Online Real Estate Technology

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.

That post headline is sure to get some interest given the ongoing saga between Rupert Murdock and Google, in my previous post we looked at Rupert’s threat to stop Google getting access to news and information from News Ltd sites.

Well hot on the heals of that story comes another twist with Microsoft and News in discussions to remove content from Google, given that Google is the main driver of traffic to these News Ltd sites, what would be the impact of any decision from Rupert to stop Google indexing content, and with other newspaper and media companies considering joining Rupert and News Ltd in this action it’s going to be a very interesting story to watch unfold.

Here’s the story from Mashable:

Newspapers and traditional media have seen their world and their business models crumble before their very eyes. Newspaper revenues have plummeted by nearly 30% in the last year alone, while newspaper circulation numbers are in the toilet. The web is destroying outdated business models and replacing them with more efficient ones.

These newspaper and media companies aren’t just letting themselves get destroyed, though. Some have gone web-only, some are embracing social media, and then some are blaming Google.

When we first heard that Rupert Murdoch intended to remove News Corp websites from Google, we weren’t impressed. We didn’t understand his plan, but we did believe that it wouldn’t work.

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Then This Google Thing Got Out of Hand

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That was, until we learned that Microsoft and News Corp are in discussions to remove content from Google and that most recently, other newspapers and media companies are considering joining Murdoch’s insanity.

Let’s think about this: in a few months, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and most of the 56 daily newspapers of MediaNews Group could be de-indexed from Google and Google News(and in News Corp’s case, displayed prominently on Bing).

Experian Hitwise explored yesterday what would happen if this plan comes to fruition. As the following graph demonstrates, Google alone accounts for 20+ percent of newspaper traffic:

Some of that traffic would remain intact (we really doubt Murdoch would remove the homepage of the Wall Street Journal from Google, thus searches for the WSJ in general would remain unaffected), but overall it’d be a devastating traffic blow. Google is still the main method of information discovery online, and that trend will only grow as more kids turn to Google instead of the $0.75 daily.

In short: Rupert’s plan will gut his company and doesn’t set News Corp up for the future.

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Rupert, We Understand Your Dilemma

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Let’s give News Corp some leeway and a little credit though: they know that the old business models are dying and that they have to do something. Even back in August, we stated that good journalism isn’t cheap and that we have to find a better way to compensate media organizations for their work. Here is what we said about his plan to put his websites behind a paywall, with key points bolded:

“Murdoch has essentially declared that the free-for-all in online news has ended. Specifically, he states that good journalism isn’t cheap (that’s true) and that, while the web has made distribution cheap, it has not made it free. He also hopes to gain more revenue from major celebrity scoops from his tabloid papers (i.e. the Sun). His bet is that people will indeed pay for news content.:

The next paragraph explains our arguments, though:

“We’re not so sure. While we don’t disagree with the need to find additional revenue streams for newspapers and quality journalism, we think there are plenty of alternative news resources to turn to. Murdoch must see something encouraging at the WSJ, because he wouldn’t be going with this plan if he didn’t think they could replicate that model without losing significant readership.”

Sorry Rupert, but newspapers aren’t going to increase anytime soon and up-and-coming blogs and media companies aren’t going away. Maybe we were wrong about you seeing something in the WSJ model. Maybe you just don’t understand how media has been fundamentally altered by the web.

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This Isn’t the Future of Media, Murdoch

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We’ve had enough. Murdoch’s plan to de-index from Google is getting out of control, and it threatens to speed up the destruction of all traditional media. If other newspapers decide to join this insanity, here’s what will happen: more efficient organizations will step in to fill the gaps. There is no shortage of lean and socially savvy media organizations built in the last five years.

The future of media isn’t in The Wall Street Journal, no matter how much value it provides society. No, the future is in the web, fast-paced blogs, and social media. The future is in companies that realize that news a day old is, well, a day old. The future is in information discovery, not in hiding content.

We know your empire is not doing so well, Murdoch, but that doesn’t excuse you from taking your company down a path that will take you into oblivion. No Microsoft deal will fix the inherent problems with the newspaper business model.

What News Corp should be doing instead: Finding more efficient means of distribution, leveraging its revenue-generating assets, exploring new methods of payments, and encouraging innovation. We’re not psychics or high-profile consultants, but we know which models are winning and which ones are not.

In short, Murdoch, take your ball and go home. Your plan can only hurt News Corp.

Writer Ben Parr

There’s been a bit of discussion recently in the blog world about Rupert Murdock’s thoughts on search engines, and in particular Google, and the fact that they provide a lot of information to consumers for free that has been sourced from News Ltd publications, Rupert has always been of the opinion that consumers should pay for news or content they recieve on the Internet, just as they would when buying a newspaper or subscribing to a web site to get the content. He has even threatened to block Google from accessing News Ltd sites. So I thought I would publish a story from Newspaper Death Blog which featured a story on Rupert and search engines, so here it is for you:

“The debate over whether search engines are friend or foe to the newspaper industry continues to grow and become more complex.

Rupert Murdoch says he will really go ahead with his stated plans to remove his portfolio of publications from Google search index. Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chief digital officer, told the Monaco Media Forum on Friday said the company would begin blocking Google’s search spiders within a few months. Miller said that Google brings in an army of one-click visitors who are “the least valuable of traffic to us…You can survive without it.” He also said Murdoch intends to lead the industry in the just-say-no campaign. A Google spokesman responded that the search engine sends about 100,000 clicks to news organizations every minute. TechCrunch estimates that Google drives about one quarter of the traffic to The Wall Street Journal.

While there’s no doubt that Murdoch is serious about drawing a line in the sand on this issue, the decision to talk about it this far in advance indicates that this is a negotiating tactic. Much as Hearst and the New York Times Co. wrung concessions from unions by threatening to close the papers they own, Murdoch may be looking to extract some kind of licensing deal from Google in return for backing down.

The Journal and the Financial Times are the only two daily newspapers that are having any success with a paid subscription model because both provide information that subscribers see as essential to their business. Few other newspapers can make that claim, which is why paywalls have been so difficult to implement.

Miller’s comment about drive-by visitors is worth noting. Publishers and auditors tend to look at traffic as the ultimate metric of success, but there are different kinds of traffic. Sex and celebrities drive page views just as they sell newsstand copies, but that kind of traffic is undesirable to most advertisers and extremely hard to monetize. If Murdoch has decided that his core base of paying and print subscribers are sufficient to run the company, he may be choosing to press his advantage while he still has leverage. The Wall Street Journal was the only large US newspaper to show any growth in the recent Audit Bureau Of Control report and Murdoch may have decided that he doesn’t need the casual visitor in order to be successful.

The Bing Factor

Media entrepreneur Jason Calacanis thinks Murdoch wants to do a deal. He suggests that the publishing tycoon could strike an exclusive deal with Microsoft Bing. This would have the win-win effect of driving revenue from Microsoft’s deep pockets while also upping the ante in the search wars. It’s an intriguing idea, and few other companies have the throw weight to pull it off.

Bing presents an interesting twist. TechCrunch reported last week that Microsoft held a secret meeting with representatives of some of Europe’s largest newspapers to discuss throwing its weight behind ACAP, a protocol that provides a variety of access controls over content. TechCrunch says Microsoft told the European publishers that it’s ready to commit £100,000 to fund development of ACAP, which permits search engines, for example, to index the full content of an article while displaying only part of it to a casual visitor. The report speculates that Microsoft may be hoping to use publishers as allies in a flank attack on Google by striking deals that give Bing exclusive or semi-exclusive access to their content.

Writer: Paul Gillin

Watch out the Twitter DM hacker has struck again, having been a victim myself only last week please make sure you log in to Twitter and change your password. Don”t be tempted to share your Twitter log in details with any third party software program that you don’t trust.

The DM spam attack, presumably being spread by hacked Twitter accounts, contains unknown but dubious content, and we advise you to avoid clicking on anything that appears suspicious. Be on the look for tweets like, “hi, did you do this quiz thingy.”

I lost a few followers last week because of these hacked DM’s so please be warned and be careful. If you’d like to check the latest on these, search “dm spam” on Twitter.

I recently invested in the new iPhone and have really enjoyed exploring the technology, however just recently I’ve noticed a recurring problem and that is my iPhone will drop out during both received and dialed phone calls.  So you can imagine my frustration when on a call and the call drops out, this happens at least 2 out of every 10 calls. So like most people today, I decided to search for the problem or I should say solution on Google, and what did i find? loads of information on the problems the iPhone network, in particular the Optus 3G network is having, and why there are drop outs. This information ironically, being provided by forum sites and other disgruntled consumers experiencing the same problem, nothing from the network that I’m with, which is Optus.

The number one result on my search query on Google is a forum site and contained within this site are numerous complaints about the drop outs, all citing the Optus 3G network not being up to spec as the cause of the problem, there are also complaints about Optus customer service and the lack of responce by Optus to customer complaints, some taking up to 2 weeks just to get a return phone call. But the interesting thing to me is the total lack of input from Optus on this site, now surely you’d think that a service company would be either monitoring this site or at least have a strategy to deal with all this negativity about their product and service, and don’t think that Telstra is any better at dealing with complaints, because they are not.

This brings me to the impact that social media has on brand building, consumers now have the ability to complain publicly about issues they are having with any company, and a simple search on Google will usually brings these forum and blog sites up at the top of the search, making them easily accessible to anyone wanting information or to complain about the service or lack of it from any company.

Business today needs to be very aware of the impact these sites can have on generating business from the web, and an effective web based brand monitoring strategy needs to be implemented and service related industries including real estate offices and agents really need to make sure they have both a monitoring and response strategy in place… Now I don’t know if Optus monitors or is even aware that these sites are on the web, but they should, the comments, complaints and opinions of current customers should be a prime concern, because if I’d read this forum before getting my iPhone, i would never have used Optus, and to allow the comments found on the forum site to continue without company moderation or input is just plain stupid.

So beware, take your on line reputation very seriously, you don’t want your brand or reputation destroyed on the web, imagine if you did a Google search on a prospective employee and found complaints and comments about them, complaints about their lack of service and response or their rudeness in dealing with clients, would you then hire that person? No I didn’t think so, well it works both ways.

You can no longer take your reputation for granted, you need to set up your strategy and a good place to start is by using this 3 phase process:

• Monitor

• Manage

• Repair

Start by monitoring what is being said about you or your brand on line, and you can do this by simply creating a Google alert for your brand name or keyword, if your brand is mentioned on the web then Google will notify you via email once a day of who,what and where you were mentioned.

This is the easiest and cheapest way to keep track of your reputation.

It had to happen at some stage and here it is, a song and video about Social Media, not quite as serious and informative as my previous post and video about  Social Media, but I thought this great video would bring a smile to your day.

So please enjoy!!

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.

Top 10 Search Properties in Asia Pacific by No. of Searches September 2009 Total Asia Pacific Internet Audience*, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
	Searches (MM)	Share of Searches	Searches Per Searcher
Total Internet	38,585	100.0%	87.5
Google Sites	16,997	44.1%	58.5
Baidu.com Inc.	8,228	21.3%	44.5
Yahoo! Sites	5,340	13.8%	41.3
NHN Corporation	1,959	5.1%	80.5
Microsoft Sites	1,093	2.8%	9.5
Lycos Sites	997	2.6%	51.0
Alibaba.com Corporation	949	2.5%	15.6
Tencent Inc.	790	2.0%	8.6
Facebook.com	259	0.7%	8.0
Sohu.com Inc.	230	0.6%	8.9

*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.

Top Search Property in Individual Asia Pacific Markets by Share of Searches September 2009 Total Internet Audience*, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
	Top Search Property in Market	Share of Searches
Australia	Google Sites	83.4%
China	Baidu.com Inc.	63.0%
Hong Kong	Yahoo! Sites	58.9%
India	Google Sites	89.1%
Japan	Google Sites	47.5%
Malaysia	Google Sites	71.1%
New Zealand	Google Sites	80.5%
Singapore	Google Sites	72.3%
South Korea	NHN Corporation	49.3%
Taiwan	Yahoo! Sites	65.4%

*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

During my research I’ve come across a great video that I thought I would share with you, the video was compiled by Socialnomics09, and is called Social Media Revolution: Is Social Media a Fad?

For those real estate business owners that have yet to consider social media as a business strategy then hopefully this will provide some insights into the On Line world of the future. This video details some facts and figures that are hard to ignore.

I’ve been like a voice in the wilderness promoting the value of a social media within the real estate industry in Australia so hopefully this video will add some weight to my voice.

If you do decide to adopt a social media strategy for your office, make sure you get someone who knows what they are doing, read my post on Fake Social Media Experts before you get fooled to part with your hard earned dollars by these so called experts, or better still, give me a call.

Please enjoy

Yes, well here we go again, another one of those, I’ve got  a list of over “9,000″ Twitter followers so I’m a social media expert marketing forms has hit my desk today. Come along it says, “to my affiliate marketing driven roadshow and in 4 hours I’ll make you the expert, but there’s more, if you sign away your hard earned money right now, i have an e-book special for you, yes just for you, an E-Book that I didn’t write by the way,but I’ll pretend its mine, and all it will cost you is $89.00.”

I get emails like this every day, offering free product that I can sell or give away as my own, I get E-Books, money making ideas and lots of materials that I can re-brand, that’s not being an expert, that’s a faker.

These so called experts all have massive numbers of followers on social media sites like MySpace and Facebook and of course Twitter, and they fool you to part with your money.

Well don’t fall for it, because I’m going to tell you how to fake it, and then you too can be the instant social media expert, you know, the one who can’t get a job selling real estate so they opt for this easy money.

Ok this is how you do it, On MySpace and Facebook, you find as many people with similar names or interests as you and then send them friend requests, a lot will decline but you would be surprised at the number that actually come back and accept you, that way you build up your following very quickly, they never do anything with you but hey it builds your numbers. Next Twitter, there are a number of programs that will show you how to build big follower numbers and it’s funny but it’s nearly always around the 9000 mark. You can do the same with Twitter as you do with MySpace and Facebook, that is follow large numbers of people and I’ll guarantee you a fair number will follow you back, and you know the dead giveaway? look at the follower number next to the following number, that they can’t hide.

I know of one expert that actually sends out his flyers with “I have 9000 followers on twitter” so I must be good, well one thing he doesn’t tell you is he follows over 10,500. If you really want to get serious with this, have a look at the Twitter accounts with large followings, 99% of them are well known actors, celebrities or business people, so what does that tell you.

I have always taken the tack that to build a social media following you should earn it, build it on providing good quality information and advice and create the “Expert” tag through experience and generate your followers organically not by underhand means and faking it.

There are so many “snake oil” sales people out there you really need to hang on to your wallet.

So next time you get a flyer or an invite, stop and do some research first, the web and Google are a great place to find out information on your expert. How many articles have they had published?, where do they rank on Google?, What recommendations do they have and what companies have they worked with in designing and integrating a social media strategy. For example, I’ve just done a search on social media experts, and this person I’m telling you about doesn’t even rank on the top 20 pages.

Is this sour grapes? no, I just don’t like rip off artists who pray on people like you.

When I was at the Inman technology conference in August, the subject of Augmented Reality was being bandied around during the technology sessions and I thought it time to have a look at how it will impact not only the working real estate agent but also the consumer.

Firstly, what is Augmented Reality?  The concept has been around since the early 90’s, but it’s really only been in the last 12 months that the technical world has gone ga ga over it and if not for the onslaught of Twitter, you’d probably have heard a lot more about it by now.  So here is the technical explanation for what it is:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, like for example sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view.

Ok, there it is, simple really, but what does it do and how can you use it in your real estate business. The easiest way to explain how the technology will work is this, Imagine a consumer being able to stop in front of a house for sale and simply point their smart phone at the house and within seconds being able to view as well as save all the information about the listing. From there the consumer can look at the pictures, watch a video, email the information and even contact the agent direct.

To watch the technology in action here’s a video from Layer, an Android-based application that uses your handset’s GPS location, digital compass and accelerometer to call up geotagged information and superimpose it on the world around you.

The iPhone application for this technology is now available for download from the Itunes store, so  you can imagine the potential this has for the future, and it’s not just real estate that will benefit.

Any business can and will benefit from this technology, lets imagine you’re walking down a street looking for a good place to eat, you hold up your mobile phone so the screen shows what’s in front of you. What you see are things you couldn’t see before, brightly coloured makers that show restaurants and bars, turn the corner and you’ll see the new view on your screen, click on any of the markers and you’ll see customer reviews, menu and price information.

This is just a small part of what this technology can do, so I hope I’ve opened the door just a little for you.

There’s one lesson in this for the real estate industry, don’t get left behind, make sure you keep up with developments and new technology such as this as it emerges. Your very future may well depend on it.

I’d suggest also reading the post on using QR codes for real estate