Online Real Estate Technology

Feedback on Content

I’ve had this blog running now for over 12 months and what started as a bit of fun for me has developed into a great passion. The blog has been more successful than I would have imagined, when I started it in June of last year.

Successful, at least in the number of people who read my posts and visit the blog on a daily basis, so I thought I would ask the question of you, what information do you find the most helpful? What content would you like to see me feature or write about on this blog that helps you the most in your business in the next 12 months?

In checking out the popularity of my posts over the past year, some articles that I thought would be popular were not, whereas other posts on Blogging and SEO were very popular, so it’s clear to me that you prefer certain topics over others.  Articles on Social Media for example, have been amongst my lowest read posts.

So the question I put to you is, which of the following topics would you like more information on:

SEO

Technology

Internet Marketing

Social Media

Blogging & Podcasting

Copywriting

Video

Even if the topic is not listed above, let me know what content you would like and I’ll do my best to provide the information you find most useful.

Social Media Usage jumps 462% amongst tech savvy moms

The way social media usage is growing with the general population never ceases to amaze me and new research is showing that the biggest increase in usage is amongst stay at home and working mothers. In fact, social media usage has jumped a massive 462% amongst tech savvy mothers since 2006 and the number who use mobile phones to go on line 348% during the same period.

“The 21st Century Mom Report,” revealed that, in addition to bigger trends shaping motherhood such as comfort with technology and increasing eco-friendliness, becoming a mother is a huge, life-stage transformation that alters a woman’s lifetime purchasing behavior and criteria and triggers a significant re-evaluation of products and brands.

For example:

• 85% of moms say having a baby changed their purchasing habits.

• 73% say it changed their purchasing criteria.
• 62% say it changed the brands they purchase.

Before having children, BabyCenter said that women are most concerned about product and service quality, features, and design.

After becoming mothers, they are much more likely to shop based on safety, quality, and price.

Some of the other interesting stats to come out of the survey include:

Social Mom: Social media is mass media.

• The number of moms who use social media regularly (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, BabyCenter Community) has significantly increased from 11% to 63% since 2006; a change of 462%.
• More than four in 10 (44%) percent use social media for word-of-mouth recomendations on brands and products and 73% feel they find trustworthy information about products and services through online communities focused on their specific interests such as parenting.
• Moms tend to use mass-reach networks for socializing and entertainment and content-rich environments, while using mom-centric communities to get information and advice from other moms going through the same experiences at a given time.

So, there you have it, if you as a company or individual business operator have not yet embraced the power of social media marketing to engage the online community, it’s about time you gave it serious thought.

If you are interested in reading the full report, click here to visit the company’s web site or to read more about creating a social media strategy visit social media is about engagement & Do Traditional Marketing rules apply to social media .

Mike Andrew's Real Estate Podcast Series

I’ve had a number of people ask me about my podcast series over the past few weeks and where they can download them from, so I’ve included in this post the URL link to download the entire series of 25 podcasts. These are designed as a series for you and you can download and keep them as a reference source on technology and marketing tips.

I’ll continue to update the series on a regular basis so to make sure you get each new episode, subscribe to the RSS feed at www.mikeandrew.podomatic.com, grab the feed from my blog or get them via ITunes by searching podcasts and entering Mike Andrew Real Estate Podcasts.

Let me know if you have any problems with downloading the series.

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

It’s been a little while since I last wrote about the worst property videos on the net, so given that they are very popular with you the readers of this blog, lets have a look at another little gem sitting on the web.

This one is not strictly a property video tour, this is actually a demo from a company offering to do a video of your house for sale. This one shows you how “good” a property video can be.

There’s no soundtrack, no voice over and the opening shot is of a car, so ladies and gentlemen, rollup, because this is how “not” to film a property video demo. 

Just a reminder that my real estate technology seminar series continues next week in NSW. The location and timing for the seminar is as follows:

Maximising Your On Line Marketing for Real Estate Professionals, Tuesday 17th March at Parkside Ballroom A – Sydney Convention Centre NSW.

If you would like to attend, please contact me here, we already have close to a full house but some seats are still available.

Look forward to speaking with you on the day.

Have you ever wondered how far we have come with technology? Do you think that today we can communicate faster than we did 100 years ago? well this little gem may get you thinking about how far we really have come. 

Please enjoy

I’ve been chatting to real estate offices lately about including social media into their long term communication and web strategy and as I’ve mentioned in my previous post on SEO How Important is An Effective SEO Strategy to Your Real Estate Business  you can use social media to build traffic to your web site instead of paying Google to do so.

Given that you may have the best real estate web site in the country, how do you use social media to drive lots of traffic to it. Here are a few tips and suggestions to help you, as long as you have great content and your site is up to date. There are more social media sites out there than you can possibly use in a lifetime, so lets look at the ones that will have a major impact for you.

Social Bookmarking sites: There are lots of social bookmarking sites for you to use on the web, so bookmark and tag all your content. Sites such as  delicious.com and Mr Wong are a great start to expose your content to other web readers, Mr Wong also allows do follow links which will help with SEO for your blog.  Stumbleupon.com is another great site to use, you should also leave a review of your content. Make your tags as broad as possible to allow users to find your site.

Blogs:Do they really work? Integrating a blog into your web site is a great way of bringing new content and visitors to your site or blog. The trick to blogging is to always provide good quality content in a consistent manner. Once you start cranking out consistent quality content, you can then start to submit your posts to news sites such as Digg, Reddit and Mixx.com, which will open up new audiences and web traffic for you. These are really good sites for exposing your content and will generate backlinks for your web site.

Facebook, Myspace,Linkedin and other networking sites are all smart places to submit your  blog to, all your connections will be able to see your content and blog. Twitter.com is another great resource to share your posts, for both business and pleasure just check out my profile at http://twitter.com/mikeandrewre to see how Twitter works.

Make sure you set up RSS feeds and email subscription links to allow readers to continue to recieve your posts and content once they leave your site. 

Hopefully this may answer some of your questions on how to set up an effective social media strategy for your office. A good social media strategy will help you build good quality backlinks to your web site that will also help your Google ranking. 

Good luck with your planning and let me know if I can help

We’ve had Walkscore.com and I’ve talked about the fantastic amount of information you can get from this great site,well now, and it had to happen, we have Drive Score.

I checked the site out earlier and got a screen grab for you which is displayed below. I then went and checked the site again and got a message saying that Google were blocking traffic because of the high traffic volumes searching the site, just goes to show the popularity of this type of information.

With all the emphasis now being placed on local search and local suburbs and neighborhoods, it is no wonder the site is very popular. Walkscore gives you the environmentally friendly version,but if you want to live out in the country areas or some of the outer suburbs you need to know where the local utilities are and how far away from your property they are. So this web site is just the score, pardon the pun!!

When you type in the address of the property, you’ll get a Google map displaying the house and the properties drive score out of 100. The greater the number of businesses and amenities nearby, the higher the Drive Score. You’ll also find on the map the locations of parks,restaurants,hospitals,libraries & other amenities. If you click on the icons on the map, you’ll then get directions to the location based on it’s driving distance from the house. It shows the distance in miles, but remember this is meant for the US market, to me though, that’s only a minor issue, given the great information the site gives you.

Users can also turn off some of the search results, so you can fine tune it to your requirements.

 The site is attached to US For Sale by Owner site Fizber.com and you can click on the link here if you’d like to check it out: http://drivescore.fizber.com/

Drive Score Screen Shot

Ever wondered when visiting a new city how safe you were, or when you’re looking for your dream home and find one in what looks like a great suburb, but you don’t know how safe that suburb really is? If this is you, then here’s an Iphone application that is just made for you.

Lethal is a new Iphone & Ipod touch application available through Itunes. The application draws on information in various data bases which has been compiled from government and academic sources. The app uses a lethal index system which tells the user how dangerous that area is. There’s a “Wildlife” index, a “Crime” index as well as “Disease” and “Disaster” indexs.

This application is ideal if you want to know what strange animals, or “beasties” might be lurking near you when you go out walking or if you want to check out how safe you are in your current suburb, this little beauty will give you the score. If you are travelling or sightseeing and start wondering how safe you are, this unit uses GPS to find you and then let you know how safe you are in your current location.

Unfortunately, this application will only work in the US at the moment, but if you are planning a trip to the states, this would be an absolute must have before you leave.

Just imagine the impact this would have if launched in Australia on property searches or suburb choice.

The application is available at a small cost from Itunes and I’ve included a screen shot for you below:

New Iphone & Ipod Touch Application