Marketing your listing online | Part 1

As we move into 2009 marketing your listings online will be a very large portion of your business. Most sellers now are requiring that the agent they hire have the proficiency to market their home online effectively and if they can't then they simply will not get hired.

I want to do a quick series on some ways to market a home on the internet appropriately. In this first part I want to go over an overlooked portion in which I call the "foundation". The foundation to any online marketing campaign begins with your MLS. Hopefully you're already putting your listing in your local MLS but I want to talk about why you should really take your time and make sure you're listing on your MLS effectively.

What a lot of agents don't know is that the listings they insert into MLS are syndicated to other national listing services such as Real Seekr, Trulia, Zillow and more. That means that the listing you've put into your local MLS will be shared and uploaded to these larger national listing systems to further help expose the property.

The reason I bring this up is because I see all to often where an agent will not even go as far as putting a single listing picture on their new listing until one or two weeks go by. So now when that listing is syndicated to these larger national listing services it has no picture and is worthless as a marketing piece.

So for now just know that everything you put into your MLS will syndicated to larger national listing companies and that it is a great way to set a foundation for marketing your property online.

Until the next post go into your MLS and really look over your listings to see what could be added or changed.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

SEO Series | Part 3 Letting everyone know your here

We're going to take a quick second to finish the series we we're doing a couple of weeks ago because I don't want to leave anyone in the dark.

Before we get into the last step (for this series) I want you to sit down and write several descriptions about what your site is about. Kinda like your keywords but more of a brief summary.

All there is left to do now that we are happy with our site/blog setup is to submit it to the search engines of your choice. Once your website is submitted it will be up to you to keep your website full of good content and keep the search engines coming back.

A good site to use when submitting your website to search engines is http://www.FreeWebSubmission.com This site lets you submit to multiple websites all at once and does a great job of it.

Just remember that because your website is submitted to search engines that doesn't mean people will find it. It is mainly your job to keep your content good and to let people know what your blog is about and where they can find it through commenting on other blogs, emails and general socialization.

Have a great day,
Real Estate Technology Online

Blackberry Storm Release Date!

I know this blog has become more of a "news central" for the Blackberry Storm but that's ok because I think you're as excited as I am about its release. I got an e-mail about 2 days ago that said the release date will be November 21st 2008. That's next Friday! YAY!

As you already know I will be first in line to pick mine up and do a blog post on the features of the phone and how I like it. Stay tuned and check back on the 21st of November.

Thanks,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

I held the Blackberry Storm....Finally

Hello again everyone,

I wouldn't call myself an impatient person all the time. Only when there is something new I want. Like the Blackberry Storm. I have literally been bugging the poor Verizon people weekly to find out any information I can about the release date of the storm. When I ask "When does the storm come out?" I always get the answer "They don't tell us that".

Well today was a little different. I am currently in Orlando FL at the NAR convention 2008 and I ran into the big Verizon Wireless booth. When I asked the young lady behind the booth when the storm was being released she said......."They don't tell us that!" AHHH! It drives me crazy. I then went to another area of the NAR expo and found the actual Blackberry booth. I figured where better to get the information I need than from the source.

I approached another young lady at the Blackberry booth and asked her the same question. As she began to mutter the words "They don't" I had to stop her and tell her my story. She gave me a sad look and handed me some pamphlets about the storm hoping to make me feel better. At this point I knew I had to pull out the big guns to get the info I needed. I started to ask her all kinds of technical questions about the storm like processor speeds, EVDO rev, storage capacity, OS capabilities etc. and finally she leaned over and whispered "There's one here if you want to play with it."

HOLY COW! There's a storm at the convention and she is willing to let me play with it. FINALLY!! I obviously agreed so she took me behind a curtain behind the booth and handed me a real fully functional Blackberry Storm. I was in heaven. The phone is everything they said it will be.

She asked me not to take any pictures or videos of the phone because it was not even supposed to be at the NAR convention much less activated and turned on. So I did the reasonable thing and recorded a short video while she wasn't looking. Below is a very short clip of me holding the final blackberry storm. I hope you enjoy it and from what I can tell this phone is going to take things up a notch.



Thanks,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online