Online Real Estate Technology

In December we Australians spent more time on social media sites than any other country, whilst we only ranked ninth in the world as far as users, we spent 6 hours,52 minutes and 28 second each according to Nielsen on line. The actual number of Australians using social networks in December was just under 9.9 million.

Here’s the actual breakdown for those interested:

Given these type of usage figures you would think that every business whether they be big or small would be engaging in some sort of social media strategy, right? well actually no. The take up of social media and all it’s components, blogging, microblogging sites and social networks has been very slow, and the reason is a lack of awareness of what social media is.

The number of on line consumers using this medium is growing faster than any other form of internet usage and as a farming arena or marketing/communication tool, it’s not a question for business of should I be using it, but when can I get on board and quickly.

You may remember my story on Rupert Murdock and his concerns about Google giving his content away for free and how he wants to start to charge on line consumers for content, well it appears that what consumers really want on line is information that is free, last weeks decision by the New York Times to build a wall around it’s content was applauded by publishers, but news coming from the Long Island Daily will not be good news for promoters of charging for news content, the Long Island Daily has achieved the massive number of paying subscribers, since commencing to charge in October last year, of just 35, at $260 per year per subscriber this nets them $9000 revenue, on a launch cost of $4 million US.

Consumers using social media want information, they want to engage in conversation with you and they want to research you, your product and your brand.

Now is the time to get on board with a social media strategy, get on the front foot and take advantage of the networking possibilities.

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.

New research out today highlights the growth in local search rates in the Asia Pacific region with Google continuing to dominate as the preferred search engine particularly in Australia with 83% share and New Zealand with 80.5% share.

This really does demonstrate that you need to get your web site up to scratch when it comes to getting a high ranking in the search results, make sure your site ranks highly for those keywords or phrases that your customers use, and if you don”t know what they are then please ask me and I’ll do a free SEO audit on your web site for you.

The study found that 38.6 billion searches were conducted in the region in September 2009, with searchers averaging nearly 88 queries per person during the month. Google Sites ranked as the top search destination in Asia Pacific, commanding more than 44 percent share of searches performed in the region.

Google Sites Captures Largest Share of Search in Asia Pacific

In September 2009, Internet users in Asia Pacific conducted 38.6 billion search queries, an increase of 33 percent from the previous year. Google Sites was the top search destination with nearly 17 billion searches performed on its sites during the month, accounting for 44.1 percent share of all searches in the region. Baidu.com Inc. followed with 8.2 billion searches (21.3 percent share), while Yahoo! Sites grabbed the #3 position with 5.3 billion searches (13.8 percent share).

Searchers in the region averaged nearly 88 searches per person during September. South Korea’s NHN Corporation, which owns search engine Naver.com, saw the most prolific search intensity among the top 10 destinations with an average of 81 searches per searcher. Searchers on Google Sites averaged 59 searches per person, while searchers on Lycos Sites averaged 51 queries.

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Local Players and Global Brands Compete for Searcher Loyalty Across Markets

An analysis of top search destinations across the 10 individual markets in the Asia-Pacific region currently reported by comScore revealed various search brand preferences across markets. Google Sites was the search market share leader in six of the markets including Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. Yahoo! Sites captured the majority share of searches in Hong Kong (58.9 percent) and Taiwan (65.4 percent).

Although multinational search brands led many of the markets in the region, the popularity of local brands was evident in both China and South Korea. Baidu.com Inc. led as China’s top search destination with 63 percent share of searches performed, while NHN Corporation captured 49.3 percent of queries in Korea, leading the market as the top destination.

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

The report is compiled by ComScore,a leader in measuring the digital world

Image via CrunchBase

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little over the Twitter fad, I haven’t yet found it a successful advertising or promotion medium and it pails into insignificance when you compare it to Stumbleupon for promotion of blog posts and actually driving readers to your blog or web site.

There are those that will say it works really well for them, but in the last few months I’ve been tracking all the referrers of traffic to this blog and Twitter does not even rate, so either there are a lot of passive followers or as new research indicates very few advertisers think it an effective promotion tool. The survey carried out last month by linkedin Research network/Harris Polls found out of advertisers surveyed only 8% thought it effective.

The study also found that advertisers are more likely than consumers to know about Twitter and are more likely to believe in the microblogging tool’s future power to help promote products and services.

The research, which included surveys of both advertisers and the US public at large, revealed that just less than half of advertisers (45%) think Twitter is in its infancy and its use will grow significantly over the next few years. In contrast, 21% believe Twitter will not move into the mainstream and it will remain something mostly young people and the media will use.

Among consumers, the study found a different picture, especially in terms of awareness. A large majority (69%) say they do not know enough about Twitter to have an opinion about it, 12% think it’s in its infancy, 12% say it is just something that young people and the media use and 8% say it is already over.

Consumer Research Twitter

Effectiveness of Twitter

Among those who have an opinion about Twitter, feelings about the effectiveness of it for promoting products and ideas are lukewarm among both consumers and advertisers:

Among advertisers, just 8% say Twitter is very effective for promoting products and ideas while half (50%) say it is somewhat effective. One-third (34%) of advertisers say it is not that effective and 8% believe it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas.

Only 8% of consumers say Twitter is very effective for promoting ideas and products and 42% believe it is just somewhat effective. Three in ten (31%) consumers say Twitter is not that effective and 19% feel it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this survey either from a Twitter user or follower, just leave me a comment.

Back in March I wrote about the closure of one of the oldest newspapers in the US, the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the move to create an online only version of the newspaper, so I thought it relevant to go back and see how the move to the online space has been accepted by the readers of the post and other newspapers that have moved to an Internet only version.

It appears that the move to Internet only versions of the newspapers has seen some very interesting growth in reader numbers, at Seattlepi.com, the online successor to the now defunct print version of Post-Intelligencer, unique visitors have grown steadily since the paper went online-only in March, and according to executive producer Michelle Nicolosi. “We haven’t lost readers”.

In the Detroit area, where readers were amongst the first to lose home delivered newspapers, readers have taken to the new Internet only versions of the now defunct papers, for example, in April traffic grew 74% to the Detroit Free Press website.

Another interesting side benefit of the move online for the papers is that downloads of e-editions, or electronic newsprint equivalents of both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News increased seven fold when home delivery of the papers ended.

It would appear that readers retain loyalty to their local brands and are prepared to make the move with them when they move to online versions.

This trend I’m sure will be welcome news for the other newspapers that are facing closure in the US.

New research from the US today has revealed that Home buyers are twice as likely to use on line sources than print sources to find information about open houses they are interested in, this is according to research conducted by Harris Interactive.

The survey commissioned for Trulia.com found that 62% of US home buyers use or plan to use on line sites to find open houses, compared with 53% who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36% who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third (31%), who use/plan to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyer’s. 

The study also found that though many home buyers rely upon a range of different sources to gather information about open houses, 41% say online sources are their primary resource, while 14% cite print sources.

More than 9 in 10 home buyers in the US (91%) attended or plan to attend open houses during their home-purchase process.

“The real estate section of the weekend newspaper is no longer the go-to resource for open houses,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia. “Home buyers are increasingly going on line to not only search for the most up to date listings but also to obtain rich information about the neighborhood, schools, and local shops.”

Inkinen added that on line sites – such as Trulia – and related iPhone applications have experienced dramatic growth in recent years because they enable home buyers to search for open houses in neighborhoods that interest them, sign up for email alerts and learn more about the local areas in which they’re looking.

“We used to see home buyers walk into open houses with a newspaper in their hands,” said Aman Daro, VP of Integrated Marketing at McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco. “But now they walk in with print outs of their search on the web. What’s more, consumers are walking in very educated from their on line research – they know details about the property and the neighborhood, and are more highly engaged in the process than the casual lookers of years past.”

Here are the results of the survey as published by Harris:

On Line Vs Print

I’ve been working on a social media strategy paper for a top real estate franchise group and it’s kept me fairly busy during the last couple of weeks and that’s the reason I haven’t been very active on my blog for that period. As part of that strategy, I’ve been looking at the impact of social media on brand building and especially the impact blogs have on the purchasing decisions of consumers.

Blogs, play a major role in influencing the purchasing decision amongst women in particular, and in a recent survey in the US, 85% of regular female blog readers said they were influenced to make a purchase as a result of a review or comment posted on a blog.  So with that in mind, if you’re the company that gets it right, you have a good chance of getting the sale, but what happens if you are on the receiving end of a negative review or comment. How do you protect your brand and how should you respond?

Your customers can now read, listen, discuss and research their purchasing decisions and you need to work harder at customer service than ever before, if you are finding negative or damaging reviews about you,your brand or service then use this as a wake up call. The world of social networks, business review sites and blogs has provided the disgruntled consumer with a voice.

Every employee in your company is now responsible for your brands reputation, and when you as a company, start to live up to your reputation, it becomes a lot easier to manage your brand effectively on line.

If you do find a negative review on any of the sites, resist the temptation to respond defensively and do  not allow any of your staff to respond, you could put the Streisand effect in motion. 

What can be used to deliver a negative can also be used to promote a positive, so use it wisely.  Remember it’s very hard to remove a negative comment or search engine result, but you can promote a positive, just like the company in this video has done. 

If you’d like any additional information on how to manage your brand effectively on line, please ask me, I’d be happy to help advise you and get you headed on the right track.

So what is more important, Blog readers or Twitter followers? Well the answer to that question appears to be very simple, Blog readers.  Problogger has been running a poll about this subject and the results which were released last week found that 84% of respondents preferred blog readers to Twitter followers and only 16% thought Twitter followers were more important.

To me, generating a good readership for my blog by providing good quality content and building relationships via that content, has always been my goal for this blog. My use of Twitter is to solely to promote and push new readers to my blog.  Twitter which allows short message updates of 140 characters is a great push tool and I find my readership and podcast downloads goes up when I tweet on new content.

I’ll continue to work on my content and my blog readership and my suggestion to new blog writers is to concentrate on good quality content and build your blog readership. Use Twitter and Facebook, which is also a microblogging site to help build on the foundations you set on your blog.

As always, let me know if I can assist you in anyway. I hope Darren Rowse at Problogger won’t mind but I’ve included the results of the survey for you below.

Bloggers are preferred to Twitters

Get Your Banner to Work, Not Just Look Pretty

Over the past few weeks conducting my office strategy sessions for business owners, the subject of banner advertising has come up. During the discussions, I’ve suggested some ways that the office can get the click through rate on their banners to increase. Most of the agent banners, when and if they are clicked on by a consumer,go through to the agents web site, and don’t really offer the consumer anything tangible to encourage them to click on the link. 

The major portals charge a fair amount for the privilege of having a suburb banner or skyscraper, you start to go a bit potty trying to remember all the names they give them,and I’ve found the account managers that service the agents aren’t all that creative in giving you advice either, it’s more a question of getting your money than worrying about the banner actually acheiving something for you.

So lets look at what the on line consumer wants when it comes to banner advertising, and then we’ll look at how we can maximise the value of the banner to really start to earn its way by generating click throughs.

Looking at some recent research on what a consumer will click on, a survey in the UK, found that over 51% of males & females will click on an add that is relevant to them and provided helpful information in what they were researching on line. On this subject, males and females are very similar in their responses. 43% of those surveyed said they would click on an add when it was useful and 33% responded that ”Money Off” offers got their attention.

Interesting side to this, is that more females responded to this type of offer than males. The results also varied by age, with younger readers more interested in special offers, and the baby boomers wanting more relevance & usefulness to them in the advertising . 

So with that in mind, lets take a look at banner advertising, I asked the business owner of one very big office the following question, “If you included an offer of a $50 petrol voucher on your banner, what would be the response?” He replied, “The clicks would go berserk” ,Why I asked? His response, “Because of a perceived value to the consumer”.

So with this in mind,where to start, first work out what you want the banner to do, then work out a strategy for the banner and decide the offer/incentive .

When you have a banner in the local suburb on the portals, people who frequent the site are searching for either real estate to buy, rentals, investments or information on real estate agents etc, so why not include a perceived value offer in your banner advertising, that is relevant to them and tie it to either a seasonal event or an offer. Change your creative on a regular basis, a suggestion could be to change it with the seasons, also monitor Google search trends and react to what is happening in the community. 

Make your account manager more accountable, by asking them to provide you with click through rates on your banners, they can get this for you, but not surprisingly, it’s not that easy for you to get. If you’re paying big dollars to own a banner, you really want it to work for you, so don’t be fooled by the “We don’t sell on click throughs,It’s there for your branding” sell job.  

Here’s one suggestion for you that has really worked well for a couple of agents, Instead of offering the old stand by of “ Click here for a free appraisal” why not use the following on your creative, “ If your current property is not selling, then ask me WHY“.

Play around with your banners to get them to drive response for you, at least then, you’ll start to get your monies worth from your advertising.

Here’s some  interesting research for you on advertising on the internet:

If you’d like advice on this post, please let me know, I’d be very happy to respond with more on this if needed.

For those of you just starting out, trying to get an understanding of how to formalise your social network strategy, can be a very confusing journey, So I’ve decided to post a few articles to help you understand how it all works. 

My previous post was to help you “listen” and “understand” how to start to engage, this post is to help you define your strategy. So firstly, before you go off and create lots of blog posts and join all the sites, lets set up your strategy.

You need to define who your target market is before you start:

People – Who is your target market? Look at their social activities!

Objective- What do you want to achieve out of communicating with your defined market? What do you want to accomplish?

Strategy – How are you going to influence your market, Plan for how relationships with your consumers will change.

Technology - Decide which social sites to use.

Apply the principles of POST to all the sites you decide to use, once you have done your homework, you’re ready to start.

Before you go and log in to all the sites available read this post first.

I’ll cover your first steps in the next few posts for you. If you need any help just ask.

Download this post as a podcast here