Online Real Estate Technology

Ian Grace Mr Real Estate Advertising

I thought it was time I opened up this blog to a few of my friends and colleagues in the real estate industry and one that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the years is probably the leading expert on real estate advertising worldwide, Ian Grace.

Ian has presented his training course all over the world and is one of the very few Australians to have spoken at the NAR conference in the US, there is not much that Ian does not know about creating great real estate advertising, so as part of this series, I’ve asked Ian to put together his top 10 tips for writing great real estate ads, I hope you get benefit from Ian’s advice.

The Top Ten Tips for Writing Great Real Estate Ads

HOODOO – a great word to help you to remember the two things that make advertising effective:- WHO – is the person who will see the most value in the property and therefore pay the highest price [that's target marketing]. DO – now show them and tell them, what they will be able to DO as a direct result of their purchase.

2. HEADLINES – remember the WHO when you write your headline, then qualify it quickly, so the reader knows you’re both on the same wavelength. Then ideally, reinforce or remind about the headline at the end of the ad. The headline must include one or more of the following:- 1. A benefit or implied benefit 2. Something that is new, news or topical 3. A curiosity element without gimmicks for gimmicks sake.

3. PHOTOS – make sure your main photo matches and works together with your headline [not the other way around] and that the other photos also match the body text.

4. PEOPLE – put people and/or pets in your photos – it’s a great way to show people what they will be able to DO when they live there.

5. NAMES – use names in your ads to personalise them – yours [in full] and even the sellers’.

6. DIFFERENT ADS – the use of different ads for different markets, enables you to talk to each prospect group about what is relevant to them only e.g. one ad aimed at first home buyers and one ad aimed specifically at investors.

7. MEDIA MATCH – make sure your press ads match with other media and vice versa, with particular reference to the main photo and headline.

8. KEEP THE SAME AD RUNNING – once you’ve written a great ad, run it at least four times if not more, as research shows people need to see the same ad or message three times or more, on average, before they will respond

9. PRICE, LOCATION, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS – if all the research done shows conclusively that these are the top three pieces of information potential buyers require, then common sense says – give it to them!

10.   OBTAIN SELLER ADVERTISING DOLLARS – research proves that the higher the seller paid advertising percentage, the higher the listing to selling success rate.

11. BONUS TIP – TEST YOUR ADS – Firstly, sellers must see the ads before they run, but most importantly, ensure at least one of your colleagues checks your ads to confirm every word and phrase will make sense to the market it is written for. Secondly, when buyers who have responded to the ads view the property, ask them if the property has matched their expectations from your ads – the feedback will be terrific and will keep your advertising right on track.

If you’d like to contact Ian you can visit his web site Ian Grace Marketing

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.

If you’re a real estate agent or small business owner just getting into a social media strategy, or already using social media networks such as Facebook and you haven’t yet created a Facebook brand page, then go and create one right now. They are an excellent way of promoting your brand not only to others on Facebook, but also promoting your brand or product via Facebook adds.

If you are considering using Facebook adds or any form of on line advertising then it’s important to understand the searching and viewing habits of the audience you’re trying to impact. Social media sites are changing the way we search on line, and as marketers, relying on this information and understanding where and how your audience views or searches for information on social media sites is vital.

So which are the best days to run your adds or banners, and which days generate the best click thru rates for advertisers? Some new research out today helps shed some light on this and I’ve detailed some of the results for you.

Content posted on Facebook based brand pages has a higher than average click thru rate on a Tuesday, the average click thru rate on Tuesday is 9.89%, the highest of any day. Wednesday follows closely behind with click rates of 9.87%.

Friday and Saturday had the lowest click rates with a very measly 2.67% on Friday and 2.7% on Saturdays. If you  take all the days into account, click thrus for Facebook brand pages average 6.76%. This average is lower than Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but still much higher than average CTRs for display advertising across social networks in general, including Facebook itself.

So really what this research means, is that certain days of the week are better for launching a product promotion, and by really understanding how consumers use social media sites, you and your company can start to target where you’ll get the best return on your investment.

In a nut shell, you really need to have a well thought out communication strategy for updating your Facebook brand page, and an understanding of when to create promotions to get optimum response.

Response to your marketing on social media sites is better early in the week then dwindles and picks up again on Sundays.

What I’ll cover for you in the next post on this subject, are results of the latest eye tracking study on social media pages, where are users eyes focused when viewing these pages and how does it differ from other web page viewing.

This has an impact when you’re deciding to use advertising on social sites such as Facebook etc, does your target market actually look at the adds? I’m sure you’ll find that an interesting read.

About the data:The sample data reported is compiled from nearly 200 million fans impressions on Facebook pages over a five-month period (March – August 2009).

For those of you who are really interested in social media, I’ve decided to create another blog called Social Media College and my intention for this blog is to include information and updates about my training courses and updated articles tips etc on Social Media.

Very soon you’ll find information on my Bloggers Masterclass series which I’m putting together as we speak, I also intend to use the blog purely for social media updates and leave this blog for real estate tips & technology updates.

So please make sure you have a look at the blog and leave me comments on your thoughts on layout and content etc.

Great Words of Advice

Today whilst visiting a real estate office we got talking about social media strategies and why as a real estate office they should be working towards implementing a social media strategy, not just to farm new pastures, but also to help them in the optimisation of their web site. During the conversation we got on the subject of blogging, and why creating a blog would help their Internet marketing efforts.

Well I have to admit that over the last few weeks I’ve neglected this blog a bit as I explore new areas and work on my web site, so with a little bit of a guilty feeling, I’ve motivated myself to write this article, and you can probably guess what it is about, making sure you create and maintain a disciplined approach to blogging.

In my research I come across a lot of blog writers who after a period of time, and it’s often around the 12 month scenario, tend to get a little bit of writers block and lose interest in maintaining their blog, which is what happened to myself, and in a number of cases the blog gets abandoned altogether.

The Internet is full of abandoned blogs, left in the wilderness by writers who lose interest.

It’s not easy maintaining a blog on a regular basis, you also have to work hard at maintaining your audience and coming up with new content that appeals to your readers.

So today I’ve written a list of things that I will do to assist me in writing articles for my blogs and I’ve listed them below for you, if you are just starting as a blogger I hope they help set you on a disciplined approach and most of all don’t give up.

1. Set aside 1 hour each day to research for new articles – doesn’t matter what time of day it is, just DO IT! – Talking to other people also stimulates ideas for posts. Mornings I find are much better, I can sit in my pajamas and coffee and read.

2.Write when you get urge - A lot of times I’ll come up with an article idea and leave it till later, in most cases later never comes.

3. Create a list of topics and categories – Then write first about what you like or are passionate about. That way you’ll enjoy writing about your favourite topic.

4. Revisit your old articles - Some of these older stories can be updated and rewritten. As some of these topics are changing almost daily, providing updates on these old stories can generate new ideas.

5. Read other Blogs & Bloggers - This will help to create ideas as well, it gets the creative juices flowing and helps with topics and trends.

6. Subscribe to RSS Feeds - Make sure you get updates delivered right to your computer, and use some of these articles on your own blog. They help break up the style of writing and provide different opinions on topics. But remember, always credit the author of the article.

6. Commitment - Now here is the magic word, once you start you really need to be committed to your blog, so create that list.

That is what I intend to action from today, I put it up on my office wall so that every morning the first thing i see will be the list.

I hope that if you are just starting out, this little list will help keep your blog on track and if you have any additions to the list please share them with me.

During the course of my blog workshops I present a lot of options on how you can promote and syndicate your blog when you are just starting out, and one of the ways you can generate new readers is by putting your blog with, what the experts call, Link Farms.

The question you may have on the tip of your tongue is “What is a link farm? well link farms are web sites that have lots of inbound links that help increase their ranking and page rank on search engines such as Google. Some of these sites actually build or contain links to unrelated web sites, and sometimes these sites also link to themselves. Search engines are very strict on link farms and in some cases ban them all together from being indexed and displayed in search results.

If they are banned by Google for instance, they will lose their page rank, but that’s not the worst part, because if your blog is linked to one of these sites then you too can be banned and lose your page rank. That is why it is extremely important that you know what a link farm is, and you know how to properly identify one so that you avoid linking to that site.

If in the past you haven’t analysed the sites and directories you link to then you really need to start doing so, as they can have a massive impact on your site or blogs ranking. It is most important that you review the site closely before adding a link to it. Hopefully the following advice will help you know what to look for and help identify a link farm.

The Site has lots of links-If you go to a site and it has lots and lots of links then you should immediately realise it is possibly a link farm.

Low Page Rank -Usually link farms get penalised by Google and lose their page rank, therefore you need to be careful if you see a site with a page rank of 0, not all sites with this rank are link farms of course, but at least this will help you start to look more closely at the site.

Little or no content – Those that control link farms don’t care about content, all they want is the inbound links to help drive page rank. Therefore as a rule, don’t Link to a site that has little or no content on it.

Badly maintained sites- Most link farm webmasters don’t maintain their sites very well, links are all that are important to them. I’ve just removed my blog from one site that had heaps of broken links and links to pages that went nowhere. So check them carefully!!

Be careful as well, as to where you link your site, I added a link to a site about 6 months ago that was heavily used by spammers, unknown to me, and this caused my blog to be flagged by Wordpress and removed from public view, the first I new about it was when my traffic decreased considerably, so be careful as Wordpress will not notify you that you have been flagged.

My advice is to check out the directories and sites really well before you link to them. If you are still not sure, check out some really well known blogs, that have been around for awhile, to get a feel of what sites they link to.

I hope this helps and as always, if you need help, please leave me a comment and I’ll respond accordingly.

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

A Rating Site for Blogs

For those of you that have just created your blog  or would like to start to get readers and traffic to your articles, I thought it worth a mention of a site that I’ve just added my blog too. There are a number of directories on the web that you can add your blog to to start to get readers and this one is quite a good one as it also allows users to provide ratings of your blog and/or topic.

This is a great tool for getting feedback on your articles and researching what they like or don’t like about what you write.

It’s called Scribnia and whilst it’s only in public beta testing at the moment, which means it’s under going changes and tweaks regularly, I found it quite easy to navigate, and to find authors and blogs on all types of topics that were of interest to me.

Scribnia is a social community, based on the premise that everyone has a favourite author, blogger or even publication, and it’s goal is to help you discover new writers based on analyzing user ratings and your preferences.

You can rate my blog and articles here if you would like to see how it works and give me some valuable feedback at the same time. 

Any blogger can claim a profile on the site and to verify the claim you just add a small piece of code to either a widget on your side bar or add it to the bottom of one of your posts. The code is invisible so your readers won’t see it. Once you’ve claimed your blog you can use your profile to interact with interested readers and another great section to the site is the ability to search by publication, so if you have a favourite topic and like to just search through the available blogs you can. 

It’s well worth a try, so here’s a shot of the front screen to give you a heads up on what it looks like.

Front Screen Shot

Social Media and Your ROI

After facing my second redundancy in as many years, I had an interesting debate the other day with some business colleagues. The debate centred on how much information is shared via blogs like this one and other social media sites for free, and what my colleagues essentially were saying is “Why would anyone pay you, when you give all the information away for free” and in reflection, I’d have to say that a number of people who I dealt with in the past, who were regular callers, have certainly dropped off since I started on my own, thinking  I might start charging them for the information and assistance.

When I started this blog almost 12 months ago it was just a bit of fun and also a tool to build my profile , as well as provide the people in the industry that I was working in with a resource and information bank that they could use to improve their Internet marketing campaigns. Looking back over the past 12 months on this social media journey, I think I achieved quite a lot, I’ve got this blog operating, which as far as reader numbers would indicate, does very well every month, and I’ve had a lot of support and great feedback from you the readers over that 12 months. I’ve got my podcast series, which is very popular with listeners all over the world and my Twitter profile is building each day as more and more followers join me on the journey, so all in all, would I have achieved all of that without social media? the answer is no I would not have.

This debate I’m sure, is one that is going on every day in business all over the world, how much do we share and what’s our return on investment with social media. In fact, I’ve had this come up time and time again when I’ve been presenting social media strategies to companies and I beleive the main reason it comes up is because the sharing and giving of information or advice is coupled with companies charging for this expertise and the thought of suddenly providing this information for free is very challenging. This leads to another challenge for companies and one that really impacts the culture of the company, social media is all about sharing and if you have people in your organisation who don’t want to share, your social media strategy will not succeed, and that comes back to my opening statement, how much do you give away for free?

 I’ve always based the information provided on this blog on issues that affect small business,how to improve Internet marketing campaigns, giving new technology advice and looking at issues such as SEO and SEM, & how important it is for SME’s to be aware of why they need an active search engine strategy. If that information helps make you aware of what you need to do to improve your marketing efforts then I’ve achieved my goal, if you decide to use me to help you in that effort then that’s even better.  

With the real estate industry, the Internet has changed the way consumers get information, 10 years ago when I was a working real estate agent, my buyers and sellers would come off the cards in the office window, I would then get the chance to interact and engage my buyers face to face, well how many times today do you get the chance to influence these buyers at that first point of research? not very often I would think, research tells us that 9 out 10 buyers start the process on the net and they start looking for information and properties in the areas or suburbs they are interested in.

How then do you make sure you are the agent they want to deal with along this process?, you need to have as many communication channels available to you assisting you in delivering information to the property buyer or seller along the journey, and that is not just having a web site, but a multi media strategy running alongside your traditional marketing activities. 

The benefits of my social media efforts over the last 12 months have helped me move into new directions and opened up a lot of doors for me that were previously closed, it’s improved my knowledge of technology and marketing and I’ve become a syndicated author. In my experience, you’ll get out of a social strategy, what you put in.

Why would I not keep doing what I’ve been doing, and as long as you the readers of this blog find it helpful and of benefit to you & your business then in my mind, that’s my return on investment.

C21 Wins Best On Line Real Estate Ad

Nice to see innovative on line Real Estate advertising recieving recognition, Century 21 has won the award for “Best Real Estate On line Ad” at the Internet Advertising Competition in the US.

The Mother-in-Law series highlights the company’s advanced mapping features by taking a lighthearted look at how a property searcher might use its pinpoint mapping technology to draw specific lines on a map to avoid living near their dreaded mother-in-law.

“Our goal is to capture the consumers’ imagination with our advertising as much as we capture their attention with our exceptional real estate mapping technology,” said Bev Thorne, senior vice president, marketing, Century 21 Real Estate LLC. “This award is an outstanding accomplishment for our brand and further evidence that our online marketing efforts are succeeding in reaching consumers in an entertaining and informative way.”

Congratulations to the Century 21 team, well done!