Online Real Estate Technology

I encountered a scenario yesterday that has just made my blood boil, and It’s been simmering away in the background ever since, so I just had to get it off my chest, why? because it comes down to who really owns your web site, you or your webmaster. so let’s start by giving you the background to this little rant of mine. I’ve been hired to look at the SEO on a real estate web site for a client and yesterday I asked for  access to their hosting Cpanel, that’s so we could start working on the site’s optimisation. I received from my client the following email they had been sent from their web master in response to my request, and I quote the email here for you.

“Unfortunately we do not provide any login details for any sites that are hosted by (&*&*&) as a policy. Giving you the login details would mean that you would be allowed access to all sites hosted by us.

Essentially your SEO specialist will need to supply us with all the code he would like to add to the site. Our Web Design will then need to review the code and if everything is order we will implement this onto the site ourselves. Please note that there is likely to be a charge involved with this”

Isn’t this the biggest load of Cr^% you’ve ever heard, lets have a look at several issues in this email.

Firstly who owns the site? If I’ve paid for it then It’s mine, or am I wrong in this assumption, it’s not hard to set up Cpanel access, most companies provide this when your site is hosted with them, well I know I do when I set up a hosting account for my clients.

Secondly, they are making themselves out to be the policemen, what right have they to approve any code or in fact any content on the site before they will agree to add it to the site, it is not up to them to approve anything, it is the owner of the site who should make that decision.

Thirdly, they did such a bad job of optimising and setting up the site in the first place, they haven’t got a clue what their doing.

Finally, they have the cheek to suggest they would charge a fee for adding the code, so really, this is what this is all about, milking you for more money to do a simple job.

So, to get back to my original question who really own this web site? you should. You’ve paid the webmaster for it and you should have the say over the future of your own site. My suggestion to all of you small business owners that have web sites is to go out now and make sure you own your web site and all components of it and take control.

You need to be the master of your own destiny not held to ransom by these arrogant companies who think you and I are fools.

By the way, if you’d like to know which company it is, just email me or leave a comment and I’ll send you their details.

I’ve had a couple of agents send me emails this week inquiring about QR Codes, so I thought I’d write this post to explain what they are and how you can use them in your real estate business.

QR stands for “Quick Response”, and they are the next generation of bar codes. They have been in Japan for awhile with the Japanese going absolutely crazy over them and they are just starting now to appear in this country.

So what do they do?

• They contain lots of information such as your web site address

• They can be read upside down and faster than a standard bar code

• You can get a QR reader for your phone or iPhone – as long as it can browse the web.

• They can be scanned from a computer screen,a newspaper or flyer, magazine and Property billboard or Listing signboard.

So how does it apply to real estate, by generating a code, which is a simple process, you can apply the bar code to your listing sign board,your advertising including print and magazine or flyers, and people can simply scan the code and your phone will take you directly to the web site that the code has embedded.The code is scanned by taking a photo of the code and the phone then opens up a browser which takes you directly to the URL in the code.

This is a great tool if you want to specify a web site or property for First Home buyers or Retirees etc, as the code will take your reader directly to the URL you have specified. You can create your QR code to send people to a web site URL, a telephone number,an SMS message or text message.

Here’s a code I created, which when read will send you directly to my web site at www.mikeandrewconsulting.com, although I could have scanned any URL and sent you there if I wanted to promote a product or service.

You can add these to your business cards as well, which is a great promotional tool for your agency. You can download a QR reader from iTunes if you have an iPhone and some of the Nokia phones have the reader as standard.

To generate the bar code is a really simple process as all you do is search on the web and you’ll find a site, in fact to make it easy for you here’s the link to one I used.

Good luck and have fun with this, it’s a great promotional tool and you can add it anywhere.

If you’d like to have more information on this or are not technical enough to add it to your marketing, send me a comment or email at info@mikeandrewconsulting.com and I’ll help you out as always.

One thing that has really annoyed me over the past few months is the amount of spam I’ve been receiving via social media sites I’m a member of. I’m sure you know the sort of spam I mean, “Click here to earn a million dollars”, “A friend of mine just found the secret to Internet marketing and you can too thanks to me”, all that kind of rubbish.

Then there’s the Twitter spammers, spamming Twitter with all sorts of offers, promising to increase your followers by a 1000%, and then when you’re hooked, along comes the crunch, it’ll only cost you $99:95 for this amazing strategy.

Then if you sign up for these fantastic once in a life time offers, you get suckered, they will never ever leave you alone again, everyday getting email after email offering amazing deals only available to you.

The reality of this, is that if a deal sounds to good to be true, it probably is and a lot of the testimonials used are fake, just there to get your money, so my advice to you is give them the big heave ho.

So what is the point of this article? I want to assure you that you don’t need all of these quick paths to fame and fortune on social media, you’ll achieve great results by providing good quality content and information by becoming a trusted adviser. There is no quick fix on this and the followers you will gain by using these spam sites is rubbish, so don’t waste your money.

What you want to do with your social media network is generate referrals, and turn those  referrals into business. Clients come from referrals and often those referrals originate from friendships we’ve made via social media sites, so there are ways to do it right and generate long term relationships via social media, not by spamming people. For example I’ve allowed my Twitter following to build organically and I get new followers every day, why, because I only Tweet when I’ve something to say, I always try and provide good quality information that is of use to them in business and I’ve never ever participated in spam.

So what are some of networking things you can do to avoid being considered a spammer and become a trusted adviser.

Don’t sell me before you get to know me – Build rapport and trust before trying to sell me your product.

Don’t spam your friends or followers – We don’t like it, it’s annoying and it just makes you not want to support your product or service.

Don’t play the numbers game – Allow your follower numbers to build organically by providing good content and networking, who cares about huge numbers of followers if they never connect with you. A small loyal band of supporters will do me thanks.

Don’t be a faker – We can all see through you, don’t have a hidden agenda be honest and up front. If you are a fake, you’ll go on my spam blacklist forever, no second chance here.

Don’t ignore people - It only takes a moment to communicate with your followers

Take time to get to know me – Spend some time with me and get to know me, then I’ll be open to your product or service, but I don’t wnat it rammed down my throat every second of every day

Treat me with respect - I’m here to follow you and get advice, give me some good staff and I’ll think you’re a guru.

Ok, there endeth the lecture, so now I’ve got that off my chest I feel better, and hopefully given you some advice, particularly those of you who haven’t yet got into social media but are thinking of starting your strategy.

Remember it takes time and effort to build loyalty and create friendships, there are no quick fixes not even by spam, but in the end,all your efforts will be worth it.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Just thought I’d let you know that this weekend I’m heading off to the US to attend the Inman technology conference in San Francisco, the event starts on Wednesday and runs until Friday, so hopefully I’ll have some great new ideas to post on technology for you once the conference is over. So if I’m a little quiet in posting this week, you’ll know why.

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.

Red Widget - Is there a question?

Thank you all for the feedback you have given me on what content you would like to see more of in this blog, and with a count of 10 to 1, most of you would like to know more about search engine optimisation, setting up a blog and how to optimise your blog once you have it up and running, rather than more posts about social media. There appears to me to be a bit of burn out around social media, so for awhile, it’s a no go area on this blog.

With that in mind, I thought I’d write a follow up piece to my post last month on Internal Links – Create A Better SEO Result For Your Blog . In that post I mentioned the phrase “ranking for red widgets“, and I said I would qualify my statement in a later post. So, lets look at how to rank for any term you write about when blogging.

Firstly, you need to understand how the search engines work, they will return search results in the order of their perceived relevance to the search phrase requested. The more relevant your site appears to be to the search requested, the higher your site or page will rank.

Lets say you  wanted your page to rank for the term “red widgets”, and this applies to any term that you select that you want to rank for, then you need to think about how you will construct the page. If your page title is about red widgets, your keyword and description tags are about red widgets, your content is unique quality content about red widgets, your page displays images of red widgets and alt text and file names demonstrate that fact, you pick up links from other web sites pointing to yours about red widgets and you include some links to other web sites related to red widgets, does this then make you think that maybe the page or site will be highly relevant to the search phrase red widgets?

Give it a try next time you write a blog post on any subject. Think about how the consumer will search for the phrase or keyword that you use, but be very careful about over using keywords on your page, use them wisely and do  not over saturate the page, otherwise Google will know what you’re trying to do, and she won’t like you at all if you try that little game.

Image via CrunchBase

With the recent addition of real estate to Google maps in Australia a lot of discussion has been generated over its value to the real estate industry.

So far, to my knowledge, of the main portals only myhome and homehound have uploaded listings to Google, although I’m sure that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au internally have been in discussions about the merits of uploading all their listings to Google.

Google will have a full time job controlling the quality of listings available, and making sure that old, outdated or sold stock is removed, just look at the issues that myhome.com.au faced when it first launched in the market with trying to maintain quality with its listings.

During a presentation to one of the major franchises on Tuesday night I was asked my opinion on this very subject and in follow up discussions with a number of people in the industry, this is it seems, more about the potential changing of the guard than anything else.

There is a feeling in the real estate community that Google may just break the monopoly of realestate.com.au.

Well, I thought I’d provide you with a link to an article that Simon Baker, ex CEO of realestate.com.au has written on his blog about this very subject, will it work for Google and what, if any impact will it have on realestate.com.au in the future.

To read the article click here

Feedback on Content

I’ve had this blog running now for over 12 months and what started as a bit of fun for me has developed into a great passion. The blog has been more successful than I would have imagined, when I started it in June of last year.

Successful, at least in the number of people who read my posts and visit the blog on a daily basis, so I thought I would ask the question of you, what information do you find the most helpful? What content would you like to see me feature or write about on this blog that helps you the most in your business in the next 12 months?

In checking out the popularity of my posts over the past year, some articles that I thought would be popular were not, whereas other posts on Blogging and SEO were very popular, so it’s clear to me that you prefer certain topics over others.  Articles on Social Media for example, have been amongst my lowest read posts.

So the question I put to you is, which of the following topics would you like more information on:

SEO

Technology

Internet Marketing

Social Media

Blogging & Podcasting

Copywriting

Video

Even if the topic is not listed above, let me know what content you would like and I’ll do my best to provide the information you find most useful.

A little while ago I started a series of posts which were based on the worst property videos that have been featured on youtube. Those posts were very popular with the readers of this blog, so I thought I’d give you another 4 minutes and 43 seconds, sorry, 4 minutes and 44 seconds of sheer painful boredom.

This is just one of a few youtube videos that highlights luxury homes available for sale in Sri Lanka. Again, here is a slide show that is pretending to be a video, and there is not one indoor shot included, just a montage of luxury properties and no voice over. The music featured on the video reflects the country which is in context, but the addition of a voice over, in my mind, would have improved the soundtrack. Remember, some of these properties are for sale at a price range over a million dollars US.

Well, I’ll leave it to you to make up your own mind on how you think this video could have been improved.

Social Media Usage jumps 462% amongst tech savvy moms

The way social media usage is growing with the general population never ceases to amaze me and new research is showing that the biggest increase in usage is amongst stay at home and working mothers. In fact, social media usage has jumped a massive 462% amongst tech savvy mothers since 2006 and the number who use mobile phones to go on line 348% during the same period.

“The 21st Century Mom Report,” revealed that, in addition to bigger trends shaping motherhood such as comfort with technology and increasing eco-friendliness, becoming a mother is a huge, life-stage transformation that alters a woman’s lifetime purchasing behavior and criteria and triggers a significant re-evaluation of products and brands.

For example:

• 85% of moms say having a baby changed their purchasing habits.

• 73% say it changed their purchasing criteria.
• 62% say it changed the brands they purchase.

Before having children, BabyCenter said that women are most concerned about product and service quality, features, and design.

After becoming mothers, they are much more likely to shop based on safety, quality, and price.

Some of the other interesting stats to come out of the survey include:

Social Mom: Social media is mass media.

• The number of moms who use social media regularly (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, BabyCenter Community) has significantly increased from 11% to 63% since 2006; a change of 462%.
• More than four in 10 (44%) percent use social media for word-of-mouth recomendations on brands and products and 73% feel they find trustworthy information about products and services through online communities focused on their specific interests such as parenting.
• Moms tend to use mass-reach networks for socializing and entertainment and content-rich environments, while using mom-centric communities to get information and advice from other moms going through the same experiences at a given time.

So, there you have it, if you as a company or individual business operator have not yet embraced the power of social media marketing to engage the online community, it’s about time you gave it serious thought.

If you are interested in reading the full report, click here to visit the company’s web site or to read more about creating a social media strategy visit social media is about engagement & Do Traditional Marketing rules apply to social media .