Online Real Estate Technology

I just wanted to wish everyone who reads this blog, a very merry and safe festive season and I hope the man from the south pole brings you all you desire.

Thank you for your support throughout 2008 and I’ll be back from the 5th January 2009 with hopefully more interesting and helpful technology advice and information.

Till then stay safe and happy!!

Around this time of year, a lot of people and blog writers all look back on the year that was, so to do something a little different, I’ve decided to look into the future. I’ve pulled out my crystal ball,well actually it is pewinternet.org’s crystal ball and gone forward to 2020. This great research group has looked at how the internet will evolve over the next 11 years and what we can look forward to. Here are the results of the survey, taken by asking some of the leading internet experts in the world today and the invitations to these experts was via Facebook and used social media to interact with these contributors.

Here’s the key results from that survey: 

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the Internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing “arms race,” with the “crackers” who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who’s connected, and the results will be mixed in terms of social relations.
• “Next-generation” engineering of the network to improve the current Internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen,the way the experts see the evolution of the net into 2020. If you’d like to read the full report, click on the link here: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_FutureInternet3.pdf

Thanks to the great research undertaken by the team at www.pewinternet.org

Now here’s my take on the next 12 months for real estate offices and agents:

1. Video will become more sought after by consumers and agents will start to look at how they can integrate this media into all their on line marketing as well as the integration of office video profiles.

2. Use of social media tools such as blogs, podcasting and vlogging will impact on office marketing. Facebook and YouTube will also become part of the daily marketing routine.

3. Agents will have to work smarter with their property marketing and employ best practice policies within their on line marketing. As the online consumer gets smarter about the type and quailty of information they can get from the net, they will demand more from agents. Frequently updated content will be a requirement.

4. All real estate agents will need to look at their SEO and SEM and take a more indepth look at their own web sites and how to use these as a local marketing tool. Agents will need to demonstrate the “Local Market Expert” tag. Start to work your own marketing and not rely so heavily on the major web portals to deliver leads.

5. On Line Reputation Management will become vital to all on line business’s not just real estate. This is the practice of monitoring, managing and reparing your on line reputation.

6. Real Estate Press will slowly start to lose business as real estate agents realise that by moving away from this medium they don’t lose market share. However, you’ll need to start embracing more on line marketing techniques and improving your current marketing attempts to capture a greater share of the on line researcher.

7. The industry should demand more from the on line portals next year, these sites have had it way to easy for too long,  demand better up to date technology, more tracking tools for agents and more accountability. Rates are going up, but in a lot of ways service and technology has not improved. Products are being released not to help you or the consumer, but to find ways to take more money off you, But do they really work??      

 As always, let me know your thoughts and ideas on these suggestions.

I refer back to my previous post about Claim Your Online Real Estate Domain Name and how important this is to your future on line marketing strategy, well don’t be overly concerned about not putting this in place, because even the minders of George W Bush the current president of the US of A make mistakes. Now this really drives home my recomendations that all business owners of real estate offices and franchise groups should buy all variations of domain names that relate to their area of operation and/or franchise group and/or geographic region.

It appears that a North Carolina based web development company called Illuminati Karate had bought the domain name www.georgewbushlibrary.com domain name for less than $10.00 and sold it back to the library’s contracted web developers for $35,000 who had accidently let the domain name expire. It’s the same as a very good friend of mine who registered the domain name www.primeministeraustralia.com.au .

So, you have been warned, register that domain name and all variations of that name, because there is only ever one domain name on the web, and if you lose it, watch out. You have been warned. By the way www.ichuckedapairofshoesattheuspresident.com is still available!!

I will not vouch for the accuracy of this story, however, it does make a really good post!

For all those Iphone users, I’m sure you have begun to rely on this little tool for just about everything in your business, but ever got to the point where trying to find all the applications and search functionality whilst stopped in traffic or working in a rush and madly trying to type away at the keyboard gets a little frustrating? well a new application will help solve this for you and it’s available via the Itunes store. It’s called vLingo, the application will allow you to speak to your Iphone and have it understand the spoken command.

This little application takes the recent voice search app from Google to the next level and allows you to perform Google searches as well as local map searches and voice dialing from your contacts list in one application. If you are a social media user you will be able to update your Facebook profile and, if like me, you use Twitter.com to update friends or contacts, you will be able to do this via voice as well. vLingo transcribes the spoken word to text and sends them to your social sites.

If you are a Iphone user, give this a try and let me know how successful it is? Here’s a screen shot of the application.

vLingo Screen Shot

As you may have gathered from the posts on this blog, I’ve tended to look at the serious side of social media and it’s impact on word of mouth or brand building from a real estate agency viewpoint, and the obvious benefits that social media has on search engine rankings in your geographic area, but every now and then, you have to stop and look at the funny side of  internet marketing and there are some very funny videos available from various sources. Of course the inspiration for this post comes from a discussion I had this morning whilst conducting an internet audit for an agency in Perth WA, the question was asked of me ”How much of yourself do you reveal on social media sites?”, Now there’s an interesting question and in itself another blog post, but in the meantime here’s a great video for you to enjoy on that “One Last Click”, The video was made as part of a UK campaign sponsored by the TUC called workSMART. This video was from a component called NSFW or Not Safe For Work dealing with aspects of IT Security as it may affect employees.

Please enjoy!!

I don’t often cover stories like this one, however due to the increasing power of social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace, I thought this story was worth a run. The Race Discrimination Commissioner has urged the government to implement laws that allow monitoring of social media sites for racial vilification and other discrimination as the practice is becoming widespread. Tom Calma was responding to the claim that scores of racist groups are using social media as both an outlet for their messages and to recruit new members. Some Facebook users who posted opposing messages and comments to the groups had been threatened with violence and there is a fear the sites could be used to rally groups to riots etc, Facebook has not responded to the cliams nor has it removed or deleted any comments placed on the site by its members. The Australian Communications and Media Authority has said that on line regulation policy is a matter for government and the standing committee of attorneys-general, and the committee was considering wether the National Classification Scheme should be amended to include specific measures to cover racial material online.

So watch this space!

Back in October I wrote how to set up Google alerts to monitor you and your brand on line,heres a reminder of that post, On Line Reputation Management – How To Set Up Google Alerts For Your Business , and looking at the growth of both consumer ratings sites and social media sites in Australia it seemed a good idea to revisit this. Setting up Google alerts to monitor your brand will give you lots of valuable information on what and how your brand is being used on line. I have an alert set up for this blog and of course use lots of social media sites to help me promote the blog, so I like to know where and when I’m mentioned. I get about five mentions a week across the web on who uses my name and links to me, and thankfully to date, it has all been positive, but to me having a monitoring strategy in place is now so important to any business owner not just real estate. Well you can now add a new site to help you monitor your on line brand it’s called social mention and here’s the link for you to do some research. http://socialmention.com/

Social Mention is a search engine that scans user generated content such as blogs,bookmarking sites and comments. You can search on all social media sites by using keywords, phrases  etc. I entered the search term for my blog, mike andrew’s real estate tips & technology and got a search rank of 35/100 and a result which indicates at least one mention every hour, I’ve been as high as a rank of 80/100 or 1 mention every 10 seconds, you can also set up RSS feeds for a particular search term and follow your mentions on line. Below you’ll see the search result for mike andrew’s real estate tips & technology.

Mike Andrew Real Estate Search Result

My recomendation is to set up your Google alerts and then add social mention, this will then be able to track your blog,bookmarking and comments etc on the web. 

As always let me know if you need futher information on this.

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.

I refer back to my post on buying your domain name and how important that is to you and your office, and this week I’ve been in Bundaberg conducting internet marketing audits for some of the real estate groups in the area. Upon checking this out with each office it appears that they still do not or haven’t thought about, buying these domain names that relate to their geographic area. If you are part of a franchise group or an independent agent, I believe you should buy the domain name that reflects your local area, if only to stop someone else from buying and using that name as a redirect on the local area search.

Lets say I own mikeandrewrealestate.com.au and I’m based in Bundaberg, I should be buying all variations on this including mikeandrewrealestatebundaberg.com.au. This stops any other agent or office from using that domain name. Without owning these, you really are allowing other competitors to come in underneath you.

I found in Bundaberg and in Cairns last week that some agents are not doing this, and even if you don’t use the domain at least you will own it.  

Also check out extending this to social media platforms and I’ve included a link to Peter Fletchers therealestatemarketingmaven.com blog post on this very subject.

Please let me know if you need any help with this and I would be glad to assist

I’ve mentioned social bookmarking in a couple of previous posts, and on the right hand side of this blog, you will see both Mr Wong and Delicious as widgets, but what do they mean and how do they influence traffic or search engine rankings.  Lets break this down into plain speak for you and look at the effect for example, of social bookmarking on my blog.

The best known use of bookmarks was adding a web site to your favourites tab on your computer, the limitation of this was that you had to always have your computer with you and if you travel or wanted to search your links from another computer you had no way of remembering what those favourite web sites were, now if you have a photographic memory, then you’d be ok, but if like me and probably 90% of the community, there’s a lot going through the old brain cells and sometimes when I would like to revisit a web site for research, entertainment or information without my favourites section, I’d be at a loss to revisit these.

Some consumers visit lots of web sites per user session per day, and the ability to be able to save and access those favourite web sites from a central location is both time saving and convenient. Thats where social bookmarking comes in, take delicious.com, you can create an account and then bookmark or save all your favourite sites in one location and then come back to those from any computer anywhere in the world. The other benefit is, you can also see who else, on the web, has bookmarked your posts, web site etc. You can also search by tags, and see at a glance what other web users find popular or of interest. For example, if you click on this link  http://delicious.com/mikeandrew you will find all the bookmarks for my blog, and by searching Delicious for Mike Andrew Real Estate, you will find, who has, on the web, bookmarked my content.

The other impact on blogs and web sites of social bookmarking, is the use of either “nofollow” or “dofollow” links, these are links that allow search engines to follow your bookmarks and popularity on the web. Sites such as Delicious have “nofollow” links so they have little effect on your search engine rankings, however, Mr Wong.com, Spurlit.com,backflip.com etc do, as they have “dofollow” links, and by bookmarking your posts and articles, they do have an impact on your search engine results.

Bookmarking your posts creates backlinks and you need to make sure these bookmarks are public, so that consumers, ( Meaning Google ) can see them.

You can also see at a glance what the most popular tags are that are being searched on the web, and what content is important or valuable to on line consumers. Be careful though, if you are a blogger or web site owner, you should only bookmark one piece of content or web page per day per site.

I’ve included a link to a video which explains the process of bookmarking in plain english for you, and I hope you enjoy, also check out the bookmarks available on Mr Wong and Delicious.com as a start.