Marketing your listing online | Part 2

Hello everyone,

Last post I talked about how important it is to make sure your property is correctly inserted into your local MLS system because it is syndicated to other national MLS' within days and that sets the foundation for a successful online marketing plan.

This post I want to take it a step further and talk about where else you can post your listings and what you should do after your MLS syndicates your listings world wide.

Most large national and even world wide listing websites such as Real Seekr, Trulia and Zillow will allow you to do what is called "claiming your listings". Claiming your listings will allow you to receive up to date statistics on views and clicks, market yourself through those sites and let you edit any information they may have incorrect about your listing. The only way to know if a site allows you to claim your listings is by visiting the site and reading some of the Q&A sections about how and if it's done.

Once you claim your listings you need to add any additional photos, descriptions etc to them to make sure they are correct and in order so when they are viewed the info. is correct. Also, make sure to add information about yourself, a picture and links to your website and blog so visitors can visit your local site.

As for where else to put your listing on the web I'm going to leave most of that to the comments on this post. I'll tell you a few that I like and if you have one that you've had success with lately post it up so everyone can use it.

External Listing Sites:
RealSeekr.com
Trulia.com
Zillow.com
Craigslist.com
Backpage.com

Ok, so now that you've listed your property on MLS correctly and claimed your properties through external listing websites it's time to go around the web and add your listings to other sites that aren't syndicated to automatically.

PS - Sorry if this post was a little "off" i'm currently sitting at a Christmas festival and their are elves running around singing songs by the Jackson 5. HAHA.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

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

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

SEO Series | Part 2 Search Engine Compatible

Part two in our series is going to ensure your website is "search engine compatible". Now that we have discussed the keywords and key phrases you are going to use in part one we can actually go into the guts of the website by discussing how to keep search engines happy with your site.

The first area we have to look at is what are the search engines looking at? What makes a search engine dislike you? Search engines have small programs or "scripts" that run called robots. These robots search through your site looking at your "code" and "content". Things that turn robots off are things like pop-ups, an over usage of pictures instead of text or all flash and no text content.

The key to keeping search engine bots happy is simply valuable easy to navigate content. Just be sure to keep your methods ethical and your content valuable. I tell people all the time that most search engines have gotten to the point where if your website truly deserves to be number one in the search result it will be.

Now for those of you that build your own site or have one built the following is for you. Make sure your "meta" tags are all relevant to your content and keywords. Always make sure your internal pages link back to your homepage so bots do not get lost or hit a dead end. Use external CSS whenever possible. If your using flash have a text version available for people without a flash player (iPhone users).

What this all comes down to in a nutshell is - the most important part of your website is how valuable and relevant your content is to the spectrum of visitors you are trying to appeal to. Like I said in step one the search engine world is a giant popularity contest and even if you have a sure fire way to become the most popular site on the net people will never consistently return if your content is no good and remember returning visitors shows Google that your content was worth coming back to.

PS - Our LIVE Real Estate Technology show will be aired Saturday 8pm instead of Sunday 8pm. We will be out of the country starting Sunday morning.

Have a greay day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Meet Matt Fagioli | DiamondDwellings.com

Today I got the chance to speak with Matt Fagioli about his innovative "blogging brokerage" and also about his technology panel at the upcoming NAR 2008 Expo.

Matt is a pioneer in the new "blogging brokerage" frontier and I couldn't agree with this business model more. If you stand back and really look at what this type of brokerage is doing it's a no brainer when someone asks what brokers will still be standing after this hard economic time.

We already know that almost 90% of people go to the internet first to buy/sell/invest in real estate. This makes a blogging brokerage perfect. The idea is that if you only have a website it's going to be very difficult to stand against the larger brokerage companies when it comes to the internet, but if you have a blog where all of your agents can post topics about real estate in your area it shows an always evolving web presence that will always stand out among search engines.

If you would like to contact Matt Fagioli about Diamond Dwellings his email is matt@diamonddwellings.com

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

SEO Series | Part 1 Keywords

We're going to get into our new series about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The video above is a brief summary from our live show last Sunday night (www.realestatetechnologyonline.com/live).

Before you ever get in front of a computer or meet with a web developer you have to grab a pen and paper to ask yourself a question.

Question 1 - What do I want my website to be found for? or What will people be searching for when they find my website?

That question will lead you into the first step of your SEO plan; "Keywords". Search engines work by using what is called "robots" to search through the text and links of your web page to find certain repetitive keywords. After robots search your site they use your "keywords" to associate what your site is about to what people are looking for from the search engine.

Take your pad and pen and start to write down words or phrases that you want your site associated with. These phrases can be "real estate agents Denver" or "relocation specialist Denver " really whatever you want to associate yourself with.

Now that you have your certain keywords/key phrases you'll want to make sure these key terms are maximized by using the Google Adwords Tool. This tool will show you how to tune your key terms to get the most out of them.

Once you get to the tool type in your first key term such as "real estate agents in Denver". My results show that on average 110 people search for that specific key term each month. Now looking further down at those results I can see that the search term "Denver real estate agent" is searched for on average of 40,500 times each month or "Denver real estate" is searched for on average 165,000 times each month. So just using that one tool I have tuned my key phrase to appeal to 165,000 people instead of only 110. That's a huge difference.

We'll that's it for part one of SEO. Get settled down and find out what keywords / key phrases will work best for your site and maybe next we'll actually start on the website.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

The SMS widget was a success!

Hello again everyone,

I'm here with my friend caffeine and we are very excited about how the text messaging widget has done in the "real estate industry". It has been 4 days and we've had around 200 agents implement this widget into their website/blog. I really give all the credit to my three favorite websites/people (in no order).

-MyTechOpinion.com
-Agent Genius
-The Jeff Turner

Now that the widget craziness is over I can get back to my blog series about agent websites and can start the new series about SEO (search engine optimization). If you want the widget click here.

p.s. - I swear the text message in the video was not planned and if you were wondering about the greatest and most potent energy drink on the planet that was featured in my blog it was the Rockstar - Blue. (be careful with it)

Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Get text messages from your website!!

Get It Here!

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Your Agent Website Series | Part Three

"What in the world should I put on my website?" I get this question a lot and the first thing I always ask back is "What do you want your website to do for you?". Amazingly this always has a way of puzzling real estate agents. They never seem to sit down and think what their website should so for them.

The first thing I think a website should do for you is generate leads. Generating leads is how you make your money so of course that should be priority one and maybe even the only priority. After that realization we then have to figure out do we want buyers, sellers or a little bit of both? Right now I am in a buyers market like most of the country so I have tuned my website to be more friendly to buyers, but still work well with sellers if needed.

By tuning my website I mean I have made it easier to acquire buyers over sellers. I did this by giving buyers the number one thing they want most - A PROPERTY SEARCH - this is they key to generating traffic to your site. You have to have a way for buyers and even sellers to search the current market. Now since I have that taken care of my next priority would be to pre-qualify these new buyers. This is done with a giant button that says "Get Pre-Qualified Here" and when the potential buyer fills out that short form there info is sent to my preferred lenders and the process begins.

Now for sellers I can provide and quick "Find out what your home is worth form" that will set me up to do a market analysis for them and hopefully lead into a listing if I want it. For the most part I am currently not trying to take on any new listings but I will if they present themselves.

Some quick features you may want to add are Videos, Text Messaging and a fun/open description about yourself. These things can add a lot to your site.

I'll go over more in the video above but for now just remember to make your siute fun and useful while keeping it simple.

-Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Your Agent Website Series | Part Two

During this series we are going to talk about many different aspects of your agent website and since we have already covered domain names in the last post we now have to decide what type of site we want? I know your thinking "Well, I want the "web" kind of site".

There are a couple of different types of websites available for you. First you can host the site yourself and control every tiny aspect from creation to editing and so on. The method does have its ups and downs just like all of them. The benefit of hosting & building your own site yourself is the level of customization is limited only by your experience and skill. The downfall of hosting and building your own site if you are not experienced can be greater. It is by far the hardest to get up and running, you must know at least basic html to start and maintain and it takes much more time to keep up to date.

The second method of obtaining a website is buying pre-built. This option is great because you don't need to know HTML, you usually just pick a custom template to get started and you get to choose your own custom color scheme. The downfalls are you have to rely on tech support if there are any problems and it is not as customizable as a custom built page. This is most likely the best option for the average real estate professional that doesn't want to spend the time to try and build their own site.

The third option to obtaining a page is using a free pre-configured site given to you by your brokerage or board or Realtors. This is not my favorite option because it is always so generic and they all look the same. All the sites have a large header on top of some generic picture then on the left it has a "frame" style menu with a picture of the agent. These pages give you control over nothing, they look just like everyone elses, you gain minimal lead generation and there is no WOW! factor. I do use these pages whenever given to me just to have a picture, description and my name on the web but I would never run my business from one.

So it boils down to this... If you are good with web based programming or know someone who is then by all means have a custom site built that is like none other. If you want to get on the web quick with a semi-original page then go with pre-built and if you just don't care and want to just see your picture on the web run your business from the free broker page.

Now the last question. What pre-built website company do I recommend? I am going to leave this up to you the reader to recommend companies in the comments section for everyone to see. Just tell the company name, website and a brief description/experience so we can check them out.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Just testing out a new toy.

Hope everyone is doing well. I just got a new toy I wanted test out in the back yard.

Hope everyone is having a great day and enjoying this great weather.

-Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Your Agent Website Series | Part One

The first part of our series on agent websites covers a very simple procedure on how to purchase a domain name since naturally this is the first step in owning your own website. If you are already a domain name buying pro you can have a hall pass and check back in tomorrow for the next part of our Agent Website series (you will not want to miss that one).

So the first step in the longest & most important journey you'll ever take in your career begins with purchasing a $10/year domain name. I know it's so cheap, that's because everything else from here out is so expensive (j/k).

I always recommend GoDaddy.com for domain name purchases because they own around 80% of all domain registrations around the world and I never have to worry about them going out of business and losing my domain names. The one thing I will say about GoDaddy.com that I don't like is they try and sometimes succeed to up-sell agents on things they don't need.

If you don't own a domain or haven't actually purchased a domain yourself all you need to do is watch the second video above for a step by step tutorial on how to buy a domain name from GoDaddy.com.

Here are a few tips on some domain names:
- always buy www.yourname.com, .net, .org, etc.
- choose keywords you want to be recognized by (your location, homes, real estate, etc.)
- if the domain name you want is taken use GoDaddy's tips to choose one that is available
- Just remember Domain Names are the new "Net Estate" buy as many as you can!

Hope step one gets the ball rolling. I can't wait for step two.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Going Green with Technology | It's Easy!

I have tried and tried to wait for someone to do this post because I just didn't want to. I didn't want to fall into this whole "Go Green" movement but it has been brought to my attention that it just has to be done.

I am going to briefly talk about how to make your real estate career "greener" using free technology available to everyone.

First we have to go over communication. Some people like to have face to face meetings and therefore will not use their cell phone to talk with you. Instead of driving 20-30 minutes to meet them just download Skype and have a video conference with them and that way no one has to waste any gas driving to a meeting point.

The next "green" thing agents can improve on is the time spent driving around showing houses. I really think it is silly to drive all over the place showing 20 different houses when we have the types of technology available to us were we can do all of this from home. Take Google street view for example, this mapping technology allows my clients to literally walk down the street or around the neighborhood of a home they may be interested in. They can evaluate the neighborhood without ever leaving their computer. Then when a client does find a home and location they are interested in I should be able to call the listing agent and have a full interior video sent to me by e-mail so my clients can do a "video-tour" of the home before we set out and waste more gas.

I am trying to keep this short but I guess what I am trying to say is agents need to use the tools that are readily available to them so they can save time and money while also being "green".

Any Questions? Contact me at info@retechblog.com

-Real Estate Technology Online

Leave Comments | Part 2

Watch the VLOG Here

Hello again everyone. 2 days ago I posted a blog talking about the importance of commenting on other blogs to create traffic for yourself. The theory goes that if you comment with a full proper signature people will see that signature and click the links inside thus driving traffic to your site.

Let's take a look at how it turned out. The post done 2 days ago has 8 comments and 3 were done by myself so that leaves 5 people commenting on that post.

The first comment was Jeff Turner from Real Estate Shows letting me know he was following orders. Real Estate Shows is a well executed marketing website for agents listings. For more info you can visit them Here

The second comment was from Manny Otero. His web home is www.MySpace.com/realty21 . Manny will be at our Miami Tech Seminar in September and I look forward to talking with him and showing him some new tricks and tools to market himself online.

The third comment was from Jim Whatley at http://www.uberrealty.com/ . Jim is an innovative agent with a lot of great ideas about how the real estate industry is moving. Although Jim your comment didn't lead me to your site I actually had to Google it.

The fourth comment was from Scott Schmitz at www.RealtyJuggler.com. Scott works on getting agents organized and much more over at their website RealtyJuggler.com

The last and fifth comment was made by Pat Williams over at www.CyberCletch.com and www.RealHomeSense.com. I really enjoyed looking at your Real Home Sense website and I think the graphics & content are great.

Ok, so we had five people that just took a few seconds out of their schedule to post comments. So what does that do for them? SEO SEO SEO SEO!!!!

Now that they have commented with the web addresses and names google with "crawl" this site and pick them up. It gets complicated from their but just letting you know it is a great way to incease search engine optimization for a site. That's why we had vendors do it because they know what happens when they get their names out on the web.

-Real Estate Technology Online

Leave COMMENTS!!! It's very important to your career!

Watch the VLOG Here

Ok, so i've noticed a trend among visitors to RETechBlog.com. Vistors aren't leaving comments. You're thinking "why should I leave a comment? I don't have anything to say.".

Who cares if you don't have anything to say! Just use me! I tell agents this repeatedly, you have to leave comments and trails if you want people to find you. It goes something like this..

We get a lot of people that come to this site to read about updates in the technology/real estate industry. So that means you have an audience that you can market yourself to right here. Simply go to the bottom of any of these posts and leave a quick comment. It can be as simple as "Hey man, nice blog today" and then add your contact information.

Matt Rains
www.RETechBlog.com
info@RETechBlog.com

Now when the hundreds of other people come to this site and see your comments they will click on the links in your comments because people are curious about you and want to see more.

This is a must if you want to bring new people to your site and don't only do it here, DO IT EVERYWHERE!

So ill go ahead and leave a comment on this post to get the ball rolling and everyone else follow along. Who knows I may even add a link to everyone that comments on my next blog post??

A little more about comments - Click HERE

Matt Rains
-Real Estate Technology Online

Good-bye Blog, Hello Vlog!

Click here for the Vlog

So you've just started your first Blog and your off to a good start with quality content and a few visitors. Then you walk into the office one morning and you over hear someone talking about their "Vlog".

First thing you might think is "oh, what an idiot. They must be referring to their Blog.". Then after some more in-depth listening your start to realize what they are talking about is indeed a "Vlog" which stands for Video Log.

Well this makes perfect sense, it's the evolution of communication. When we first started this whole web 2.0 endeavor we were and are still using blogs (web logs) which are a written form of communication much like a book or magazine, then we went into the next frontier with "Podcasts" which are like radio broadcasts based solely around voice communication and now we have reached the final frontier with Vlogs (video logs) which are video transmissions much like television or movies.

Just like they have said time and time again "TV killed the Radio star" so I know you just got the whole "blog" thing working for you, but it's time to move forward and start Vlogging.

If you wan't to see a well executed example of vlogging visit Ian Watt at www.IanWatt.ca

Great to see you again and look forward to seeing you again soon.

-Real Estate Technology Online

Use links to Generate Traffic.

I want to show you an easy way marketers have been controlling internet traffic for years. They use a simple process I call "Link Guiding".

The key in link guiding is to make someone go to your web site without really any effort or any begging. Below is an example of link guiding, let's say I want to get someone to go to my website "RealEstateTechnologyOnline.com".

Hey,

I was just online and I found a great real estate seminar that includes tips on marketing yourself and also marketing your listings. I know they are going to Miami in September but I wonder what it would take for them to come to Colorado where I am??

Have a great day,
Matt Rains

All I am doing is changing key words in my blog post to links of where I want to guide visitors. I never once mentioned the name of the company Real Estate Technology Online but every link in the post will guide visitors there.

I hope you find some fun and useful ways to implement this into your blog.

-Real Estate Technology Online

Leave Breadcrumbs...

There are a lot of agents wondering why no one ever visits their blog. It may be because you never tell anyone where it is. The key to a successful blog or even a website is letting people know where it is and how they can find it. I have always found a simple signature at the end of any of my posts is a great way to leave a trail back to my blog.

A perfect example of this uses Trulia Voices. Let's say I am in Trulia Voices and I am talking with other agents about the current market in my area. After each of my responses or "posts" I leave a simple signature telling everyone my name, location, e-mail and blog address, like the sample below.

Matt Rains
Miami, FL
Info@RETechBlog.com
www.RETechBlog.com

Now when other agents or even potential clients view Trulia Voices they will see what I wrote and how to find more. This is a simple tool that can increase your web activity ten fold. After a few months of leaving your signature all over the web you are guaranteed to see an increase in traffic to your site.

Just remember to keep your input clear and direct. You want the people viewing your posts to really understand you are the leader in your market and they should contact you for further direction.

-Real Estate Technology Online

Starbucks and AT&T come together.

Say good-bye to T-Mobile and hello to AT&T internet access while your drinking that addicting mocha. Starting in April AT&T will be taking the reigns to the largest wi-fi hotspot in the world.

AT&T will now offer free wi-fi internet access to anyone who has AT&T broadband internet at all Starbucks location world-wide. Now you will have access to over 17,000 hot spots for the same $25.00 monthly fee from AT&T.

So if your thinking of buying a mobile broadband device such as the USB727 listed below you may want to think twice because of the now readily available starbucks wi-fi hot spots. Of course this only applies to those of you who have AT&T broadband service.

-Real Estate Technology Online

So you need a free 411 directory service??

Well, that's not a problem. As you might have already known Google (the leader in free stuff) has a toll free telephone number you can call and get phone numbers, addresses, etc. of any person or business you need without using the internet or a phone book. (if anyone still remembers what a phone book is?)

The toll free number is 1.800.GOOG.411 or 1.800.4664.411

A few months back you would have to listen to a short commercial before you could get your information but know it is all commercial and adv. free all you have to do is say the city and state you are calling and then the listing name. It's that easy! I hope this little number saves you money because I know my phone service charges you close to 1$ just for using their 411.

-Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online