Online Real Estate Technology

I’ve just got a colleague of mine to join Twitter and on checking out her Twitter page last night, I was surprised to find that she hadn’t used her own name. I mentioned this to her this morning on our way to the seminar at Fraser’s in Perth and Sarah replied that her name and variations of her name had already been taken. Now, if you are wanting to get into social media or even market on the web under your own brand, it is vitally important that you buy your domain name.

It is now just as important that you register your user name on social media sites as well, because if you don’t someone else will. Being able to use your name to build your profile or brand is vital to your success on the web and you need to ensure that you own it and register it. By having a consistent image across all social sites allows your followers or devotees to find you and follow you, plus it has the added benefit that you don’t have to remember hundreds of user names.

So create a user name, preferably one that identifies you instantly and register it across all social sites, you can use this great web site to check if your user name is available. Some sites will not allow your full name and limit the number of characters that you can have, so create a user name that is consistent and easy to remember.   

Register it on every site you can find, you’ll never use most of them, but at least you will own the user name and this will stop others from high-jacking your name or brand.

If you have popular web site or blog and have lots of followers, there are some users on the web who will try and grab your name and create their own logins, so now you have been warned.

Go forth and Grab it quick before it is gone, gone gone!!

If you were ever in any doubt about the growing power of social media, then it’s time to think again, new stats released by Nielsen Online show just how powerful a tool social media is becoming within the online space. Some stand out points from the report include the fact that 66.8% of internet users around the globe had accessed “member communities” at some point during 2008. When you then compare email usage at 65.1% in 2008, the growth is even more staggering. Now if you think that research just applies to the US, then lets have a look at how social media is impacting the internet user here in Australia. In December 2007, the share of time spent on social media was 6.9%, in December 2008, that had grown to 10.9%, a change of 58% in 12 months. The biggest change in usage of sites was in Switzerland, with a change of 207% in just 12 months.

Time spent on community and blogging sites is growing at over 3 times the rate of overall internet growth. In 2007, social media sites accounted for 1 in every 15 online minutes globally,in 2008 it now accounts for 1 in every 11 minutes. In real terms, in 2008 users spent 63% more time on social media sites than they did in 2007.

Facebook grew by 566% in time spent on it by users worldwide and the fastest growing demographic is the older users, with an additional 12.4 million people aged 35 to 49 using the site in 2008 according to the Nielsen report.

Whilst I’ve concentrated on the stats with this post, I don’t believe there is any doubt of the impact that community based sites are having on internet usage, and real estate businesses in Australia need to really embrace social media and integrate it into their corporate communication strategy.

Social media sites provide significant opportunities for businesses to interact with community sites by tapping into the consumers increasing desire for good quality content. Real estate is a networking business and the better you network, the more opportunities that are created for you.

However, one consideration is how you use social media sites and what content is provided to the users, if you do it wrong, then you as a company, will not realise the potential it has as a network tool, so it’s vital to your companies success that you design a comprehensive strategy that is consistent across all networks, yet employs each ones strengths to their up most potential for your business.     

If you’d like to read the full report, I’ve included a copy for you on the link below.

nielsen_globalfaces_mar09

Twitter for real estate twits

Twitter.com has become the flavour of the month, or make that year, and the number of people who Tweet is now around the 6 million mark every day. Between 5 to 10,000 new accounts are open daily and traffic to the web site has grown a staggering 600% in the past 12 months. A lot of real estate agents are joining Twitter and you can even follow me here. I speak about Twitter a lot in my social media seminars and I often get a lot of questions about how it works or how it should be used.

You or your real estate agency need to have developed a strategy to be able to get the maximum out of Twitter, and there is a lot more to using it than just promoting your listings. If you go down this path, you and your office will fail to maximise the value Twitter can have on your communication strategy, so how do you go about using Twitter to get maximum benefit for you and your real estate office?

Nicole Nikolay from MyTechOpinion has put together a great manual on how to use Twitter. This will really help you get started with the site and explains how it works as well as what you need to do to get the most out of your Tweets, so if you don’t know what a Tweet is or who Tweeple are, then you really need to get a copy of this manual.

You can download it from this link: twitter_for_real_estate_twits

So next time someone you know says they are going  out to Twinkle, you’ll know exactly what they mean!!

I recently had a discussion with Shane Dale, the owner of myhome.com.au about the future of video and virtual tours, and Shane I gathered from the conversation, is very much a supporter of interactive floor plans and other similar technology for real estate marketing. During the discussion we talked about technology and where the future may be for video etc. I for one, am not a big fan of the old style virtual tour, the one where they stitch together photos, add a voice over and music and charge you accordingly for it, when better technology is available to real estate marketers.

Video is fast becoming a great tool to market properties and I’ve talked about this before, and with technology evolving daily, I thought I’d share with you what a virtual tour of the future could look like, where you could design your own tour using technology. In the video you’ll see a man building a world for the woman he loves. The video was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit and took 2 years to complete, but it is an interesting insight into the possible virtual tour of the future.  

Click Here to Watch the Video World Builder

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!

Last week I spent time in Adelaide South Australia and presented to a number of real estate groups, and it was for me an interesting exercise. Social media is not going to be for every agent or business owner, of that there is no doubt, because each person within the office needs to commit to the discipline of social networking.

It is vitally important that social networking is seen as a long term strategy and not a short term fix. It takes time and commitment to really work social media, to create the handshake and work the room. Traditional real estate marketing models are quickly becoming obsolete as the internet takes over so real estate businesses need to start to think more long term and think about marketing to the customer of tomorrow not just today.

This is the word of mouth brand building of 2020, so when deciding that a social strategy is part of your marketing plan, make sure that all staff are committed to its success. Social media very quickly sorts out the committed members in your office.

So where to start: First of all make sure you put a realistic time line in place,when integrating social strategies into your office, plan to have it integrated over the next 2 years. This allows you sufficient time to get it in place and build on the network.

Decide on who will be your target market - Because this is, in reality, what social media is, a corporate communication strategy for your business, and you need to plan what information will be shared by you and your company/staff.  This is really about people!!

Decide on the objective, what do you want to achieve and more importantly what do you want out of it as a business or sales person. Is it instant leads or sales or is it a long term plan to provide good quality content to your prospective clients, so that when they decide the time is right to buy or sell, you are the business they choose.

Plan your strategy, will it be combinations of social networks or just one, how often will you post to your blog, what type of information will be included and what is your ultimate plan?

Finally, decide on the technology you will use. Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, blogs etc or do you intend to use them all. If so, then make sure you have a plan and strategy in place for each one.

Once you have all of that laid out as part of a corporate communication strategy, then and only then, is the time right to start to implement your plan.

As always, if you would like my help on getting your strategy started, all you have to do is ask or send me an email via this blog.

Nice to see one of the major portals being proactive in creating better information for the agents to use as part of the subscription costs. Again getting one up on the competition realestate.com.au, the Domain team announced the ability for agents to get more indepth reporting from Domain property data by offering free access to advertised sales and rental history. The Domain media release is below for your information. 

FREE ‘JUST LISTED’ AND ‘JUST SOLD’ AGENT DATA.

Domain Property Data has always equipped you with the most reliable and accessible market knowledge. Now we are changing the industry by offering Domain.com.au agents free access to advertised sales and rental history, as well as agent reported sales results. Our new agent reported data platform is launching on the 2nd March.

 Agents that report their sales results to Domain Property Data will be able to keep up to date with properties that have ‘just listed’ or ‘just sold’ right across the state, for no extra charge. What’s more, your sold properties will enjoy increased exposure across various sections of Domain.com.au and several of the Fairfax Media newspapers and websites. Domain.com.au also distributes sold content, including weekly auction and private treaty sales results, to a wide range of media channels, and auction results are syndicated for publication in leading metropolitan, community and regional newspapers and internet portals.

To ensure that your sales success is published across these channels, report your property sales to Domain Property Data. When searching on Domain Property Data, you will have the ability to do the following: View a property’s sales data (price, sale type, etc) and key attributes (bedrooms, bathrooms, etc) Search a property’s advertised sales and rental history View historical agent reported sales data for the property.

In addition you and your team can receive a weekly email from Domain.com.au, keeping you up to date with agent reported sales in your key markets. Agents that do not subscribe to Domain.com.au and/or do not report their sales results will not be able to access agent advised data on Domain Property Data. Please note, Domain Property Data is not available in Western Australia. To access agent reported ‘just sold’ and ‘just listed’ data on Domain Property Data or to find out more about Domain.com.au simply contact your Account Manager or call us on 1300 799 109.

Report your sales success easily You can now report your sales results easily (even when the sales price is marked ‘Confidential’) via your bulk uploader or Domain.com.au Agent Admin. As well as gaining free access to Domain Property Data, agents who regularly report their sales success will also benefit from increased exposure for their agency. Agents that choose not to subscribe to Domain.com.au and do not report sold data will not be able to access Domain Property Data.

Kind Regards The Domain.com.au Team