The 123rd edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted over at real/diaBlog. Tony Arko points out some posts that you won’t want to miss as you start the new year, particularly the very practical one about how to create video with Google Earth — head over to real/diaBlog and find out what you need to know!

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, January 12th at For Sale By Locals. Please submit your best post by Sunday January 11, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

The 122nd edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted over at Northwest Indiana Mortgages – take a look at this week’s winners!

The carnival will take a bit of a break over the holidays and reconvene January 5th at real/diaBlog. Please submit your best post by Sunday January 4th, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

I just posted the 121st edition of the Carnival of Real Estate over at Geek Estate Blog – head over and take a look at this week’s 5 award winners!

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, December 22nd at Northwest Indiana Mortgages. Please submit your best post by Sunday December 21st, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

Here are the rest of last week’s submissions that did not quite make the cut:

Andy Hodes presents Tips for Chattanooga homeowners to save on heating bills posted at Scenic City Scoop Real Estate Blog.

Rory Siems presents Laguna Beach Ocean Front Homes, High End Real Estate, and Beach Homes posted at Laguna Niguel Real Estate.

William Doom presents Top Tax Deductions Overlooked For Homeowners/Investors | Your Mortgage Planner 2.0 Blog posted at Your Mortgage Planner 2.0 Blog - Your Mortgage Planner 2.0 Blog.

Junelle presents Real Estate Twitter User to Follow posted at Home Value Comparison Blog.

Melissa presents SHOULD I HAVE MY HOME FOR SALE DURING THE HOLIDAYS? posted at Sarasota Real Estate Expert Blog.

Shawna Ebersole presents It’s The Price, Stupid! posted at iShop Greenwood | Greenwood IN Realtor | Greenwood IN Real Estate.

Riley Smith presents Want Dirt? Land Values in Coconut Grove posted at The Real Estate Coconut.

Melody Anderson presents Making the Most of Your Home Decor posted at Postcards From The Lake.

Dave Peniuk presents Doing No Money Down Real Estate Investments posted at Life as Real Estate Investors.

Ro Troia presents Eco Fun Facts posted at Blog the Rockies.

Dan Melson presents Buyer’s Agents Presenting An Offer In Person posted at Searchlight Crusade.

Ben Roberts presents 3 Reasons a Good Home Inspector will Help Your Marriage when Buying a House posted at Exit Real Estate 540.

Dan Green presents The 3 O’Clock Hour Matters To Mortgage Rate Shoppers posted at The Mortgage Reports.

John West presents You Locked In A Low Mortgage Rate — Now You’ve Got To Close On It posted at The Mortgage Advisor.

Mark Eckenrode presents Why Listing Reviews are Better than Listing Descriptions posted at HomeStomper | Guerrilla Real Estate Marketing Tips.

Michael Anderson from Eppraisal hosted the 120th edition of the carnival this past Monday at Realty Thoughts. I spoke with Michael this morning for the latest CoRE Podcast.  Since the subject matter of the winning post was Twitter, we talked quite a bit about social media marketing on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook — hope you enjoy the conversation!

The CoRE encourages all hosts to follow up with a podcast interview. Why? It’s a great way for future hosts to hear about the process and the thinking behind previous host’s selections.

The 120th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted over at Realty Thoughts. For the life of me, many people don’t understand the value of social media.  Just this morning my wife was poking fun at me while I was updating my facebook page - and I have to admit that sometimes I, too, find all the mindless updates, twits and twerps a bit inane.  Well, this week’s carnival brings more focus on the use of social media for realtors– head over to Realty Thoughts and find out what you need to know.!

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, December 15th at Geek Estate. Please submit your best post by Sunday December 14, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

The 119th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted at Housing Chronicles. There were 5 awards given for this week’s top posts, along with a few honorable mentions — head over and take a look to see who won the Mayflower Award for this week’s top post. You can see all of last week’s submissions here.

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, December 8th at Realty Thoughts. Please submit your best post by Sunday December 7, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

The 118th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted over at The Stockton Real Estate Specialist. In this thanks giving season, I’m thankful that after some technical difficulties we got this edition posted a day late but not without plenty to be thankful for, as Pat Holkesvig highlighted posts that were positive, helpful, uplifting, and genuine, and Thanks-giving — head over and take a look!

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, December 1st at Housing Chronicles. Please submit your best post by Sunday December 1, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

If you feel your real estate blog needs a total makeover, head over to Inman News to learn how you can enter your blog the win the Blog Makeover at Bloggers Connect NYC ‘09.

The 117th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted over at Agent Genius. Benn highlights the 5 top picks (but all submissions got a link) — you’ll have to head over and take a look to see who received this week’s top honor!

The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, November 24 at Stockton Real Estate Specialist. Please submit your best post by Sunday November 23, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in administration of the CoRE? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

We all know the content is king, and to have a successful blog you need to give your readers consistent, accurate content. But where do the ideas for this content come from? How do you consistently come up with pertinent, meaningful blog post that keep your readers engaged and coax them into subscribing to your blog?
The best Blog writing tools may be tools that inspire ideas and bring pertinent blog post worthy ideas to your desktop. In the special post for the Carnival of Real Estate, I will share two of my favorite inspirational tools, Google Alerts, and Google Blog Search / Feed Reader.

Google Alerts is a free service available to any Google account holder that allows the user to choose specific search terms and ask Google to inform them via email, when this search term is used throughout the Internet. To set up a search simply go to your Google home page and login. Next, at the very top left of your screen you will see the link “more.” Click on this and scroll all the way down to “even more.” Here, you will find on the very top left, “Alerts.” Choose alerts and it will take you to the alerts screen… Now, you will see a box on the upper left of the screen entitled, “Create a Google Alert.” Choose a search term, I chose Stockton Real Estate, or Stockton Foreclosure, or Stockton Housing… Choose “Comprehensive” to receive all the news from web pages, blogs, etc. and choose “Once a Day” to receive your alert daily. Enter your email address and press “Create Alert.” Voila. That is all there is to it.. Google will know keep track of any chatter, anywhere on the web and send you one email per day with links, and excerpts to the site it appeared on. AS you can tell, this is great information and a great way to aggregate information for your readers, or simply use the information for inspiration to create your own blog posts.
Google Reader, combined with RSS feeds and Googles Blog Search feature is another way to have pertinent information delivered to your desktop. If you have not downloaded Google Reader, it will really change the way you use your computer for news gathering and information. Google Reader is an RSS feed aggregator. Simply put, it displays any and all of your RSS feeds in one place, real-time for you to read. Now, if you are a bit behind on RSS, here is the short description. RSS stands for (among other things) Real Simple Syndication.

Almost every blog, news site and a fair amount of general information web sites have RSS feeds. RSS feeds are indicated by a small orange “chicklet” like the one shown to the right. IF you find a site that you feel is interesting, and would like to read more from the author(s), you simply click on the RSS chicklet and choose Google Reader. The site will now send all new content, (posts) as they are uploaded to your Google Reader… which know lives as part of your Google homepage. Even Microsoft Outlook 2007 includes the ability to capture RSS feeds. This allows you to keep up to date with all of your favorite blogs, and news sites, without having to go to each one, every day and see if there is any new content.

As, you can see, both Google Alerts and Google Reader (with RSS feeds) can offer you lots of daily news. And this news can be great fodder for additional blog posts. So keep your ideas fresh, current, and plentiful, with these two great services.

Content may be King… But Content Ideas are surely Queen!!