Great Real Estate Agent Websites

Great Real Estate Agent Websites
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Tech Tip: Simultaneously Post Your Listings to over 10 websites using Postlets and RealEstateShows
Posted October 26, 2009 by Brett Miller
      
By Brett Miller

Leveraging yourself is one of the key ingredients of any successful entrepreneur. Here are a couple of great tools, both free and paid, that will save you lots of time. And time is money!

A free tool on the internet called Postlets (http://www.Postlets.com) will allow you to post your new real estate listing to 10 different real estate listing and classified websites including Google Base, Zillow, Oodle, Vast, HotPads, Backpage, Trulia, ByOwnerMLS, Enormo, DotHomes, and Frontdoor.

For Social Networking fans, Postlets will put your listing right into your Facebook and MySpace accounts.

Postlets

Plus, it offers a great copy-and-paste template to use in Craigslist. It creates the HTML that you will need to accomplish a Craigslist posting and will deliver you directly to their website so that you can create an ad on Craigslist by pasting the HTML into the appropriate form.

The free version of Postlets will accept up to 6 JPG photos with a couple of non-intrusive ads. There is the ability to ³upgrade² to the ³Plus² version which removes the ads that support the free version, add up to 18 photos, video and more for $5. The Postlet has a 60 day life and can be renewed if the listing hasn't sold yet. Postlets is the best of the free options, their pay option is among the most inexpensive.

If you were looking for another great service that is only $125 per year, I would again recommend the Real Estate Shows site at http://www.realestateshows.com where you can create unlimited movies created from photos you upload.

In addition to being able to publish your video in a Flyer to Google Base, Oodle, Trulia, Zillow, Vast, Hotpads, Geebo and Viewr -- RealEstateShows.com also has one-button publishing directly to your YouTube account. Be sure to add in the best Keywords into each YouTube submission for maximum Google placement! This service averages to less than $11 per month, but if used to its fullest potential, can prove invaluable, and put those 360 panorama tours to shame.

In no way should you use these as a complete substitute for good blogging, but used wisely, you can intersperse your personal blog and social networking posts with quality posts showing off your hot listings, and give yourself the look of quality.

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Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. If you're a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to get noticed, go to http://www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com  or check out their many services at http://www.HoopJumper.com
Beware of the Domain Slammers!
Posted October 14, 2009 by Brett Miller
      By Brett Miller

Remember back in the 80s when there was something called "Telephone Slamming"? Wikipedia describes this as "an illegal telecommunications practice of changing subscribers' telephone service without their consent. Slamming became a more visible issue after the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the mid-1980s, especially after several brutal price wars between the major telecommunications companies."

Well, in the 2000s, something I like to call "Domain Slamming" started popping up. This was the deceptive practice of sending you a piece of postal mail or fax or email that had the appearance of being a domain renewal notice, but was in fact a solicitation to buy something from their company.

DomainsHere's the scenario: the postal mail comes in to your company’s or to your spouse who calls you and says : "We just got a bill for your domain name. Should I just pay it?" Being busy and wanting this off your plate, often the response is "Just pay it." Then a contract is sent back to the company authorizing them to charge you for their services. I've heard this story over and over again.

There are 3 kinds of Domain Slamming:

1. Changing Domain Registrar:
What looks like a bill for your domain is really an order form for you to switch companies, and usually for more money!

2. Buying Domain Name with Different TLD Suffix Extension:
Your domain is yourdomain.COM but you're getting an invoice for yourdomain.CC, yourdomain.US, yourdomain.BIZ or any infinite number of other Top Level Domain extensions. You probably don't want these domains, but if you did, you should buy them through your regular domain registrar company.

3. Buying Search Engine Registration or Optimization services:
This invoice has your domain on it, but it is some ancillary service related to services for your website. Chances are that this company is not your best option for these services. If you like what they are offering, go online and find a reputable company offering the same thing and not a company that is trying to fool you into paying them.

Most of us now know that a domain name should only cost around $10 - like at http://www.HoopJumperDomains.com - but the fees these companies charge for their domains usually are in the $35 per year price range. This should be an immediate flashing red light. (And if you right now paying $35 per year for YOUR domain, you should really switch companies.)

Another red light is if you receive this notice by postal mail or fax. You should only be receiving this renewal notice via email and only from the company you are doing business with. KNOW WHO YOUR DOMAIN COMPANY IS AND READ THEIR EMAILS!

I get these invoices all the time and recognize them for what they are instantly. Do what I do, open them up, inspect them, have yourself a good laugh, then START SHREDDIN'!

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Brett Miller is founder of HoopJumper Websystems, home of Great Small Business Websites and Great Real Estate Agent Websites and has helped hundreds of small business owners become the Master of Your Own Domain™.  Find out more at http://www.HoopJumper.com
Tech Tip: How to get started with Social Media
Posted September 23, 2009 by Brett Miller
      By Brett Miller

Many of my clients are asking about which Social Media sites to use. With Social Networking being all the buzz, it is important to understand why you want to bother with Social Media. Simply, it is because people will do business with people they like. It is easy to create connections with clients, leads as well as family and friends who can “suggest” you to their extended group of friends. That is what Social Media Marketing is all about.

Not so long ago, I was scheduling in morning and lunchtime meetings at local Chambers of Commerce and BNI groups. These get-togethers are well organized and run professionally, to be sure, but the time commitments and expense can really take a toll on your productivity.

Think of making sure you have your good clothes on, leave a half hour or more before hand to drive to the restaurant where the meeting is being held, check in, find your seat, get your food, listen to the official opening remarks, wait for every person in the room to give their “elevator speech” or testimonial about another member, give my 1 minute scorcher, wrap up, network, give out business cards, and drive back to the office. Whew, I was doing that a few times a week and only meeting with people in my area.

Now with Social Networking, I’m able to connect up with lots of people nationwide easily, always put my best foot forward, and my “friends” keep me in their minds with very little effort on my part... and no rubber chicken. And I can leave the monkey suit in the closet. 


Here are some basic instructions for choosing which Social Media Sites you use:

  1. First, figure out what sites are your clients on. You can do this by looking at emails sent you by prospects, friends and clients inviting you to join a certain Social Media. If you are just getting started, I recommend starting with one or two and then adding more down the line. Look at one of these to start with: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Active Rain, or MySpace. If your niche market is on Twitter, don’t spend your time figuring out MySpace.

  2. Decide your objective with having the site before you set up your profile. Will you use this for business, or for personal use? How often will you be updating it? What kinds of posts will you make?

  3. Schedule time to update your Social Media 3-5 times each week. If you don’t use it, it won’t work for you. At first you may post things a few times a day, but after the novelty wears off, how are you going to make sure you keep using it. Schedule time to work on your Social Media marketing each week

  4. Be careful your posts reflect the image you want to portray. If a friend from college insists on posting stories about your younger days that you would rather not remember, monitor that. Also be careful when allowing assistants to post things to your social networking site. You want to make sure it is in your voice.

  5. Mix personal and professional posts. One of the main reasons Social Networking sites are as popular as they are is that people are craving connections with people. With internet putting us in front of computers more and more and away from personal contact, people are craving those personal connections with real people, so be real! Mix up personal posts about what you are doing in your personal life, with what is happening with your business. It will make you much more interesting and three-dimensional.

  6. Be mindful of speaking about the usual taboo subjects like religion and politics. You would be surprised how many business contacts you relate to in many other ways have deeply-held, strong and differing opinions on many divisive issues. If you really want to use your Social Networking site to talk about these things, consider setting up a separate account and steer your personal and professional contacts to the right place.

  7. Just do it! I think we all realize that this Social Media “thing” is out there to stay and needs to be part of our complete marketing campaign. A little bit at a time will go a long way.

Happy Networking!



Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper® Websystems. He has created small business websites and real estate agent websites with seamless blog integration. Find out more at http://www.HoopJumper.com where “We jump through hoops, so you don’t have to.”™
Don't Lose Your Domain Name!
Posted September 10, 2009 by Brett Miller
      By Brett Miller

"BRETT! WHERE IS MY WEBSITE!!!! OMG!!!!!!!! MY WEBSITE IS GONE, MY WEBSITE IS GONE!!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!!!  FIRE IN THE MOVIE THEATRE!!!!!! OH THE HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE... ITS PEOPLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!!!"

These fun emails or voice mail messages (okay, some are movie quotes) delivered desperately, loudly, frantically and usually on a holiday weekend, come in far more often than I would like. Mostly because someone has ignored an email from the Domain Registrar Company who manages their domain names and has unknowingly let their domain expire. Then their domain name - NOT THEIR WEBSITE - has been pulled down.

More often than not this can get fixed quickly with a phone call to your Domain Company and a good credit card. But if you wait too long after it has expired, your domain name will go out on the open market and will be scooped up by an unscrupulous person, usually in another country, who will gladly sell it back to you for a prohibitively high amount of money.

CHRONOLOGY OF EXPIRED DOMAINS

Once your domain has expired, as a courtesy, many companies will leave it up and running for up to a week before pulling the plug or “suspending” it.

At 30 days after expiration, your domain goes into what's called "Redemption" - a purgatory-like state between “heaven” (the state of you owning your domain) and “hell” (when your domain is back on the open market and is picked up by a domain grabber/ransomer). This “redemption period” lasts until 80-100 days after expiration.

Getting your domain out of Redemption can cost as much as $100 or more depending on the registrar. Though expensive, this is not nearly as bad as the thousands of dollars in "ransom" you may be asked to pay if your domain is picked up in the open market.

Another option for getting your domain back, though not guaranteed, is to put a “Backorder” on your domain so that when it does come out of redemption, you have a chance of owning it again. Domain Backordering costs around $20, but if someone else also has a Backorder on the same domain, you may not get it back. (Do you feel lucky?)

DOMAIN NAME ISSUES ARE NOT YOUR WEBSITE HOSTING COMPANY'S FAULT!

Most good website hosting companies have a 99.9% uptime record, even better than the purity of Ivory Soap! Before you freak out on them, go to this website and see if your domain has expired or not:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/

If your domain HAS expired, call the phone number listed in the contact information immediately and not your website hosting company.

If you pay attention to your website and you know your domain has just recently expired, chances are very good that you will be able to get it back under your control and serving up your website in minutes for just the normal cost of your Domain Renewal. I hope this is your experience. (Tip: Put the domain company’s phone number in your cell phone in case you need to call from a distant location. Keep your domain account number, password and PIN# on a card in your wallet.)

Repeat after me: “My Domain Registrar Company and my Website Hosting Company are two different entities. If my domain expires, I will call my Domain Registrar Company.”

LEARN WHO YOUR DOMAIN REGISTRAR IS AND DO NOT IGNORE THEIR EMAILS.

I understand how much spam you must get daily as well as other junk mail. Plus, you're getting faxed and postal mailed with either alarming messages that you are going to lose your domain name or an "invoice" shows up that is urgent and must be paid. Most of these are false, misleading and borderline fraudulent.

So yes, you're sick of it and growing a little apathetic to these red alerts coming in.
You must still learn who your Domain Registrar is and do not ignore their emails. Read each email to determine if they need you to update your information.

Your Domain Registrar will normally send you an email, not a fax or a postal mail, to let you know your domain name is going to be up for renewal. Click this link and type in your domain name to see if your current email address is the one listed as the "Administrative Contact." If it’s not, you will not get these important emails.

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/

Your domain name is something you need to guard continuously because losing it can waste years of efforts building up your Google ranking online as well as printing costs to replace anything with a now lost domain name.

IS YOUR CREDIT CARD EXPIRED OR NO GOOD?

The Domain Notice email may try to tell you that your card number on file has already expired, in which case it will not be able to run and your domain will expire.

DID YOUR BANK SEND YOU NEW CARDS WITH A DIFFERENT NUMBER?

With all the credit problems associated with the current economy, many banks have reissued their cards, many with a different credit card number. Did you update your billing information with your Domain Company? If you do not update your card with them, your domain will expire.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A WEBSITE?

A website is a group of web pages in a folder or "directory" stored on a computer server located somewhere. When someone clicks on a link or types in your website address (URL), the world's servers translate your URL into the address of that server and voila - WEBSITE!

WHAT EXACTLY IS A DOMAIN?

For those who may not know the specifics, your domain is not the same as your URL (website address). Your URL "contains" your domain name, but they are not synonymous. Take Yahoo, their URL is http://www.yahoo.com but their "domain name" is simply "yahoo.com" without the "www" and without the "http://". The "www" is what is known as a "subdomain." Other things can be used as a subdomain than “www” – example: http://gallery.hoopjumper.com . In this instance “gallery” is the subdomain.

HISTORY OF DOMAIN FEES

In the olden days when dinosaurs roamed the earth (1994) when I first began creating websites, a domain cost $100 per year and you could only buy them from Network Solutions. Then the price dropped to $70, eventually to $35, then the monopoly ended and you could buy domains from lots of other vendors like GoDaddy and HoopJumperDomains.com for as low as $10 or less.

WHEN YOU BUY A DOMAIN, WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU BUYING?

Well, you are not really buying anything, you are "leasing" the right to use a specific domain name that points to your website. Think of your “domain name” like it is the tabs on your license plate: every year they must be renewed. This of your “website” like it is your car. (If you have a HoopJumper website, think of it as a Porsche.) Even if your tabs expire, you still have your car, you just can’t drive it.

THE MORALE OF THIS STORY

Know who you registered your domain name with and make sure you pay attention to emails from them letting you know when they will renew the name and charge your credit card on file.  Also, make sure you update your credit card on file when you get a new one with a new expiration date.  Doing these things will help you keep your domain in your hands and help ensure that your website will stay up and working for you.

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Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. If you're a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to get noticed, go to http://www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com  or check out their many services at http://www.HoopJumper.com
Tech Tip: How to import your blog into your Facebook account
Posted August 03, 2009 by Brett Miller
      

 
by Brett Miller

Many of my clients are asking about how to import their blogs into their Facebook page.  With Social Media being all the buzz, it is important to understand how to easily add news and content.  What better way than to post content from your blog?!  Now this should not be the ONLY content on your Facebook account.  Remember to use it to create connections with clients, leads as well as family and friends.  People will do business with people they like.  That is what Social Media Marketing is all about. 

Here are some basic instructions for importing your blog on to Facebook:

  1. First, locate the Feedburner feed link for your blog.
  2. Open your Facebook, then click on the "Application" button on the bottom left of the page.
  3. Click on "Notes" (you may need to scroll to see it.)
  4. When the Notes page comes up, click the "Import a blog »" link in the "Notes Settings" area.
  5. Now enter your Feedburner feed link for your blog. (It should look like http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeedburnertag)
  6. Check the box for "By entering a URL, you represent that you have the right to permit us to reproduce this content on the Facebook site and that the content is not obscene or illegal."
  7. Click the "Start Importing" button.
  8. Facebook should then show you a preview of the imported blog
  9. Scroll down and review to make sure everything looks correct
  10. Then Click "Import"

 

Voila! Now when you post on your blog it will also show up on your Facebook profile.


For a good video walk though of this procedure you can go to.
http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/how-to-add-your-blog-feed-to-your-facebook-profile.html

 

 

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper Websystems.  He has created small business websites and  real estate agent websites with seamless blog integration.  Find out more at http://www.HoopJumper.com where “We jump through hoops, so you don’t have to.”™
Syndicated Real Estate Mapping: Did Google just disrupt the real estate data status quo?
Posted July 10, 2009 by Brett Miller
      HoopJumper WebSystems of Lake Forest, California has entered into a strategic alliance with real estate mapping pioneers RealBird, Inc. to offer a service that builds off Google's massive real estate listing syndication database called GoogleBase. RealBird co-founder Zoltan Szendro has written a very interesting article about this groundbreaking new service which you can see at http://realbird.hoopjumper.com . His article is included in full below:

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Did Google just disrupt the real estate data status quo?
by Zoltan Szendro - CTO, EVP, Co-founder RealBird Inc.

Google just announced that they revamped the search capabilities on their Google Maps service and now when consumers search for homes for sale, Google maps matching real estate listings using data from their Google Base database.

This is a big one. Bigger than it might look at the first glance as I will explain it below (The disruption). It is also one of the most stunning timing that I have seen since the founding of RealBird. Just a few month ago - in April 2009 - we released our first version of the private labeled RealBird Property Search service for real estate agents, brokers and other related real estate professionals, a service that is using the very same Google Base real estate database as the just released search tool on Google Maps (4 Million+ listings syndicated by agents, brokers, technology providers like us, FSBOs and MLSs to Google Base). While Google Base was available as a search engine for consumers before, it was not part of the flagship Google products until now. According to Compete.com, Google Maps has over 50 million unique viewers a month vs. some 300K on the Google Base domain name. That is almost a 200X jump - a major step in terms of syndicated real estate data visibility.

Check out RealBird Property Search

Google recent announcement shows Google's dedication to their Google Base real estate repository and hence, underwrites the value of our own RealBird Property Search. I usually try to avoid using very large words in our blog posts, but I think, we, at RealBird and our members just participated in a major step of the creative disruption of the real estate data distribution model. With our RealBird Property Search product - the only one on the market currently as far as I can tell - we enable you to be in the forefront of this new real estate search experience. I am very excited about this new development at Google so I may be using big words when talking about our service as well. One of the reasons is, that over the last few months, RealBird Property Search is proven to be working great as a business building tool for our members and also because it is exciting to see that Google herself justified the efforts that we invested in building the industry's first private labeled real estate search engine for agents and brokers using data from Google Base. 

First, let's talk about the disruption that I believe is happening, then I talk more about how Google's new consumer facing real estate search tool relates to our offering for real estate agents.

Did Google just disrupt the real estate data status quo?

I think so.

Check out RealBird Property Search

Step 1 - A few years ago, agents and brokers started to distribute (syndicate) real estate listings to 3rd-party consumer facing portals such as Google Base, Zillow, Trulia, Oodle and many others (even to international sites like Viewr.com ) using either direct MLS syndication or 3rd party providers like our service, the RealBird Listing Publisher I consider this to be the first step of disruption. Listing brokers - smartly - started to understand that with consumers spending more and more time on the Internet, the listings that are "seriously looking for buyers" need to appear on as many destination sites as possible. The obligation to home sellers as a broker is to provide all means of marketing the property. Zillow, Trulia and many others built their business (partly or mainly) around the aggregation of all of these listings and providing a superior user experience to their visitors. Listing syndication outside of the MLS is Step 1 in the disruption process.

Step 2 - Many, many home sellers now understand that in order for their listing to sell as fast as possible and at its best price and with the best terms, they need Internet exposure. They know or care little about the details and legal complexities of real estate advertising (IDX, association and MLS rules, business code etc.). They expect their listing to be marketed honestly and at its fullest while their financial and other interests are also considered. It has become the reality already for the last few years (see Step 1) but now that Google is fully embracing syndicated real estate listings within their flagship service, this will be even more pressing on listing brokers. While Zillow, Trulia and other great companies created a great brand in the real estate industry and also among consumers, Google - with their leading worldwide brand - incorporating syndicated listings into one of their flagship products will certainly bring exponential attention to the new era of listing advertising. Everybody (!) who uses the Internet knows about Google. Their US monthly consumer reach - only on their map service (maps.google.com) - is over 50 million according to Compete.com.

Imagine two listing agents going to a listing interview with exactly the same credentials, experience, professionalism etc. One who wants to keep the listing information in house (in the MLS only etc.) and one who promises widespread distribution via syndication, including presenting the property on Google Maps search. Guess which one will get the listing.

As more consumers will be aware of this option (associating value to syndication due to the undisputed brand and reach of Google) the more demand there will be on listing agents and brokers to let the information "free". The more listing brokers and agents welcome this brave new world, the less power will be in the hands of those who are protecting the status quo. Eventually, this pressure will trigger all the way up to the associations and MLSs and more and more of them will syndicate listings to trusted 3rd parties such as Google, Zillow and Trulia etc. Many of them are already doing it. This is the era we just entered with Google's announcement. Google just raised the importance of listing syndication outside of the MLS with several magnitudes. And that leads to the final step of this process.

Step 3 - Data quality. Once MLSes start distributing to Google Base and other destinations and/or more quality assurance tools are developed, data quality will no longer be an issue. MLSes will eventually do this based on their pressure from their participating brokers, who are pressed to do this by their very own home sellers - the real driver of the industry. We are not yet there, at step 3, this may take a few more years, but Google's new service, just made it sure that this time is coming.

So how does Google's announcement about their revamped real estate map search and the RealBird Property Search relate to each other? Who are they for?

 

Google and RealBird real estate search based on Google Base  Check out RealBird Property Search

Data source: Both are using real estate listings from Google Base as the source of property information.

Private labeling:  The standard Google Maps real estate search delivers traffic to listing brokers directly, cutting out buyer representation all together. It connects home buyers searching Google with listing agents and brokers. On the other hand, the RealBird Property Search is completely private labeled for you. ALL inquiries are forwarded to you so you can eventually convert interested visitors into home buyer clients for YOURSELF. This is a major difference between the two. Google simply redirects to the listing agent/broker website, the RealBird Property Search redirects interested parties to YOU.

Who are they for? The new Google Maps search option is mainly for consumers who visit Google to search for information. It certainly benefits listing agents and brokers with incremental exposure but has close to no value for home buyer representatives. On the other hand RealBird benefits both sides of the real estate transaction. Via the RealBird Listing Publisher - you as a listing agent or broker can syndicate your listing to the Google Base database quickly with minimum effort. With the RealBird Property Search service, you can also provide search tools to home buyers utilizing the same data as Google does, hence you can generate business on the buyer side as well. Just to emphasize it again, the RealBird Property search is not a competing product of the new Google offering, but rather, it packages the same features (and more) into a private labeled, branded service for you, supporting values and benefits on both the listing agent and buyer representative sides.

User interface: Google's version is targeting their regular portal visitors and listings are mapped on their Google Maps interface. It can be embedded just like any other maps, but it can NOT be private labeled by you. The RealBird Property Search (using the same data) is completely private labeled with your theme, photo, company name, address, email, social networking accounts and just to emphasize it again, all leads are forwarded to you and client accounts for saving searches and listings are also associated with you.

Search engine performance: This is one of our favorites. The RealBird Property Search was designed from the ground up to deliver exceptional performance. We are proud to say that due to the software architecture that we developed, your visitors to the RealBird Property Search get the exact same lightning fast search results as the people visiting and searching Google directly.

Widgets and deployment: Google Maps can only be embedded as a standard map without the search form, without private labeling and the widget carries practically no value to you on the home buyer side, because all click-throughs go the respective listing agent or broker. The RealBird Property Search  can be embedded in many different forms, including full screen version, live search tool in blog posts, (e.g. in ActiveRain post), blog sidebar widget and more. Interestingly enough, Google's search form is still very basic and lacks one of the most powerful features that their Google Base service provides: the keyword search. With the RealBird Property Search, you can create fine tuned, niche, pre-set search widgets such as ocean view homes, equestrian ranches, short sale properties or whatever you can come up with that makes sense in your market.

Some examples and buzz from existing users

   1. Tutorials by RealBird here on ActiveRain
   2. Member success story: RealBird flies to the top
   3. Member success story: ActiveRain + RealBird = Google Page 1 result

How to get your own RealBird Property Search

Just create a free account on RealBird and your service is set up and ready to be used in minutes.

Zoltan Szendro - CTO, EVP, Co-founder
RealBird Inc.
How to Promote your Website
Posted July 06, 2009 by Brett Miller
      You know that you should be helping with your own SEO by promoting your website and providing opportunities for back links, but HOW?  Here are a few ideas I shared with one of my Real Estate clients:

CRAIGSLIST and OTHER FREE CLASSIFIEDS

Craigslist is an amazing place to post advertisements for your services with a link pointing to your website. You should try it! Also, writing little articles in your Blog about what you do not only will be good for Search Engines, but they can be used on Craigslist, Backpage, and on Article Submission sites.

DON'T FORGET TO PUT LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE!

Never waste a Blog Posting by not having links pointed back to your website. Without links you shouldn’t be wasting your time! Think of every link you place online as a vote for yourself. If your search term is “Colorado Springs Real Estate” and you have that term set up as a link pointed to your site, as top agent Brandon Smith does at ColoradoSpringsHomeSite.com, the more links like this that appear on the web, the higher your Google ranking will be. One by one, post by post, week in and week out, think about how you can insert the keywords and keyphrases you want people to find you when searching in Google and other Search Engines.

VIDEO IS REALLY REALLY EFFECTIVE!

Think about the Video idea as well. Create your own little commercial. Using a Webcam or a little Flip Videocam is so easy now.

The best part is that it doesn’t need to be long. In fact it’s better if it isn’t. When I scan through videos and audio podcasts, I’m looking for bite-size nuggets that won’t take too much of a bite out of my day, because I just don’t have that much spare time. Think 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Talk directly into the camera about what you do for a minute. You can do that. Keep doing takes until you have “the one.”

YOUTUBE IS FREE AND GOOGLE LOVES IT (THEY OWN IT)!

Once your completed video is on your computer and you’ve done any editing you wish to do, upload it to YouTube for Free. If you don’t have a YouTube account, set one up now. It will take just a few minutes. Once you have uploaded successfully to your YouTube account, I will point you the way of putting it on your website.

Just think how amazing it would be if you would record 30 second spots for each page on your website. Google likes to feature YouTube videos on Page 1 of their search results. If you took just a minute to add the main search words that you would want people to find your video with in YouTube, you may be rewarded for your efforts with Page 1 placement. (It happens all the time!)

FOCUS ON YOUR LOCAL MICRO AREA INSTEAD OF THE BIG METROPOLIS

Perhaps trying to throw a whole swath over a big marketing area (let’s say “Dallas”) are not going to be as effective as focusing like a laser on the actual smaller community that they really want to market to, like “Plano, TX.” There are thousands of people all trying to get that big market key search term placement on Google. To get that will certainly cost you a lot in paid premium search engine placement. By focusing smaller, your competition for that high Google placement is reduced significantly.

KEEP BLOGGING!

If you have been blogging, Congratulations! DON'T STOP! It's not a "get rich quick" type of operation. Think of it as a mountain building exercise and each post is a shovel of dirt. One by one you will create your mountain until it towers above all others in your field who are not putting in the time, or who only put money into the Pay-Per-Click programs.

This again is an example of the Assets vs. Liabilities theory talked about by Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Premium Pay-Per-Click campaigns are Liabilities; once they’ve been clicked on, they’re gone! Building your own empire online of Blog Postings containing links pointing to your website can stay up forever, and their exponential nature can build and build and bring you the benefits for years to come!

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Brett Miller is founder of HoopJumper Websystems, home of Great Small Business Websites and Great Real Estate Agent Websites and has helped hundreds of small business owners become the Master of Your Own Doamain™.  Find out more at www.HoopJumper.com
What Would Google Do?
Posted March 11, 2009 by Brett Miller
      Wow! Loaded question.

One of the most asked questions by my clients goers like this...

"My website went live last week and I'm still not on Page 1 of Google? What gives?"

The first thing I try to let them know is

A) Google is a business, not a democracy, and 
  
B) Google shakes up their own apple cart constantly, so what may work great one week or one year may be ineffective now.

Some things to keep in mind about Google... they take their users seriously.
It's their goal to give their "clients" the best sites that fit the search terms entered. Google loves websites that are information rich and which are updated on a regular basis and not stale with the same information year-in and year-out. They also seem to like sites that deliver new media content like audio and video.

A recent article from Broker Agent Social that I've some clients sending me called "Page Ranking is Dead"  states that Google, as it did over 300 times last year, is planning to unveil an updated algorithm, and that this one is going to change things dramatically. As the article states about Google's new Universal Search feature:

"This will be the most significant factor of 2009. Google looks at soundtracks and convert them to text. They can jump into the middle of videos, scan sites to determine if you have video/images or not. There are a lot of variables in universal search, and some of these variables tell how engaging your site is. What will be scary to those casual users, is if you don¹t have video and your competition does, you¹re going to see a big shift in rankings. If the top ten sites don¹t have video, they may lose their ranking over night. There is no question about it. Getting placed at the top of the search engines will change from what we have known in the past. The real question is: what are you doing to stay ahead of the competition?"

Dang! I just saw a DVD called "Eagle Eye" where a computer is able to translate a voice's sound waves reflected off of someone's coffee into text. (For us older folk, we remember the HAL9000 reading an astronauts lips.)

A great value for creating easy videos for the web is a company called Real Estate Shows at http://www.realestateshows.com . For $125 per year, you can unlimited videos created from your own digital photos. It's a very fancy video slideshow which pans the pictures in a "Ken Burns" type way which is very nice. You can easily add a soundtrack, captions, and... voila! Internet movie ready to use. RealEstateShows.com even connects directly to your Realtor.com

So we can begin to pick apart and find out what Google has done, it is much harder to figure out what they will DO.  The best thing you can do is create a quality website, with excellent content that people find, go to and return to often. Trying to beat the system is tough to do and stay ahead of, especially with where Google is concerned. 

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Brett Miller is founder of HoopJumper® Websystems and helps his clients create quality websites that visitors come to and return to.  To find out more about his products and services, visit www.HoopJumper.com 
Top Producer's Market Snapshot: An Option Worth Exploring
Posted July 07, 2008 by Brett Miller
      By Brett Miller

There are many different schools of thought on how a Real Estate website should look and feel. I am constantly reiterating to my clients that the most important things about Real Estate websites are content, facts, and news. Flashy designs may be exciting to some, but they are also distracting and give only face value attraction. You want to give your prospective leads a reason to contact you and to come back again and again, and the best way to do that is to give them the information they want and the details they deserve.

One new tool is the amazing "Market Snapshot" from Top Producer®. It sends up-to-the minute MLS graphical reports - automatically delivered and updated without you lifting a finger! And it keeps the dialogue going by giving potential home buyers and sellers important information that they actually can use allowing you to be their informational point of contact regarding the data.

A client of mine, Oakland Real Estate and Relocation Expert Dave Higgins and owner of the OaklandHomefinder.com website, uses the Top Producer Market Snapshot extensively. Says Dave, "I have used Market Snapshot in several ways to help separate me from my local competition.  The first is by preparing a market snapshot for all prospective sellers within 24 hours of meeting with them as a follow-up tool.   The snapshot is laid out in a way sellers love and data is easy to interpret.  Secondly, we have added the snapshot to our seller 'closing plan' and as soon as we have concluded a transaction we let them know they should be expecting this service as part of our 'client for life plan'.  This is a great way to continue to be seen as the market expert in their new neighborhood and continue to deliver pinpoint precise market data consistently."   I would recommend the market snapshot to any serious realtor!'

For information on Top Producer's great new Market Snapshot program, contact Luke Rogalsky at 1-800-444-8570 ext. 8113.

If you already have Market Snapshot and you need to integrate it into your HoopJumper Great Real Estate Agent Website, call HoopJumper at 888-HOOPJUMPER.

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For information on Top Producer's great new Market Snapshot program, contact Luke Rogalsky at 1-800-444-8570 ext. 8113.

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Did you know that HoopJumper WebSystems creates Real Estate Agent websites that work with Top Producer®? Imagine all your web leads flowing directly into just one database. Contact us today to learn how you can get a Great Real Estate Agent Website that is integrated with Top Producer® including the new Market Snapshot!

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. If you're a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to get noticed, go to http://www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com or check out their many services at http://www.HoopJumper.com
Business Building - 6 Ways to Boost Marketing ROI with E-mail
Posted March 12, 2008 by Margaret Kelly
      

mar12leadweb.jpg

RISMEDIA, March 12, 2008-With declining home sales and tighter budgets, a strong return on investment is more important than ever. E-mail marketing can be a great way to improve your ROI because much of your investment involves spending extra time, not hard cash.

E-mail marketing can be highly effective-and profitable. It can also be futile and annoying. It’s all in the execution.

The No. 1 goal of e-mail marketing should be to attract potential customers, not convert or sell them. If you try to sell through e-mail, you risk being perceived as a spammer. Instead, you should entice e-mail recipients by giving them something they want: a tool, new information or something they requested.

To get the best results, target inactive prospects in addition to your current leads. These people were interested enough to inquire about your services-you may be able to pique their curiosity with your e-mail campaign.

Here are six ideas to help you create an effective campaign:

1. Don’t start your e-mail campaign using e-mail. Attract prospects through traditional marketing techniques and encourage them to opt in to your campaign. You can do this in person or through your website. Be sure to include an opt-out option in every e-mail.
2. Use the same sender address starting on day one. Your e-mails need instant recognition, and the “From” line is the easiest way to do this.
3. Create subject lines that are short, but precise. Tell readers what they can expect to see in the message.
4. Personalize the experience. A subject line that says, “Karen, here are houses that meet your criteria,” will be opened more often than one that reads, “Houses that meet your criteria.”
5. Keep your message short. If you offer an in-depth newsletter, tease it with a short description and then link to your website where the information is housed.
6. Make sure your messages are professional and grammatically correct. Don’t be afraid to ask for editing help. Also, avoid using all caps and don’t attach stationary backgrounds.

E-mail marketing can build relationships, grow your business and improve your bottom line. You can win credibility and respect. Invest in a smart e-mail marketing campaign and enjoy the strong ROI that follows.

Margaret Kelly, CRB, is chief executive officer of RE/MAX International.
What Makes a Good Real Estate Web Form?
Posted February 29, 2008 by Brett Miller
      What makes a good real estate web form?

Web forms are very important for gathering leads off your website.  This is what Realtor.org has to say about it this month.  What do you think?
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This article was published on: 03/01/2008 on Realtor.org

Get More Leads
Turn Your Web Forms Into Business Generators

Can’t get customers to fill out your online forms? Then maybe you need to change your approach. Here are three strategies to get customers sharing.

BY MICHAEL RUSSER

Your Web site forms are the most direct way for your site visitors to contact and interact with you — they are literally the doorway to new online business. Unfortunately, this door is slammed shut on most agent sites.

But getting prospects to complete your Web forms with accurate information is not difficult.

Here are three proven strategies that will have your visitors actually excited about filling out your forms. Keep in mind that these assume you are giving your visitors something of value in exchange for completing a form.

Strategy 1: Tell them they don’t have to complete it!

One of the biggest mistakes that Web site owners make with their forms is insisting that a visitor provide full contact information. This is the old gate keeper mentality that essentially says: “I’ll give you the information you want as long as you tell me who you are.”

This simply does not work well with the online consumer who initially enjoys the anonymity the Internet affords them. In fact, putting in this type of requirement can drive them away, or many consumers will blatantly enter false information.

So take an entirely different approach. Put the following copy above each and every form on your site and watch what happens:

“We understand that you may be in the information-gathering stage and may not be ready to open up about who you are or your real estate needs at this time. If you are not comfortable providing all your contact information that is perfectly OK. Just enter your e-mail address so we can send you the material you requested.”

(NOTE: On your Web form, the e-mail address should be the only mandatory field.)

Human nature is a funny thing. Tell people they have to do something and they’ll dig in their heels. Explicitly tell them they don’t have to and chances are they will complete all of it — with accurate information.

Strategy 2: Reassure them of their privacy.

Privacy is extremely important to online consumers. The more you can explicitly reassure them that their information will be kept safe and not be abused, the better. In addition to the copy in Strategy 1, add the following on every form:

“Please be assured that your privacy will be kept sacred and your information will never be shared with any third party.”

By the way, you should also have a link to your formal privacy policy at the bottom of every page of your Web site, providing them with even more comfort.

Strategy 3: Give them visual cues to complete your form fields.

It’s been shown anecdotally that if your form fields have a pale yellow text area color, online consumers will often take that as a cue to complete the field, even if it is not mandatory to do so. Another aspect of this is to have your Web designer make your forms visually appealing and fun to use.

Form design is one of the most overlooked areas in Web design with potentially the highest payoff. Don’t settle for plain vanilla forms. A little thought invested into the design of your Web forms can give you a big return.

A couple of years ago I created a very special kind of form called a MOVA Assessment. This was by far my biggest form and it was designed to engage home owners who were thinking of selling their home. (Click here to see an example)

(NOTE: This is a live form on the Web that has been pre-filled in for demonstration purposes. See what happens when you hit the “Submit” button at the bottom.)

This form incorporates every aspect of the three strategies mentioned above — and it works! I’ve discovered that when home owners complets this form, there is about a 95 percent chance they will turn into a listing.

Put Yourself in Their Shoes

Now just imagine you are a home owner thinking of selling. Review your form and the questions it asks, and just as importantly, how it asks them. As a potential seller what are some of the conclusions you are coming to about the practitioner that supplied this form? And, was it a burden or opportunity to take the few minutes to do it?

The forms on your Web site shouldn’t be an intimidating barrier to having online consumers engage with you. Instead, make them your welcome mat, a friendly inviting threshold that will help turn casual visitors into serious clients.

Note: Mr. Internet, Russer Communications, and its staff and officers receive no compensation from any third-party vendors and make no recommendations as to the suitability of the products or services mentioned in this article. Always thoroughly investigate any product or service before purchase.

Web 2.0 and Real Estate
Posted February 28, 2008 by Brett Miller
      There was a great article in the March 2008 addition of Realtor Magazine.  I have posted it below.  What do you think?  You have heard me many of these ideas numerous times.  How does your website do in these areas?

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Welcome to Real Estate 2.0

There’s a new Web world out there. Here’s how to build business with a variety of social networking tools.

BY JOHN N. FRANK

When Teresa Boardman left a major Minneapolis-area real estate brokerage in 2005, she saw traffic to her Web site plunge. Most of her Web visitors had found her through the brokerage site, she soon realized.

Looking for a way to increase her online visibility, Boardman turned to a tactic then still relatively unknown to real estate professionals. She started her own blog, a Web-based daily chat with her customers, potential customers, and anyone else interested in hearing about real estate in her St. Paul, Minn., market area. “At the time, I couldn’t find any examples to follow,” she recalls.

Today, Boardman is setting the example. Her StPaulRealEstateBlog.com site pops up first on a list of Google finds when you search for “St. Paul real estate.” She’s getting between 3,000 and 5,000 visitors a week to her blog, and that’s translated into new business.

Ann Marie Clements, with the RE/MAX Realty Group, in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Gaithersburg, Md., has found another avenue for Web-based lead generation. She posted a profile of herself on Facebook, a social networking site. The site was founded in 2004 as a way for college students to connect, but in the past year, Facebook has been reaching out to business people. Within three weeks of her Facebook page’s debut, Clements got a client referral from another Re/Max professional who found her there.

Welcome to the latest incarnation of the Internet. The professionals who simply created Web sites for online exposure are giving way to the next generation of Web users. The tech world has dubbed tools like blogs and social network sites like Facebook as Web 2.0, enabling Web users to connect with one another rather than view content passively.

These tools offer real estate practitioners a new way to market themselves — turning Web 2.0 into Real Estate 2.0. “Real Estate 2.0 really means a conversation with the client or the prospective client,” says Brian Boero, cofounder of 1000Watt Consulting, an Oakland, Calif., real estate technology consultant. “That sits in opposition to Real Estate 1.0, which was really about one-way communication from the real estate professional or brokerage company about their services, their expertise, their brand.”

Major Real Estate 2.0 tools are:
  • Blogs: Quickly becoming the most widely used symbol of Real Estate 2.0, blogs are online diaries or commentaries. Blogs can be on a free-standing site you create, a brokerage site, a real estate–oriented site that also includes listings, or a site designed to host real estate bloggers. Costs range from free for a basic blog to $2,500 a year for creating more elaborate, custom creations.
  • Wikis: These are compilations of information from a variety of contributors. Real estate pros are creating wikis for their local communities, asking visitors to their sites to comment on schools, shopping, and other topics of interest to buyers and sellers. Web sites such as Inman.com and Zillow.com are also creating real estate wikis, asking real estate professionals to contribute their community insights.
  • Mash-ups: This term refers to combining elements from different Web companies on your own site. That could mean combining Google maps with local demographic information. The goal, as with wikis, is to give potential customers community information that will help them decide where they’d like to live.
  • Social networks: These are Web communities people join — usually free of charge — through a simple registration process. Members can post profiles of themselves and invite other members to become their friends. MySpace and Facebook are the best known of these sites. Because they were created as places for young people to meet up, these sites still skew toward the tween to college-age crowd, though that’s changing. And social networking is finding its way into the real estate realm. Activerain.com, which hosts real estate blogs, also has a social networking component that has more than 61,000 real estate professionals signed up.
  • Videos: YouTube is the best-known video sharing site these days. Its policy forbids commercial use of the site, though real estate videos are popping up there. Real estate sites, such as Coldwell Banker’s ColdwellBanker.com, are also looking to make greater use of video, while third parties such as HGTV are creating new sites with more housing-related video content.

When you’re ready to join the Web 2.0 movement, you can do it on your own, turn to a variety of Web sites ready to help or, if you’re part of a large national brokerage, look to its Web site as your home base.

More tools likely will appear as the Web continues to evolve, but real estate and marketing experts agree that the key to mastering Real Estate 2.0 isn’t simply to focus on the tools. Rather, success involves taking a new approach to marketing yourself and a new realization that old approaches won’t resonate with buyers and sellers who look to the Web first for their real estate information.

The coming of Real Estate 2.0 signals the end of an era when real estate professionals could attract business by promoting themselves while holding on tightly to key information about listings, says Charlie Young, chief operating officer with Parsippany, N.J.–based Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC.

“The listing information really is a commodity now. You have to look at how you can augment and bring value to it,” says Young. The most effective real estate bloggers, for example, “promote communities and not themselves. That’s a fundamental shift for a real estate professional who has been brought up in a culture of self-promotion,” Young contends.

Being genuine is the first and most important Real Estate 2.0 rule. Be yourself and let people who like you and your views find you.

Boardman, for example, writes about historic homes because that’s an area of interest for her. She’s found clients with the same interest and thinks they’re easier to work with because they feel they already know her from her blog postings, she says.

Other rules of the Real Estate 2.0 world: Developing leads takes time. Blogging and social networking won’t likely replace face-to-face contact with your sphere of influence. And your 2.0 efforts can overwhelm your day if you don’t manage your time properly.

Create a Brand

Which Real Estate 2.0 tool should you try first? Experts agree you need to take a step back and do some work before you decide. “It’s entirely likely there are real estate professionals out there making a killing using Web 2.0, but I would bet that they have a killer brand behind them,” says Tate Linden, principal with Stokefire, a brand-naming consulting firm in Springfield, Va. “Find a way to differentiate yourself.”

Claude Labbe, ABR®, GRI, with the Flaherty Group in Kensington, Md., consulted with Linden before deciding to position himself as a real estate professional for people who need things done quickly. His tagline, “Realty for Your Busy Life,” is on his Web site and is part of the name of his blog, YourBusyLife.com.He started the blog in the spring of 2007.

“I knew I wanted something to get people to talk to me more,” Labbe says. “Real estate is a contact sport; you have to be with people.”

“If you get over the psychological hurdle of using a computer, it’s really not that much different from what you’ve always done,” says consultant Boero. “Real Estate 2.0 should be a medium that helps you convey your voice and get your image out to a wider audience.”

To be effective, that image needs to be of someone who knows the market inside and out. Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes. What would you want to hear if you were them?, Boero asks.

Ardell DellaLoggia, with Brio Realty in Bellevue, Wash., wants readers of her two blogs to know she’s their advocate. DellaLoggia began blogging as a tester for RealTown blogs on Jan. 1, 2006. “I always say I started blogging because I didn’t like football,” she jokes. Rather than watch traditional New Year’s Day college bowl games, she wrote five blog postings that day.

Today, “all my business comes from blogging,” says DellaLoggia, who does between 20 and 30 trans­actions a year and has done as many as 36 in one 12-month stretch. The steady stream of prospects from blogging has changed how DellaLoggia approaches other parts of her business. Open houses, for example, used to be strictly for attracting new clients. Now, when she does an open house, she’s out to sell the house, not herself, she says.

Her blogs appear on two of the more well-known real estate blog hosting sites — RealTown blogs and the Rain City Guide.

Networking 2.0

While Rain City Guide concentrates on the Seattle area, the unrelated ActiveRain, both are based in Bellevue, Wash., is a national site that allows real estate professionals to put up a blog without charge. Started in June 2006, ActiveRain bridges the space between blogs and social networks, offering a bit of each.

The idea to create an online real estate community complete with blogs was “one of those three-in-the-morning ideas,” jokes Matt Heaton, executive vice president and cofounder of ActiveRain. “We saw this huge need for social networking in the real estate space,” he says.

ActiveRain was conceived as a way for real estate pros to connect with consumers, but it quickly became a place for real estate pros to talk and refer business to each other. “So we embraced that,” Heaton says. “The feedback is just amazingly positive. One associate said he got seven listings in two days off a blog.”

ActiveRain isn’t standing still; in late 2007, a major site revamp was planned. It also was testing Localism.com, a new site to provide local market information across the country. Real estate professionals will contribute information about their markets. Another site, RealtyTimes.com, already offers local market information supplied by real estate pros in its Realty Times Market Conditions feature.

And now a new site, Zolve.com, is hoping to do much the same thing, creating local market profiles — in the form of wikis — that can be as detailed as what people think of a particular teacher in a particular school, says founder Brian Wilson.

Zolve, based in Colorado Springs, Colo., launched in mid-October 2007 with 2,800 members (membership is free). It allows business referrals with contracts on its site creating a digital paper trail for any referral. Wilson has plans to expand to a consumer function that will allow people to rate their experiences with real estate professionals, creating Amazon.com-like ratings of various pros. Sites such as Incredibleagents.com and Realestateratingz.com are already offering agent ratings.

Zolve and ActiveRain aren’t the only sites moving more deeply into Real Estate 2.0. Trulia.com, which began with property listings, now features Trulia Voices, where consumers can ask real estate–related questions and get answers from real estate pros in their area.

“It’s an example of us making interaction online extremely simple, and it has become an extremely effective way for real estate professionals to demonstrate their local expertise,” says Sami Inkinen, founder and chief operating officer of San Francisco–based Trulia. The average question in Trulia Voices receives an answer in 20 minutes, he notes.

Here Come the Caveats

Social networks like Facebook appeal to a younger demographic: Many are years away from home buying. But “those folks will be buying homes over the next 10 years” and so shouldn’t be ignored, says Mike Montsko, president of Weichert Lead Network for Weichert, REALTORS®, in Morris Plains, N.J.

Clements, who got a lead shortly after joining Facebook, learned some of the nuances of social networks when she first tried MySpace. She posted some photos of herself in casual clothes and even an evening dress on MySpace. Those got her e-mail from men wanting to meet her, not something the married Clements was looking for. So when she switched to Facebook, she went with only one photo in a business suit to convey that she was there for business, not casual chatting or dating.

While blogging has its real estate adherents who will tell you about business they’ve garnered from their blogs, social networking isn’t quite at that stage yet.

“Social networking should be left as networking; don’t get your hopes up for more than that. Don’t think this is going to be your bonus check at the end of the year,” says Nick Pacelli, interactive director at the Most Agency, a Newport Beach, Calif., advertising and communications agency that has worked with the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Social networks also are geared for person-to-person interaction, so professionals need to be careful they don’t come off sounding too brand-preachy.

Any Real Estate 2.0 tool you try will take time to gain a following, adds Keith Garner, managing director at the Center for REALTOR® Technology in Chicago. “Experiment but make sure that what you’re doing has some sort of return,” he says. Wait six months to evaluate whether your Real Estate 2.0 efforts are bearing fruit. “You’re shopping your personality out there,” Garner says.

Big Players Are Thinking 2.0 Too

Franchises, large brokers, and others involved with real estate also are trying to carve out space in the Web 2.0 world.

Homescape.com, a listings site, has hired professional journalists to create a blog that looks at real estate news. The site is a division of Classified Ventures LLC in Chicago, which is itself owned by media companies Belo Corp., Gannett Co. Inc., The McClatchy Co., Tribune Co., and The Washington Post Co. Those journalism roots provide it with a point of distinction from other listing sites, one it wants to emphasize with its new journalist blog, says Frank Breithaupt, Homescape’s vice president and general manager.

Scripps Networks, which owns HGTV and HGTV.com among its other media holdings, in December announced the debut of FrontDoor.com, which features a variety of videos on real estate topics in addition to real estate–related stories from its editors.

By the first quarter of this year, it hopes to be syndicating HGTV-produced video features to real estate partner Web sites, says Vicki Neil, vice president of real estate with Scripps in Knoxville, Tenn. The site already is mentioned on HGTV’s main site as a place to browse through home listings.

“HGTV has been trying to evaluate where great brand extensions are. Real estate shows have been doing a great job on our network, consumers turn to us as soon as they buy a home. The next logical step is to grab the consumer and help them through that homebuying process,” says Neil.

Coldwell Banker is partnering with Scripps, investing in videos it can put on its site, says Charlie Young, chief operating officer with Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC in Parsippany, N.J. It’s also working with another company to create neighborhood videos for its site.

On the blog side, Coldwell Banker introduced AgentSpace on its site at the end of 2007, allowing agents to write and post videos and photos, says Young. The company has also been working with its agents to populate a new wiki-like tool that will include surveys about the best attributes of neighborhoods around the country.

Coldwell Banker already has taken one of the largest steps into Real Estate 2.0 with its efforts on Second Life, a virtual reality online world where it set up shop in March 2006. “Our objective was to send a message to the real world that Coldwell Banker was serious about innovation,” says Young. Through July 31, of last year, Coldwell Bankers’ Second Life office had racked up 1.3 million minutes of visitor time. Young notes that the site has yet to attract a large enough number of users to make it a serious source of real estate leads. “At the current moment, I think we’ve learned as much as we can,” he says.

Just a few miles down the road, in Morris Plains, N.J., Weichert, REALTORS®, is workng on its own Web initiatives, including one that will enable its associates to create neighborhood profiles. “I think you’re going to see more and more large brokers incorporating these Web 2.0 principles going forward.” says Mike Montsko, president of Weichert Lead Network for Weichert, REALTORS®.
Among other initiatives, Weichert is working on ways its associates can build neighborhood profiles.

Well-known Real Estate Bloggers
What is a Blog and why should I Blog, anyway?
Posted February 26, 2008 by Brett Miller
      By Brett Miller

As of today, there are 89,700,000 search results for ”What is a Blog?” and 45,100,000 for “Why should I Blog?”  If there are really this many people talking about it, why aren’t people more doing it?

As a Professional Webmaster, I am constantly urging my clients to Blog.  Why do I do this?  The answer is simple, because this is the single most effective ways you can increase the number of people finding your site, trusting you as an expert in your field and buying products and services from you.  Wow!  You may think these are bold claims, but let me explain why I feel this way.

What is a Blog?
You may have heard people call them Web Logs.  What they mean is that a Blog is a way of keeping a Log on the Web.  It is a way to continually add information on to a site that often builds off previous information you have already posted.

A blog is a weblog, which is essentially an online journal or newsletter that is frequently updated for general public readership.

Blogging allows you to self-publish yourself online, allowing you to be perceived as an expert in your field.

Furthermore, if you write your Blog postings correctly, they will be rich with keywords and consequently direct search engines toward your website daily. Webepreneur gives you the freedom to add as many internal blogs as you want to your website.

Some time a blog is the entire site such as www.RealEstateMoms.com  and other times it is only a part of site such as in http://www.healthyfiguresinc.com/blog/healthy-blogs.htm

If you are going to use just a Blog, www.Blogger.com is a great place to start.  It is free and easy to use.  If you would rather have a Blog be a part of your site but not the entirety of it you may want to check out the easy to use Internal Blog functions in http://www.webepreneur.com/pages/blogging.htm

Why do I need Blogs?

When web surfers are searching for products or services, they will enter keywords that describe their search on search engines such as Yahoo.com or Google.com. One way the search engines determine if your site is what someone is looking for is by looking for the keyword they used in their search used multiple times on your site.  Search Engines search words, not pictures, flash animation and graphics.  Now, there is definitely more to Search Engine Optimization than just keywords such as frequency in updating, back links, Title Tags, and many other things we will be getting into more of that in the weeks to come, but one thing is for sure, content is king, and Blogs are the best way to add new fresh content to your site constantly. 


Brett Miller, the founder of HoopJumper WebSystems, is the creator of Webepreneur, an easy-to-use search engine optimized WebSystem designed specifically for Small Business Owners who want to be able to update their own website and Blog themselves with ease.  Check out the Webepreneur WebSystem at www.Webepreneur.com or www.HoopJumper.com to see the other services offered.  
Why Blogging has moved from a Should to a Must for all Real Estate Agents
Posted February 19, 2008 by Brett Miller
      You have heard about blogging now for quite some time.  Is it really that important? Well, Ann Brenoff, a writer with the Los Angeles Times, quotes experts and Realtors across the county saying things like:

  "There is a new wave growing. Agents that blog. We believe you will eventually only use an agent that blogs. Why? Because . . . if they blog about a community they must know it. . . . You also learn more about them as they blog."

 "About 75% of those clients came from the blog," she said. "The other 25% were previous clients or referrals from them." And she deals primarily with families looking for principal homes, not investors or second-home seekers.

What do you think?  Do you have a blog?  If you do, are you using it to get results like these? 

 You can read the complete article below.

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper WebSystems and creator of GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com. 

 
http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/printedition/la-re-blog10feb10,1,2558541.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

From the Los Angeles Times

Realtor blogs help reel in clients, boost sales

Informational or gossipy, agents say sites give them an edge.

By Ann Brenoff
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 10, 2008

BACK in 2006, which in the real estate blogo- sphere is pretty much akin to the dawn of creation, Real Estate Undressed blogger Larry Cragun had this to say to the American home-buying public:

"There is a new wave growing. Agents that blog. We believe you will eventually only use an agent that blogs. Why? Because . . . if they blog about a community they must know it. . . . You also learn more about them as they blog."

Cragun's advice must have been heeded, since it seems that every agent and their brother now has a blog. And if anecdotal evidence is to be believed -- nobody actually tracks this -- agents who are still selling today are agents who blog.

Take Diane Cohn, who started Reno Realty Blog two years ago. An agent with Chase International, she's been selling real estate for just three years and last year closed 21 transactions totaling almost $13 million in a declining Reno market. This in a place where the median home price is about $285,000.

"About 75% of those clients came from the blog," she said. "The other 25% were previous clients or referrals from them." And she deals primarily with families looking for principal homes, not investors or second-home seekers.

Is her experience just a flash in the pan? It doesn't appear so.

There's also Teresa Boardman, a St. Paul, Minn., agent whose www.stpaulrealestateblog.com regularly makes everyone's short list of great agent blogs.

Boardman started blogging two years ago. She intentionally hyper-localizes her blog to her market and posts photos and jazzy graphics that she generates.

She says that in the current Twin Cities market, "if I didn't have this blog, I wouldn't be in business." Boardman, with Keller Williams Integrity Realty, adds: "Most of my business today comes from my blog."

Talking via cellphone from a New York City taxi as she was en route to speak to realty agents about successful blogging, she said most industry blogs are too mundane and offer generic buying and selling tips available anywhere. In her blog, she writes about architecture, local developments and life in the various St. Paul neighborhoods. "A blog needs a hook," she said.

Athol Kay, a Prudential agent in Bristol, Conn., has certainly found his. Kay has garnered national attention with his Bad MLS Photo of the Day. Although critics dismiss it as just a gimmick, Kay is quite passionate in his cause: to rid the world of bad real estate photos that ultimately cost unsuspecting sellers money.

"I try to keep it as light and fun as possible," but, he said, an agent's incompetency with a camera can cost a client.

"If the agent straight up stole a $5,000 deposit or something, that would be a clear illegal act," Kay said. "But butcher the photos and have the house languish on the market for months or force huge price reductions . . . that's just bad luck for the seller."

Kay, from New Zealand, has been blogging for about as long as he's been selling real estate in Connecticut -- since October 2006. His site, www.reagentinct.com/, gets about 1,200 unique visitors a week.

Another agent with a hook is Marlow Harris, whose 360 Digest blog is written from Seattle. Harris, a fanatical Elvis fan, freely admits that she has a "never-ending quest to put Elvis and real estate into the same post." And she does so with regular success.

How's it been for business? Howling like a hound dog, apparently. Although the popular 360 Digest is aimed at realty agents, her other blogs, Seattle Twist and Unusual Life, focus on potential clients.

Harris finds that a "soft connection" brings the most results. Her unusuallife.com features "unusual homes, amazing architecture and interesting people," and although she's not actually selling real estate there, she features people who might buy or sell at some point.

"I consider this a more gentle practice of real estate," she said, "a more Zen-like approach to a business that is sometimes harsh and brutish."

But unlike Kay's and Harris', many agent blogs seem to lack the pizazz and originality needed to thrust them into the national limelight.

Still, a blog can be a place for buyers and sellers to get to know an agent without having to step out from behind the curtain of anonymity. They can watch from afar and determine whether they "like" the agent and what he or she has to say. When they are comfortable and ready to make a move, they pick up the phone and generally don't need to be pushed into a transaction, agents say.

Cyber round-table

Although some blogs are marketing tools, others are a forum for the thorns in the realty industry's side -- which is where most of the cyber-fur flies.

The housing-bubble bloggers are, in general, people who predicted that the high prices of homes -- the bubble -- wouldn't last forever. Today, they offer a gloomy picture of how low the housing market may fall and do so with a certain glee over having been right.

Dust-ups between the bubble bloggers and the real estate industry bloggers are frequent, and disputes fall along predictable lines: Agents put a more positive spin on the market; bubble bloggers predict economic catastrophe. The two groups distrust each other, and some bloggers claim to fear repercussions from the other side. Few would disagree that bubble bloggers are angry victors whose "I told you so" message is often delivered with a cyber finger-poke in the chest.

The loudest bubble blog, by most accounts, is HousingPANIC, run by someone who wants to be identified only as Keith, who says he sold his home in Phoenix, which he described as "housing bubble central," in 2006 and moved to London. He has since left London "to travel the road."

Tamer in tone and written by 43-year-old Ben Jones is the Housing Bubble. Jones started the blog in 2004 when cracks first started appearing in the sub-prime market. He dismisses some of the bubble bloggers as "crazy" and prefers not to be associated with them.

Written out of northern Arizona, www.thehousingbubbleblog.com can get 40,000 to 50,000 unique visitors on any given day depending on the news, Jones said. It includes a group of regular posters -- some grateful to the blog for persuading them not to buy, others taunting and vindictive-sounding about those who did. The blog accepts ads and has, in fact, become Jones' day job.

And then there is Housing Doom -- written from Austin, Texas, by Debi Averett, who sold her Phoenix-area home "in 15 minutes" when she thought her husband had a job out of state. The job offer fell through just days before escrow closed, and the buyer held the couple to the contract. Averett and her family wound up renting and, given the rapid escalation of housing prices in the area, couldn't afford to buy again.

Widely credited with building the real estate blogo- sphere's infrastructure is 31-year-old Dustin Luther -- whose Rain City Guide about the Seattle real estate market was the model for many respected agent and broker sites.

Luther, who now lives in and runs the site from Calabasas, created it as an inexpensive marketing tool for his wife, a former Seattle realty agent.

What makes it unique is that it has topic experts blogging their opinions. It quickly became a go-to site with a national audience.

Phoenix realty agent Greg Swann, founder of the popular Bloodhound Blog, says Luther's effect on the real estate industry can't be minimized.

"His Rain City Guide set the foundation for the rest of us," Swann said. Bloodhound Blog's focus is national and the audience is the industry, but the site, which sees 1,200 unique hits a day, definitely has a nose for the news and is written with some bite.

An excerpt: "Are you looking for a mission statement? . . . BloodhoundBlogis everything you wish were in Realtor magazine -- but isn't."

The latest rage in the realty blog world is social networking sites. Think YouTube or Facebook but about real estate.

In that arena, Bigger Pockets deserves a mention. It includes a blog written in Denver by Joshua Dorkin, 32, a onetime real estate agent in L.A. Dorkin showed what people connecting on the Web could do. Back in 2006, he blogged about a Ponzi scheme involving Atlanta-based Pinnacle Development Partners LLC. Word spread like blogfire, and soon complete strangers from across the country were coming together on Bigger Pockets and talking to one another.

Making a connection

The site became the informal home of Pinnacle's victims. S. Gregory Hays, the court-appointed receiver in the resulting court case, was able to post notices to the investors on the site to keep them updated. In September 2007, Pinnacle head Gene A. O'Neal was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for defrauding investors of nearly $20 million.

And then there are the blogs that exist to entertain. They report on celebrity transactions with the passion of People magazine and E!. And once again, the anonymity of the Internet may be a key.

Your Mama, proprietor of the celebrity-realty transaction blog the Real Estalker, isn't a mama at all, but a man. Mark David -- who goes by his first and middle names -- covers Hollywood like white on rice, although the blog is actually generated from an apartment in Manhattan's Chelsea district. Talk about ripping away the curtain from the Wizard of Oz.

But no matter, Your Mama provides a steady stream of scoops, those hard-to-come-by interior photos of celebrity homes and caustic comments on how the rich and famous live and sell their properties.

Mark David admits that the blog has exceeded his expectations and seems to have taken on a life of its own. It's led to other paid writing assignments and TV appearances.

Competitor -- and that's using the term loosely because the two blogs engage in a regular love fest, congratulating each other on their entries -- Big Time Listings (www.bergproperties.com/blog/.com) has more of the same but with less attitude.

Throw in Luxist -- an online sort-of Architectural Digest of beautiful homes for sale across the nation, some non-celebrity-owned -- and you have the realty world's online celebrity triumvirate.

Even some agents have caught the "amuse them and they will come" fever.

Kris Berg's San Diego Home Blog is a "must read" because of her Erma Bombeck-like voice.

She once blogged about shopping in a brick-and-mortar bookstore that was out of the books she wanted and realizing that online booksellers are always stocked: "We departed like two people who just remembered they left their children on the stove. . . ."

Her point of the post was, of course, real estate. The brick-and-mortar bookseller was yesterday's storefront realty office and the Internet is where you'll find your housing needs met today -- most likely on someone's blog.

 
How to Turn Those Extra Domain Names into More Business
Posted December 19, 2007 by Brett Miller
      How to Turn Those Extra Domain Names into More Business

Remember Lionel Richie?
Remember a singer from a band called the Commodores in the 70s and 80s named “Lionel Richie”? He won all kinds of awards and was a staple of this new cable network called MTV. You might remember that as a channel that used to play music videos. Back in the mid-90s, Lionel’s people wanted me to create their fan club website. Lionel was having a comeback of sorts and he wanted to be on the Internet. In those days, domain names cost $100! Now, they’re less than $10! The first thing I told them was that they needed to purchase LionelRichie.com and explained how to do it.

For whatever reason, this expense got bounced around his management and the people who dole out the money didn’t take care of it for weeks. The accounting department probably said, “What’s a domain name and why are we buying one?” Finally, when I got the message they were ready to buy, we found out that 3 days earlier, someone in Quebec had already purchased it! In fact, the same person had also bought BruceWillis.com, CindyCrawford.com and whole slew of celebrity domain names. These people became known as “Domain Squatters.” Lionel’s people were livid and threatened legal action to this man, but the laws hadn’t caught up with common sense on this issue yet and this person actually threatened to sue Lionel's people for harassment! It would be years before Lionel would own his own domain name. As a result, the whole website got scuttled. I was upset because would have been quite the feather in my cap, but the research I did during that time really got me thinking about the politics of domains and how they work.

Domain Speculating
It's been going on since the very beginning of the "Internet" as we've known it back in the mid 90’s. We would hear about this domain or that capturing a million dollars. It really got our minds tuned to what seemed like a modern day gold rush to grab all the good ones. So, you've been buying a domain name here and there the last few years with great intentions and now you're sitting on a pile of domains either not being used or being used ineffectively. Does that sound like you? In some cases, the way you are using some of your domains could actually be hurting you.

Google's Rules
It wasn't always this way, but Google now will penalize your Google placement and ranking if it sees that more than one website has the exact same content on it. When you have more than one domain name "pointing to" or "parking on" the same website, Google is reading this as a duplicate website, not as one website with multiple domains. The penalty comes in the form of reducing your influence within the page rankings. If you started off with a website that is optimized well and should rank well, by putting two domains on the same site, you thus reduce your effectiveness by half. If you park three domain names to the same site, you have reduced each domain's ranking prospects to one third, and so on.

Pointing, Parking and Redirecting
There is a big difference between "Pointing" and "Parking" - and "Redirecting." "Pointing" and "Parking" refers to the actual assigning of your domains on your website's DNS (Domain Name Server) to accept these domains as their own, so that if you type in any of the domains assigned to the one site that the individual domain is still visible in the Address bar at the top of your browser. Duplicate website. Penalty!

"Redirecting" is when someone types in one domain name and then is sent to another one. A good example of this is Half.com - if you type in http://www.half.com it will automatically switch you over to http://www.half.ebay.com/. Or http://www.washingtonmutual.com will redirect you right over to http://www.wamu.com. Google actually seems to like this method and will not penalize you.

Domain Names: Keep'em Simple Offline - Make'em Keyword Rich Online
King Carty, a real estate agent from Lake Norman, North Carolina, is a great real estate agent that people like and refer clients to often. When he hands them a business card or is talking on the phone to a prospective home buyer or seller, he needs a simple URL to tell people who know him how to find him online. KingCarty.com is extremely easy to say, to write, to remember and to print on a small business card. So what about the people who don't know King?

When people King knows enter http://www.KingCarty.com they are automatically "redirected" to his real actual web address of http://www.LakeNormanRealEstateHomesForSale.com . "Wow! That's long," most people say. Well, King never has to say this long URL, write it, type it, nothing. He just tells them KingCarty.com. Yet, the longer domain name has important keywords inside it that will help its Google ranking.

You're actually allowed up to 63 characters before the .com or what ever the dot extension at the end is! I'm not recommending using all 63 characters, but it certainly opens up your options. Someone actually created a 63-letter version of Google.com with 57 extra o’s in the name!

You will want to use some free tools like http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ - or http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ to see which search terms get the most hits and create a domain name from the best combination. King found that "Lake Norman Real Estate" was the most common of terms involving his industry and region. The domain with just those four words was already taken, as the most popular ones are by now, but by adding a word or two you can almost always come up with a combination that has everything you need in it. And remember... you don't ever have to read this to anyone!

Dashing Through The... Domains
Did you know that dashes (hyphens) are great for domains? It's true. Google looks at them as if they are spaces, so in many ways, the individual keywords in your domain will read even better. I wouldn't overdo it, but if your desired domain name is already taken, try putting dashes between the words to see if that domain is available.

Try Domains That Don't End in Dot-Com
Since this is strictly for Internet use and not on your personal marketing pieces, feel more at ease to use the non dot-com extensions like .net, .biz, etc. When telling someone your domain name, dot-com is almost always better since many people will type that in anyway no matter what you tell them (and perhaps find your competitor). Let's review quickly: offline promoting: .com --- online only use: .net, .biz, etc.

Misspelled Names
Tami DeLand, a Saint Cloud Minnesota real estate specialist, has a website with her husband Steve at http://www.TamiAndSteve.com . Unfortunately, people misspell "Tami" all the time, either as "Tammi" or "Tammy" and were not able to find their website. She solved this problem easily by registering the misspellings of her name: TammiAndSteve.com and TammyAndSteve.com - then simply redirecting them to the correct website.

1-Page Wonder: One Page Domain Gateway WebPage
So, you've already got your Short Personal Offline Marketing Domain (SPOMD) and your Long Keyword Rich Online Marketing Domain (LKROMD) - so what do you do with all the rest of the domains that you've been holding on to for years? You create a special 1-Page Wonder Domain Gateway Page Website!
This 1-page site should not be a duplicate of another page you already host online. It should be its own free standing unique, content-rich super page that is optimized to the hilt with links pointing to your main website. These links are the main reason for having this 1-Page Wonder. The more links pointing to your main website from other websites on other servers the better for helping you achieve higher ranking on the search engines.
On your 1-Page Wonder, you want to post as much content that is applicable to the subject as possible.

It's better to write new copy for these pages. If you can create a special Blog for just this domain that you will keep up and not let it go stale, this is a great idea since Google LOVES Blogs. Create as many different keyphrases that apply to this domain name and link those to your main website.

Add RSS and XML Feeds to your page with news items that are based on your keywords to ensure that you have constantly updating content, or better yet, set up a Blog that you will enter special material just for that gateway page. There are a lot of services coming out every day that will give you "widgets” – snips of web code – that your webmaster can place right on the webpage to show your Blogs and Newsfeeds. A couple of these are FeedBurner.com and SpringWidgets.com. A good place to find information on a 1 Page Wonder gateway page websites is at http://www.HoopJumper.com

Cheap Domains
A great place to buy inexpensive domains is at HoopJumper Domains – http://www.HoopJumperDomains.com  – where for under $10 per year, you not only can register a domain name but get a "free" place to host a 1-page Domain Website. Now, “free” is a relative term since anything you get for no charge online comes with advertising posted on your site, but for under $5 a month, you can turn off the ads if it makes that much of a difference to you.
      
Backlinks and Reciprocal Links
As I stated before, along with a well optimized website and content that is constantly updating, Google's main criteria for giving high placement is how many other websites are linked to you. It's like a popularity contest or an election. The great thing about this "election" is that you can stuff your own ballot box! There are some important caveats, though.

A one-way link, where someone links to you but you don't link back, is called a "backlink." When 2 sites point to each other it is called a "reciprocal link." Backlinks give you more "points" from Google because if they link to you but you don't link back, you must be cooler than them, right? That’s what Google thinks.

If you find some linking partners, Your 1-Page Wonder gateway page is a great place to put their link if they will put a link to your main website on their site. This is what I call the “triangulation” approach, and will make all the links look like “backlinks” instead of like “reciprocal” links.

Unneeded Domains
So, for some of your remaining domains, you know you’re not going to redirect or create a 1-page Wonder for them. They were simply an impulse buy that seems like a good investment for the future, but now, they just eat up $10 or more per year each. What should you do?

Ask yourself, is it REALLY more valuable for you to keep the domain then to allow your competitors the chance to own it? Usually, it really doesn’t make sense to keep paying for a domain that you know you’ll never use. If you have months to go, consider selling your domain on EBay, or any number of sites online. You don’t have to ask for a lot of money, you might even just want what you’ve invested in that domain the last couple of years. If you’d like a Domain Name Appraisal, consider getting a Domain Name Appraisal at HoopJumperDomains.com for as cheap as $4.99. If you just let your domain name expire, many times an after-market domain reseller will snap it up and try to sell it themselves for a very high sum which will probably keep it out of your competitors hands, though not always.
For your “boutique” domain name of your company, it makes sense to own the .net, .biz and .org for those, but probably not for the generic termed domain names, so waving goodbye may be a better bet to you then continuing to pay for these. Be sure that you remove any auto-renewal options from these domains if you will not be renewing so you won’t be charged.

Domains are like Dreams
In conclusion, domains are like dreams and its easy to get excited about the possibilities, but just having them sit there do you no good. At the very least you should re-direct them to another page. The best use for any domain is to have its own website, whether a real full content rich multi-page site or a 1-Page Wonder site that helps promote your main site. If you do a lot of off-line promotions with direct mail or print advertising, having an easy to remember domain that redirects to a specific page on your website may be a great idea. But paying year after year on domains that you don’t use is a waste of your money and you should consider dropping them so you can afford a better domain that you will use.
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Brett Miller is the founder of http://www.HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. With a Great Real Estate Agent Website, you will be seen, heard and known in your area, city, and nation. If you're a Real Estate Agent and you want visibility, go to www.GreatRealEstate AgentWebsites.com  Please contact us to get more information on One-Page Wonder Real Estate Gateway WebPages

 
Finding Catchy Keywords and Search Terms for your Real Estate Website
Posted October 23, 2007 by Brett Miller
      Someone is looking for you, but the problem is they don't know you yet!

Your future Real Estate business is going to be split into 2 groups: people who know you and people who don't know you.  Those who know you can find you easily and even the least optimized website can be found by someone typing in your name, Real Estate Team or domain name directly into their browser.

For those who don't know you, the best way to bring prospects to your Real Estate website is through the internet, and the best way to get them via the internet is by using the right keywords. Knowing the right keywords to use in your Realtor® web site and blog is crucial to obtaining a high search engine ranking. If your website doesn't have those key words or search terms in the title or the text on your website, you will not be found.

What are keywords? Keywords are the words that best describe your business, services offered, and/or products offered. These are the words that people search for when they need what you have. For instance, if someone is looking for a Real Estate agent in Laguna Beach, California, they will search for "Real Estate Agent Laguna Beach CA," or something like that. "Real Estate Laguna Beach CA" are keywords.

How do you know which keywords to use? Put yourself into the mind of the seller sitting at their computer looking for a Real Estate agent to sell their home. Chances are, those who don't know you but need what you offer will be going online and typing into their favorite search engine a few key words and perhaps a city name to locate you. What are those terms?

Another strategy is to follow the lead of other successful websites by doing a Google search in your own category and see who is at the top.  Go to their homepage, right-click anywhere on the home page. Then scroll down and click on View Source. A window will open on your screen. A few lines from the top, you'll see a line that starts with the title "meta" or "meta name." Now look for "keywords." You'll see the keywords used on the page. This is an easy and completely legitimate way to know what keywords are being used by high-traffic sites.

Using the same keywords as the top-ranked Real Estate sites doesn't guarantee a high ranking for your Real Estate website and blog, of course, but it's a good way to start educating yourself. Although these are good ways of learning how other businesses are directing traffic to their websites, the best way to find the right keywords is to choose an Internet Marketing expert to host your website and blog. A web system that offers Search Engine Optimization and keyword selection targeted to the specific prospects in your market will achieve a high ranking for your site without the expense of pay-per-click advertising that you see on the top or side of search engine results that say, "Sponsored."

When you find a company that promises to Search Engine Optimize your website, make sure you know what you're getting before you sign up for a hosting plan. Most hosts will submit your keywords to search engines, but not all will help optimize your site for keywords.

Are you tracking the key words people are already finding you with? If not, you should sign up for a free account with either StatCounter or Google Analytics and place their few lines of supplied code on every page of your website. Then go in regularly to see how people are finding you now, if at all. If you're several pages back from the first page, you may want to consider how to optimize your site more effectively for these desired key words

No one knows your Real Estate business better than you do. Keyword selection is part Internet science, but it's also a product of experience and intuition. What word or phrase would you type into a search engine if you were looking for the type of service you provide? Brainstorm. Ask your friends. Experiment. The answers can help your Real Estate blog and website to the top of the search results.
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Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. HoopJumper WebSystems can personally optimize your website with custom tailored keyword research and meta keywords and descriptions hidden your Real Estate Website. If you're a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website optimized, go to www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com or check out his many services at http://www.HoopJumper.com
Top Producer’s New Market Snapshot: An Option Worth Exploring
Posted October 15, 2007 by Brett Miller
      There are many different schools of thought on how a Real Estate website should look and feel. I am constantly reiterating to my clients that the most important things about Real Estate websites are content, facts, and news. Flashy designs may be exciting to some, but they are also distracting and give only face value attraction. You want to give your prospective leads a reason to contact you and to come back again and again, and the best way to do that is to give them the information they want and the details they deserve.

One new tool is the amazing “Market Snapshot” from Top Producer®. It sends up-to-the minute MLS graphical reports - automatically delivered and updated without you lifting a finger! And it keeps the dialogue going by giving potential home buyers and sellers important information that they actually can use allowing you to be their informational point of contact regarding the data.

A client of mine, Oakland Real Estate and Relocation Expert Dave Higgins and owner of the OaklandHomefinder.com website, uses the Top Producer Market Snapshot extensively. Says Dave, "I have used Market Snapshot in several ways to help separate me from my local competition.  The first is by preparing a market snapshot for all prospective sellers within 24 hours of meeting with them as a follow-up tool.   The snapshot is laid out in a way sellers love and data is easy to interpret.  Secondly, we have added the snapshot to our seller 'closing plan' and as soon as we have concluded a transaction we let them know they should be expecting this service as part of our 'client for life plan'.  This is a great way to continue to be seen as the market expert in their new neighborhood and continue to deliver pinpoint precise market data consistently."   I would recommend the market snapshot to any serious realtor!'

For information on Top Producer’s great new Market Snapshot program, contact Luke Rogalsky at 1-800-444-8570 ext. 8113.

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This following article by Rebecca Fairley Raney proves that sellers want facts and Top Producer’s® Market Snapshot offers just that.

 “Forget Gimmicks: Buyers Want Numbers”

A few years ago, people advertising homes on the Internet were racing to employ the latest gimmicks: 360-degree photographs to show off spacious living rooms, mortgage calculators to pinpoint monthly carrying costs, even videos of agents to talk about a home’s attributes.

Today, companies and brokers are focusing less on toys and are offering something more straightforward: numbers. This detailed information — be it local home values, neighborhood amenities or broader market conditions — is part of a trend to attract consumers by offering data they cannot find easily elsewhere, or could once get only from real estate agents.

Maisha Cannon, who recently sold her home in Paramount, Calif., first contacted Mike Rode of Keller Williams Realty, who e-mailed her back with detailed data about recent sales trends in her market. Ms. Cannon, a 29-year-old recruiter for the University of Southern California, said Mr. Rode had accessed the data through a new tool for brokers called Market Snapshot — which was an improvement over traditional packets of comparable properties that other brokers provide.

“The chart and graphs were all in the e-mail,” she said. “Someone else might send you a general e-mail and a spiel.” When she interviewed agents to decide with whom to list the property, she used the information from Mr. Rode to see if the other agents were on target. Ultimately, she listed the property with Mr. Rode, and the sale price tracked with the data he sent her. The process, she said, was “seamless and easy.”

Offering packages of detailed data is becoming a new method for brokers to build their clientele and a way for general Web sites to feed consumers’ interests. Last month, the search engine Yahoo entered a partnership with a nonprofit site named Greatschools.net to offer buyers detailed data to compare schools.

“In the past, people would, say, send a pumpkin at Thanksgiving or send a calendar,” said Errol Samuelson, president of Top Producer® Systems, the company that produces Market Snapshot as a division of Move.com, which owns several large real estate and housing sites like Realtor.com. “Our perspective is, if you provide real information instead of another refrigerator magnet, you set up the foundation for a relationship.”

Of course, the explosion of detailed real estate data online has produced confusion as well. For example, with the popular house valuation Web sites — including Zillow.com and Trulia.com — the results on values for a half-million-dollar house can range from $400,000 to more than $600,000.

The companies that run these sites offer a simple explanation: We employ better methodology than the competition. In other words, our data can beat their data.

Zillow.com, which was inaugurated last February, uses flashy maps imposed on color aerial photographs of neighborhoods, and gives estimated values for individual houses.
After the start of Zillow.com, a handful of sites cropped up offering similar services.
Within a month, even the giant Realtor.com, which in recent years had not offered the sale prices of comparable listings online, had a new feature on its front page that gave consumers a starting point to assess their property values.

Allan Dalton, president and chief executive of Realtor.com, said that the feature had already been in the works, and that the start of Zillow “reinforced that we had the right plan.”

Realtor.com, which works in partnership with the National Association of Realtors, designed the feature to help a seller find an agent who could give a professional assessment of the value of a property, not simply state a value.

“If you tell a house seller that a home value is preordained, the home seller is not going to seek someone to get the best price,” Mr. Dalton said. “We represent both the homes and the professional. At the end of the day, people need to have expert advice.”

This approach differs from that of sites like Zillow.com, whose goal is to attract an audience for its information and to sell advertising on the basis of the size of that audience.

Within a few months of its opening, however, Zillow attracted some unwelcome attention. In October, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit consumer group in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that contended that inaccurate valuations on the site, both high and low, were damaging the interests of all consumers and particularly the interests of working families.

The complaint has yet to be resolved, but a spokeswoman for Zillow was careful to point out the site’s disclaimers. “We’re a starting point,” said the spokeswoman, Amanda Hoffman. “We’re not a crystal ball. It’s the Internet. You sort of have to take everything you read on the Internet with a grain of salt.”

Beyond the growth of home valuation sites, companies and individual real estate brokers are developing other methods to win customers with information online.

When Barbara G. Cox trains real estate brokers, she says, she encourages them to go beyond listings and use the Web to position themselves as specialists. For example, a specialist in horse properties can use a site to demonstrate knowledge about stabling, feeding and grooming.

“I’m telling them, in positioning, you have to distinguish yourself,” said Ms. Cox, co-author of “Internet Marketing in Real Estate” (Prentice Hall, 2000) and instructor of a course in real estate technology at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif.

This approach improves upon older, less effective tactics like “talking head” videos of agents on Web sites, Ms. Cox said. “That’s not what most buyers go to the Web site for,” she said.

Kristal Kraft, a broker with the Berkshire Group in Denver, has found this approach so effective that she now shies from giving seminars about the Internet to other agents. In fact, she said, she has had to take legal action against agents who have plagiarized her site.

Ms. Kraft built a Web site — and a clientele — with the idea of reaching buyers who need to relocate to Denver. The site, kristalsellsdenver.com, offers features like cost-of-living comparisons matching Denver against other cities. It also gives profiles of 27 neighborhoods, which include information on average age, percentage of families with children and drive times to city landmarks.

The site also has a section titled “My Favorite Places,” which, in a breezy, personable narrative, features Ms. Kraft showing off amenities ranging from the local stock show to the Denver Children’s Museum.

Ms. Kraft said that she started developing the Web site 10 years ago after she moved to Denver from Colorado Springs, because she had no clientele in town. As a result, she became a specialist in helping outsiders move to Denver. In the end, she said, the specialized approach she developed through the Web site shaped the future of the brokerage itself.

“That’s really the only way to do it,” she said. “You can’t be a generalist.” Ms. Kraft’s site, like most others, became more sophisticated over time. But for agents who do not want to do all the work themselves, many companies offer tools that they can use in Web sites or in e-mail to potential clients.

In the last year, Top Producer® Systems has developed tools for agents, like Market Snapshot, that go beyond listings. Mr. Samuelson, president of the company, said these tools could help agents counter publicity about slumping real estate markets by showing that some local markets are thriving.

Introduced in November, Market Snapshot offers sophisticated, full-color arrays of maps and data that show how quickly houses sell in a neighborhood, the average selling price and even the ratio of list prices to sale prices.

Agents can use it on their Web sites, or they can send it to potential clients by e-mail. The company also offers community snapshots that list churches, theaters, recreation centers and side-by-side comparisons of schools. The reports can draw from as many as 4,000 types of data about a community.

As an extension of pure data about communities, Realtor.com is planning to add some consumer opinion, a feature that follows somewhat in the style of online retailers like Amazon.com.

Mr. Dalton said the company was developing a feature that would allow people who live in a community to comment on the site about schools, restaurants and other amenities.
He conceded, of course, that public opinion could be tricky to manage in a high-stakes sales environment. He said that site administrators planned to allow residents to make recommendations — but that the site would employ editors to keep watch.

“It won’t be the wild, wild West,” he said.”

By Rebecca Fairley Raney
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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For information on Top Producer’s great new Market Snapshot program, contact Luke Rogalsky at 1-800-444-8570 ext. 8113.

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Did you know that HoopJumper WebSystems creates Real Estate Agent websites that work with Top Producer®? Imagine all your web leads flowing directly into just one database. Contact us today to learn how you can get a Great Real Estate Agent Website that is integrated with Top Producer® including the new Market Snapshot!

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. If you’re a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to get noticed, go to http://www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com or check out their many services at http://www.HoopJumper.com
10 Reasons Why Every Realtor Needs to Podcast
Posted September 20, 2007 by Brett Miller
      I asked a professional in the field of Real Estate Podcasting, Dan Dashnaw, what he considered the top ten reasons that all Realtors should be Podcasting regularly. His answers are consistent with what I’ve been reading in different trade journals and real estate publications for awhile now. In a competitive environment where you’re dealing with tech-savvy Generation X and Y clients on a daily basis, having the kind of Technological edge that Podcasting can give you may be the “X-Factor” you need!

10 Reasons Why Every Realtor Needs to Podcast

1. The power of rich media.   Home selling is a dynamic medium, which implies a need for the capacity to deliver compelling marketing materials in order to effectively showcase a property or a business.  Podcasts (either audio or video) allow for a level of interaction and user experience that fulfills this need directly, giving sellers a rich medium to advertise their interests across the internet very effectively.

2. Economic Relevance.  Real Estate buyers and sellers are more liable to be broadband internet users then the general populace. Podcasts leverage broadband connections in order to make rich media content available to stream and deliver online, making them highly reachable and an attractive feature for the real estate industry.

3. RSS Subscription Technology.  Podcasts serve as an easily distributable form of content that can be updated immediately and instantly consumed.  If a realtor wants to showcase a new property that he or she has just added, a podcast could be produced and published the same day, making the content to all of the subscribers, listing sites, and aggregators immediately. The dynamic nature of the real estate 'information exchange' is a perfect fit for the quickly adaptable medium of podcasts and RSS.

4. Technological Relevance.  Realtors have always been on the 'cutting edge' of technology.  With availability as a mantra as well as a competitive imperative, realtors had cell phones years before the masses of teenagers in the mall.  Podcasts are most certainly 'the hot new technology' right now for many reasons in terms of internet communications, and as such they can be an effective competitive weapon for real estate professionals.

5. The numbers.  Over 80 percent of consumers looking for properties begin their search on the internet.  Since the web is now transitioning to podcasts and video as the content formats of choice, what better place is there to focus your marketing initiatives?

6. Time-shifting.  Podcasts are marketing tools that potentially never stops working. They can email them, download them, and users can subscribe to them via RSS feed technology for free. You can literally be showing your listings 24 hours a day anywhere in the world.

7. Distribution of content.  Podcast technology combines the benefits of enhanced listing information with tremendously wide syndication and distribution to the target markets and client buyers for high-end property listings as well as to the leading search engines like Google, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, iTunes TM and all of the web's podcast directories. By aggressively embracing the latest advanced technology tools like podcasts, it allows you to increase your marketing and sales success with your real estate clients.

8. The online experience.  Today's consumers want an experience, and they want it online. With podcasting, agents are able to deliver marketing content and property listings to these consumers directly.  This gives the potential customer a better view of the agents business, market, and even their property listings - making the agent much more marketable online.

9. An increased pace.  Today's market is characterized by increasingly tech-savvy home buyers looking for detailed, on-demand information, so putting podcasts to work can be the difference needed to get homes sold faster to the right buyer.

10. The buzz.  Experts predict that the number of online podcasts and slideshow home tours will multiply dramatically over the next couple of years due to several factors, including competition for listings and increasingly affordable and easy to use technology.


Podcasting Teleseminar: September 26, 2007 at 9:00 AM
Tune in to learn the importance of Podcasting for Real Estate Professionals and how you can create a Real Estate Podcast with Brett Miller of HoopJumper WebSystems and Dan Dashnaw of Audio Expansion.

To enroll, or for more information, contact us today.

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. Through his strategic partnerships, Brett now offers Real Estate Podcasting through his HoopJumper Podcasting website at www.HoopJumperPodcasting.com If you’re a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to work for you, go to www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com or check out his many services at www.HoopJumper.com
Why Blogs are Crucial to Your Real Estate Business
Posted August 30, 2007 by Brett Miller
      Using your Real Estate website to its maximum potential is essential today. There is no reason to have a pretty website with pictures of you and houses you have sold, and pay for it to be hosted monthly if you’re just using it as a business card. Your website can pull Real Estate leads to your business if you use it the right way. By having blogs and xml feeds from other blogs on your Real Estate website, people will easily find your website. Furthermore, these are prospective customers who are already interested in your line of business because they searched for it in the first place.

Your Real Estate blog can be the first point of contact with a potential client—your blog starts building a relationship even before you know the prospect is there. And when your blog gives visitors information that adds value to their lives, they’ll want to come back.

First impressions are crucial in the process of turning Real Estate leads into sales; an online visitor’s first impression is determined in large part by the quality and content of your blog. Use blogs on your Real Estate website the right way, and you will have a rainmaking website.      

  • Be a Keyword King. Using the right keywords in your blog postings will direct people searching for Real Estate experts or new homes in your area to your website. Also, adding an external blog that is rich with your Real Estate or location specific keywords to your website through an rss feed will make it easier for your website to get more traffic which means more leads.
  • Post, Post, Post. Post to your blog at least once a week. That is the only way to guarantee that your Real Estate website and blog will hit higher on search engines. Post as if you’re watering a plant, if you don’t do it consistently, it will die. That’s how search engines see your site, if you don’t refresh it with new content, they will see it as dead. You don’t even have to post blogs that you write, you can post other peoples’ blogs through rss feeds, or copy and paste from news articles on Realtor.com as long as you give proper credit to avoid copywright infringement.
Imagine this: if you post 1 blog posting a week, that will amount to 52 new pages of content per year that the search engines will see as opposed to your competitor who doesn't blog and has the same 8 to 10 pages month in/month out. If you were to blog twice a week, that would be 104 new pages of content.... And so on. You can see how in a content-hungry search engine world how this gives you a great advantage.
  • Use your feedback. By taking the comments that people give you on the articles you add to your Real Estate blog, you can make your blog and Real Estate business more effective in sales and customer service. See them as constructive, even if they are critical. Your readers and home buyers will take note of the fact that you value their input and respect you and refer you to other home buyers. 
  • RSS Feeds are necessary... and cool! Adding rss and xml feeds of other blogs and news websites will keep your website alive and direct many people to your website. You must choose the right feeds that pertain to Real Estate or the communities you serve, and that are specific as well. You will be very surprised at the amount of people that are directed to your website because of one or two words that they search for. By adding other feeds, you don’t have to do as much work as you do with your own, internal blog. Other people write the articles for you and as long as you feed their blog, they will always have proper credit.
  • Recommend Books.  If you’ve recently read a book on Real Estate, the area or state that you work in, or on other home and garden subjects that you would recommend to others, think about posting a good keyword-rich review on your Blog. You’d be amazed at how many people are searching for information about that book or its author and how having those keywords in your blog can have prospective home buyers finding your site. If they already like that author and their work, they will relate to you for liking it as well. This works equally well for any type of media from DVDs to a TV show you saw recently.

Real Estate relationships aren’t just person to person any more, the Internet has created a new medium for Real Estate. Use this community to create your own network of readers and prospective home buyers around your website and business.

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. Brett has helped hundreds of real estate professionals make the most of their Internet presence. In addition to integrating the best MLS tools that buyers love, Brett has also integrated full Top Producer functionality into his clients' sites to work automatically and seamlessly saving them administrative time and expense. If you’re a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to work for you, go to www.HoopJumper.com and www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com
How Using a Templated Real Estate Website Hurts your Business
Posted August 21, 2007 by Brett Miller
      If your Real Estate website isn’t generating you leads, you need to ask yourself what’s wrong. If you’re using your real estate company’s templated site, that may be the cause of the problem. Search the Internet yourself to find out which realtors are ranked at the top in different cities. You won’t find a franchise’s local office at the top of most search results. More often than not, the No. 1 site is a lead aggragator site that collects names and email addresses and then sells the leads to individual Realtors® at a premium. Now, scroll down the page until you get to the first actual agent web site. How many of them are using a templated company site? My guess is not many.

Internet home searchers have become a tech-savvy group. They’ve seen every type of real estate website imaginable. When they hit a site that’s obviously built on a company template, they know it right away. Internet searchers have seen enough templated real estate websites to know that such sites don’t offer the personal attention they’re looking for in a real estate agent. Every one looking almost exactly the same, with the same canned “about me” text, the same everything except maybe the one little thumbnail picture and your personal contact info.

When everythingthing is exactly the same on every agent page from a templated company site exept what I’ve heard called “the interchangeable body part” of your head shot, nobody is special and it will dillute any good ranking you could have among the multitudes using the same template giving it zero value. Simply stated: If your site is templated with templated copy that is exactly the same as a lot of other sites with only the contact information being different, you will all be given lesser value for being duplicates.

Many times, the only properties visitors are likely to find on a templated site are the firm’s own listings. That doesn’t help your business; Internet buyers want an complete MLS search with all homes for sale from all brokers.

What will you do that none of your competitors can or will do? It is necessary to answer all of these questions in your website and make them ask for more.

In a search engine world dominated by Google, one principal has become clear: Content Is King. The search engines regularly crawl through every website to see if there have been any changes since the last time they visited. If your site has added content since the last visit, you will be noticed as someone who has not let your site go dormant and seem abandoned.

This principal of search engines ignoring duplicated websites is especially true for affiliate websites where you are given a specific ID number to track your traffic, but with everything else exactly the same, no one ever has a chance of being found by potential clients that you have not personally directed to your site.

Regularly updated content that is rich with keywords relevant to what your site is about is important for showing the search engines that you are an important source of timely information which they rate as very important. When your website is constantly updated, prospective clients know that it’s not just a templated site. They will see that you are putting an effort into putting your best web-face forward, which is the key to marketing and sales strategies in real estate today.    

The majority of today’s homebuyers begin their searches on the Internet. If a real estate website is hard to navigate, or if visitors don’t find an MLS search tool within the first few seconds of hitting a site, they’ll leave as fast as they came. It must be click-click-click easy because you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression.

Your real estate website has to be a place that visitors want to come back to. A place where they know they can find information to help them achieve their goals. A place where you can build strong relationships with prospects and clients.

The best way to create such a place is with a personalized real estate website that puts a human face on your business through the very human act of communication. To offer anything less will just reinforce the notion that humans aren’t important to the process of buying or selling a home. And then we all lose.

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Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. Brett has helped hundreds of real estate professionals make the most of their Internet presence. In addition to integrating the best MLS tools that buyers love, Brett has also integrated full Top Producer functionality into his clients' sites to work automatically and seamlessly saving them administrative time and expense. If you’re a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to work for you, go to www.HoopJumper.com and www.GreatRealEstateAgentWebsites.com
Blogs: 5 Reasons Why All Real Estate Agents Must Blog
Posted August 01, 2007 by Brett Miller
      If there’s one thing that I continue to repeat to my Real Estate clients over and over and over, it is that blogging is one of the most effective ways to attract prospects to your Real Estate website, and you need to be doing it at least weekly.

Here are five reasons why all Real Estate Agents must blog:

Search engine optimization

Blogging helps your Real Estate website achieve a higher ranking on search engines. The key to search engine ranking is information-rich content. Blogging is the ideal format for publishing information on the Internet, and it’s really easy to update a blog. It’s just like writing an email only it’s to the whole world. Every Blog you post becomes its own web page adding yet another page of content on the web. The more content you have on your Real Estate website, the more you look like an information-rich website to the search engines.

Credibility

A blog helps to brand you as an expert in Real Estate. Blogs are the perfect place to talk about what you know, market updates, and Real Estate news and cost you practically nothing to post them. When you share your knowledge in a blog, you build the kind of trust that turns leads into clients for life. After a while, you will build up a huge inventory of postings which will be impressive, especially to the Generation X and Y home buyers.  

Relationship Building

Blogs put a personal face on your Real Estate business. The personal nature of blogs makes them a powerful tool for building relationships with your clients and potential clients. There’s a lot of competition online and in Real Estate; a blog is one of the best ways to separate your business from the competition.  Staying in front of these potential future clients is critical in staying in their hearts and minds when they are selling or purchasing a home.

Feedback

Your blog makes instant feedback possible. A blog is an ideal format for getting feedback from clients. Visitors can respond to your comments and link to your blog posts from their own websites and blogs. Hot topics can create a thread that engages dozens—or hundreds—of readers to post their replies. The replies will tell you a lot about what your customers want.

Up-to-date information

Blogs put information that is new and that helps you in a couple ways.  First, it will give your clients and potential clients reason to come back to your site again and again.  Also, the “spiders” that Google uses to crawl your site will reward you for the fresh and frequently updated content by giving you higher Search Engine rankings. Every time Google comes back to see “how you’re doing” and discovers that you and your site aren’t going to roll over and play dead after putting up your initial 8 page website, they will take note and give you an advantage over the other complacent website owners. Google is drawn to new content as a cat is drawn to catnip. Give Google all the catnip you can and reap the benefits!

Blogging helps you build the quality of relationships that can turn leads into clients for life. If you don’t have a blog, make launching your own blog one of your top priorities.

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Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best real estate websites in the industry. Brett has helped hundreds of real estate professionals make the most of their Internet presence. In addition to integrating the best MLS tools that buyers love, Brett has also integrated full Top Producer functionality into his clients' sites to work automatically and seamlessly saving them administrative time and expense. If you’re a Real Estate Agent and you want your Real Estate website to work for you, go to www.HoopJumper.com
The 2006 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers: Focus on Buyers
Posted November 28, 2006 by Paul C. Bishop and Harika Bickicioglu, NAR Research
      There continues to be an increase in studies and surveys that prove how today's home buyers utilize the internet to find their homes. In particular, it's interesting to note how the internet has increased in use as a search tool.


Once again, it's very clear, and can't be stressed enough how important having a quality website that is search engine optimized is for a real estate professional. I highlighted, in blue, some interesting points in the article.


The 2006 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers: Focus on Buyers

Home buyers and sellers rely on real estate professionals to assist them in many aspects of the home sales transaction. From the initial search to closing, real estate agents and brokers help guide home buyers through the many steps that culminate in a successful home purchase.

Real estate professionals also help home sellers by developing market plans, pricing homes competitively and utilizing their experience to assist sellers through each step of the process.

The National Association of REALTORS® annually surveys home buyers and sellers to gather detailed information on the home buying and selling process.* The survey results provide REALTORS® with insights into the characteristics and needs of their clients. It also helps them to improve client services. Others can also benefit from the findings through a better understanding of the housing market and how the unique role of real estate professionals continues to evolve. The latest survey results were recently released and published in the 2006 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Below are highlights from the report that focus on home buyers.

Characteristics of Home Buyers
Who are today’s home buyers? The demographic characteristics of home buyers can provide insight into how the demand for housing will evolve over time. Smaller households (those with fewer young children) and aging baby-boomers approaching retirement will influence the type of homes those households purchase. In addition, healthy levels of legal immigration will contribute to household formation, fueling housing demand.

· The typical home buyer was 41 years old. As in previous surveys, first-time buyers tended to be younger than repeat buyers. Among first-time buyers, the median age was 32; for repeat buyers, the median age was 47. The largest percentage of all home buyers – 30 percent – were between 25 and 34 years old.

· The majority of home buyers – 62 percent – were in households where there were no children under 18 years old residing in the home. Fewer than one in five buyers had one child under 18 years old who still lived at home.

· Home buyers tended to have a larger income than did the population in general. The 2005 median household income for buyers was $71,800. As a comparison, the Census Bureau reports that the median income for all households was $46,326 in 2005 (latest data available).

· First-time home buyers accounted for 36 percent of homes purchased – the first decrease in the share of first-time home buyers since 2001. First-time homebuyers had a lower median household income – $58,300 – than did repeat buyers ($81,900). That is not surprising since first-time buyers are generally younger than repeat buyers.

What They Buy
Buyers purchase homes in different areas – suburban or city – and of different types and at different prices. As in previous surveys, existing homes accounted for the majority of homes sold during the survey period, but new homes were also popular.

· One in five homes purchased by recent buyers was newly built.

· Similar to results in the previous survey, three out of four homes purchased in 2005 were detached single-family homes.

· The typical home buyer purchased a home 13 miles from their previous residence in a suburb or subdivision.

· The median price of a home purchased by the typical buyer was $214,000. First-time buyers generally purchased less expensive homes – $165,000 – than did repeat buyers – $249,000.This is not surprising since repeat buyers tend to have higher incomes and can use the equity from their previous home toward their next purchase.

Why They Buy
People buy homes for many reasons: as an investment, for more space, to be closer to schools, relatives, or their work. But the reasons for purchasing a home can differ for first-time buyers and repeat buyers.

· The most frequently cited reason for purchasing a home – whether a first-time or repeat purchase – was the desire to own a home of one’s own. As might be expected, this was most important for first-time buyers (74 percent).

· The desire for more living space was the cited as the primary reason for a housing change by 20 percent of repeat buyers, but 16 percent of them purchased another home due to a job relocation or move.

· Other reasons for a home purchase include retirement, change in family situation and desire for less space.

Finding a Home
Home buyers can turn to many information sources when searching for a home to purchase. Real estate agents and the Internet are the two most popular sources of information cited in the latest survey. Yard signs, open houses and newspapers are also frequently cited as information sources.

The Internet, in particular, has continued to increase in popularity among home buyers as a search tool. Eighty percent of buyers used the Internet as an information source. Almost
one fourth – 24 percent – of all buyers first found the home they eventually purchased on the Internet.

There were differences in the type of information used between first-time and repeat buyers. First-time home buyers were more likely to cite the Internet as a home search tool than were repeat buyers (83 percent vs. 78 percent). Repeat buyers used a home builder as an information source more often than did first-time buyers (30 percent vs. 19 percent).

The Use of Real Estate Professionals
In spite of the continued rise of the Internet as a home search tool, real estate professionals are still the number one source of information about homes for sale. In fact, 87 percent of Internet searchers also used a real estate agent as a source of information, and 35 percent of them found the home they ultimately purchased through a real estate agent.

Use of the Internet has not diminished the role of real estate professionals in the home purchase process. More than three quarters – 77 percent – of home buyers purchased their home through a real estate agent. Interestingly, even those home buyers who used the Internet to search for a home were more likely to use a real estate agent in the home
purchase transaction.

What Buyers Look for in Their Real Estate Professional
Home buyers rely on the experience and professionalism of their real estate agents. The two most important factors in choosing an agent are the agent’s honesty and trustworthiness and her reputation. That honesty and repute can result in additional
business. Almost half of first-time buyers found their real estate agent through a referral from a friend, neighbor or relative (or knew the agent themselves). Over one third of repeat buyers (35%) also relied on referrals for an agent, but 19 percent of them also relied on their previous experience with an agent. Regardless of how they found their real estate professional, what buyers most wanted from their agent was help finding the right home to purchase. Interestingly, this factor was more important for repeat buyers than first-time buyers; first-time buyers more often wanted guidance in determining how much home they could afford.

Conclusion
The professionalism, responsiveness, knowledge and efficiency that real estate professionals bring to their home-buyer clients pays off in repeat business. The 2006 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers** shows that two thirds of agent-assisted buyers would definitely use their same agent again or recommend that agent to others.

Many of the home buyers surveyed for this report will use their agents to help them sell a home in the future. Next month in this column, we will take a brief look at the profile of home sellers based on the results of the 2006 survey – their characteristics and those of their homes, FSBOs, and the role of real estate professionals.

*These surveys provide information on demographics, housing characteristics and the experience of buyers and sellers in the housing market. Buyers and sellers also share information on the role of real estate professionals in their home sales transactions. The 2006 survey results are representative of home purchases between July 2005 and June 2006. Consumer names and addresses were obtained from Experian, a firm that maintains an extensive database of recent home buyers derived from county records. Information about sellers comes from those buyers who also sold a home.
Focus on Search Marketing for Real Estate Sites
Posted October 24, 2006 by Nancy Hackett
      Earlier this year I read a very interesting and telling blog post by Nancy Hackett, over at I Need Hits. According to a study published by Borrell Associates - local search ads for real estate agents account for almost half of pay-per-click ads in ten targeted US cities. Amazing! Yet not surprising since research released last year that stated 80% of consumers begin their searches online.

I just can't stress enough the importance of having a quality, user-friendly and properly optimized website. Don't let your online competitors leave you in the dust.

Local search ads for real estate agents account for almost half (49.6%) of all local PPC (pay-per-click) ads in a sample of ten U.S. cities. This is the amazing finding of a report published by Borrell Associates which also reports the share of real estate ads amongst all local search ads has jumped by 32.1% compared to just 18 months ago.

With local pay-per-click advertising expected to grow to $987 million this year and to $4 billion in 2010, search advertising expenditure of the real estate section is expected to grow explosively. No wonder - research released last year by the National Association of Realtors stated that almost 80% of consumers begin researching real estate online. According to another prediction by Borrell Associates, online advertising will account for over one third of the entire real estate industry's advertising budget in only four years' time, leaving classifieds in newspapers and other print publications behind.

Paid search advertising like Google AdWords and other online marketing expenditure, including organic search engine optimization and display advertising, is paying off for real estate agents in term of lead generation and sales.

The vast number of searches conducted on real estate related terms is mind-boggling. For example, during February 2006 the following numbers of searches were conducted on the Yahoo! network for the top 10 real estate related terms:

Search Terms
Search TermsNumber of Searches Feb 2006
real estate1,795,889
real estate agent470,029
travel real estate career205,408
real estate appraisal154,750
real estate developer home builder123,487
charlotte north carolina real estate104,140
florida real estate90,686
real estate listing71,925
las vegas real estate61,796
century 21 real estate61,661



How Can You Stay Ahead of the Real Estate Pack Online?

Firstly, there are no easy solutions, and a short article like this is not able to cover the components of an outstanding online presence in depth. The quality and user-friendliness of your website cannot be emphasized enough - apart from making sure its search engine optimization is flawless (including keyword-rich copy with lots of local search terms, easy-to-follow navigation, meta tag optimization and inbound links), the property search function and the quality of your listing information and photos is critical. You can not only display the relevant facts and photos about an individual property, but you can also add information about important lifestyle factors - what schools are in the area, what recreational and shopping facilities are nearby, how long does it take to get into the city center and so on.

In attracting visitors to your site, you probably can't afford to ignore paid search advertising, even if you have good organic rankings. However, the real estate sector is notorious as an industry with very high P4P click prices - so how can you ensure you get a positive return? When considering your paid search budget, you need to estimate the quality of the leads you generate. You might find that certain local keyword terms attract different types of visitors who are more or less likely to be a valuable lead. Once you know what type of traffic is more valuable, you can adjust the keyword bids within your paid search campaign to ensure you maximize your return on investment, or go for "the tail of search" - bid on longer keyword terms that do not have the large search volume that more generic search terms have, but that provide you with better qualified visitors at a cheaper price. For example, instead of bidding on "Florida Real Estate", bid on a more specific term like "real estate for sale in Orlando Florida".

To ensure you get the most out of any potential leads, also make sure that you have systems in place to follow up on leads in real time and continue to communicate with leads over a period of time (for example using email) if you have permission to do so.

For more specific discussions on a broad range of online real estate related topics, visit
http://www.realestateforum.com/index.php.
Online Real Estate Ad Spending to Nearly Double by 2010
Posted October 11, 2006 by Kate Kaye
      ClickZ Online Marketing Expert website had an interesting article a few months ago, written by Kate Kaye, and highlighting the research firm of Borrell Associates' report stating that online real estate ad spending is expected to grow from $2 billion this year, to $3 billion by 2010!

It's interesting to note that the report also states that agents who have been in the business for a substantial amount of time are much slower to jump on the internet ad and budget bandwagon than their less seasoned counterparts.

The Web has put the real estate ad industry in constant flux in recent years, and a new Borrell Associates report indicates there are no signs of things settling any time soon. Indeed, online real estate ad spending is expected to grow from $2 billion this year to $3 billion by 2010, rising from a 17.7 percent share of all real estate ad spending to 32.1 percent.

Not only are new Web sites and search tools having an impact, advertisers are also shifting dollars within the print space.

"There's still a lot of room for online spending," observed Borrell Associates VP Pete Conti. The research firm found that while 77 percent of real estate buyers use the Internet for home searches, just 15 percent of the 535 agents surveyed place ad dollars there. Forty-seven percent of agents said they'd spend more online this year than last, and 45 percent said they'd spend the same amount.

The "2006 Update: Online Real Estate Advertising" report puts this in context, noting, "In May we met with the owner of one large brokerage firm who expressed frustration that while potential customers had moved online en masse, his agents hadn't changed their advertising habits correspondingly."

On the whole, newspapers will continue to experience a decline in real estate spending. The report predicts that the 37 percent share attributed to newspapers this year will move down to 30 percent in 2010. These numbers can be deceiving, though; some won't necessarily feel the burn. According to the report, more real estate agents said they plan to raise newspaper ad spending this year -- 42 percent -- compared to 40 percent who said they'd spend the same amount.

Because agents typically aim to target small regional markets rather than large metro areas, they're finding, "They can get a better bang for their buck in a small community paper." While classified ad spending in large metro dailies will dwindle, those dollars will flow towards less-expensive but more targeted suburban and community papers and alternative weeklies, according to the Borrell report. "Agents are running from the metro dailies," said Conti.

Online newspaper sites are gaining online real estate classifieds dollars. Yet even though those Web classifieds are seen by more people than print classifieds, said Conti, the lion's share of those dollars is attributed to the print version of the paper. This "kind of masks the increases," he added.

Real estate advertisers will also spend less on non-newspaper print media and direct mail in the coming years according to the report. Ad buys in magazines and niche publications will drop from 17 percent to almost 13 percent by 2010, while direct mail spends will decline about 3 points from 16 to 13 percent, mainly due to postage costs and increased use of email by agents.

A Borrell Associates report released in March showed that real estate agents did the majority of local search advertising. Search ads for individual local agents rose from 17.5 percent of local search ads in 2004 to 49.6 percent of listings on keyword searches across 10 different cities this year.

The report also found a disparity between long-time agents and those who are relatively new to the industry. It showed that 36 percent of those who have been agents 10 years or longer use online advertising, while 64 percent of those in the business for 10 years or fewer buy online ads. Seventy-one percent of those less-experienced agents will boost their Web ad budgets this year compared to 48 percent of their veteran counterparts.

The agents with longer histories in the industry, opined Conti, "are going to lose out pretty soon" because more and more people entering the market are using the Web to find their next home.

Free listings sites provided by alt weeklies and sites like Craigslist and GoogleBase "will have a big influence over the next 6 months to a year," forecasted Conti. The report mentions Web sites such as social networking site CityCribs.com, New York City housing market blog Curbed, vertical real estate aggregators and search engines like Trulia, Oodle, Yahoo Real Estate and Move.com, as well as real estate value comparison site Zillow.com. Such sites, notes the report, are "aimed at creating a higher level of interaction and a better user experience for home buyers and sellers than ever before….But the real showdown for Web 2.0 real estate advertising dollars online may erupt over how these sites can acquire and display Realtor's [sic] listings."
Where Will Your Marketing Dollars Get The Best Return on Investment?
Posted October 03, 2006 by Brett Miller
      During your training as a new Realtor, you undoubtedly received coaching from managers and brokers on many subjects designed to help you build your business. Despite this, many Realtors don't do all of the exercises that they promised themselves they'd do. As a result, many agents find themselves doing the same marketing plans month after month without analyzing how hard their advertising dollars are working for them.

Ask a Simple Question With Big Results


Nearly everything that a Realtor spends money on is designed to promote him or herself as an agent. Direct mail, ads, websites, promotional items, even your yard signs, are all speaking to clients on your behalf. But not all of these things are equally effective, and it's important to determine which of your marketing materials are working hardest for you.

All it takes is a little research to determine what's working, and what can be cut back or eliminated altogether. Create a spreadsheet on your computer, or even use a notebook divided into columns, and list every form of self-promotion that you use - even those that you don't pay for. Be disciplined and ask each and every potential buyer or seller that you speak to, "How did you hear about me?"

Use Your Money Wisely


Once you've collected data for an entire month, review your results. Let's say that your data breaks down to five leads from referrals, one lead from your weekly newspaper ad, five leads from your website, and four leads from the promotional calendars that you sent out to your farming area. If you’re spending a significant portion of your budget on your newspaper ad, you might want to put that money into other areas of advertising. You’re not getting the return on investment that you should from a newspaper ad.

In addition, a good real estate website should be generating many more leads than just five. Invest in a professional, fully-customized website and you will generate the bulk of your leads online. Once you’ve made the initial investment, your website will work for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A truly professional website requires very little upkeep and maintenance on your part. This is fortunate, since you will be busy with all of the new clients who find you online.



Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best lead generating real estate websites in the industry and helped hundreds of real estate professionals make the most of their Internet presence. Call 888-Hoop-Jumper for a complimentary web analysis today or visit www.HoopJumper.com to see how HoopJumper can help you grow your business.
Real Estate Websites- The Center of Your Marketing Campaign
Posted September 26, 2006 by Brett Miller
      Studies indicate that 70 percent of home buyers begin their search for homes online, so by not having a real estate website to promote yourself, you are missing out on valuable leads! Those buyers are choosing someone, so why shouldn't it be you? Getting a website started is easier than ever, so don't wait!

How Will a Website Help My Business?


Print advertising can be very expensive, and direct mailings are time consuming in addition to the cost. Once you set up your website, it will be working for you each and every day, getting you business. Many potential customers will start with a search on their favorite search engine. Making your website rich in keywords will help buyers see your site first. If you specialize in rental properties in Oak Park, use the phrase "Oak Park rental" as many times as you can. This ensures that a buyer who searches for that phrase will see you first. You can also set up banner ads that run at the top of the screen and advertise specific properties, open houses or events. It's a great way to keep current clients and potential clients in the know.

Using Email With Your Website


Email is a great resource for Realtors. It allows you to maintain casual contact with many clients, and to keep them in the loop about updates and new listings. There are many programs that allow you to set up automatic email responses. This means that clients can fill out a quick form detailing what they are looking for in a property, and emails will be sent out to them every time a new property meets their criteria. It saves them search time, and they feel they're receiving quality service. This also helps you build a database of email addresses for you to send marketing materials to.

With just a little time to set up, your website will bring you business all day, every day!

Brett Miller is the founder of HoopJumper.com and has created the best lead generating real estate websites in the industry and helped hundreds of real estate professionals make the most of their Internet presence. Call 888-Hoop-Jumper for a complimentary web analysis today or visit www.HoopJumper.com to see how HoopJumper can help you grow your business.
 
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