Online Real Estate Technology

It’s called Social Media, but sometimes the people who use social media are not social at all. You put a lot of work in setting up your profiles on social media sites, making sure that you include all the relevant information, contact numbers, email address, great looking photo, update it regularly and then – Nothing!! that’s because you do not introduce yourself or work the room. Ahh, have I got your attention with that comment?, you have just entered the biggest conference or social event in the world and if you stand in the corner and do nothing, that is what you will get out of all of your efforts.

Get out and create the handshake, that’s one of the secrets of networking yourself on social media sites. You are not stalking other users, they are there to network just like you and get information from like minded people on all kinds of interests and passions. The more you network or meet people on the web, the more followers you will generate. One of the things that I  notice when I talk to people, is they can talk passionately about the subject that is closest to them when they are face to face, but as soon as they get in front of a computer, they become totally different people.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs are all big social events and you need to get out and create traffic by inviting and following other users. Start conversations with them, invite them to connect with you and network. This way you will start to build a following and this in turn creates more followers, as like minded people will find you and your sites. Take Twitter as an example, by using Twitter Grader you can find other Twitter users in your area, or better still look at their profiles and follow them, chat with them, share your information or expertise with them and they will respond. Check out my post The Green Green Grass of Home- Try Twitter Grader  for a refresh on this.  Update often, but make your updates relevant, don’t waste their time when they start to follow you, for instance, I made a decision when I started this blog, not to include gossip or to criticise other portals when I post, this blog has always been there to provide you with helpful and useful information on technology and internet marketing, and I’ve stuck to that theme. I only update or post when I have something to say that is relevant to you, my readers.

This networking also applies to your listings, they way you write, structure your content etc, all impacts on the way your listings will be viewed. So get out there, meet and network these social media users, introduce yourself and create conversations. Here’s a great video that will help you get to terms with how to work the room.

Good luck and please let me know your thoughts on this post and wether you found the information helpful.

This post now available as a podcast

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.

I’ve just spent the last 2 days conducting seminars in Sydney NSW on the future of internet communication channels and how to effectively use them to network your real estate business, and one of the ideas presented to the attending guests is using social media sites such as facebook as a networking tool.

I’ve also looked at, and in fact recommended, the use of banner advertising or facebook adds, but today I’ve decided to look a little closer at this for you and find out if they really are effective and also look at new products that facebook is providing in the market, and how that will affect what and how you use the web site. Lets have a look at Facebook Connect, this product allows it’s members to log onto other sites using their facebook log in and see their friends activities on those sites. Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.

A number of web sites will be integrating this feature into their pages including sites such as Discovery Channel, the company says that this will assist with the emergence of a new “Social Web”, because friends will be able to penetrate sites that have not been social in the past. So how will this really work, lets say that mike andrew is watching a show or video on a web site, I can alert my friends on facebook and invite them to join me to watch and/or comment on the show as it plays in real time.   

Facebook is not the only social media site that is planning to do this, Google,Yahoo and Myspace have all announced plans to release a similar platform, and they will use common standards to allow other web sites to reduce the work needed to integrate each system.

“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.”

So now we have that part explained lets look at how effective advertising has been on facebook for businesses around the world.

A survey last week from the research firm IDC suggested that social networks were a miserable place for advertisers: just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. And it turns out that marketers are not so interested in advertising on pages filled with personal trivia and relationship updates.

I personally believe that by tapping into user groups or creating your own groups and inviting current users to join you within facebook that are relevant to you and your business, and then networking to that group, is a better way of using the potential of facebook.

So who made up the rule that your on line property listings can’t be updated to reflect what is happening in the community? No one did, it’s just one of those things that most agents never think of. Lets use the recent rise in fuel prices, internet search volumes for real estate, individual suburbs searches and more importantly property views increased during the period of high petrol prices, why? because a great number of consumers decided to do more searching at home, so how many agents reflected this in their listings, how many included the words,”Not travelling as much, don’t worry we’ll come to you” or enticed their property readers to “attend the open for inspection at home, anytime at your convenience”.

Constantly using the internet to update your listings to reflect what is happening in the local community, is to me, a very effective way of making the net work better for you. You are tapping into what affects people in real life. In the cluttered market we have today with lots of stock available, why not take the approach to use the strength of the medium, it’s ability to instantly update the consumer with new and relevant information. You’ll stand out from the crowd and consumers searching in your suburb will pick up on this very quickly, why? because one of the most common complaints about property listings is outdated information, so turn the tables!! 

Another issue to think about, I often see properties being targeted to a very wide target market and one that has not been properly defined, by doing this, you actually miss the very people you are trying to attract.

An example of this, which I encountered yesterday in an office, was a property being marketed to both a property investor and a first home buyer. Great idea except, to me, these conflict? An Investor will be looking for something totally different in that home than a first home buyer. The investor looks for rental return, good existing tenants and potential capital growth, whilst a first home buyer looks for a “home” to live in.

The agent trying to market this property would be better to properly define their target and write the copy to attract that targeted buyer, not by trying to be everything to everybody. There is also nothing wrong with marketing this listing at the first home buyer for 2 weeks and then changing the target and copy, to market to the Investor. What you achieve here is constantly updated properties that are well targeted and well defined.   

There is nothing wrong in this at all, In fact it may just help you stand out in a cluttered market and you will start to use the medium more effectively. It will also improve your copywriting skills and you’ll start to rotate your properties so that they don;t get stale. Remember, the longer they stay online, the worse they will perform, so update your target market regularly and update the property to reflect the changes in the community. Tap into issues like interest rate cuts etc. It’s all about cut through in a crowded market and the entrepreneur will be the winner.

This blog post available as a podcast: www.mikeandrew.podomatic.com/Updating Your Listings Body Copy to Reflect the Current Market

I’ve long been a believer in the power of positive thinking and in my business career,taking positive action when it seemed that the odds were against me succeeding. That is why, today, I’m very positive about real estate agents maintaining their advertising spend on the on line space and not cutting subscriptions to the main real estate portals. If you are wanting to cut expenses, look at how much you spend in press for an add in the real estate section each week, and I’ll bet that you spend as much, or probably more, on that add than you do on your on line subscription. 

The other area that will help you is training, seeing how other people can overcome the hard times or even to succeed when the market is tough, is inspiring to us. I know that I get inspired by the power of positive thought and positive actions by those around me. The Domain breakfast series that we have been running is part of that positive approach and it never seems to amaze me that some of you out there, yes, real estate agents, can’t see the big picture, and can’t be bothered attending a 2 hour breakfast to learn, or to discover new ideas and concepts that will actually help you and your business. To those that do attend, and are always willing to push the boundaries or look at how they can improve in the current economic slowdown, i hope you get what you deserve, and that is success!!    

To that end, I spent some time in September on a seminar series with Grant Thorpe, Life Coach and Business Mentor, and Grants approach to life and assisting his clients build success stories around them is a positive experience that in tough times can help you weather the storm.  

Grant recently wrote an article on his blog about surviving the tough times and shared his strategies for gaining on and beating your competitors in tough times. I thought I would share this article with you, I hope it inspires you, I hope it gives you strategies to power forward in what you do in your life and your business.

Heres the link to that story, please enjoy: http://grantthorpe.typepad.com/life_coach_and_business_m/2008/10/index.html

As a follow up piece to my post yesterday regarding the power of real estate videos, ABI research have found during some new research that the number of people watching on line video through a browser has doubled in the past year growing from 32% a year ago to 63% today. This has been driven by the amount of rich content available in ad-supported format on portals and via social networks, along withincreasing demand from people for video in both short-and long-form on line content.

“Consumers are changing their on line habits quickly,” says research director Michael Wolf. “Broadband speeds have continued to increase at the same time that Hollywood has decided on line distribution is a legitimate monetization opportunity that will increase total return on their video assets, and expand audiences.”

When asked if they watched long-form content in the form of TV shows or movies on line, close to half of those under 25, and 53 percent of those 25-29 said they do so once a month or more.

Older viewers are much more likely to have experimented once with on line shows. Seventy-five percent of those over 65 who watch on line video said they have never watched TV shows or movies on line.

“Today’s younger consumers are developing habits that will mean drastic changes for the video entertainment market,” said Wolf. “Many consume a large percentage or even a majority of theirvideo entertainment through on line distribution today, and we believe that this trend will continue to accelerate as more efforts are made to put this content on various non-PC screens.”

So armed with those type of growth results, it’s not hard to see that video will soon be demanded by the property searcher who requires a more intimate view of the property and even for the agent themselves.

Little point to remember, over 33% of users of the real estate portals in Australia say they are looking to list their property with a real estate agent they find on line, so why not use video to boost your profile on line?  

Source: http://www.abiresearch.com/home.jsp

I spent Thursday and Friday last week chatting to some real estate agents in Sydney about blogging, and on a number of occasions they mentioned to me the potential for readers to leave nasty messages or disparaging comments on their blogs, and this was the reason why some of them did not want to start blogging.

Well lets clear up the confusion on this, a blog is not a forum. Forums are where people are encouraged to leave comments on a business or service, and we know that in most cases these comments can be negative. I’ve even been driven to add my comments to these sites on occasions. As an example, I’ve been searching tripadvisor.com, planning my holiday, and because of user comments on service or standards of hotels, I’ve changed my choice of hotel. Blogging is not a forum, blogs allow you to publish information on any issue you feel relevant or to add advice about real estate etc, it is your personal communication tool. Your readers can add comments on your posts and request information on any issue that they feel is relevant to their area, their life or business. If you get comments from readers, which you should encourage, these are captured in the backend system of your blogging program and you get to vet or moderate these comments first, so no comment hits your blog without you approving it. If you don’t like the comment delete it, simple!!!   

Set up your blog as a tool to communicate with prospective buyers or vendors and make sure you provide good quality information on your blog. The other roadblocks put forward are, “I don’t have time” or ”I don’t have time to commit to this, I’m already very busy”. Well one word of advice, ”MAKE THE TIME”. You commit as much or as little time to blogging as your schedule allows, but remember, blogging will allow you to publish information that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, by your clients or readers. Publish your blog address on all your listings on realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, promote it on your own web site and emails and publish on all printed material that leaves your office.

That means you will have as part of your on line strategy a digital communication tool, that allows you to instantly update your clients or prospects with information that might just lead to you being the chosen professional against your competition, now wouldn’t that be nice.

I’ll cover in the next post, On Line Reputation Management, this will cover how you protect yourself from unwanted or negative comments from consumers, this is a slient business killer, and you need to know how to protect yourself and your business.