Online Real Estate Technology

No I can’t take the credit for that title, the guys at Internet Real Estate Success have written a great article on how you can influence your readers to click on your on line adds without offering money, lol, something I don’t have a lot of, but really about being able to communicate your expertise and then getting those consumers to click on your add.

So, check out the link below on a blog written  by Joseph Bridges, I believe you will get a lot of value from this article when it comes to getting the best value from your on line advertising.

I’ll also post a great tip for you for you on what to include on your internet listing presentation when trying to get VPA for internet advertising, that’s to come shortly.

http://internetrealestatesuccess.com/2008/08/27/5-real-estate-ads-for-success-on-google/

I’ve just finished a seminar presentation with my friends at Century 21 at their International Management Academy, and like most working real estate agents today they are having to work harder to attract buyers and sellers. The theme of my presentation was blogging and podcasting as a means of communicating on a more personal level with the internet consumer. Blogging and podcasting is an extension of your personal approach and allows you to discuss real estate issues and/or in fact, any issue that you believe relevant to your market as well as offer your opinion and request interaction from your readers. It’s difficult to get this personal approach across on your property listings as you have to market the property, get the property and relevant information across and try and generate the lead, all in a succinct and efficient way.

By using blogs and podcasts as an addition to your on line marketing strategy, you can add the personal touch to your on line presence. The online search process can be a very impersonal one and to be able to provide the personal touch as part of that process, to me is the very essence of why, as a working real estate agent, you need to embrace blogging.  

Real Estate is a personal business and effective networking is just a part of doing business, and I don’t believe the internet should replace this, use your blog or your podcast to create this personal space and networking on the net, it will pay dividends for you. 

The same approach should be taken with your podcast, look on this as the portable blog, when creating your podcast look at the value of the information you are providing, imagine you are talking face to face with a prospect and/or client, and record your podcast with this in mind. The success of both your blog and your podcast will depend on the quality of the information provided, it’s about quality not quantity.

Good luck and please let me know your comments or thoughts on this post

Listen to this post as a podcast:

Blogging & Podcasting – Adding the Personal Touch to Your On Line Marketing Strategy

Just to advise that my podcasts are now available through PodcastAlley.com and is now available via Podcasting on itunes.

http://mikeandrew.podOmatic.com/rss2.xml

I recently came across a comment in my travels that I’ve used quite frequently in my presentations and I believe it hits the spot, “Real estate agents will not be replaced by technology, they will be replaced by agents with technology”. 

When I really started to look at this in more detail and the impact it would have on business if an agency did not start to embrace it, got me into looking at the consumer angle on all this technology and was there an overload of information. This is only an assumption on my part but I believe the answer is yes. The real estate agent role has changed from controller of the information to the facilitator, and if an agent could communicate this more effectively through their marketing both on line and off would it provide more leads and or listings.

Some interesting research on the buyer/seller relationship comes from the California Association of Realtors, their Traditional Vs Internet Buyer research showed that whilst 81% of buyers search the Internet to find homes, 56% of these same buyers search the net to find a real estate agent to either buy from or to list or to use as an information source, so it seems to me that we should focus on demystifying the technology and bring it back to real life. 

There’s an interesting blog on this if you would like to read about the consumer angle:

http://transparentre.com/2008/08/23/consumer-internet-fatigue.aspx

I’ve received a number of emails and comments about my upcoming seminars so for everyone,following is the information asked for, the seminars consist of 3 guest presenters including Advertising expert Ian Grace, sometimes referred to as Mr Real Estate, Grant Thorpe, Global Real Estate coach and Business Mentor and myself. The subjects covered on the day include How to Secure Vendor Paid Advertising, the Only 5 Things In Real Estate that make you Money,Maintain Commission Level and the subjects that I will cover include On Line Reputation Management, The Internet Consumer 2008, How to Maximise your properties performance on line, Blogging and Podcasting and how you can generate greater exposure on Google and use these mediums to make more sales, and I’ll also cover social networking sites such Facebook and youtube and how you can set up new forms of networking using this technology. Plus some more surprises. The cost is $300+GST for the full day seminar and you can register at 1300 662 203 or email at realestate@kaplan.edu.au. Please let me know if you need any additional information. Regards Mike

A little while ago Telstra canned the mobile phone search platform in Australia due to lack of interest from the consumers, which was understandable given the current mobile phone screen sizes, well what a difference an Iphone can make. I wrote a post awhile ago from domain.com.au about their listings being available via Iphone, well really all of the portals can be found via the internet of course, but just recently some very exciting mobile innovations have been released in the US, one, is a product called the Puluwai mobile real estate search, this being available for download to your Iphone or Ipod touch and allows you to search for a property either by location or via the Iphones GPS function, this software is not currently available in Australia yet but is available in NZ, but news today from a Canadian company called Utopria, who have launched a new real estate search tool for the Iphone. They have taken the listing flyer and single property web site and brought them together for the mobile search platform. Here’s how it works, put into the Iphone a property website found on a yard sign, using Safari on your Iphone, and Mediapod,(Utopria’s) software program,(see screen shot), will deliver a specially formatted version of the listing page to your Iphone. The system delivers all the relevant information such as agent brand and phone numbers etc, but where this really starts to deliver is the ability of the agent to embed a video which introduces them and the property. The agents contact information includes email and phone links that dump directly into the phones applications.

Another nice touch is that buyers can also choose to view surrounding schools, restaurants, parks and shopping outlets from a drop down menu and then have those instantly mapped into the Google Maps application on the iPhone. (To which you could then get directions, using iPhone’s location awareness)

If you were wondering about the impact of the Iphone on real estate searching well here is a little glimpse of the future. However a video is worth a thousand words, so I’ve included a link here for you to watch on how the application works. I’m sure when you’ve seen this you’ll be as impressed as I was.

I first saw this software program when I worked for PBL’s myhome.com.au and Microsoft was a shareholder, they gave us a demonstration of this product about 12 months ago, and what a fantastic product it is. It has taken Microsoft about that long to get the program from taking a day and a half to process the synths to today where it takes a moderately powered computer about 5 mins to calculate a synth of about a dozen photos, matching elements they have in common to reconstruct the subject.  Essentially the software arranges photo sets in their real-world, 3-D context and allows people to navigate smoothly around the canals of Venice, for example, or zoom in to read the serial numbers on the space shuttle’s heat shields.. Imagine what it could do for the average real estate home photos. You could open the door of the house or apartment for the first time and fully experience every element of the design and architecture. This program is already finding it’s way into the commercial real estate industry with one New York based Realtor using the program to showcase high end properties to out of town clients who can’t personally make the open home. 

To get started all you need is a Microsoft Windows Live ID to create a free account and then to create and view the “synths” you’ll need to download an 8mb piece of software. From there you just create your “synth” and add copyright to your photos if needed.

To Shoot:Use any off-the-shelf digital camera, shoot lots of overlapping photos of an object or scene, specifically for Photosynth. Don’t just throw every photo on your computer into the system. Start with wide-angle shots, moving around to cover the whole subject. Then take closer, detail images. Subjects with lots of texture do best.

The web site has experienced large traffic volumes since launch last night and has temporarily shut down, however you can still visit and get a rough idea of how it all works, so for you all here’s the web address and once they get the site up and running again, I’m sure we’ll all have a load of fun.

www.Photosynth.com

I get asked about this quite frequently, SEO and keyword searching, are subjects that a lot of real estate agents get confused about when trying to get that coveted position on the major search engines. I’ll cover it a little later in future posts but in the meantime, here is an interesting article and video that may help you when it comes to writing your keywords. I hope it helps. Let me know if you find this article interesting.

Click here to view: http://internetrealestatesuccess.com/2008/08/21/attract-the-customers-you-want-with-the-right-keywords/

You can now check out my podcast for Using Video On Your Property Listings: 

http://mikeandrew.podOmatic.com/entry/2008-08-21T00_16_06-07_00

Have Fun, I did putting it together

Hi All, I’ve got the dates and locations organised now for the seminar roadshows for September and thought I would share them with you, if you would like to come along I’ll be covering new technology for real estate, blogging and podcasting and how to set them up and how to maximise your searching on google, as well as showing you how to make your property listings perform better on the internet as well as a segment on On Line Reputation Management, which is essential to you and your business in todays digital world. I’ll also cover social networking sites such as facebook and myspace and how you can use these sites to market you, your brand and your properties. The dates and locations are as follows:

1. Tuesday 9th September Greek Club & Convention Centre 29 Edmonstone street South Brisbane
2. Wednesday 10th September Oatlands Golf Club Bettington Road Oatlands Sydney NSW
3. Thursday 11th September Melbourne Bowling Club 138 Union Street Windsor Victoria

To register contact on 1300 662 203, realestate@kaplan.edu.au, visit www.kaplanprofessional.edu.au or complete the registration form below and fax back to 1300 360 834.

I’ll look forward to seeing you there if you can make the seminars.