Property Ad Guru

Agent Strategies: Even School Information Works

Alice Allan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:42:21 +0000

We’ve talked a lot recently about the kind of content agents can add to their blogs to gain traffic, such as posts that focus on long tail keywords and hyper local issues. In this week’s agent strategy, California broker/realtor Karen Fiddler gives a great example of how timely, targeted blog content can work to generate leads:

“I posted a couple of blogs this past hour about fall registration for our local high school and local middle school. The times of these registration periods and the procedures can be confusing. I carefully used long keywords and tags, and guess what? Less than an hour from the post on our high school, Capistrano Valley High School, I have a new lead.

I received an email from a new resident of Mission Viejo who needs to register her child in the high school and found my post. She and her family have been renting this past summer and are now ready to find a home. Doesn’t this make sense? A new resident needing both a home and school information?

So, my advice is to take advantage of this time of year and make it easy for residents to find the information they need on their local schools. How about a supply list? Or uniform suppliers? Maybe local stores offering sales for back-to-school? Be creative – I just got a new client out of it.”

For more of Karen’s advice, check out her activerain.com blog here.

Over 65s Flock to Social Media in the US

Alice Allan — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:26:22 +0000

If you thought your social media efforts were only reaching people in their 20s and 30s, think again. A new US-based study by Pew Internet shows the number of over 65s using online social networks grew by 100 percent between April 2009 and May 2010.

As the report shows, the number of over 65s using networks like Facebook and Twitter is still relatively small at 26 percent, but if the growth trend continues, they could soon rival the 47 percent of users aged 50 to 64.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest demographic on social sites is still the younger crowd – 86 percent of Americans aged 18-29 are now using some form of online social network.

“Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users,” explains Mary Madden, Pew Internet’s senior research specialist and author of the report. “Email is still the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, but many older users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications.”

Of course, reaching this growing demographic still takes planning and precision, so don’t forget to check out our Top 10 Tips for Real Estate Agents Using Twitter, along with our advice on making the most of your Facebook profile.

roost.com Swaps Listings for Social Strategies

Alice Allan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:52:10 +0000

Until recently, roost.com had been steadily expanding its presence as a US-based real estate search engine. But over the past few months, the people behind this website have been watching Facebook’s exponential growth, and changing their strategy accordingly.

Load up roost.com today and you won’t find a real estate search bar. Instead, the website promises “a social media toolkit for real estate agents, brokers, and professionals.”

So what exactly does the new roost.com offer? Their product is described as a “toolkit” for real estate professionals looking to market their brand via Facebook. Market snapshots, featured listings, and analytics to monitor the results of agents’ social media efforts are all part of the package at this stage.

roost.com explains their move away from Internet leads in a blog post. “The vast majority of agents still get 80%+ of their business via word-of-mouth referrals,” roost.com writes. “The referral sphere is where the business is done – not blind Internet leads.”

roost.com CEO Alex Chang expanded on the move in an interview with inman.com. “At the end of the day, the world doesn’t need another property search engine, but Realtors absolutely need a social media toolkit for word-of-mouth business.”

According to inman.com, the cost of roost.com’s toolkit for agents will be around US$20 per month, while brokerages can expect to pay up to $2,000, depending on their size.

Five Inspirational Real Estate Videos

Alice Allan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:41:25 +0000

propertyadguru.com welcomes this guest post from Catriona Barry, product developer for Ireland-based video creation tool trakAxPC.

Obviously the last couple of years have been tough for most realtors and estate agents across the globe. In some markets things are picking up slightly, while in others (like Ireland), the market has remained challenging. To help their clients sell properties and to sign up new clients, realtors are looking at new ways of using technology, in particular video. Below, we have listed five easy but innovative ways you can use video to enhance your real estate business.

1. Create a video tour of your properties.

Real Estate Tour from tashunka b on Vimeo.

Creating a video tour of the property is much easier than you may have imagined. Looking at the video above, they have kept things simple – nice shots of the property with a recorded voiceover. The voiceover means you can write a detailed script and don’t have to worry about your presence front of camera. Be sure you have a tripod (shaky video will just look unprofessional) and that each room is well lit and turned out.

2. Create a slideshow tour of the property.

Real Estate Listing Video from Jeremy Erickson on Vimeo.

This option is even quicker – if you are commissioning professional photos of your property, why not make a video slideshow to bring the photos to life. Quickly add some text to highlight some important points of the property and you’re done. To achieve a similar effect to the video above, add some “zoom” effects and keep your font choice crisp and simple. What makes this video so successful is the actual photos themselves – the lighting is immaculate, so push your photographer to make the most of lighting available on the property.

3. Give sellers/buyers useful advice.

Pamela Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group is one of the most famous faces on the New York real estate scene. On the Corcoran Group Real Estate YouTube Channel, Ms. Liebman gives practical advice to sellers and buyers in bite-sized videos. Often less than one minute long, Liebman covers questions such as “How do I make an offer on an Apartment I Like?” or “How do I determine my price range for Buying a Home?” as well as questions that are very particular to New York.

As a real estate agent, you know your city or neighbourhood probably better than anyone else – what questions do new buyers always ask? Create short videos that you can share on YouTube and your website that answer these common queries and highlight the positive aspects of the neighbourhoods where you sell – not only should it help traffic by covering keywords that buyers may be searching for, but also build your reputation as a “Trust Agent”.

4. Explain complicated technical information.

Real Estate Adjustments from PaulHatfield.ca on Vimeo.

Buying, renting and leasing are often complicated processes and buyers/sellers can be intimidated by legal requirements and the complicated form-filling that accompanies any property transaction. Why not create short videos (they can be one minute or less) clearly explaining some of the legal jargon that is part of the rental/lease/buying process in your jurisdiction.

I recently read that more new businesses were started in Ireland this year than in any previous year and I am sure this trend is reflected in many countries. The international downturn has meant more and more people have become entrepreneurs and are starting their own businesses. If you are running a commercial property business, these potential clients may be completely new to their commercial renting and leasing market. Videos explaining important information that these users need to know could be a valuable tool to small businesses and portray your real estate business as the “human face” of commercial property.

5. Market your real estate business.

Obviously to maintain a healthy real estate business, you need a combination of new and satisfied clients who are buyers and sellers. Often estate agents can get a bad rep, so reverse this preconception with a video showing your offices, your staff and maybe even some happy customers.

Catriona Barry is a Product Developer for trakAxPC, a multimedia editing application that enables both beginners and more experienced users to create professional videos – see trakax.com for more information.

How Well Do You Know Your Audience?

Alice Allan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:52:33 +0000

The SOBOX blog has tipped us off to a great resource on getting to know your audience: Social Media Examiner’s guide to online surveys.

“An online survey is a great way to establish exactly what your audience wants from you,” says SOBOX. “By creating a simple survey you can understand your clients and customers better and deliver information that is timely, relevant and enticing.”

For real estate agents, some simple survey questions to put to clients via Facebook, email newsletters or Twitter could be:

- What’s your biggest concern about buying a new property?

- What’s the top quality you’re looking for in a real estate agent?

- Sellers: What are some questions you have about the current market?

- What’s the best feature of your neighbourhood and why?

- Real estate terminology: Are there any words you’ve come across that you’d like explained in more detail?

- When you’re searching for a home online, where do you look first?

The responses to any of the above questions would make great material for a future blog post, and go a long way towards positioning you as the go-to agent for that particular topic. Better still, you’ll deepen your relationship with your audience, making them more likely to turn to you when it comes time to sell or buy.

For more on customer surveys, check out our in-depth guide here.

Value from Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Google Analytics Explained: Part 2

Alice Allan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:33:06 +0000

propertyadguru.com welcomes part two of this guest series from Petra Sprekos, general manager of Australian industry-owned real estate portal realestateview.com.au:

2. See what’s driving visitors to your site

Keeping track of what’s driving traffic to your website is a fundamental part of any online activity. This allows you to work out ways you can improve the flow of traffic to your website.

Within Google Analytics, the “traffic sources” tab provides three main traffic source categories to assist you in identifying where your traffic is coming from. These are:

Direct Traffic: This shows how many users are coming to your site directly through typing in your address, using bookmarks etc. Good for working out the percentage of people who are aware of your site.

Referring Sites: This shows which sites are driving traffic to your site as well as people visiting your site from emails.

Search: The search tab will show you how much traffic is being derived from the major search engines and also allows you to drill down and view traffic from organic search and paid search. Here you can find out what keywords are driving traffic to your site, work out which words are not driving traffic, and find out the percentage of brand vs generic terms driving traffic to your site.

3. Goals to track conversions

While online ‘conversions’ are rarely to do with dollar figures in online real estate, all sites can work out their goals and track them using analytics programs.

Having goals set up for your site is a key factor in keeping focus on what the objectives of your site are and tracking what is performing.

The primary goal of a property listing or agent website may be to get consumer enquiries or sales leads, but you may also like to know how many times users view properties and how many times brochures are printed for these properties, for example.

To set up goals in Google Analytics all you need to do is edit your analytics profile settings and select goals. Here you can add the URL for each goal you wish to track.

There are a large number of resources out there that will help you with Google Analytics, including:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/education.html
http://analytics.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/googleanalytics?hl=en
http://www.sitescanga.com/ (a useful tool to see if your analytics are set up correctly.)

Using some of these simple analytics techniques will enable you to drive even more value from your online presence and help your business grow.

Online Marketing Snapshot from eROI

Alice Allan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:47:12 +0000

A new study of over 500 online marketers by eROI reveals some interesting trends in mobile marketing and social media strategies.

The study, titled “The Current State of Social, Mobile & Email Integration,” started with US-based statistics that show 97 percent of households use email, 75 percent are on social networks, and 91 percent of the population use a mobile device of some kind.

Marketers Unaware of Mobile Use

With these stats in mind, eROI was surprised to find that approximately two-thirds of marketers are unaware of how their customers use mobile.

“77 percent of marketers are not offering, or are unaware of, mobile versions of their websites and/or landing pages,” the report explains.

“Of those that are offering mobile-optimised websites, we found that 68 percent are providing limited versions of their websites and 32 percent are offering their entire website in a web-optimised format.”

So if the majority of websites aren’t optimised for mobile, making yours mobile-friendly could be a big step towards standing out from the crowd. To get you started, we’ve put together these resources.

Missteps in Social Media Measurement

We’ve talked before about how important it is to measure the impact of your social media efforts. According to eROI’s survey, 65.5 percent of marketers are measuring changes in their Facebook fan or Twitter follower numbers, while 59.5 percent are measuring how social media is affecting website traffic.

Marketers are less interested in how many new leads or sales are generated via social media, which makes sense for a medium that’s usually more about relationships than dollar returns. But where a lot of marketers are dropping the ball is in not tracking when they are mentioned.

Only 39 percent of respondents said they were tracking mentions, which is a shame considering how easy and effective it can be. Along with the handy @ search on Twitter, you can use a web-wide listening post tool such as Google Alerts. This takes just a few minutes to set up, and delivers mentions from all over the web, straight to your inbox.

No related posts.

Google Analytics Explained: Part 1

Alice Allan — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:17:51 +0000

propertyadguru.com welcomes part one of this guest series from Petra Sprekos, general manager of Australian industry-owned real estate portal realestateview.com.au.

It’s common knowledge now that the primary tool for property research is the web. Property listing portals, property data sites, real estate blogs and other resources are all easily accessible to potential property magnates and industry types alike.

To get a slice of this pie, agents can no longer ignore the need for an online presence or establish a website to set and forget. There are many factors that go into creating a successful property website and what underpins this is website intelligence.

This series summarises some of the most important things to look at if your business is using the free Google Analytics tool (which we use at realestateview.com.au) to measure your site’s performance.

1. Keep track of your visitors

It’s important to not only look at how many visitors are coming to your site but also what they are doing when they get there. There are many metrics you can track via analytics, however some of the key ones are as follows:

Total Visits & Unique Visitors: Total visits let you know how many times your site is viewed, while unique visitors show how many individual people are actually viewing your site. When analysing this information it is important to look at the data over time to see if your site is increasing the number of visits/unique visitors on a monthly basis.

Bounce Rate, Pages per Visit and Time on Site: A ‘bounce’ is when a user hits your site then exits without viewing any other pages. A high bounce rate (greater than 30%) means you should probably look at changing some aspects of your site to engage users more. In addition to bounce rate it is important to focus on how long users are spending on your site and how many pages they are viewing.

A note of caution – if users are spending a lot of time on your site and looking at a high number of pages this is not always positive – users may find it difficult to find information, thus it is important to review your site in light of the data.

Top Content (see image below), Top Landing Page and Top Exit Pages: By using these reports you can see what the most popular pages are on your site, where users are entering your site and the pages that are making them leave. This will help you identify what works on your site and what doesn’t, and will allow you to make changes accordingly.

Top content report (sample from a different site):

Subscribe to propertyadguru.com to make sure you don’t miss part two of this series from realestateview.com.au.

Quick Tips for Powerful Polls

Alice Allan — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:58:22 +0000

We all know that content is king on a great real estate website, but that content doesn’t always have to come in the form of blog posts. Polls can be just as effective in engaging website visitors. Here are our tips for polls with punch:

1. Keep your question short. A single question that gets straight to the point is best when it comes to online polls – long, complex questions almost always mean fewer answers.

2. Take care with multiple choice. Some questions, such as the preference people have when it comes to social media, can be answered with five or six options. But other questions – “What do you expect from a real estate agent?”, for example – need more room, and should be reserved for platforms such as blog comments or email surveys.

3. Use polls to understand your audience. Polls can be a great way to find out when your readers think they might be ready to sell, where they’re planning to buy next, or what they’re most confused about when it comes to real estate. All this information can be useful when it comes to refining your online marketing strategy.

4. Highlight the results. As well as telling you more about your readers, polls also give you new content you can use to keep your website fresh. A quick blog post highlighting the results – particularly if it provides a snapshot of the market – will always draw people in.

[Image: psdgraphics.com]

Four Quick Tips for Social Media Success

Managing Social Updates in a Nutshell

Alice Allan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:40:53 +0000

We all know a presence on the social web is important, but how do you handle the seemingly endless stream of updates from your various profiles? That’s where a service like NutshellMail could come in very handy.

NutshellMail was first launched at the end of 2008, and has since gained a steady following along with plenty of rave reviews. It works by gathering updates from locations such as your Twitter feed, Facebook page, LinkedIn account, and non-primary email accounts, and presenting these as a newsletter to your primary inbox.

This might sound like a recipe for information overload, but you can customise these updates so they only cover the information you’re most interested in. This video gives an overview of how Nutshell Mail works:

NutshellMail: Simplify Your Online Social Life from David Lyman on Vimeo.

appstorm.net gives NutshellMail an overall score of seven out of 10, noting that it could be a great tool for business users of social networks. If you’ve given NutshellMail a try, let us know how well it works for you in our comments.

Can Social Media be Simplified?