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.
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? --------- 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.
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?
---------
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
Teresa Boardman: A blogging pioneer, her site comes up first in searches for St. Paul real estate.
Dustin Luther: Consultant for real estate professionals about the use of online space and founded Rain City Guide, a real estate blogging site.
Frances Flynn Thorsen: Runs the Realtygram Blogger, includes video blogs.
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.
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.
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.
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
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. ---- 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
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. --- 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
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.
--- 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
------- For information on Top Producer’s great new Market Snapshot program, contact Luke Rogalsky at 1-800-444-8570 ext. 8113.
------- 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
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.
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
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. Postto 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
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.
--
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
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.
-----------
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
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.
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 tha
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.