RealBird's Blog on ActiveRain

Tracking "clicks" on printed flyers - Using bit.ly with RealBird on your brochures

2009-11-09T21:24:24Z

The great thing about blogging on ActiveRain is that the community many times helps us with real-world examples - case studies that we could hardly produce ourselves. The collective creativity of the RealBird members - on and off ActiveRain - is way bigger than what we could produce on our own. This was the case with Mike Conner's example of online marketing results with RealBird and this is the case with the next example.

The credit goes to John Slocum of RE/MAX Vancouver. John had a great idea and he actually implemented it with his listing flyer. With his permission I share it here in a form of a tutorial and as an introduction to the power of web analytics segmentation.

Enhance your printed flyer: track views with bit.ly and RealBird

Here is the concept:

Printed listing flyers are passive by nature. You design them, you print them and you distribute them at your property's location. Once you leave the scene, you have no idea where they go. Kids, neighbors or random people take them and eventually many of them discard the flyers. A lot of waste. Hopefully, many interested homebuyers get them too, but there is no way to tell. As opposed to online marketing - where you can track visitors and conversions (the money spent vs. a meaningful action taken) - with offline marketing it is hard if not impossible to measure your marketing activity. Unless of course you utilize the simple technique suggested by John Slocum

What if you could add a special link to your printed flyer with your call-for-action, one that is short and easy to type in, even on a mobile devices? A special link with web analytics capability that can be accessed from any web capable device. If this link is only shared on the printed flyer, you end up having a web analytics segmentation, a technique that can track consumer actions via your printed flyer.

Real-world example:

For this example, we'll use John's listing at 2770 E McLoughlin Blvd, Vancouver, WA 98661

John created a listing website on RealBird and then set up a bit.ly Url for it. I won't link his bit.ly Url here because we do not want mix up web traffic with the traffic through the printed flyer. When designing the flyer, John added a special call-for-action message with the link at the bottom of the flyer as you can see below (the arrow annotation is by us).

You can download the PDF flyer here to see it in full size.

The bottom of the flyer links to http://bit.ly/MyCondo2770 Via bit.ly's analytics capability, John will be able to track traffic through this dedicated link by visiting http://bit.ly/MyCondo2770+ (Note the plus sign at the end of the link). It's a simple, but very powerful solution.

You can do this for your own print flyers by following the simple steps below:

Create a bit.ly Url shorting account
Login to RealBird to access your existing listing websites or create an account to create one
Copy your RealBird property website Url to your clipboard
Shorten it with bit.ly - paste the RealBird Url into bit.ly and click "Shorten"
Optionally, using the "Custom Name" field on bit.ly, you can enter your property address to have a vanity short Url. I suggest to add only the number and the street name to keep the Url short. You can of course leave the default bit.ly code as is, but having the street address in the short Url may help with additional branding. E.g. http://bit.ly/streetaddress - Careful here, the Url will be case sensitive. I suggest to use all lower case letters as they will be less likely to mistyped by your clients.
Finally, make sure that you only use this special bit.ly link on your printed flyer, not on the web. Do not share it on any other places, in order to be able to track the traffic from the flyer.

Give it a try, it does not take much extra effort and you will get some special insight using these technologies, a benefit that is not available otherwise.

Thanks John for the great tip.

While you are at it, please fan John Slocum's Facebook page about Vancouver, WA real estate

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

"Yet Another Reminder of why I LOVE RealBird.com" - an online marketing case study by Mike Conner

2009-11-06T21:23:08Z

An excellent case study by Mike Conner about how different Internet and social media marketing techniques can amplify your reach and take your listing beyond the MLS. His RealBird property website for the single family home for sale at 11 SE Rosewood Ct. Shelton, WA 98584 had over 200 hits in the first few days.

Thank you Mike for sharing it with us !!!

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Via Mike Conner, City Realty Inc. Olympia, WA (City Realty Inc.):

A few months ago I was fortunate enough to stumble onto a company called RealBird. As a real estate agent trying to embrace the vast new world of online marketing I was admittedly lost, not knowing where to begin. What RealBird did for me was provide a one-stop place for me to get my listings seen all over the web. I used the tools they provided, added a few ideas of my own, and took off running. The results were fairly immediate with new leads coming in from places I had never even imagined posting listing information. Since that time I have used those same tools to easily obtain new listings I was competing for as well as build an almost overnight huge web presence. I won't go into all the details and features of their system here (but please go check out their website and AR blog!!!) because what I really want to share with you is a real life example of the power their product provides....

This past week I went out on a listing appointment. I didn't know going in if I would be competing for the listing or if it was a slam dunk, so I came prepared. After about 30 minutes of touring the home and conversation I knew the listing was mine. I had barely explained the online marketing I was doing and how their home would have its own personalized website and next thing I knew we were signing listing paperwork.

What happened next is where the magic kicked in....

We weren't going to be officially listing it in the MLS for a few days so I asked their permission to go ahead with some online marketing to create some excitement about the home in hopes of producing a quick sale. I submitted the listing info and created a listing page on RealBird for the home. I followed my usual routine of posting the listing to craigslist, Facebook, my blog, etc. as well as all the sites RealBird automatically syndicates to.

The results were astounding! I had over 200 hits to the listing website within the first few days. Phone calls and emails began rolling in within hours. What topped it all off though, was when I got a phone call from a fellow local agent. This agent explained to me that her clients had found my listing online and were very excited but the agent couldn't seem to find it in the MLS. The implications of this hit me hard....in terms of reaching consumers online, the MLS is no longer the only game in town! Obviously the value of the MLS is still great, due to the data shared amongst brokers. However, the old model for real estate agents of simply having a website with an MLS search function may not be enough in the near future.

The need to spread your online presence to multiple outlets and link it all together is growing rapidly, and RealBird provides that service in a very user-friendly interface. Do yourself a favor and check them out if you haven't already. You can sign up for free on a trial basis and market up to 3 of your listings. Experience the results for yourself!

Search Olympia Area Homes Join me on Facebook!

Featured Listings

iPod Touch Sweepstakes - The Final Push

2009-11-03T13:11:42Z

We started a sweepstakes a few month ago using our RealBird Facebook Page as the platform, and an iPod Touch as the prize. The rules are simple: to participate, just fan our Facebook Page and we'll randomly select one of our Fans as the winner, once we reach 500 total fans. No purchase of any kind is required. You can also help by inviting your real estate friends to fan the RealBird FB Page too. Your chance of winning will not change. Due to rules of the sweepstakes, it always stays 1 in 500, but with your invites, we may get there faster.

We are now in the final stage, with the current fan count at 411. There are only 89 more fans needed. You can participate by fanning our Page on the right sidebar of this blog or visit the RealBird Facebook Page and participate there. There is also a handy invitation tool built into the Facebook platform. Once you are a Fan, you can use the "Suggest to Friends" link on the left side, as shown below. Again, your chance of winning remain the same:

Thanks and good luck with the drawing.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Never miss a client inquiry again - The RealBird Message Archive has an RSS feed now - Productivity update #3

2009-10-30T19:59:17Z

One of the issues we have been working on regarding RealBird's lead capturing functionality was making sure that prospective clients' inquiries actually reach you. Email inquiries and showing requests were sometimes lost in space. Either because of spam filter settings or simply because sometimes emails go unnoticed due to information overload.

In May, 2009 we introduced the Message Archive for RealBird members and started to store all of your prospects' and clients' inquires and even consumer-to-consumer forwards for the RealBird Listing Publisher and the RealBird Property Search services. However, that facility still required RealBird members to log in every now and then in order to see if there are new messages that need attention. While this feature was a big step, in practice, it was still not the perfect solution. One forgets to check the Message Archive or due to the log in requirements just delays it. And we all know that a week old lead is as almost as good as no lead at all.

We needed to do better than that. All the powerful features of RealBird is useless if the leads are missed or go cold for the reasons described above. With this new release, we believe we sold the problem. The RealBird Message Archive now has a handy RSS feed that you can subscribe to with your favorite feed reader. You can add it to your browser toolbar, to your iGoogle browser homepage, Google Reader and even access it from your mobile devices, you name it. Most phones - Blackberry, iPhone etc. - has some sort of RSS reader application so that you can be notified when a new inquiry is submitted through RealBird. There are even services that you can use to receive text messages when this RSS feed is updated.

You can get your own RSS feed in the RealBird Member area under the Message Archive section. See the screenshot below:

Previous "Productivity Update" posts are:

Enjoy !

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Slideshow ads of your RealBird listings on Backpage.com - and on local online newspaper sites

2009-10-22T16:13:11Z

John Slocum was kind to let us know a few weeks ago that he could successfully post his RealBird property ads on Backpage using the new, high-impact RealBird embed code. Not only BackPage takes the RealBird slideshow code with all its glory, but it also produces very nice search engine ranking for your listings.

Most of you know the value of posting your RealBird single property websites to Craigslist, but I thought it is good to emphasize the importance of posting to Backpage.com as well. With our new RealBird Quick Share tool, it now takes only a minute or so per listings to do so. One of the great features of BackPage is that they then distribute your ads to local newspapers.

The combination of the new high-impact RealBird embed code, Backpage search engine ranking, their distribution to local online newspapers and the new RealBird Quick Share tool looks like a winning combo. It's quick and powerful way of sharing your listing info to even more places.

I am researching the exact list of newspapers that BackPage distributes advertisements to, but the post on Galttech.com says, that BackPage supported newspapers are huge in Dallas, Pittsburgh, LA, Kansas City, Houston, St Louis, and Miami. I'll contact them for a full list and let you know what I found out.

See a few ReaBird ads on Backpage below - active ads at the time of posting this article:

Vancouver, WA condo for sale - RealBird ad distribute by Backpage to Willamette Weakly - courtesy of John Slocum

Clevelend, OH 4br home for sale - Direct BackPage ad - courtesy of Al Stasek

Olympia, WA Multi-family for sale - RealBird ad distributed to Seattle Weekly - Courtesy of Mike Conner

Myrtle Beach single family home for sale - Direct Backpage ad - courtesy of Buyer's Choice Realty

To get started, just enter your listings in RealBird as usual and from the listing management page or via the Quick Share page, post it to Backpage.com with a few clicks. Simple, fast, great-looking and powerful distribution.

Enjoy !

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

5 insiprational blogs about webdesign - Linkroll #5

2009-10-20T20:15:02Z

Another week, another linkroll. This time it is a list of 5 blogs I am reading on a regular basis for design ideas, trends and insipration. These blogs focus mostly on graphic design, web design and usability/user experience.

And if you want more, get the big list at AllTop's webdesign section or see our previous Linkrolls here

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Quick sharing to Craigslist, Backpage and social media - Productivity update #2

2009-10-19T21:28:32Z

As promised, we continue to roll out productivity upgrades to the RealBird Listing Publisher. Here is the second feature which should reduce the time it requires to perform important repetitive tasks such as reposting your RealBird property websites to Craigslist and to social media. The more clicks we save for, the more likely you will actually use the features. So our theory goes ...

Last week, we made a downloadable PDF file available that should help you keep track of repetitive tasks with a simple checklist. The #2 productivity feature we have just released is a Quick Share page that shows your top 100 most recently added or editied RealBird listings on one page with one-click access to the most important sharing codes. Until now, when you wanted to re-post your listings to classified sites that do not allow automatic syndication, you had to log into RealBird, navigate to your listing management page and share the listings from there. The new Quick Share page does NOT require login (there is no private information on the page) hence you can bookmark it with your browser and jump back directly to the sharing page with only one click.

How to use this new RealBird feature:

Log into RealBird
Go to your listing management page
There is a new link called "Quick Share" above your listings - highlighted above on the screen shot.
When you arrive to the Quick Share page, bookmark it with your browser

On subsequent visits, go directly to your bookmarked Quck Share page, no need to go through the first 3 steps again. You will be able to re-post your listings to Craigslist and other destinations with only a few clicks. The page is also optimized to load fast (showing only minimum information) and does not require paging through sets of listings.

See our previous Productivity upgrade posts:

Listing marketing checklist - Let's go low-tech, shall we? - Productivity #1

More upgrades are coming soon...

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

6 Google Wave invites available for the first 6 people to hit the comment button - ActiveRain Exclusive

2009-10-16T20:16:20Z

ActiveRain Exclusive - this invite won't be shared on other platforms.

I finally received the Google Wave access and I have 6 invites remaining.

The first 6 commenters will be invited. For free of course.

Just say: "I Love RealBird" in the comment - is that too much to ask ? :)

And do not be mad at us and at the 6 fast-handed cowboys and cowgirls who might have got in at the top 6 positions. Once they are in (in the Wave that is) they might just invite you, if you ask.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Listing marketing checklist - Let's go low-tech, shall we?

2009-10-16T01:51:34Z

Well, let's not. At least not completely.

Please find below a downloadable, printable PDF listing marketing action item sheet: a basic, but powerful checklist and progress tracker for your RealBird listing marketing activity. It's low-tech, because it is designed to be printed and to be pinned on your office wall or filed in your listing folder. It's also low-tech, because you can mark the completed action items with your favorite red marker, no need to use your wireless bluetooth, fingerprint scanning, music playing mighty mouse. But than it's cutting-edge again because it encourages you to take advantage of RealBird's online marketing toolset and hopefully helps you in utilizing it at its best.

We all probably agree on how much peak traffic Craigslist can bring to a property ad shortly after posting it there. But it only happens during the intial hours or during the first day. Your ad will then be pushed lower and lower on the list and less and less traffic will be directed to you and eventually your ad will be purged by Craigslist. Most of us know the value of reposting to Craigslist every now and then, but most of us also skip these tasks for a simple reason: It is just too much of an effort to keep track of all these small repetitive tasks.

The most time consuming part of these repetitive tasks is to actually remember what to do next, rather than actually doing it. That's why most people drop repetative tasks no matter how much value they associate with it. We all do. Whether it is blogging or other online activities, some tasks are skipped eventually, because of the lack of prepared and simple action item plan.

So here we go: Download the RealBird Listing Marketing Checklist as a PDF file (235 KB). Print one for each of your listing and track the progress for two month for each listing. We designed the form to focus only on the most important repetitive tasks in order to keep it as simple as possible. Try it and see for yourself how much a simple low-tech form like this can help.

Download and print the PDF file (235KB)

Download and print the PDF file for each listing (235KB)

Stay tuned for more RealBird productivity features to be released soon ...

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Those of you who are using Internet Explorer 4.0 please raise your hand

2009-10-14T01:21:36Z

We noticed a few Internet Explorer 4.0 users on the www.realbird.com domain and also on the RealBird single property websites. According to Wikipedia IE 4 was released 12 years ago in '97 superseeded by IE 5 in 1999. I wonder who on Earth still uses IE 4?

Good news: As you can see it in the trends below, in most browser categories, usage of the latest versions grew significantly.

The only category where I would like to see some changes is the upgrade from IE 7 to IE 8 (and forgetting about IE 6 altogether). Firefox 3 and 3.5 are both solid (though 3.5 is much faster) but IE 8 is a big improvement over IE 7. IE 6 is just simply terrible.

Browser stats on RealBird.com - Courtesy of Clicky

Here are the links to the latest browser downloads, just in case you - dear reader - still use IE 4 :)

Upgrading to the latest browser will benefit you (latest versions are much faster) and benefit us, developers, because we do not have to spend time on developing and testing for old versions and therefore we can roll out new features and products faster. It's a win-win.

So what's your browser preference?

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

4 free online photo editors - Linkroll #4

2009-10-11T18:41:00Z

Before the week is over, here is a quick linkroll of some free, online image editors. I use some of them regularly and while none of them can replace Photoshop - the mother of all desktop photo editors from Adobe - they are sometimes better suited for quick jobs like cropping, photo touchups, simple effects, mark up and sharing etc. This is just a quick link roll post, no reviews or tutorials, only a quick share. Try a few or try them all and decide which one you like.

Picnik - One of the first online image editor tools I started to use on a regular basis. E.g. for cropping images, it is pretty much the most simple to use one. Just upload the photo (even without login), crop and save it back to the PC. Done.

Aviary Phoenix - I really like this company. They have many distinct online tools for all different kind of manipulations of different media. They just rolled out multi-track audio editor tool called Myna which is simply amazing. Another very useful tool is their Firefox screen capture plugin, which makes taking a screenshot of a web page extra easy including capturing the full page, not just the visible area. It is a toolbar button so you don't even have to start another program. Once captured, the screenshot can be saved to the local disk or edited with Phoenix instantly.

FotoFlexer - Another good one with many options, including direct editing of your photos hosted on Flickr, PhotoBucket, Facebook etc.

Photoshop.com - This one is from Adobe - the maker of the #1 Photoshop software. Many options. Worth checking out.

Enjoy.

And of course, for your online real estate marketing and listing syndication needs, use our RealBird Listing Publisher service

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Using A Dynamic Photo Wall To Highlight Your Listings and Get Google Juice!

2009-10-11T16:56:22Z

We just love it when Katerina Gasset (@CoachKaterina) writes a great tutorial with live examples about one of the RealBird features. See below her post and make sure you check out one of her upcoming SEO seminars too.

Thank you Katerina !

-- Zoltan

Via Nestor & Katerina Gasset Realtors® Wellington Florida Luxury Homes (International Properties and Investments, Inc.):

Using a dynamic photo wall to highlight your listings and get google juice- doesn't get much better than that!

Realbird just came out with this feature of the photo wall for your Realbird account and that you post on your blogs, websites and even add to your Realbird single property sites for each of your listings. You can also add this photo wall to your Facebook Business pages! You can check out how it looks on a Facebook Fan Page/Homes For Sale tab here.

It is a really cool feature. Feel free to play around with the feature below. The more listings you have, the cooler it looks. We carry a lot of listings so it does look really neat. You can click on the sides of the wall and it floats almost like a 3D effect. You can scroll the entire wall and when you put your mouse on a photo- it tells you the address of the listing. If you click again on the address you will get a brief description of the property. There is a 'click for more information' link also and that will take you to the actual single property site for that particular listing.

Set up your free Realbird account by clicking here. Put the power of Active Rain and Realbird together.

FTC Disclosure: I am an affiliate member of Realbird. I may gain monetary and other benefits from endorsing Realbird. I am an Active Rain Ambassador- I may gain monetary and other benefits from promoting Active Rain. I also may gain referrals from agents that may turn into business, for heaven's sakes! There, do you think that is enough disclosures- have I dumbed it down enough to satisfy the obvious? LOL! Hmmm, wonder what the new rules for size and font will be?

Enjoy the new Photo Wall From Realbird:

Map these properties Powered by RealBird.com

Using A Dynamic Photo Wall To Highlight Your Listings and Get Google Juice! by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

By TwitterButton

Google Wave will change the way real estate transactions are conducted online

2009-10-03T17:52:13Z

First, please watch this YouTube video by Epipheo Studio explaining why Google Wave will revolutionize email communication. Then see how it will change online real estate transactions and sales cycles for the better, by making it integrated, manageable and streamlined.

Most of what I write below is based on my expectation of the exact features of Google Wave without actually having access to it and to the API sandbox (Google - please send us an invite already, will you?)

As you can see from the video above, Google Wave improves email communication by solving the mess, that the back-and-forth, multi-participant email communication creates. Any process (business or other) that has a relatively long timespan and involves many participants are a pain to conduct via email. That applies to the management of a web design project as described in the video above, planning a wedding or a corporate event, and true for real estate transactions as well. Since real estate transactions and the real estate business cycles are 1) lengthy by nature and 2) they involve many stakeholders besides you and your client (inspectors, assistants, insurance folks, lawyers, interior designers, vendors etc.), it is very well suited for improvements by the Google Wave platform.

What is Google Wave?

At its basic level it is:

A communication platform, that combines different features and benefits of

email
threaded discussions
media-independent sharing (any digital object - text, video, PDF etc. can be attached to the Wave)
real-time chats
open, standard extendability

If we dig deeper into its capabilities, it will clearly show that the sum of all these things is bigger than what the individual features by themselves can deliver:

The real estate business cycle consists of 4 major components:

Self marketing and prospecting
Servicing active clients
Listing marketing (etc) for sellers and home finding (search, showing etc.) for buyers
The closing process
Customer retention (CRM, farming, newsletters, market updates etc.)

Even though, during the last decade or two, most of these processes became computer aided and many of them went online, integration of individual business processes are still cumbersome if at all doable.

Google Wave has the potential to change this. You will be able to set up a Wave, invite all participants to communicate in one communication channel, attach all information to one thread and you and your clients will be able to track progress, communicate decision points all within one environment.

Let's talk about Extendability:

I believe, that Google Wave will become an overnight success for many reasons, but the emphasize on extendability can not be stressed enough. Theoretically, you could imagine that one software vendor could create a service for you that supports the whole real estate business cycle via their proprietary system, but in practice a system like this can be prohibitively expensive and always lacking and slow to adopt to new requirements. Alternatively, you could ask the many vendors supporting your individual business processes to pick up the phone and start talking to each other and integrate their systems (IDX and eDoc and marketing tools and lead management and CRM etc.) but quite frankly, the chance of this happening is close to zero. The cost and risk is too high for the vendors and their interests overlap and collide. This is where Google Wave extendability comes to the picture. Wave is designed from the ground up to be a platform that provides the infrastructure for 3rd party vendors to add their own custom functionality to it. It is a centralized standard that vendors will adapt and you will be able to replace an under performing vendor by simply signing up with a competing one WITHOUT jeopardizing your overall service.

Via the Google Wave's robots and gadgets specification, software vendors like us at RealBird and Zillow, Cyberhomes, Altos Research, Trulia and many others will be able to create extensions that interact with your Waves and enhance them with added functionality and information.

The easiest way to imagine how a Google Wave application will look like is to take all the scenarios where you or your visitors or your clients initiate an email conversation. Replace the email communication with Wave and imagine how much better the whole process will be when other stakeholders and 3rd party information can be attached to the conversation thread.

For example, take a RealBird single property website. Some prospective buyer finds it through syndication or search engine marketing and is interested enough to share it with his or her spouse. Currently they send an email using the built-in email tool. We will provide an option for them to not only send an email but create a Google Wave - which eventually invites the spouse to join the conversation via email. They start their discussion about the property within the Wave. Let's say they decide that they want to see this property, Currently, they would send you another email, a step which starts breaking down the communication process to unconnected channels. With Google Wave, they will invite you to join the existing Wave as a participant. With the built-in permission system, they will be able to add you to the conversation without disclosing what they talked about before. Once you joined the Wave, you will be able to add calender events and todos to the conversation (maybe using a 3rd party Wave extension gadget) and attach more information such a disclosures, floorplans and any other info that you think will enhance the process. Let's say, your prospective buyers like the property and for the sake of argument, let's say they have their own buyer's agent already. At this point - or maybe earlier - they invite her to join the Wave. Again, with appropriate permission control. Eventually, they make up their mind and make an offer. Let's say the offer is accepted. From this point the Wave will turn from a prospecting channel into managing the closing process. You will be able to add new 3rd party "robots", maybe one from DocuSign or other eDoc providers, and you will invite title and escrow people etc. You get the point: the Wave - with it's core platform and with its 3rd party applications - will help you cross the current boundaries and disintegration points of the business process, melting them into one, easy to manage integrated environment.

This is just an example process, simplified for the sake of the example, but I think it's good enough to show the power of Google Wave to manage business processes. This particular one shows an example from the buyer's perspective, how they can add stakeholders to the process, but you can take other processes and apply the same exercise with you being the "chairman" of the thread. Or imagine a Wave for a home search, with RealBird Property Search "robots" participating and posting matching listings into the Wave. Or conducting office collaborations. Or open house marketing. Only the imagination is the limit.

Google, if you are reading this post, please send us an invite already, we can't wait to start developing Wave robots and integration points for RealBird. Will you? Thanks.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

The global reach of RealBird

2009-09-30T17:29:38Z

I reviewed some of our Clicky web analytics reports this morning and I thought that I share some info with our readers through the heat map below.

The map shows the referring countries where visitors came from, in the last 356 days. It is an aggregated analytics report: collecting information on all of the RealBird single property websites and widgets.

Darker colors mean higher traffic count. I was pleasantly surprised that there are only a handful number of countries and territories (yellow color) with no referral traffic. It clearly shows the global reach of RealBird through syndication, SEO and property widgets. The few countries with no referral traffic include: Cuba, French Guiana, Falkland Islands, Greenland, Serbia, Turkmenistan, Botswana, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Swaziland, Botswana, Congo, Gabon, Central African Republic, Chad, Niger and Eritrea. Well, we'll have to work on that, in order to make RealBird truly reach the whole World, but nevertheless there are only 21 out of 203 countries, that have no referral traffic. In other words, RealBird reached almost 90% of the world in the lat year :)

What is your most surprising country referral source leading to your own blog or website?

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

New ActiveRain and Localism embed code is available for your RealBird listings - SEO benefits

2009-09-25T16:21:49Z

We extended the available options for embedding your listings that are published via RealBird. The new ActiveRain, Localism and blog post widget is an HTML embed code and designed for maximizing the SEO benefits of reposting your RealBird listings to your blogs. As opposed to the other RealBird listing widgets, this new version generates an embeddable flyer as a HTML code, that you can copy and paste into your blog post and it has many deep links to your RealBird single property website, to your social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, MyBlogLog, AR) to your regular website, to your other homes for sale and even to your RealBird Property Search application.

How to use this new feature:

Publish your listing on RealBird as usual
On the listing management page, there is a new link under the Share section: "Embed it in ActiveRain & blog posts"
Click that that link to open the widget configuration page
You can set the width for the listing flyer: There are two pre-defined width options. One for posting to ActiveRain and Localism together and one for posting only to ActiveRain. They have different width requirement so select the preset option that fits your needs. You can also define custom width between 450 to 800 pixels if you plan to post it on other blog platforms or website with different design theme.
You can also decide whether to show the contact information section and whether to center the widget in the post or align it to the left. Check and uncheck the appropriate checkbox.
Finally, click "Generate code" and copy the generated code (you can preview it on the same configuration page also)

As you can see, it takes less than a minute to generate the code for your existing or new listings on RealBird. Make sure that when you paste the code into ActiveRain or your blog, you switch to the HTML mode of the code editor.

This is currently part of the free service so go ahead, get your code and post it away.

Below are a few examples embedded in our post (with the listing agent/broker's permission)

Elegant & Gracious Home in Springwood Estates, Hopkinton

Overview
Maps
Photos
Features
Description
Video
Neighborhood

$949,900

Single Family Home
For Sale

Main Features

4 Bedrooms
2 Bathrooms
2 Partial Bathrooms
Interior: 5413 sqft
Lot: 45,870 sqft

Location

14 Smith Road
Hopkinton, MA 01748

Kathleen Buckley

(508) 259-9411
kathleen@kathleenbuckley.com
http://www.StarRealtyHopkinton.com

Listed by: Star Realty Hopkinton

Our recent listings

Elegant & Gracious Home in Springwood Estates, Hopkinton
Ideal Home for Casual Entertaining
Fantastic Retreat in the Woods of Hopkinton

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Cobblestone Short Sale

Overview
Maps
Photos
Features
Description
Neighborhood

$329,000

Single Family Home
For Sale

Main Features

3 Bedrooms
3 Bathrooms
Interior: 2629 sqft
Lot: 0.50 acre(s)

Location

979 SW Squire Johns Lane
Palm City, FL 34990

Eric Slifkin

Keller Williams Realty
(888) 288-1765
eric@treasurecoasthomesales.com
http://www.treasurecoasthomesales.com

Listed by: Keller Williams Realty

Our recent listings

Palm City Home For Sale in Cobblestone
Cobblestone Short Sale
Town Park at Tradition in Port St. Lucie
Vista Pines 55+ Condo
Port Saint Lucie Short Sale

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RealBird Webinar - Social Networking Secrets With Gabe Gross and Coach Katerina Gasset

2009-09-15T13:13:06Z

Join RealBird's Gabe Gross and Coach Katerina Gasset for another fun and information packed, free webinar: Thursday October 8, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. EDT

The cheese has moved!

It used to be, just a few years ago, that having a nice real estate website was all you needed to start generating leads from the Internet. Today that is no longer the case. Your customers may be searching for a listing with Google Search, or go to one of the classified portals like Craigslist, Zillow, Trulia, etc. or, “hang out” and learn about home buying or selling on their favorite social networking sites: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, ActiveRain etc. To maintain a steady stream of leads you will need to “fish” in all these places for clients and connect with them before your competition does.

In this free webinar webcoach Katerina Gasset (http://www.coachkaterinaseo.com and http://activerain.com/wellingtonhomes) and Gabe Gross of RealBird will show you how to go about using social networking to generate new business.

To sign up please fill out the form here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEtuZm9nVjJ0bWJhVTZFTGpKbDZ4eVE6MA..

You will then receive a GotoWebinar invite with instructions how to join the day before the webinar.

Thanks and we look forward to seeing you at the webinar.

iPod contest rules changed - better for you, "worse" for us. But we like it anyways

2009-09-05T15:17:32Z

As many of our regular readers know, we started another iPod Touch sweepstakes on Aug 14. The original rule was that we draw an iPod Touch among our RealBird Facebook Page fans, once the number of fans reach 1,000. Ambitious it was, slow it became. While we have more and more fans every day, based on the current trend it would take a long time before a lucky winner can walk away with the iPod. So we decided to change the rules.

We are going to select the winner, as soon as we reach 500 fans. Currently, we are at 232, so this goal can be reached much faster. This is good for you - our favorite fan - as you do not have to wait that long and your chances of winning just doubled. It is also good for us. Even though our "fan acquisition cost" - excuse us for this term - just doubled, the main reason for this sweepstakes is to experiment with our Facebook Page and to test social media campaigns, hence keeping the campaign dynamic and the interest level high is valuable for us. In order to have a meaningful result of this experiment, we also want to know the "true cost" of a marketing campaign based on this new media.

Those of you who already are fans of us on Facebook, you are all in, the campaign is on. For those of you who just join in now, there is only one simple step to take. Visit our Facebook Page and click the "Become a Fan" button, that's all. Two seconds of work, no purchase necessary and 1 in 500 chance of winning a brand new iPhone Touch (8GB)

As I said before, helping us share this message is really, really cool, because it shortens the time required to reach the goal and the drawing, while your chance of winning remains exactly the same, 1 in 500, even if all your readers and colleagues join. You can easily reblog this post or retweet and share it with the tools at the bottom of the post.

And that leads to the analyses of this campaign - as promised:

There are 3 main online advertising categories in general:

CPM - Cost per Impression - you pay for every impressions. Typically banner ads (display ads) fall in this category
CPC - Cost per Click - you pay when somebody clicks on your ad and arrive to your site or whatever you designated as a destination. Google AdWords is the most well-known implementation of this.
CPP or CPA - Cost per Performance or Cost per Action - you pay when somebody takes some sort of actions after clicking on your ad, such as registering with your service, filling in a survey form, purchasing a product on your site etc.

All 3 types are widely used and benefit advertisers in different ways. One of the challenges with these regular advertising methods is that their effectiveness only show after some time, while you are spending money on them from day one. It's true, that with advanced ad networks (like Google AdWords), you can minimize your risk by following conversion rates closely and run trial and fail campaigns and adjust them according to the results, but nevertheless, it requires a lot of follow-up, analysis, tracking and expertise to achieve the best results.

The social media campaign we are experimenting with differs in many ways.

Technically, it falls into the CPA category because we will only have cost (purchasing the iPod) when a certain action is taken by the audience (becoming a fan of our Facebook Page). The main difference is that we do not have any cost until the overall goal is reached, i.e. 500 of you fan our Facebook Page. And that is a huge difference. It is a true, zero-risk trial and fail campaign. If we never meet our goal, cost will never occur.

There are also many benefits for us as an "advertiser" using this approach:

The action required to participate is a high value participation: We gain Facebook Fans - a more engaged audience than the one we could reach by any other means
The Facebook platform also syndicates the actions taken by our Fans (fanning, posting on our wall, commenting on our FaceBook page) so there is a built-in viral marketing utility
During the campaign - since fans have to remain fans until we reach the goal - we have an ongoing communication channel to the audience, so subsequent messages can be delivered in a bi-directional, personal and engaging ways
While some Fans will disappear after the contest is over, we hope that most of them will remain and hence we successfully build a community around our services and brand.
It is the vested interest of our contest participants to share the sweepstakes. The sooner it reaches the goal, the sooner the winner is selected. And there is no downside bacause the chance of winning is pre-set and remains the same, i.e. 1 in 500. In other words, this type of campaign is capable of mobilizing the very participants in order to jump-start viral marketing.

Now let's see the numbers:

The 8GB iPod Touch costs us $229+tax+shipping. Let's say $250 for the sake of this calculation. So our campaign cost is $250 (excluding soft costs, like time spent on executing it, human resources etc.) Our goal is 500 fans, that makes the CPA cost - fan acquisition cost - $0.50

Prior to starting this campaign, we checked how much it would cost us to promote our Facebook Page to REALTORS(R) on Facebook. Facebook's own ad network calculated us the following campaign cost. If we choose CPM ads - paying by the impression of our ad - it would cost us $0.32 (CPM) cents per thousands impression or $0.74 per click-through if we selected CPC advertising.

While the CPM cost looks smaller, than our CPA cost, keep in mind that the click-through rate will be small and out of those who clicked-through, those who actually become our fan will be even smaller. If you add all the other benefits of our campaign - fans remain fan while the contest is running, no ongoing cost, but only at the time when the goal is reached - it becomes clear that the cost of our sweepstakes based campaign is much smaller than any of the advertising methods Facebook is suggesting. Comparing to Facebook's $0.74 CPC rate is even easier. It is more expensive for a click, than ours is for an actual action. If you consider that let's say 50% of the click-through traffic will fan us, than you are actually comparing effective CPA cost of $1.48 to our $0.50. With all the additional risks associated with CPC ads (ongoing cost, guesstimate of the 50% conversion rate) it is a no-brainer to see the cost benefit of our sweepstakes-based campaign.

So how can you apply this advertising method to gain Fans for your own Real Estate Facebook Page?

If you are serious about building a community on your real estate Facebook Page, you can start a similar sweepstakes-based campaign yourself. We can not advise on the legality of a sweepstakes in your area, so once you have the concept figured our, consult with an attorney on your own, but below are a few tips on how to make it as effective as possible.

Pick a reasonable goal: How many fans do you want to gain? Be reasonable. We reduced our goal to 500 to keep the contest interesting and realistic. It is important to make a goal, which is high value for you, but not unrealistic for your audience.
Select a good prize: This is exciting and important. You want to pick one which has high appeal, fits into your overall profile, business and message and ideally has incremental value for you.
1. For example, if you will give away an iPod Touch you can also engrave it with your name and website, online, while checking out in the Apple Store. So besides the core goal of the campaign (gaining Fans) you also gain incremental benefit, the lucky winner will be always reminded of you and where the gift came from.
2. Another good prize for real estate campaigns could be to team up with a local retailer or restaurant. You could give away a fine dinner for two sponsored by your partner restaurant. This could be a win-win for everybody. You gain followers on your real estate Facebook Page and the prize does not cost you a penny, the restaurant, retailer gains a very low cost advertising (compare the $60+- the dinner will cost them to how much it would cost them to place an ad in a local newspaper) and your winner gets a great prize. It's up to you whether you pay for the prize or you make the partner pay for it, but I believe that there are many verticals (restaurant, retailers etc.) who would find this a very cost effective social media marketing tool for themselves as well and would be glad to pick up the bill for you.
Share, share, share: Just like with our campaign, it is very important to share the contest as much as you can. Tweet about once a week, write follow up blogs, ask your partners to write about it as well and most importantly, ask your readers and Fans to share it as well. They don't "harm" their luck, and by sharing it incrementally, everybody gains.
Analyze, adjust and repeat: It is important to track your campaign during the process and adjust your goals as needed. Once it is concluded, do the simple math, calculate and try to quantify the results. Make sure that you announce the winner, and if the overall result is good (net positive), start a new campaign ASAP. For example, once we reached our goal of 500 fans, and upon our final analysis, we will start a new one with the goal of 100 fans. We will also try to find a partner who will provide the prize themselves in order to experiment with that approach as well.

I hope you found this post useful and if you decide to start your own social media campaign on Facebook, we would love to hear about it.

If you are not yet a Fan of our RealBird Facebook Page, please click here and become a fan. You will be instantly entered in our iPod Touch sweepstakes and will have a 1 in 500 chance of winning the prize.

Finally, please share, share, share this post. Below are some handy links to share it on Twitter, Facebook and many other networks and of course, you can always reblog this post here in ActiveRain. Remember, no matter how much you share the contest, it will not reduce your chance of winning.

Thanks

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Add social sharing to your post with the new Activerain signature feature

2009-08-21T22:06:57Z

Ever since we started using ActiveRain, I have been waiting for this feature to be available and finally, there is now an easy way to add social bookmarking and sharing to your ActiveRain blog. Even better, once you set this up, it is applies to all of your previous post at once and all future articles. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see it in action.

Before I get into the steps to accomplish this for your own blog, let me emphasize that implementing this is a huge opportunity and there is no downside whatsoever, so do not just bookmark this post and come back later, but do it now, while reading this post :) It is a one-time setup option and only takes a few minutes to complete. Once done, your readers (and you) can easily tweet your post, share it on Facebook, email it to their friends and in general, generate more traffic with minimum effort on your side.

What you need:

An ActiveRain blog - obviously
A free AddThis.com account

Step 1 - Getting your AddThis social bookmark code

I suggest to create a free AddThis account so that you can track sharing statistics later, but you should be able to do this without even registering with them. It takes only a few seconds to set up your AddThis account and the stats they provide for registered members are very valuable. Once you have the account, click "Get Your Button" on the top and select the preferred button style. I selected the one highlighted with the arrow on the screenshot. I like that the most because it shows the Facebook and Twitter icons inline while providing quick access to other social sharing services. Select the one that you prefer.

Once you clicked the "Get the Code" button, you'll see the AddThis code. Copy that to your clipboard. You will have to add it to the new AR Signature field as explained below in Step 2.

Step 2 - Adding the button to your ActiveRain settings

Adding the AddThis social bookmaring button to your ActiveRain settings is pretty straightforward. There is only one trick to know about. So here we go:

Go to your ActiveRain settings page
Find the new "Signature" text box
Important and not obvious: Click the "HTML" icon on the editor bar as highlighted on the screenshot below
Paste the AddThis code that you copied in Step 1 into this code window, rather than the WYSWYG default editor
Once you submit it, do not mind that the WYSWYG editor does not show the correctly rendered social bookmark button. It will work on your blog posts anyways.
Click "Update" below the form to finalize the changes.

If you already had the custom signature set up, be careful when you add the AddThis code in the HTML view. I suggest to add it to the very bottom of your post, so make sure you place the cursor at the location where you actually want the button to appear at.

You can see it in action on all of our ActiveRain blog posts. I hope you found this tutorial useful. There are many other contents you could add to your signature like a call for action for your visitor to subscribe to your RSS feed via FeedBurner or a TweetMeme button to encourage retweeting your post. I have not tested those yet, but once we have them added, I will let you know and I will write another tutorial.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Take The High Road To The Top Of Google- SEO TO THE TOP SERIES- Part 1

2009-08-19T14:24:55Z

Katerina's SEO Webinar's announcement. Highly recommended by us.

-- Zoltan

Via Nestor & Katerina Gasset Realtors® Wellington Florida Luxury Homes (International Properties and Investments, Inc.):

Take The High Road To The Top Of Google- SEO TO THE TOP SERIES - Part 1

I have written a lot of articles about blogging your way to the top of page one on Google.
This series is a way to tie a lot of the information together to make it easier for you to follow and for Active Rain newbies to find.

There is NO dispute that Active Rain is a fantastic Google Juice magnet but if you don't use the right blender to make your juice; it is not going to benefit you or your business.

You can get to page one of Google in a couple of hours to a couple of days when you blog correctly and with proper SEO steps.

But what good is that if no one finds you anyways?

What if you blog all day long and find yourself on page one of Google but your phone still doesn't ring?

Did you know that you can blog your way to the bank?

Did you know that you can blog to make your phone ring with sellers and buyers?

Did you know that you can blog so that you have money in your pocket at the end of the day?

It all begins with knowing who your audience is and then finding the right words to reach them with.
There is longtail blogging and then there is effective longtail blogging.

While it is fun and exciting to see ourselves at the top of page one on Google for longtail keywords we are just blogging for fun if that blogging does not find its' way into the search results of a searcher, (a buyer or a seller). Of course, there are members here on Active Rain who do blog just for fun and that is just fine for them.

We are just going through the exercise of blogging if we don't compel the reader to pick up the phone to call us when we blog with the search terms (words) they are searching for. Of course, there are members on Active Rain who don't really care if any potential buyers or sellers find them through their blog and that is fine for them.

But I am here for many reasons and one of those reasons is to reach my goal of 80% of our business coming from our on line marketing. We are now at about 60% for all our listings coming from Active Rain blogging. We have closed on 6 listings in the last 3 weeks and 4 of those were from sellers who found our Active Rain blog and called us to list their houses. 1 was because of a referral which was a past client who found us on Active Rain and one closing was from our expired letter. Our buyers' agent just put two new buyers under contract that came through us because of our Active Rain blog hosting a Real Bird Widget on one post and the Vision product on another post. So needless to say; a big reason to blog is for an increase in profits to our company.

But how are these people finding us? They are finding us because I have a keyword research session with myself every 3 months. It is during this keyword research session that I research terms and trends of what our audience is searching for on line and what are the problems they need to solve.

Before you even start the keyword research part of your blogging business plan, you must know who you are writing for.

Create a buyer persona for each target market that you serve or wish to serve that is in your geographical area. You can ask agents that I coach and that take my SEO webinar how effective this one task is to your business.

You need to have a blogging business plan.

Set your goals. How much money do you want to generate from your blogging this year, next year, 3 years from now and so on.
How many listings or buyers do you want to generate directly from your blogging this year, next year, 3 years from now and so on.

You can read my post here on Who Is Your Audience.

It is not as generic as just saying that your market is for instance; First Time Home buyers. You need to find out everything you can about how they think, what they do, where they go, where they work and so on. You have to know what their problem is, what their pain is, what their dream is. Then you can give them the solutions to their problems. That is how you discover what words they use to search for the answer to their specific problem. You deliver it through your blogging and then they will call you.

Subscribe to my blog now so you don't miss out on any of the articles in this series to help you know how to get to page one on Google, stay on page one of Google, dominate on page one of Google and to make that all increase the money in your pocket at the end of the day.

If you want to learn more, do more, reach higher in your application and understanding of SEO take my SEO TO THE TOP Webinar.
Click here to start your journey to get to page one on Google. You will be glad you did. Ask anyone who has taken my SEO webinar.
Our next session starts September 2. All sessions are recorded. Don't miss out, get on board now.

SEO To The Top Webinar Starts September 2. Sign Up Today.

Take The High Road To The Top Of Google- SEO TO THE TOP SERIES- Part 1- by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

By TwitterButtons.com

Win an iPod Touch - again. Social media experiment with Facebook

2009-08-14T01:28:39Z

We are at it again. We are giving away another iPod Touch as part of our ongoing social media experiments. We ran our previous campaign in April, at that time using Twitter as the delivery media. This time, we are experimenting with our RealBird Facebook Page.

The rules are simple:

Fan our RealBird Facebook Page to enter the sweepstakes
Once we reach 1,000 fans we will randomly select one of you as the winner ( currently at 149 at the time of writing this post)
Those of you who became our fan on Facebook prior to this sweepstakes will also participate of course
Remain a fan until we reach the 1,000 mark (we certainly hope you remain a fan forever :)
US residents only
No purchase is necessary

Please reblog, tweet, share this post on as many places you can. The faster we get to 1,000 fans and the sooner you may become the winner if luck is on your side.

I will have a follow up post about why we think this is a great platform for campaigns like this (social media advertising) and how you could repeat the same concept in your own real estate business. So stay tuned.

Thanks for participating.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Add your listings as a "Homes for Sale" tab on your Facebook Page

2009-08-06T15:44:38Z

Facebook Pages are publicly accessible minisites on Facebook that you can update - just like your personal Facebook profile - with status updates, news, links, photos, discussions and now: with your RealBird listings and home search services. If you don't have one, you can create it here in less than a minute

As opposed to your personal profile, people can fan your business page on Facebook and you can have a two-way communication with them without actually adding them as a friend (your inner circle).

For RealBird Pro customers we offer a service to embed your own featured listings posted through RealBird and also links to your home search services. The Pro service level costs only $99/year (equals to only $8.41/month) and includes other powerful features, such as unlimited MLS compatible (unbranded) virtual tours, ad-free user experience and more.

How does this RealBird feature work?

With this new RealBird feature, you can enhance your Facebook real estate page with a new, highly visible tab called "Homes for sale". Visitors and fans to your Page can see the new photowall widget of your listings and they can also click-through to your RealBird Property Search to search all available listings in the neighborhood. Whenever you post a new listing or update one on RealBird, the photowall widget will reflect this change automatically. Only one time configuration is required. See our announcement on our RealBird Blog.

See some live examples below. Click the image to visit Eric's and Janie's Facebook real estate Page

How to get it?

Upgrade your RealBird membership to the Pro service level (only $99/year) - there is a link to do so right after you login to RealBird and on the listing management page. If you are already a Pro or Premium (Map-based IDX search) member, just skip this step, you are good to go.
Make sure that you have a Facebook Page. This feature does not currently work for your regular Facebook Profile. You can set up a Page here
There are two options:
1. If you want us to set it up for you on your own FB Page, we charge a $50 onetime setup fee (reduced from $100 for our ActiveRain readers)
2. If you want to add the "Homes for sales" tab to your Facebook page, just email us and we will send you the step-by-step instructions for free.

As always, should you have questions or feedback, just comment, email or call.

Thanks

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

The new RealBird photowall widget makes your listings look soooo nice

2009-08-03T18:21:00Z

We just released a new listing inventory widget for your properties on RealBird I added a few examples below. This is the same widget we added to the PRO RealBird Property Search subscription a few weeks ago. It is now available as a standalone widget for your own listings that you can embed in your website and blog. Once the images are loaded, you can pan among them by grabbing the UI while holding the mouse button down. Clicking on a photo will enlarge the image and reveal your property description and links on the photo description let your visitors click through to your RealBird property website.

Update: It looks like Firefox has some issues when 2 or more of these photowall widgets are included on page. This will not be the issue for your visitors using Firefox when they view your own RealBird photowall widget because you most likely will have only one instance embedded per page. For our example we used 2, but in real-world scenario, there will be only one widget per page. IE, Safari and Chrome browsers all works fine with multiple widgets per page.

The RealBird Photowall widget

The following widget uses the default 100% width and 600 pixel height configuration, which is great if you have many active listings. Listings are courtesy of Jeff & Grace Safrin of Valparaiso, Indiana

Map these properties Powered by RealBird.com

The second example shows Kathleen Buckley's current listings in Hopkinton, MA on a more compact widget. Width has been changed from 100% to 500 pixels and height is reduced to 300 pixels. You can see how gracefuly the widget adjusts. The background color is also changed to black to demonstrate further customization options:

Map these properties Powered by RealBird.com

How to get your widget code

Login to RealBird or register for free
Go to the Widget page (top navigation on the blue bar)
On the listings widget page, click the Photowall section
Copy the auto-generated code to your clipboard (CTRL+C or Control+C on Mac)
Paste into your website or blog (e.g. paste it into an ActiveRain post using the HTML tab of the editor)

RealBird members: As always, just comment, call or email for help and send us your suggestings too. If you are not a RealBird member yet, you can register for free here.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Turn your single property websites into banner ads on Facebook, MSN, Yahoo, AOL

2009-07-29T18:11:04Z

This post is reblogged from our RealBird corporate blog

~~~

We are pleased to announce our partnership with iPromote - an innovative, one-click display advertising solution provider that lets you convert your RealBird property websites into standard-size banner ads and distribute them on major networks like MSN, AOL, Yahoo and Facebook.

How does it work?

With the current feature release, an iPromote icon is provided on the listing management page for each of your listings in the RealBird member area (see image below) Clicking the icon pops up a preview panel, then clicking the "Next" button redirects to the iPromote configuration page. The banners are automatically created and they are preset with your property's photos, the title and the link back to your RealBird single property website. iPromote's innovative WebpageToAds(tm) technology automatically creates different, standard-size banner ads. No extra steps are required on your side. Easy and powerful. The banners are great looking photo slideshows - optimized for engaging visitors and encouraging click-throughs.

Customization

There are further customization options for those of you who would like to set geographic targeting, adjusting the banners' photos and the call-for-action message. See the marked options on the screenshot below. You can edit the banner ad's content using the "Edit your ad" button, target local geographics by changing the settings under the "Target Audience" section, set your "Promotion Budget" by adjusting the daily maximum spend and the price-per-click values.

How much does it cost?

iPromote is a pay-per-click ad solution. You only pay when somebody actually clicks through to your property website. One of the great features of iPromote is that their ad delivery network enables you to set your daily spending budget and the amount you are willing to pay for a click. The minimum is $0.10 per click with a minimum of $5/day daily spending limit. You can run low-cost trial campaigns without committing to high upfront spending. This is a big thing. Usually, advertising on premium networks like Facebook, MSN, Yahoo etc. requires a higher level of commitment. With iPromote, you can advertise your listings on the same networks at a very affordable rate. Based on the results, you can fine tune and adjust your budget and geographic targeting.

Other ways to use iPromote

You can also use iPromote to advertise your website, real estate blog and even your RealBird Property Search service. Just visit our co-branded iPromote interface and enter your website (blog etc.) Url in the box. Click the "Create my ads" button and iPromote takes care of the rest. You will be able to customize the banners and campaign settings, the same way as with your property website campaigns.

Finally, as with most online marketing, you have two goals to achieve: The obvious one is to reach as many potential home buyers with your listing information as possible. The second one is to impress your current and future sellers. Make sure that you let them know that you are using iPromote and RealBird in order to provider their listings the maximum possible exposure. You will look dedicated, tech and marketing savvy, and will stand out of the crowd.

Disclaimer: We have a revenue sharing partnership with iPromote. Whenever you purchase an ad campaign via our co-branded iPromote interface, we make money as well.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

How to add your Facebook Page widget to ActiveRain

2009-07-25T14:56:36Z

More and more real estate agents and brokers are setting up their Facebook Business Pages every day. The Facebook Page is a publicly accessibly presence for your business and group, where you can manage communication with clients, visitors, business partners and your company's or group's fans in general. As opposed to your regular Facebook Profile, Facebook Pages can be viewed and interacted with by any user without actually becoming part of your inner circle of friends. A few days ago, we wrote about how to add the Facebook Page widget to your RealBird single property websites in order to connect with your visitors. I thought I share some other ways of getting free publicity to your Facebook Page and eventually gain more followers and great social media marketing exposure.

Adding the widget to your ActiveRain sidebar

It is quite easy but it requires some extra steps because AR currently does not allow the inclusion of the standard <script > tag of the Facebook Page widget. Rather, you have to use their <iframe> version, which requires a little manual editing. Nothing complicated, just some copy and paste. The screenshots below will show you how you can do this in a few steps.

Getting the Facebook widget code

Make note of the profile_id in the <script> code. Then using that id and your Page's link, you can customize the iframe code as described below. Facebook does not generate you the iframe code automatically but it has also some instructions here

Below is an example iframe code using our own RealBird Facebook Page.

The highlighted content will have to be changed manually before pasting it into the ActiveRain textbox. The example shows the version applicable to our RealBird Facebook widget:

Replace it with your own Facebook Page ID
We are showing 9 random faces of our fans
Set the width to 200 pixels
Set the height to 610 pixels
Replace the link to your own Facebook Page
Replace RealBird with your own Facebook Page title

Adding it to ActiveRain

Once you have the iframe code created, you can add it to ActiveRain using the "Blog Description" textbox on your AR profile's Settings page. Just paste it to the position where you'd like it to appear at and click "Update".

You can also see it in action on Janie Coffey's ActiveRain blog (right side)

Adding the widget to your RealBird Property Search

The more places you add your Facebook Page widget, the more visitors will eventually become a fan. In our previous post, we explained how to add the widget to your RealBird single property websites. Our other service, the RealBird Property Search can also be customized by including the widget on the full screen version, in the right sidebar. In this case, you can use the standard Facebook widget script code and there is no need for manual configuration of the iframe code, other than adjusting the width. The screenshots below show the customization steps and also the place to paste it in the RealBird configuration area.

Getting the Facebook widget code

See the screenshots above at the top of this post. Copy the standard <script> version auto-generated by Facebook, change the width:300px to width:200px in the code and you are good to go.

Adding it to your RealBird service

Login to RealBird and go the Property Search Configuration page.
Scroll down to the "Sidebar content" section and paste the code that you customized in the previous step
Save the changes

Live example on our demo service

Click the image above to see it live on our demo RealBird Property Search service.

To get your own RealBird Property Search, you can register for free at www.RealBird.com. The service can be up and running in less than 5 minutes.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

RealBird's Blog on ActiveRain

Tracking "clicks" on printed flyers - Using bit.ly with RealBird on your brochures

"Yet Another Reminder of why I LOVE RealBird.com" - an online marketing case study by Mike Conner

iPod Touch Sweepstakes - The Final Push

Never miss a client inquiry again - The RealBird Message Archive has an RSS feed now - Productivity update #3

Top 10 Venture Capitalist Blogs - Linkroll #5

Slideshow ads of your RealBird listings on Backpage.com - and on local online newspaper sites

5 insiprational blogs about webdesign - Linkroll #5

Quick sharing to Craigslist, Backpage and social media - Productivity update #2

6 Google Wave invites available for the first 6 people to hit the comment button - ActiveRain Exclusive

Listing marketing checklist - Let's go low-tech, shall we?

Those of you who are using Internet Explorer 4.0 please raise your hand

4 free online photo editors - Linkroll #4

Using A Dynamic Photo Wall To Highlight Your Listings and Get Google Juice!

Google Wave will change the way real estate transactions are conducted online

The global reach of RealBird

New ActiveRain and Localism embed code is available for your RealBird listings - SEO benefits

RealBird Webinar - Social Networking Secrets With Gabe Gross and Coach Katerina Gasset

iPod contest rules changed - better for you, "worse" for us. But we like it anyways

Add social sharing to your post with the new Activerain signature feature

Take The High Road To The Top Of Google- SEO TO THE TOP SERIES- Part 1

Take The High Road To The Top Of Google- SEO TO THE TOP SERIES- Part 1- by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

Win an iPod Touch - again. Social media experiment with Facebook

Add your listings as a "Homes for Sale" tab on your Facebook Page

The new RealBird photowall widget makes your listings look soooo nice

Turn your single property websites into banner ads on Facebook, MSN, Yahoo, AOL

How to add your Facebook Page widget to ActiveRain