That’s right!  Popular online MLS web search provider, IDX Broker, recently released a new Wordpress plug-in that allows you to easily blog listings direct from the MLS by data type. You can also incorporate property lead capture on your blog and increase your visibility in the search engines.  This plugin appears to be very a similar competitor to the dsIDXPress Wordpress Plugin from Diverse Solutions that we previously blogged about.

With the new IDX Broker Wordpress plug-in you can:

• Display IDX search forms, widgets, and links on your Kinetic Blog
• Choose one design for all of your IDX results and details pages
• Use the IDX Broker WordPress plugin to add IDX lead capture and indexable idx page links to your Kinetic Blog

For those of you already using IDX Broker, the plug-in appears to be included with your existing IDX search service.  Take a look at the real estate demo site with the IDX plugin activated.  Give them a call to find out how you can access the power today (your MLS may need to be on a participating list in order for you to utilize this tool)!  If you have this service, we can easily install and configure the plugin for you within your Kinetic real estate blogs!  Just give us a call.

So what are you waiting for?  Email the Kinetic sales team to get your real estate blog with auto generated MLS listings started today!  We couldn’t be more excited for you.

Social Gears Launches Digital Business Card – Follr.com

Per our last post, this is going to be a useful tool for folks with many different web identities. Per Follr.com,

“A card for the world we live in today – a FREE Website combining all your online social activity streams and contact information into one easy contact solution. A connected Social Card is important for individuals and businesses alike.”

Jump in for your FREE Digital Business Card here

Per Fran Thorsen of  Real Estate Social Media Policies,

“Now, a real estate agent displays a listing syndication map illustrating dozens of destinations where the seller’s property is displayed and a social business card containing all her listings and links to her profiles on the social Web.”

For More, See: Finally! Paint Your Social Media Portrait with a Business Card

We wrote an article in January of 2008 about real estate widgets for your blog and website.  In true fashion the power of blogging has shined via this post – today (more than two years later!) it still resonates on page one of Google for the search term “free real estate widgets” and “real estate widgets free”.  As it happens this is a popular search phrase and we get a fair amount of traffic from the one article.  Confused about real estate widgets?  Take a look at the original article for a general definition.

Although I recently updated the old post I thought it deserved some new attention based on demand.  Following please find an updated 2010 version of the 2008 list!  Hopefully these tools will add some fresh new ideas to your real estate marketing arsenal.  Enjoy.

Real Estate Widgets Revisited:

1. Diverse Solutions dsIDXPress for Wordpress (www.dsidxpress.com) – This nifty tool is actually a Wordpress plugin, but if you can figure out how to get it installed (or have your blog provider install it) it provides some great real estate widgets – an MLS quick search,  a property search by coverage area, and a property listings widget by MLS data type (for instance foreclosures in a certain area).   This one is not free, but it’s easy to install and well worth the listings exposure.  Check it out!
2. Feedblitz RSS to Email (www.feedblitz.com) – if you have a blog, this is an incredible tool. It allows people to sign up to receive your blog posts by email instead of through RSS.  It allows you to use your blog as a direct marketing email news system to keep in touch with your existing sphere of influence.  Unfortunately this service is no longer free.
3. Feedburner is an alternative to FeedBlitz (www.feedburner.com) –  It not only offers you a blog to email subscription tool, but also measures how many subscribers you have via your RSS feed.  This Google tool is not nearly as robust as FeedBlitz but it is FREE.
4. Altos Research Altos Charts (www.altosresearch.com) – Get live real estate market data on your sites!   Over 150 different market measures for each of the thousands of cities and zip codes across the country that they cover.  They offer a free version or a paid version with more extensive options.
5. Zillow Widgets (www.zillow.com) – Wow, lots of tools here.  Everything from real estate statistics to new homes for sale to home value estimates.  If you are a fan of Zillow, they offer some great functionality.  These are FREE.
6. Trulia Map Widget – (www.trulia.com) – Pin point your real estate listings on a Trulia map.  When users click on your listings on the TruliaMap widget, they go directly to the property on your own web site. Users can also watch a “slide show” of your properties on the map.  Nifty and FREE.
7. Real Estate Technology Text Widget (www.realestatetechnologyonline.com) – This widget allows you to be contacted from your website or blog directly by text message.  Super Cool, FREE.
8. Mortgage and Loan Calculator (www.mlcalc.com) – Nice UNBRANDED mortgage and loan calculator.  FREE.
9. YouTube Video Gallery (www.youtube.com) – you may or may not be hip to the Youtube craze, but if you have videos on Youtube you also have the ability to create a video gallery widget.  The importance of online video is growing quickly so if you’re curious, go take a look.
10. Custom widgets “borrowed” from your real estate website for placement on your real estate blog.  That’s right, you can make your own widgets.  One of my favorite things to do is to take an MLS “Quick Search” and add it directly to the navigation within your blog.  A blog helps you gain visibility, turning that visibility into leads is up to you – this is a great way to do that.  (not all of you have a quick search, but often times your IDX provider can make one for you!  Ask them.)
11. RSS Feed widgets for your website – Have you ever wanted to offer your real estate blog news from your website?  You can easily do so with an RSS feed widget.  Take your blog’s RSS feed and plug it into a widget, customize and then place the code on your website.  There are quite a few of these out there but not all totally reliable.

Here are a few for you to check out:

• http://www.widgetbox.com (sometimes unreliable)
• http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com/widgets (large Adwords interface)
• http://www.feedflash.net (discrete company link, not bad)
• http://widgets.cc/rss/scrollbox/ (adwords subtle, but interspersed in your content)
• http://feed.mikle.com/en/ (no adwords, no links as far as I can tell, this one is good!)

That’s a wrap!  Clean blog interfaces retain more traffic – make sure you don’t add too many real estate widgets to your sites or you might scare visitors away.  Determine what to use based on your business goals – if the widget will help you generate leads and sales then by all means go for it!

Need a branded business blog?  Call us today for more information.  Don’t have time to connect?  Download our FREE Business Blogger’s Bible for some valuable marketing tips.

Did I just find a little known real estate technology secret?  Perhaps, read on…

In a quick search for real estate apps in iTunes, you get a menu of about 135 available applications (to do this you must have itunes installed locally).  Still surprisingly few.  By far the most interesting trend comes from enterprising agents racing to the real estate app scene with mobile access to their online IDX property search portals. Simple applications that funnel the “downloader” of the app to those personalized online real estate searches in various geographical regions.  Not a bad idea, in fact – why not?  A branded presence in the iPhone App Store – pretty darn smart.

So how are they doing it?  It seems many are using a service called MobileAppLoader.  I have no personal experience with this company so can’t give it a thorough review but a large percentage of the real estate companies listed in the iPhone App Store have used it.  This might not mean much other than that the process is easy and attainable.  It seems most of the apps they build follow a simple format:

• Contact page with one touch calling
• Info Page with active web links
• About Page with active web links
• Social networking profile pages (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube)
• Notifications which send alerts to customers
• Property Feedback function
• Loan calculator

Maybe a little clunky but a way to quickly and easily get in the game while not only branding your company but grabbing your main geographic target phrases for the name of your app – Maui Real Estate Search, Chicago Home Finder, Las Vegas Foreclosures.  There are a few different price levels for real estate as well as a fixed cost versus a monthly subscription.

I installed one of these real estate applications on my iphone just to check out the interface.  Not bad (nice graphics are important to the overall feel).  You will want to make sure that your existing IDX search website works well with mobile browsing before you jump on board.  All the app does for real estate search is provide a web link to your existing website’s IDX search page.  You will also benefit from having Facebook, Twitter, a YouTube page and a business blog setup before you jump into real estate iPhone app development.  This real estate app provides exposure to those mediums so be prepared!

Another real estate app developer visible in the app store is IDX, Inc.  These real estate applications seem more robust with potentially better connections to an IDX search interface.  They appear to really just be an IDX website search provider and serve the following MLSs.  Not too pricey; if you also need an MLS search website tool – might be worth a look.

I started this post with the intention of reviewing a few useful iPhone apps for real estate and ended up with a much different result.  Guess we’ll save that one for next time.  Perhaps this information can get you started developing your own iphone application for your real estate business, good luck!

If you need help developing your business social networks or creating a branded real estate blog, we can help – call or email us today.

Adding any application to your Facebook business page is not always the easiest of things to do.  Ideally you should make a connection between your blog and your Business Fan page and then “fan yourself” to get blog news to your personal Facebook profile page.  Facebook does not shine upon commercialization within your personal profile pages.

According the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities:

• You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.
• You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).
• You will not engage in unlawful multi-level marketing, such as a pyramid scheme, on Facebook.

While somewhat vague, these points suggest you should really keep business news on your Facebook business fan page.  Here’s part one and two of a video that will help you figure out how to do just that!  You can use an application called NetworkedBlogs to get the job done.

Videos require the most recent version of Adobe Flash to view.

- Adding Your Blog News to a Facebook Business Page (Part 1)

- Adding Your Blog News to a Facebook Business Page (Part 2)

Good luck!

No time to hook up your own news?  Take a look at our blogging social media package or contact Kinetic Knowledge for more information today!

This is a very new application introduced by Google called Goggles that may become immensely supportive to your real estate business.

Ben Rosales over at Agent Genius strikes again suggesting, “…it is a tangible way for consumers to get up to the minute property data, but even more importantly, an even better way to preview property listings that are from other brokers. Say you’re in the car touring property, and a client asks about a sign not belonging to you, simply snap a photo of the property, or even the yard sign and view the agent and property details instantly providing you with a warm on the fly opportunity to present a property the buyers are interested in. Imagine a client driving by your bus bench (I know, lame, but now made cool by Goggles) who snaps a photo and instantly obtaining your contact details along with everything you want them to know about you is now right there at their fingertips. The same principle applies to billboards or anywhere else you’ve plastered your logo (or face). The post cards you’re mailing are no longer useless to consumers in the sense that they throw away things they don’t want to store, they can now snap a photo and register your data right there in their phone, and the same could apply to a photo snapped of the front page of your website- hey, it’s you on the go!”

Our esteemed client and top real estate technology speaker/ trainer Allen Hainge stands out nationally when it comes to showing real estate sales associates and their companies how to make money using today’s technology.

Now he’s released Volume I of the CyberStar® Success Series: ‘Digital Essentials For Today’s Agent’

If you’re looking for immediate or improved success in the business,’Digital Essentials For Today’s Agent’ offers Tech Tips, Techniques & Strategies from 128 of real estate’s top agents.

This is an on-target, in-depth look at what top technology agents use…and how they use it! 225 specific tech tips, techniques and strategies direct from 128 of the CyberStars®

Get your copy of ‘Digital Essentials For Today’s Agent’ here!

‘Google Insights’ Supports Better Real Estate Business Blogging Results

Let’s say you’re a real estate agent selling property in Grand Lake OK and you’re looking to capture as much search traffic as possible with your blog. There are many things you’ll eventually need to understand, but none more than the identification of the most relevant key words & phrases. Starting there is sound strategy!

The first question you might ask yourself is, “If home buyers were looking for property, homes or real estate in Grand Lake  how *exactly* would they search?”  You could certainly use logic based upon ‘in the field business experience’, but that would be short of *exact*… and anything less risks your valuable time, effort and money. A better course, and best real estate blogging practices for that matter, might be to look for facts surrounding Grand Lake OK search activity.

Google Insights Search: Grand Lake OK

A great place to start is Google Insights where, rather than guessing, you can identify a lot about what people are looking for in Grand Lake OK. Ultimately, successful search visibility amongst the most qualified buyers and sellers requires targeting the right real estate topics with your real estate business blog.

Google Insights is a powerful tool, requiring some investment of time to truly tap its potential, for finding a depth of insight into where, what & when people search.

Let’s simply start by looking at top level insight into what people interested in Grand Lake OK have been searching. For starters, by solely searching Grand Lake OK without 1) comparing other terms or 2) the use of geographic limits or 3) andy date range … we find that the lion’s share of that search traffic is looking into Grand Lake OK Travel, Local & Recreation.

One might conclude that many of the people searching consider this to be a resort area; however there’s more immediate insight front & center, including that the traffic is all US based. Understanding that international buyers are probably not a target, one could use the geographic filters offered to see where in the US interest is based. Doing so shows that interest is coming from KS, MO, AR & TX based searches. And what could that tell us about future geographically based posts we could write for potential KS, MO, AR & TX second home buyers?

Going further, target key words & phrases is where we get the most useful information and Google Insights delivers both the top search terms and also the fastest rising search terms:

Top Grand Lake OK Search Terms

The key words & phrases are here and they should be cross referenced with business goals in order to determine which might be best emphasized in future real estate business blogging.  Some additional observations might include that Grove OK, Resort, Rentals, Casino & Cabins are sought after, and that they should be looked into as potential target topics.

 Rising Grand Lake OK Search Terms

Some additional observations here might include that Monkey Island & the Marina in addition to Grove OK, Resort, Rentals, Casino & Cabins are becoming sought after. Clearly, they should also be paid some attention in terms of their value as target topics.

Comparing Search Terms

The above identifies Grove OK as a related area of interest, so it is certainly useful to search it versus Grand Lake for further insight. Low and behold, Grove OK is actually generating more searching…  making it an important key phrase to dive into for further insight.

Bottom line, ‘Google Insights’ supports better use of key terms and phrases. Spend some time and you’re guaranteed to improve your overall insight into what search activity amongst qualified home buyers is how future real estate business blogging can bring you more success!

For some time now we’ve been pounding the tables about changes taking place in today’s’ marketing & advertising environment.

Because the home buyer or seller can [re]search & subscribe at will, they NOW hold the upper hand for any exchange of information with marketers. To a degree, traditional advertising is fading for them… as noise.

Top Real Estate Industry Consultants, The WAV Group, recently released a white paper titled ‘Edutizing‘ that we recommend highly.  

In it WAV says, “Consumers simply do not want to be “sold” anymore. They want to understand what you [Real Estate Agent] can do for them. They want to know that your claims are backed up by legitimate experience and insights you can bring to them.” Very much like us, The WAV Group feels, “By consistently sharing their expertise and focusing on educating consumers instead of selling, them agents will enhance their reputation. The more open and honest agents are about their strengths and expertise, the more they will be perceived as honest and trustworthy as well. Information driven advertising offers consumer education about real estate, Edutizing.”

Give Edutizing a read!