Online Real Estate Technology

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I’ve been working in social media for a long time now and I write for about 10 different blogs every day and some times I republish articles that I believe will be of benefit or interest to those that read my blogs, just like lots of blog writers do every day, after all, isn’t social media built on the principle of sharing? I thought so until today.

I always adhere to the principles of acknowledging the writer or publisher and I always leave the links intact so as to give the original blog owner the backlink as well as the kudos of having their material syndicated. I am always flattered when a blog owner takes one of my articles and adds it to their blog, as long as they give me credit as the author and include a link back to my site.

Well that is what I did today, published an article with credit and links intact and low and behold I get an email telling me to remove the article as it is copyright material and I don’t have permission to post the article or any other on my site. By the way the “remove” was in the largest font possible, any bigger and would not have needed my glasses to see it.

My mistake here it seems was leaving the box marked pingback ticked.

The site in question, or maybe I shouldn’t tell you who it is for fear they may be a bit precious, is a site all about social media.

The point of this post is basically to advise you that if you are taking other bloggers material to check first to see if the story is copyright, I wonder if they participate in article marketing, mm, anyway make sure you have permission before you publish content.

I mean silly as it sounds, I should just take the post, rewrite it and republish it and we’d be fine, after all, it is a post that offers information that has been around for years.

Maybe that’s what I’ll do, rewrite the post, and call it “6 ways to constantly produce quality blog content” or maybe that is copyright to, I know, I’ll go one better, I’ll change it to “7 ways to constantly produce quality blog content”.

There you go Mike, I’ve just found ways to produce better blog content, and your site will be a constant fountain of ideas.

Ian Grace Mr Real Estate Advertising

I thought it was time I opened up this blog to a few of my friends and colleagues in the real estate industry and one that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the years is probably the leading expert on real estate advertising worldwide, Ian Grace.

Ian has presented his training course all over the world and is one of the very few Australians to have spoken at the NAR conference in the US, there is not much that Ian does not know about creating great real estate advertising, so as part of this series, I’ve asked Ian to put together his top 10 tips for writing great real estate ads, I hope you get benefit from Ian’s advice.

The Top Ten Tips for Writing Great Real Estate Ads

HOODOO – a great word to help you to remember the two things that make advertising effective:- WHO – is the person who will see the most value in the property and therefore pay the highest price [that's target marketing]. DO – now show them and tell them, what they will be able to DO as a direct result of their purchase.

2. HEADLINES – remember the WHO when you write your headline, then qualify it quickly, so the reader knows you’re both on the same wavelength. Then ideally, reinforce or remind about the headline at the end of the ad. The headline must include one or more of the following:- 1. A benefit or implied benefit 2. Something that is new, news or topical 3. A curiosity element without gimmicks for gimmicks sake.

3. PHOTOS – make sure your main photo matches and works together with your headline [not the other way around] and that the other photos also match the body text.

4. PEOPLE – put people and/or pets in your photos – it’s a great way to show people what they will be able to DO when they live there.

5. NAMES – use names in your ads to personalise them – yours [in full] and even the sellers’.

6. DIFFERENT ADS – the use of different ads for different markets, enables you to talk to each prospect group about what is relevant to them only e.g. one ad aimed at first home buyers and one ad aimed specifically at investors.

7. MEDIA MATCH – make sure your press ads match with other media and vice versa, with particular reference to the main photo and headline.

8. KEEP THE SAME AD RUNNING – once you’ve written a great ad, run it at least four times if not more, as research shows people need to see the same ad or message three times or more, on average, before they will respond

9. PRICE, LOCATION, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS – if all the research done shows conclusively that these are the top three pieces of information potential buyers require, then common sense says – give it to them!

10.   OBTAIN SELLER ADVERTISING DOLLARS – research proves that the higher the seller paid advertising percentage, the higher the listing to selling success rate.

11. BONUS TIP – TEST YOUR ADS – Firstly, sellers must see the ads before they run, but most importantly, ensure at least one of your colleagues checks your ads to confirm every word and phrase will make sense to the market it is written for. Secondly, when buyers who have responded to the ads view the property, ask them if the property has matched their expectations from your ads – the feedback will be terrific and will keep your advertising right on track.

If you’d like to contact Ian you can visit his web site Ian Grace Marketing

Last week during a webinar that I participated in with Michael Sheargold and the Real Estate Results Network, I suggested that every real estate office should create a digital media strategy that covers at least the next 12 months. Technology is changing so rapidly for real estate agents and without a plan or strategy in place you’ll find it very hard to keep up. I’ve had some agents talk to me about what should be in this digital strategy, so to help you lets go through the basics of what you should include in your document.

1. Web site SEO – First and foremost in my mind is having your web site search engine friendly. Local search queries continue to increase as does 3+ word keyword searches.

Yellow Pages book usage is decreasing and Internet searches increasing, so that makes it vital that your site appears on the first page of Google. You need to also consider how your site performs, Google are planning to use site speed as a ranking factor and therefore how quickly your site loads will be a consideration. Image heavy sites without alt tags and optimising your pages for relevant keywords needs to be considered.

During the webinar, one industry specialist wrote a comment ” Do you really think that principals or agents actually write their own copy?”  No I don’t, but they need to make sure that what is written on their behalf is search engine optimised and written for the web, not copied from a newspaper. Make sure that you get access to the coding on your site as well, you pay for it, you own it, not like I have encountered recently with one web company attached to the number one real estate portal, they have a very arrogant attitude to you the customer, so if in doubt walk away, there are plenty of web design companies that will help you.

Search Engine Marketing should not replace your web site SEO, use SEM wisely and don’t double up, if you’re on the first page or rank highly for a search term, don’t waste money on Adwords,use them in areas that you don’t rank, remember, Google ranks pages not web sites so you can effectively optimise each page on your web site for keywords.

2.Social Media – Include this into your 12 month plan, small business is lagging behind their big brothers in using and integrating social media into their business. Your customers have embraced social networking and it is becoming the trusted adviser, so you can’t afford to neglect it any longer.

One of the reasons slowing the integration is a lack of knowledge about social media by small business owners, in my mind you are better to try and work with social media than to ignore it, so jump in and have a go. Plan it slowly and use the major sites such as Facebook and Twitter to start with, you can use this as your guide, POST. This stands for:

• People – What is your target market?

• Objective – What do you want to achieve from using social media?

• Strategy – How will you go about communicating with your customers? Status Updates, Coupons, Discounts etc

• Technology - What are the main sites you’ll use to communicate your message? Facebook/Twitter

That at least will help you plan your strategy, also remember, Podcasting, Vlogging and YouTube are powerful tools in getting your message across, plus Google loves video, so use this to your advantage

3. Blogs – Create a blog and add it to your web presence, it allows you to add the personal touch to your on line marketing. ComScore’s research indicates that blogs reach over 48% of the online population in the Asia Pacific region, social media 56.1%.

Blogs are a great way to communicate with your customers and are a great customer service tool, remember though you need to make sure that your content is fresh and relevant to the target market you are aiming at. Google loves blogs because of the constantly updated information they provide and will index them very quickly as well as give them a high ranking, sometimes even over a higher authority site. WordPress provides a great platform for you to use and I’d recommend the self hosted option as you can use your own domain name and you have much more flexibility.

4. Internet Marketing – Make sure that you have your office details listed with Google business, use different keywords or categories so that you rank on different search pages in your area. Be very selfish with where your links go, you might think its great that your business comes up number one under a realestate.com.au listing in your area, but think where the customer goes when they click on the link, to you? no they go to the portal so make sure your web site ranks on that first page.

Audit your listing on the portals and start to implement good keywords in your copy, remember you’re writing for the web not a newspaper, so think about how people search and what keywords they use. Get those from your own office, you have a wealth of information at your disposal, so ask your staff what words or phrases consumers use when  they contact your office, find the most frequently used and start to weave those into your articles or listing copy.

Don’t leave out of your listing valuable information, Google uses a completeness filter on Google real estate, so the more information in your listing the higher the rank, makes sense really doesn’t it.  

5. Technology – Make sure you stay informed on technology that impacts on how your customers find you, Augmented Reality and QR codes are examples, be aware of the impact they are having and factor these into your strategy.

I hope that helps you in planning for the next 12 months, having this in place is a good start in improving the way you market and communicate with the online consumer, it also improves your businesses “Future Fitness”  for digital marketing.

Earlier this week I was a presenter at a training session in Sydney run by one of the major real estate franchise groups, and my topic for the session was “How to Market More Effectively Using On Line Technology” , or in other wards, how to write better copy to be found on the search engines such as Google and Bing.

The first part of the day focused on writing for print, and the presentation really was quite good, it focused on writing clean copy with no clutter and writing catchy headlines and avoiding cliche’s.

A lot of time and effort went in to focusing on the print side, how to submit your editorial, when was the best time to do so, what style of writing does the editor like etc, and then, when looking at the end result, which had been written up on a white board, I thought about how those headlines or keywords would research on the web. A lot of agents simply copy and paste their print copy onto the web, with no consideration of keywords, search phrases etc.

You really have no idea whether your copy or headline will have any impact on the property searcher unless you have a clear understanding of how they search on the web, what phrases do they use, what are the trigger words or keywords they search for, these are all the questions you need to answer before you submit your copy to the web.

It’s even more important today, with Google’s real estate section now publishing listings, because anything that is published on the web, will be indexed by search engines, so make sure you start to optimise your copy with keywords or phrases that target your market, if you don’t, you’ll end up not showing on the search results, or being missed by your buyers, and whilst those headlines look OK in print, they may not work on the web.

With 9 out of 10 property searchers starting their property search on the web, how much time are you going to spend on your research to get it right. So lets give you a few ideas on where to start: A really good place to start your research is in your own office and for a refresher please read my earlier post “Choosing the right Keywords for your Content”

The post I’ve highlighted will give you some really good ideas on keyword research, so next time you sit down and start brainstorming ideas for your headlines and listing copy, give some thought on how your buyer searches on the web and what phrases or words they use, if you do that you’ll have a head start on getting your property found on the web.

How do you choose the right keywords for your piece of copy or blog post to really make sure that you’ll get readers to your blog or that you’ll get a good ranking on Google. It’s hard sometimes when writing, to find the right keywords to use, and even harder to put them into sentences that are optimised for the Internet. So I’ve decided to write a little piece on it for you, and give you a few ideas on how you can choose those keywords and then check to make sure they have enough search volume to rank. Remember my post on Red Widgets and how to include keywords in your article to get a good rank on the search engines, well lets now look choosing the right keywords for your target market.

The first thing to do in your real estate office, and this works really well with any business, is to sit down with all your staff and find out the most commonly used words or phrases your customers use when they contact your office, either by phone or face to face, create a list of these words and then identify the words or phrases most often used.

Develop these into profiles, you could for example have a first home buyer profile, or an investor profile, a green profile, a retiree profile etc.

Determine which one of these groups your article is targeted too and then weave the words that are keywords from each group into your body copy when writing your article.

Technology can be of real benefit to you here, as you can use Google Adwords keyword tool for checking keyword popularity and the tool will give you suggested variations on your chosen keyword.

Another great tool to use to find variations on your keywords is to use Google’s “Wonder Wheel“, now what is this you ask? when you type in a search term on Google you get the results on a web page, on the top left hand corner is a link called “Options”, click on the link and now you have a side bar on the left hand side with a number of options for you to use including one second from the bottom called “Wonder Wheel”.

Click on that and you see the wonder wheel appear in your screen, I’ve included a screen grab below for you which shows a search for Real Estate.

Real Estate Wonder Wheel

By clicking on the Wonder Wheel link, I now have a list of real estate companies, if I click on any of the links surrounding the wheel it gives me variations on my search term

Googles Wonder Wheel

This little tool is really handy for finding matches to your search term or for finding other keyword variations, the best way to understand it is to play around with it for awhile, so go and have some fun.

Be aware of what you publish in your property advertising

Writing good property listings for the internet is all about content and creating cut through in a very cluttered market, but what content should be included?

In this day and age, real estate agents need to be aware of what they write and publish in listings either on the net or in traditional media.

In an article written by solicitor Tim O’Dwyer on the Australian Real Estate blog, he warns that information you provide in your listings, if found to be deceptive at a later stage, can result in you being sued and the contract cancelled. 

Here’s a snapshot of some of Tims article: “The Supreme Court of New South Wales recently ruled that the buyers of an off-the-plan property were entitled to a rescission of their contract and a deposit refund because the estate agent for the developer had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. These inexperienced investor-buyers had relied on baseless representations in newspaper advertisements that the value of the inner city terrace units being marketed by the agent would double in five years. A major law firm soon issued a media release suggesting that, in a falling market, off-the-plan buyers might try to get out of deals done years earlier by relying on pre-contractual mis-representations. Property developers and their agents were warned “to carefully check the wording of their advertisements or other representations” to make sure they were “based in fact”, while any statements regarding future value must have a “reasonable basis” with further information being provided to qualify those representations”.

So be very careful what information you include in your on line property listing, check all information carefully before you include it and publish it on the net.  Also make sure that you flag your properties as “under contract” or “sold” and move them to the sold data base on the portals when the deal is complete. I’ve had cases where the Qld Dept of Fair Trading had contacted me in my role with realestate.com.au after consumer complaints to them, about agents not flagging properties as under contract or sold. The consumers can get very annoyed about this and they don’t think very highly of agents who they see as wasting their time. 

If in doubt, don’t include it, and if it’s sold, move it!

Ever wondered how the consumer or real estate searcher when searching on your web site or real estate portal views themselves? Am i a lead? a prospect? a contact or am I a person?

How do you approach social media or Internet marketing in general with your real estate office? do you treat them as a lead or a prospect, a contact or a person? 

From the consumers point of view it’s, All about me!!!

Interesting thought starter isn’t it. How you approach your marketing efforts on the web really is about how you view your consumers, how you talk to them, how you respond to them, how you market to them and the words you use are all very, very important when it comes to on line marketing, WHY? because this is usually the first point of contact a consumer will have with you and your business or product, and how well you treat them or engage themwill depend on whether they come back to your web site, use your services or buy your product.

I often get the response from real estate agents when talking about internet marketing and social media of “all I want are leads” or “How many new prospects will I get” .

The buyer/seller will judge you on lots of criteria, including your knowledge of the area, your expertise in marketing and selling property, your negotiating skills etc, so how do you inform them of all your skills and provide them with the information to make the decision to use you or your business. Most real estate agents market for today, and I don’t for one minute suggest you stop that activity, but give some thought to the future and implement a longer term strategy and start to market effectively to the future.

From the real estate portals comes research that indicates up to 39% of the real estate buyer or seller can be researching up to 9 to 12 months on line before buying or selling, so when they do, have you been the one that constantly updates them, provides them with really helpful information on real estate, sells your expertise in the area and have you treated them as a person.

Here’s a really great video for you to watch on this very subject and after you watch it, you may just be tempted to engage your market.

I for one would like to see you do just that.

With the predicted drop in official interest rates by up to 1% point by the Reserve Bank tomorrow, are you geared up to take advantage of the spike in traffic that will flow on from that announcement? When the last official decrease was announced, the search volumes on Google increased for terms such as real estate for sale & houses for sale, and that searching volume also flowed thru to the major real estate portals. So to help you take advantage of this, here’s my suggestion, Once the official announcement is made, get on to your listings and change the headlines accordingly. A suggested headline could be “Official Interest Rates Drop by 1%, This property now more affordable, Ask Us How!” Leave this headline in place for the next 2 days and then revert your headline back again.

By doing this you start to effectively use the internet to tap into lifestyle and community interests. Social media is very good at showing you how to react and communicate with your audience or market.

Don’t use the net passively, get out and be proactive. This will be my message to the agents I’ll be consulting tomorrow, good luck.

I’ve been in Bundaberg this week conducting both the “Copywriting for the Web” seminars and internet marketing audits for real estate offices, so I’ve been busy over the last few days, and that’s why I haven’t had much chance to update my blog. However, the good thing about going around the country is I get to talk with lots of agents and business owners about the current market conditions and Tuesday, I had the privilege of spending time with Ken Callec and his team at Yes Realty in Bargara, and I must congratulate Ken as he has a great motivated team in his office, not to mention the great dinner he treated me to earlier this week, so thank you Ken. 

Ken reads my blog, so he’ll get the message.  

But the point of this post is to look at a comment that Charlie, one of Ken’s team, asked me about when we were sitting around dissecting the teams listings on line and looking at why some properties have high property views but very low email lead conversion. Charlie asked me how, as a marketing agent, he could be different when marketing open listings, in other words, “How do I stand out from the crowd”, well Charlie, that is a very good question, in fact, most agents wouldn’t even bother to ask me that one with an open listing, so well done Charlie for considering the vendor.

So lets then look at what Charlie could do to be different in his approach to an open listing, or, better still,why don’t we just look at how Charlie can stand out from the average agent with every listing.

First of all lets throw away the rule book, lets break every rule in the so called real estate traditional “marketing 101″ book.    

Lets look at 10 points that Charlie can use to stand out from the crowd

1. Identify the target demographic you want to aim the property at, and be very specific in your marketing to that buyer. Make sure the content is relevant to who you are marketing to, for example, a first home buyer looks for different content than an investor does, as a retiree does, so really aim the content of that listing to the target market. By being too broad in your targeting for any property, you will actually miss the very buyer you are trying to impact.

2. Rotate the target demographics every 2 weeks. 2 weeks to a first home buyer and 2 weeks to an investor. There is absoultely nothing wrong with this, and in fact will start to provide frequently updated content to the searching consumer. It will also help keep the property fresh. Do this with all your properties and see what the results are.

 3. Gender, aim the marketing to the people who are looking at your listing, in general, it is likely that 6 out of ten people who will view your listing will be female. When doing audits in offices, the female staff members are often quite critical of listings written by male agents, when given the chance to offer an opinion they will privide you with a wealth of really good feedback, so guys, don’t wait, get them to critique every listing you write, before you publish it on line.     

4. Photos, be prepared to be different with this, before you make any decision on that main photo, think about who you are targeting, and more importantly, what will impact that buyer. Do a virtual drive through of the suburb, see who you are up against, and do something different than the other agents. Employ a strategy to update every listing weekly, Monday’s are the highest traffic days so put in place a plan to change your photos and body copy every week. Frequently Updated Content is what consumers know they can get from the web, so what is new today, is tomorrow old news, Update to reflect the changing community needs. You will reap the rewards by frequently updating your content. Write your body copy to reflect what is happening in the real world. How many of you updated your first home buyers properties last Tuesday to reflect what the reserve bank did with interest rates? 

5. Strong lifestyle and catchy headlines. Make sure you have a strong lifestyle driven headline on your copy. Don’t use bland real estate headlines. Make a statement and drive the consumers attention by trying something different.

6. Include Lifestyle or local suburb Information on Your Listing, when I worked for the Raptis group in 2001, our job was to write advertising for off the plan apartments, so how do you write for something that doesn’t exist? by creating emotion and selling the lifestyle expectation of what I would get as a buyer, in other words, what is in it for me, me, me!!! Remember, females over 25 are still the most dominant users of real estate sites in Australia, and what are they  really interested in? schools, security,local transport etc. 

7. Walkscore.com, include a jpeg grab of this great mapping web site on all your listings, research coming in from domain.com.au and an agent on the sunshine coast in Qld who is using these images as part of their property marketing is that the www.walkscore.com image is the most clicked on image on that property, why?  because the on line consumer is looking for lifestyle information on the suburb and the property, and these images and a great resource for both buyers and tenants alike.

8. Include a Video Tour or Video Update.Try to include a video tour on every property you do, remember in a previous post I talked about how research was showing that property searchers like video and that a well produced video tour can increase the perceived value of the property by up to 6%. Property Videos Increase Percieved Property Value . Now, If you can’t get the vendor to pay for this, why not include your own weekly market update and attach it to your property and up date it weekly. Domain.com.au will indicate a video tour and provide a video icon on each listing, but please let the consumer know that you have included a local real estate market update that is refreshed each week, and they will then start to look for your updates. 

9. Create your youtube real estate channel.Attach your channel to all your listings content and load all your videos to youtube. Promote the channel on your listings as a way for local property searchers to be constantly updated by you, the local real estate expert.

10. Include a strong call to action on all your properties. Brand your self the “local real estate market expert” and ask people to call you, email you or stalk you, do what ever it takes to get people to respond to your listing.  It’s not good enough just to leave a phone number, ask them to call you.

That should be enough to get you thinking about why being different will help you stand out, it’s also about being entreprenarial about how you market your brand and properties. There is no right or wrong with this, if you find your property views drop off, you change the target market and change your photo. You are only ever a minute away from making a change. Remember, search volumes have increased on the portals, so people are still searching, you just need to work harder to get the lead.