Real Estate consumer moving increasingly toward online Real Estate Resources

Leading- edge Web analytics technology provider and Real Estate Blogsite related products & services partner, Visistat, releases promising data demonstrating an increasing use by consumers of online Real Estate Resources.

Director of Sales and Marketing for VisiStat Tina Bean said,

“We provide data for thousands of brokerages and agents across the country, and because of this, I have been working closely with brokers and agents for some time. It’s no surprise that the figures in this report coincide exactly with what I have been hearing from them, and that is, home buyers are using the Internet to educate themselves and find properties, often long before they engage an agent.”

It means that a Realtor can distribute an advertorial message to a target audience direct!

Let’s go a little further into the idea of local Real Estate branding AND your Blog’s direct marketing value proposition, which I recently posted on here.

On the web, distribution of your advertorial content is no longer controlled by traditional media [a recent phenomena known as disintermediation.] It means that, rather than depend on Newspapers, TV Programming, Magazines & Web- based Media to distribute an advertorial message, you can get it to your target audience direct! In fact, because of syndicating content formats like RSS, which are standard with your Blog, there’s nothing stopping YOU from distributing knowledge & information to your marketplace. In fact, with an RSS convert to Email solution, you’re empowered to offer your Real Estate clients & prospects the choice of RSS or email

You see, a content management system like your Blog makes publishing content to the web BOTH cheap & simple. In addition to your Blog’s rapid publish to the web capability, it seamlessly formats content for web syndication [RSS syndication = movement around the web.] Nowadays, with syndication, content is free to go wherever it’s needed so any amongst your clients & prospects have the choice to subscribe to your Blog directly. That’s right, just like a feed from the New York Times Travel section, they can subscribe to you. Direct! By taking advantage of this important opportunity you don’t necessarily have to depend on or pay for Media Intermediaries. That’s right, you may actually save on repetitive advertising costs when you can make useful ‘real estate market coverage’ available to your clients & prospects direct.

But you ask, "how do my clients & prospects gather content direct from a Blog?" They do it with an ‘RSS News or Feed Reader.’ The individual consumer of information [your clients and prospects] need only make the RSS feed connection, which is readily available via your Blog. Don’t know what an ‘RSS News or Feed Reader’ is? Take one minute to watch this painless video and all confusion will be gone.

Again, with a RSS convert to Email solution, you’re empowered to offer your Real Estate clients & prospects the choice of direct via RSS or email

We’re not saying advertising in good media is dead by any stretch. Sure, affiliating yourself with the New York Times or your local newspapers’ audience, for instance, costs money but access to their audience(s) has a true value. What I am trying to convey is that with a little effort you can also reach your clients & prospects directly; you can repeatedly touch them with great new information direct! With a leveled playing field for the distribution of information, the complete customized flow of incoming information is now possible for all people. They’re no longer limited to stumbling onto your ad or to searching in order to know of and to be informed by you. It means that if you can offer useful local Real Estate information via your blog, you can build voluntary, informed & ever- loyal customer relationships.

So folks, help your marketplace understand the convenience of feeds & RSS. Blog your useful & timely Real Estate knowledge- base and let your clients & prospects know they can can be informed regularly by subscribing to your Blog’s RSS [or your RSS convert to email] feed in order to be informed

As a Realtor, who amongst your clients & prospects wouldn't benefit from your accumulated & timely knowledge ...direct?

A Real Estate Blogs’ PR value, where knowledge is shared transparently and where interactive participation in the way of conversations can ensue, has been well documented. We’ve written quite a bit on a Real Estate Blogs’ value as a cost- effective Search Engine Marketing tool, where Search Engine visibility & discover-ability is possible, but have you considered the direct marketing value proposition of your Real Estate blog?

In each case consistent localized content is key, but if you’re sharing good Real Estate information why wouldn’t you encourage clients & prospects to subscribe to it? In an age of readily available information, those who share their local knowledge- base will gain mind share. And who amongst them wouldn’t benefit from your accumulated & timely local Real Estate knowledge? In the best case scenario, you will distribute it to them direct and with no additional effort!

[An incredible feature of all Blogs is RSS. The acronym RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and it means that your content is prepared for movement around the web. RSS can serve you as a consumer of content and as a Real Estate Marketer! As a consumer of content, rather than having to visit all your favorite sites all the time in order to know ‘what’s new’, RSS makes it possible for ‘what’s new’ to visit you direct. Rather than email, which is often out of your control, you can easily control the inbound gather of information direct and to one convenient place. By setting up an RSS Feed or News Reader account, which are typically free web- based services, you’re ready to begin making direct inbound connections. Look for the little orange icon or ‘Add to MyYahoo’ at your favorite sites, click and you should have what’s needed to create a continuous feed connection to your RSS Reader. As a Real Estate Marketer, RSS makes your content available direct to your existing & prospective clients. It’s a valuable feature because there is no better form of advertising than direct communication. If they subscribe to your RSS feed, you know your content is reaching the most qualified individuals because they’re doing it voluntarily! With our Kinetic Blog service RSS convert to email is also standard.]

Until recently, the web was mostly HTML Web sites. The primary means for distribution of Real Estate content was a search engine or a directory, but now there are Blogs & RSS. As more and more people get involved [more content sources, more blogs, more news service feeds, etc., etc.] it becomes ever more important to do what it takes to maintain & grow online exposure. You see, RSS is becoming an important distribution channel and the ability to maintain local Real Estate- oriented visibility will shift some from the big search engines [including some from the need for content SEO] to RSS feed directories and RSS search engines.

Not to worry folks, if you don’t believe your audience has adopted a ‘RSS Newsreader’ like MyYahoo, MyMSN, GoogleReader or Bloglines for direct subscription it’s still important you get on board because mass adoption is gradually occurring. What’s more, it’s possible to add an ‘RSS convert to email’ subscription box so that when you blog your content can reach people based on their choice of direct subscription via RSS or Email. Again as a Realtor, who amongst your clients & prospects wouldn’t benefit from your accumulated & timely local knowledge?

Folks, we can’t pound the drums hard enough on this: do what it takes to touch your clients & prospects with your useful information. Share your unique & timely Real Estate knowledge- base and, in the best case scenario, do it with with voluntarily participation direct!

Why wouldn't you pursue organic search engine indexing with a Blog when, according to ComScore, Google's Pay Per Click percentage [when folks are searching] is 13%, Yahoo's 11% and MSN's 8%

It’s well known that 80- 90% of home buyers & sellers will search when they want Real Estate information and long before they contact a Realtor. Realtors, what have you decided to do to help them find you?

You could pursue Pay Per Click; however, regional Pay Per Click advertising rates have been bid up so high [often well over $1 per click] that it has become more and more difficult to sustain any search engine visibility within the constraints of a budget.

You could pursue organic search indexing [Blogs make it easy] and why wouldn’t you when, according to ComScore, Google’s Pay Per Click percentage [when folks are searching] is 13%, Yahoo’s 11% and MSN’s 8%. At 87 to 92 organic clicks versus 8 to 13 PPC per 100 searches, one can easily see where opportunity lies.

It’s important to recognize that as local organic search awareness elevates, the competition for relevant organic search engine index placement will inevitably heat up. In order to establish rank for towns, developments, communities, subdivisions, high rise condominiums, land, golf property, listings and other real estate oriented subjects it’s important to develop a strategy NOW… and a locally focused Blog is the cost- effective answer!

It’s relatively simple to blog consistently and to cover what’s going on in local Real Estate. With Blogs there is an unlimited ability to transfer ones’ knowledge- base, to establish relevant [both primary & long tail] keyword & key phrase search engine indexing and to generate discoverability. What’s more, blogging on current events in a region can generate long tail search engine indexing very naturally. For those who don’t know, ‘long tail’ are terms related to your primary targeted search terms that may individually cause less search discovery, but collectively match or surpass your primary search terms impact. In fact and because search engines are known to favor consistent on- topic content, a blog can offer visible longevity for primary and long tail terms where PPC may not and, by openly sharing good information regularly, a Realtor can create local trust where PPC and other forms of marketing or advertising never will.

In all and if web- based costs are a concern, get yourself a good blog!

Think of your blog as the visibility arm in your Internet marketing strategy. How will you turn visitors into potential leads?

As many of you know by now, blogs are ‘real-time’ technology tools.  We create posts, or short articles of information, we hit save and the content is immediately available for online viewing.  It’s a dynamic environment which typically leads to some pretty good visibility in the search engines if you use it correctly.  But wait, has anyone really stopped blogging long enough to think about how to turn that visibility into an online lead?  This is the end game, so let’s talk about it a bit.

Link Funneling ABCs
What does this techno-speak mean anyway?  When i talk about ‘link funneling’ - what i am really referring to is ‘how many people are you sending from those blog posts to the lead capturing tools on your websites?’  Lots of folks think only in terms of unique visitors - how many visits am i getting to my blog in a day or a month.  What we should really be thinking about instead is - how many potential visitors did i funnel to my MLS Search pages, my Home Valuator and my e-mail listing alerts.  You may be surprised to know that some of you who are experiencing less visitor traffic, yet are doing a great job at link funneling may be getting more out of your investment than those with lots of traffic and very few link funnels.

Blogging is About Visibility, Lead Capture is Up To YOU
If you want it to also be about lead capture, you need to put some thought into it.  What happens when someone lands on that blog post you wrote about the new condominiums going up two neighborhoods over?  There are a few things you should consider every time you write a business-based real estate blog post:

1. Have you put yourself in the reader’s shoes?  Meaning… is your post easy to read, well laid out, does it offer value, are you answering the questions that led your reader here?
2. Are you the resource or have you given the spotlight to someone else?  Every time you offer a link out to an external resource such as a newspaper article or perhaps the developer of a new project, you send a message to your reader.  That message is, I am not the expert - they are.  This is OK, but you need to do a cost/benefit analysis of doing so.  Is it worth potentially losing someone to the outside source or could you spend a few extra minutes giving out more information from your own expert opinion?
3. Is your content relevant to your target audience?  Again, step into your potential clients shoes - what are they interested in, what kinds of questions might they turn to Google for answers on.  These are the things you should be focusing much of your blog posting energy on. 
4. Does your post make it easy for the reader to find your complimentary online tools?  This is A#1 - if you don’t make it easy for them to click on "Free MLS Search" or "What is my city, state Home Worth" or "Sign up for Automated Real Estate Listing Updates Via Email" - how are you going to get the opportunity to turn them into a lead? 

Make it Easy, Easy, Easy
When you add those links to your complimentary online tools - make sure you link directly to the relevant page within your website.  Don’t create a link that says, "Free MLS Search" and then send someone to your home page!  Make it simple, send them directly to the search page or to the registration page necessary to get into the search page!  The last thing someone wants to do is land on a home page and figure out what to do next. 

Blog Navigation is a Key Factor
How’s your navigation?  And  by navigation i mean the links you offer from the top, left and right sides of your blog.  Is it easy to understand/use?  Could it be simplified?  How about turning text into graphic buttons?  Would any of this make your user interface and your reader’s experience better?  These are important questions to ask yourself as typically your environment can be modified to meet your needs.

As I mentioned above it is truly possible to have low visitors yet good link referral traffic.  At the end of the day, where does your concern lie?  The end game is in leads - look at your blog in a new light, where do you measure up?  The good news?  If you’re not happy about what you find, it’s an easy fix!  Put a little more thought into providing visibility to your online lead capture tools from wherever it makes sense!  And, don’t be afraid to edit some of those historical posts to add these links back in!

Home Buyers are searching for Real Estate Video Listings in YouTube

Pew Internet & American Life Project says that 57% of Internet users have watched videos online and most of them share what they find with others. They say 74% of those who enjoy high-speed connections at home and work watch or download video online and that 19% do it every day.

More recently Hitwise data showed visits to YouTube had increased 70% when comparing January 2007 to May 2007. In fact, Hitwise showed YouTube’s market share to be 50% greater than all 64 video aggregator sites combined.

It’s noteworthy that Google has massive competition for virtually any search, whereas in YouTube there’s a great deal of search traffic but much less competition for search results. Seeing as how Google recently announced the YouTube video library will be a major part of their search index, it’s an opportune time to consider creating listing video tours. They can be terrific marketing content for Blogs, Websites, Listing Aggregator Accounts and, obviously, YouTube. In fact, agents and brokerage firms can create video content from simple still images, post them to YouTube, optimize them for search with tags, benefit from both Youtube & Google visibility and possibly generate leads they wouldn’t have normally had.

At Real Estate Blogsites we offer a low cost, image- based video tour content creation service. In fact, we’ve recently submitted tours to YouTube for folks in places like Tampa FL, Ann Arbor MI and Tucson AZ. This particular tour was uploaded recently and it’s seeing incredible Youtube search result placement [for avon real estate, avon co real estate, vail real estate, vail co real estate, vail valley real estate, vail valley co real estate, vail realtor, vail co realtor, vail valley home, vail home, vail co home] & download traffic for it’s Realtor.

Let us know if we can help prepare your listing tours for searching home buyers today.

Web 2.0 Social Networking Websites can help the visibility of your Internet Marketing Strategy

With the latest news showing that MySpace, News Corps giant social-networking community, has over 100 million members it has enough search usage in its own search facility that it has passed AOL and Ask.com. It has been called ‘the 4th search engine’ and a serious contender to the ‘big three’ - in July MySpace had 551 million searches.

At that critical mass MySpace, which allows you to create your own online profile and to link up with friends and colleagues for free, the community is nothing to sneeze at. While it’s believed that other search engines won’t consider individual MySpace users for their own highly ranked results, by creating a presence in a community of this size you can’t help but believe there’s an opportunity. You certainly have the bonus of being able to socialize, message, search and link up with other colleagues in the MySpace environment! Social Networking communities have become so popular in recent years that MySpace is not alone with Facebook also hitting critical mass. Specialist professional social networking communities such as Active rain and LinkedIn are also potentially useful.

Yahoo is rumoured to be developing its own social-networking website called Yahoo! KickStart, which will be similar to LinkedIn. Using these platforms to your advantage is the key. Facebook, for instance, has a great third party RSS feed application, which you can place onto your profile for your own blog’s feed updates - another marketing avenue (albeit a subtle one).

It appears social networking communities are here to stay. They are a potentially a great way for developing new relationships, for keeping in touch and for reaffirming business and personal friendships!