In today's Agent Insights guest post - Karen Kruschka - realtor of RE/MAX Ultimate in Virginia - gives advice about contract situations to avoid and how to keep them on "track".

Here's Karen:

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in May of 2014. It was updated in July of 2015 for accuracy.

Lead generation remains a natural focal point for those seeking to develop new business opportunities as a realtor. But, it’s largely the degree to which you successfully engage with your incoming leads that determines whether or not you’re able to convert them into new clients at their moment of intent, and ultimately increase your closings.

In November of 2013, we announced our partnership with Zillow. In short, our mutual goal is to increase the value of your individual leads - by increasing the likelihood of converting each lead into a new business opportunity. And so, we built a specific set of product features to support realtor leads generated with Zillow.

In 1990-something, everyone was doing Billy Blanks Tae-Bo and was calling Jenny Craig for diet advice. Rewind a few more years to the mid-'80s and it was all about Jane Fonda and the grapefruit diet. (Rumor has it, there was even a global shortage of neon leopard print leotards in 1986!) Today, people won't stop going on about Crossfit, P90X and Paleo (you know the ones...).

Regardless of the decade, there's always been a half-dozen quick fix solutions that help you shed weight fast and achieve your goals with minimal efforts. But what does any of this have to do with real estate?

Many of the same things that deter us from successfully incorporating a healthy, balanced diet and consistent exercise into our daily lives can also sabotage your real estate career. Here's some food for thought...

Avoid These 5 Self-Sabotaging Behaviors:

Are you making the most of your MLS listing photos?

I've recently been looking at homes for sale and am sad to report that many of the MLS listings are severely lacking when it comes to quality photos. Most of the listings aren't as bad as some of the photo fails we shared a while back - but agents often neglect to focus on the most important areas of their listing, provide only one photo or provide dark, out of focus or warped images.

But the question is, if you are to provide the best possible photos to intrigue buyers without giving away the farm, which photos should you consistently include on the MLS? 

Trulia did a survey to find out what the most important listing photos are. Surprisingly, men and women both agreed that the following five photos are the most critical when it comes to deciding whether or not a property is worth taking a look at. 

Here are the Top 5 MLS Listing Photos You Must Include:

Vlogging (short for video blogging) is easy and affordable. It also provides a great way for real estate professionals to build meaningful and engaging relationships with buyers and sellers. Done right, posting videos on your blog on a regular basis can do wonders for your business. To figure out how to do it right, let’s go through some details on what vlogging for real estate is and how you can incorporate it into your real estate marketing strategy to generate and convert more real estate leads.