Dear Zillow-meisters – Better start makin’ copies of the Trulia-nator January 9, 2008
The folks at Trulia, have just released a new feature that is cooler than the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. In fact, I think Zillow and Realtor.com will need to order more photocopiers. Trulia has just released their Trulia Publisher Platform, and the coolness of this feature is that it lets publishers use their search technology, with your listings, with a publisher’s co-branding, and at no cost to the publisher. This is the real estate equivalent of Google AdSense and will change the nature of the real estate web advertising game, perhaps drastically.
Currently, Trulia has signed up Kiplinger, American Towns, and perhaps most interesting, Seattle Weekly. Getting Seattle Weekly as a publishing partner has to annoy Zillow more than Apple giving free computers to Redmond-area schools annoyed Microsoft. If Trulia can sign up more publishers (frankly the value proposition is so simple & compelling for small to medium sized publishers, I can’t think of a reason why they won’t sign up) they are going to have to upgrade their servers to handle the increase in traffic.
What’s this mean for publishers? Well if they are small or medium sized, they just got a much more effective way of associating their brand and increasing real estate related web traffic. Granted, Trulia controls the listings and the technology, but if your core competency isn’t real estate search, getting a co-branded search tool is much more cost effective. And since Trulia has over 2 million listings, the publishers will probably get more traffic & ad revenue too. Seems like an easy decision to me.
If you’re a big publisher, it’s a much harder decision. But since developing technology is expensive and getting listings critical mass is difficult, I suspect the desire to partner w/ Trulia got much stronger unless you’re a direct Trulia competitor. If Trulia gets big web media players to partner with it, things could get very interesting.
What’s this mean for Realtor.com? I dunno, but it’s increasingly looking like they are going to get HouseValued (yes, I just made that verb up), if they don’t show some brain activity.
What’s this mean for Zillow? Just when Zillow’s listings feed program was getting off the ground, Trulia does this! I’m guessing the sales & engineering departments just learned what they are going to be working on for the next several months.
What’s this mean for the broker in the trenches or realtor on the street? Well, if you have a Trulia listings feed, you just got more free exposure. If you pay Trulia to feature your listings more prominently, well you just got a much better return on your investment. If you liked the free traffic Trulia gave you before, you’re going to LOVE them now. Perhaps even more than the 12th man, loves his Seahawks.
Sphere: Related ContentA Fistful of Feeds September 15, 2007
Cue up the Ennio Morricone music and head for the hills! There’s been some recent talking among the town folk, about the feeding frenzy that’s happening out there on the wild web of the west. Let’s just say San Miguel will never be the same once the schema with no XSD enters town.
Just when you thought it was safe in digital listing land, it’s going to get a little wilder. You see, Jesse ‘Zillow’ James has got a new six shooter and is getting ready to take your listings, publish them for the world to see, and give the town sheriff something else to think about. Right now, Jesse is just at target practice, but high noon at the O.K. Corral is coming soon enough.
Even better, Jesse has been taking marksmanship lessons from Wild Bill Gates’ old play book. It’s every bit as clever as the lead shield old Clint used in the movies. You see, Zillow’s doing 2 things which show they’ve learned the “embrace and extend” tactics from yesterday’s web slinging masters.
First, Zillow is embracing Trulia’s feed format – This move means that anybody who already has a Trulia listings feed will be able to get their listings onto Zillow with than less than 10 minutes of effort (the amount of time it takes to fill out a form with your feed url). It’s entirely possible that by doing this, Trulia’s feed format will become the “de-facto” industry standard. (Which wouldn’t be all bad)
Secondly, Zillow’s extending the purpose of Trulia’s format, by coming out with their own feed format – OK, some of you are already thinking, oh great, another XML format I need to implement and support. However, I think Zillow will be able to garner support for their ZIF format because of the following reasons.
- Their spec is simple to understand. Unlike GoogleBase & edgeio, which seem to be trying to win an Obfuscated XML code contest with their name spaced RSS mess, Zillow’s feed documentation is every bit as clear as the current industry feed leader, Trulia.
- Their spec is comprehensive. The only industry schema that compares to the breadth and depth of the Zillow’s XML Schema is RETS. Except Zillow has the benefit of not having to getting 900 MLS boards to play nice together.
- Doc ‘Trulia’ Holliday is not dumb. A master gun fighter in his own right, nothing is preventing Trulia from embracing the Zillow feed standard as their V2 spec. If that happens, RETS may suffer the same fate as Lester Moore. Out here on the wild web of the west, there’s the quick and the dead.
- Oh yeah, they also get about 4+ million monthly visitors on their web site.
Anyway, grab the popcorn; it’s going to be show!
Sphere: Related ContentConsumer Benefits of a Statewide MLS? June 3, 2007
I’ve been asked to speak before the California Association of Realtors (CAR) committee on MLS/Computer and Business Technology this Thursday in Sacramento, CA and I’m just now coming to the conclusion I may be in over my head! 
Despite the slightly off-topic nature (California MLS issues as oppose to Seattle MLS issues), I thought I’d share the story of what I’m working on as it might interest more than a few RCG readers…
Here’s some background:
- A few months ago, John Hickey (president of the Pasadena/Foothill Association of REALTORS) attended one of my seminars and asked if I’d be willing to speak to the CAR MLS committee members in Sacramento in June (It seemed so far away at the time!) about online real estate technology.
- My research to date has been limited to talking with John, talking with a few people around Move about CAR’s MLS plans and reading their Proposal of a Statewide MLS in California.
Just to be clear, I haven’t been asked to give an opinion on the merits of doing away with California’s local MLS organizations in favor of one statewide MLS (although that appears to be the proposal), but rather, my role is to give a short overview presentation (20 to 25 minutes) on how online technologies are being used in the real estate space. (This is tougher than it sounds!).
It’s dangerous to walk into any presentation without a goal in mind, so here is what I’m looking to accomplish. I want the people in attendance (anywhere from 100 to 250 local MLS technology representatives) to walk away with the understanding that the only way to be successful in the online space going forward will be to provide tangible and obvious benefits to consumers. (I’m not going to make this part of my presentation, but I personally think that with the size and scope of the competition in the listing aggregation space, it is a gamble to assume that any one organization will control listing data into the future, especially if the local MLS’ aggregate into larger and larger targets.)
Here’s the outline of my presentation so far:
Understanding Online Real Estate Technology through the Prism of Web2.0
Overview: How do “Web2.0″ technologies apply to online real estate? (7 minutes)
In a simplistic sense, successful web2.0 sites are designed, developed and managed for the consumer as oppose to a product, advertiser or organization. Some Web2.0 characteristics:
- Everyone is a publisher
- Quick examples of writing posts, leaving comments, writing reviews, rating items, social bookmarking, etc.
- Designed for more than just a browsers
- Websites are being built for mobile devises and feed readers that rely heavily on web-services and APIs
- Consumers expect websites that meet their individual needs (personalization)
- Example: Understanding Kayak’s roll in disrupting sites like Expedia and Travelocity
Understanding how communication tools are being used to benefit consumers (5 minutes)
- Blogs
- What is a blog? and Why are agents using them to market themselves?
- Feed Readers
- Example: How Google Reader can be seen as an extension of a personalized online newspaper
Understanding how communities are being used to benefit consumers (5 minutes)
- Consumer-oriented Social Networks in the real estate space are still relatively undeveloped
- While some agents have gone to existing consumer-oriented platforms (like Facebook and MySpace), the majority of agents using social networking tools are blogging.
- ActiveRain is the most popular service in the real estate space by providing a forum for agents to share knowledge about effective online marketing options and reach out to consumers.
- MyBlogLog provides a way to connect blogs and create a sense of community out of bloggers who write on their personal sites.
- Trulia Voices provides a way for consumers to interact with real estate professionals around local topics
- Blogging is particularly appealing to real estate agents because it is mostly a one-way conversations where agents can have control over the conversation. While there have been more than a few attempts, no social networking platform in the real estate space has managed to capture significant consumer participation.
Web2.0 websites work because they deliver on evolving consumer expectations… (5 minutes)
- Consumers are being conditioned to expect more and better data on the internet about the home buying process:
- Market and neighborhood information: Market Snapshot, Altos Research, Trulia and Neighboroo
- Realtor information (reviews and commissions): HomeThinking and Redfin
- Comprehensive database and listing information: Realtor.com, Zillow, and PropertyShark
Summary (3 minutes)
Web2.0 aggregation sites are highly focused on serving the real estate consumer:
- RE consumers expect websites (and Realtors!) to use multi-media tools to build community and trust into the systems.
- RE consumers don’t care about our rules, practices and policies with regard to listings. They expect and will continue to seek out the most complete and accurate database of listings.
- RE consumers trust the information from websites that (1) rank well in search engines and (2) allow for interaction and acknowledge feedback.
- RE consumers expect that the tools being developed and the websites they visit to focus on providing a tangible and obvious benefit to them.
Now that I’ve put the outline together, I’m going to rearrange existing slides (from my earlier seminars), add some new content and cut away at my outline until I can get it down to 20 minutes. If you have any thoughts on how I can hack this presentation down to better serve my goal, I would love to hear your ideas.
Tech Thursday: Are you addicted yet? May 10, 2007
After a Wacky Wednesday, I thought it might be time to return to real estate technology…
ShackPrices adds mass transit to their listing search and Greg continues to be impressed… (so am I)
USA Today provides an idea for a potential update to ShackPrices… What if Galen included the emotional map of each area?
Speaking of new online mapping tools, Joel has a nice write up on a new home search site out of Toronto called Real Estate Plus that was built by Fraser Beach…
The vFlyer folks published a huge list of Web2.0 sites… There are some obvious omissions (I would have found a place for sites like Cyberhomes, Sellsius, PropertyShark, RealEstateShows, HomeHugg and, of course, Shackprices), but overall, it was a valiant effort to capture the cutting edge of the online real estate front…
The Real Estate Zealot gives some good background on using Yahoo’s JumpCut to edit and stream real estate videos… (If YouTube made the previous list, then JumpCut appears to have earned a spot as well…)
Nothing too big, but I have been working with some others to build some new themes and widgets for a WordPress website for a Move Trends website that went up a little bit ago… (Note: I also took control over the “hat” at the top of Move.com, so don’t be too surprised if I start sending traffic to random places! LOL!)
The release of the updated Google Analytics has been a real joy! I spent way too much time this evening clicking on the “Entrance Sources” option for popular pages on RCG (it feels much more informative than the previous layout). In the process, I’ve learned a ton about where and how traffic is reaching the site and I’ve actually learned that some of my previous assumptions were completely wrong. (However, considering I’m not using any of the goal tracking or funnel analysis, Seth thinks I should just quit… but I’m having way too much fun to quit…)
I’ve also been wasting spending way too much time on Facebook recently (it ramped up after Joel’s recent post). Fight it if you wish, but I predict online social networking is in your future…
UPDATE: Shortly after hitting publish, Trulia announced some major enhancements to their website… Bloodhound has the details (including a podcast by Bryan).
Sphere: Related ContentDeath by a thousand paper cuts February 25, 2007
Every once in a while a realtor or broker from out of state will ask me to develop an IDX web site for them. Unfortunately, supporting a new MLS is very similar to supporting a foreign language. It is a large software engineering task that takes a lot of time, and since I don’t already have the code written and don’t already have access to their MLS’s feed, I inform them that time is money and the conversation usually ends there. Someday, that may not be the case, but I’d rather be small & profitable than large & broke.
The problem is made worse by the fact that many Realtors don’t know what format or protocol their MLS uses for data downloads or even who to contact in their MLS to get a feed for an IDX vendor. If you ever want to change IDX vendors, hire a software engineer or are crazy enough to do it yourself, you should know this. Knowing how your MLS distributes your listing data is like knowing how to change the oil in your car or how to defragment your hard drive. You don’t have to know, but it’s good to know. It may seem like I’m ranting about some MLS techie mumbo jumbo thing again, but it is preventing the industry from taking advantage of the low cost IT innovations that could be. I don’t think folks fully appreciate the challenges that an IDX vendor faces and how those challenges are retarding the industry’s growth and health.
For example, the NWMLS (Northwest Multiple Listing Service - serves mainly Seattle, WA and western Washington) uses software from Rapattoni. It provides listing data via a proprietary SOAP interface and all the photos are accessible via an FTP server. Listing data is updated constantly (a new listing usually appears in our feeds about 15-20 minutes after it’s been entered into NWMLS by a member as I understand it).
By contrast, EBRD (East Bay Regional Data - serves mainly Oakland, CA and the east bay area) uses Paragon by Fidelity MLS Systems provides it’s listing data via nightly updated CSV text files, down-loadable by FTP. The new and updated listings images are accessible via ZIPed files via FTP. The photos for active listings which haven’t been recently added or changed are not available (unless you bug the IT dept).
The only way they could make their systems more different is if the EBRD encoded their listings in EBCDIC! In order to support both, I need to develop 2 very different programs for downloading the listing data onto my server, importing the listing data in my database, dealing with differences in the listing schema (for example, the EBRD doesn’t contain a “Number of Photos” field or a “Community Name” field), dealing with differences in the photo location downloading (the NWMLS stores all photos in an uncompressed format in one of a thousand sub directories while the EBRD just stores the fresh photos in one big zip file). So I can spend my limited time improving my software for new markets (that have no customers) or improving my software for my home market (which has paying customers). Unfortunately, given the current market realities I can only afford to support my home market at this time since MLS IDX programs can be very different and there is no place like home (so far as I know anyway).
I keep waiting for RETS to save me from this madness, but until it happens in Seattle or the East Bay, I’m not holding my breath. After all, if two of the larger MLSes in the country in the two most tech savy areas of the nation don’t support it yet, I interpret it to be a vote of no confidence. I suppose, RETS could be going great guns in the rest of the country, but if it was, I’d expect the NWMLS & EBRD to be all over it, like the establishment on Redfin.
The Center for REALTOR® Technology Web Log, paints a rosy a picture regarding RETS deployment in the industry. Unfortunately, according to Clareity Consulting, an IT consulting firm that serves MLSes and other parts of the real estate eco-system, RETS is the NAR’s unfunded mandate. Although, everybody wants the benefits of RETS, nobody is willing to pay for it. Furthermore, it appears back in days before I got sucked into real estate technology, there was an effort to promote the DxM standard and that went nowhere (which is a bad omen). What’s worse is that they keep moving the goal posts. We don’t even have widespead RETS 1.0 support, and they’ve already depreciated that standard going full bore on RETS Lite and RETS 2.0. It seems the biggest problem is one of vision and scope. They keeping adding more features to cover more scenarios, when we don’t even have wide deployment of the existing standard (assuming that we had standards to begin with at all). It reminds of the recent software industry debacle that is known as “Longhorn reset“. The problem is that RETS is just too complicated, in an environment with too many legacy systems in place, too few resources to support it, and excessive aspirations. The idea of RETS is great, it’s the implementation and deployment that’s disappointing and at least Microsoft pulled Vista out if it’s death spiral…
The sad thing is that computer industry already has great tools for moving data around over the Internet in efficient and well supported (if sometimes proprietary ways). They allow you to query, slice, and dice your data in a near infinite number of ways. They’re called database servers. They are made by multiple software vendors and there are even some excellent open source ones out there. They let you set permissions on what accounts can see what tables or views (gee, sounds like something an MLS would want). The better ones, even have this level of security to the field level. Even better, most of these so called database servers have the ability of exporting data into spreadsheets, reporting tools, and even GIS systems. All of them provide a well defined and often times well implemented API that software developers can use and exploit to implement what hasn’t been invented yet!
Why doesn’t the NAR & the MLSes save us all the trouble, standardize on a few good database platforms (I’m a fan of MS SQL Server and MySQL, but I’d settle for anything that has ODBC, .net & Java support at this point), and provide everybody RDBMS accounts? It’d lower the cost for us IDX vendors (less code to write, since everything is just SQL), it’d lower the costs for MLS vendors (since data access, security, programmability, and scalability is now the RDBMS vendor’s problem), provide more choices for agents and brokers (since getting Excel talking to MS SQL Server is a cakewalk compared to RETS) and it will lower IT costs for the MLS (because the MLS vendors don’t need to invent an industry specific solution to a problem that’s been largely solved already and I’m betting that the MLS vendors already use somebody else’s RDBMS to implement their solutions anyway). Granted, a SQL Server won’t enable all the scenarios that RETS wants to enable (if RETS was ever well implemented and widely deployed enough for that happen). However, I’m of the belief that it’s not going to happen until after Trulia or Google Base becomes the de facto nationwide MLS by providing a single schema with a simple REST like web services interface.
So, what does your MLS do to support IDX vendors? Do they provide all the data all the time, or just daily updates? Have they deployed RETS yet? Are they going to? Who is their MLS software vendor or do they have a home gown solution? What do you want to do, that you can’t do today because the data is in a format that you can’t use easily? Would you be willing to pay more in membership dues for better software or better service from your MLS? Are we at the dawning of the RETS revolution, or is it too little, too late?
PS - Anybody, know anybody from an MLS / IDX dept or MLS vendor that blogs? I’d love to know what things are really like on their side of the listing data fence.
Sphere: Related ContentAdventures in digital listing land February 10, 2007
Recently, one of my clients (Real Property Associates) asked me to automate the process of submitting (or advertising) their real estate listings and rental properties on Trulia, Google Base, and Craigslist. After implementing the feature, I thought sharing my experiences would a make an interesting blog post. (So here we are)…
As you may know, there are 2 ways of getting your listings on Trulia. The easiest is just to let Trulia crawl your site. Unfortunately this method doesn’t work very well since there are an infinite number of ways to present listings on a web page, and Trulia’s engineers haven’t been able to spend the requisite infinite amount of time required to handle all the cases. This isn’t a knock on Trulia, since Google Base doesn’t even attempt to do this, but just a reminder that there are a lot of things software just can’t do yet. If this method works for you, your lucky.
The recommended way is far more reliable. You merely need to host an XML file on your web site that contains the listings you want to promote, and then once day or so, Trulia’s web farm will request your file, parse it, and import onto their site for the whole world to see.
In my case, since I already export MLS searches via RSS (I knew writing that feature was a good idea), I merely had to spend a couple hours tweaking the output of my MLS RSS feed pages to match Trulia’s schema, register the URL on Trulia, and in 48 hours, we had listings on Trulia. And in 72 hours, I noticed referrals from Trulia was already generating about 4% of the site’s traffic!
By comparison, Google Base was easier in some respects and more cumbersome in others. The nice thing about the Google Base file format is that it is standard RSS. Or rather, it’s standard in the same way the Microsoft Word exports standard HTML. It’s RSS with a bunch of namespaced items for the custom attributes that Google Base uses for it’s Housing item type. Anyway, if you have already have an MLS RSS feed, tweaking the output to match Google’s schema is pretty straight forward. I should note that Google appeared to be more particular about the XML it gets than Trulia appeared to be, so you’ll probably be spending more time getting things onto Google Base.
The problem with Google Base isn’t creating the feed, it’s getting it up there. You see, Google Base does not download an URL like Trulia does, therefore you have to upload your data to the GooglePlex. There are 2 ways to upload your data, via a web browser or via ftp. I ended up writing a script on my server that would download a Google Base feed from my web server, and then upload it to Google in the middle of the night.
Automating Craigslist from a web page was an interesting challenge. They have a very aggressive anti-spamming policy, CAPTCHAs, have no supported way of submitting a post programatically, and the web browser’s cross domain security model certainly doesn’t make things easier. Fortunately, I found a way around everything but the CAPTCHA, but it required some IE only technology since Firefox on Windows still doesn’t support COM automation. (BTW, if any developers out there know if XUL applications on Firefox/Mozilla can accomplish everything IE based HTA’s can, drop me line. I’d love to talk with you)
After serving up listings to “the major players”, I decided to see what the beast from Redmond was up to. Turns out they want in on the action too (big surprise), and the 1-2 punch of Windows Live Expo and Live Product Upload appears to be Microsoft’s answer to both Craigslist and GoogleBase. I’ve signed up for the Live Product Upload Beta, and I’m looking forward to adding support for their service once they get their act together. It looks promising, but currently their upload service is more designed for merchants selling products, instead of real estate professionals selling homes.
Hopefully, the Live Product Upload team will correct this oversight and support multiple item types for upload. They better not wait too long to get that feature implemented, because I’ve recently discovered that Propsmart, Oodle, Edgeio, already have web feed programs in place for XML formatted listing submission. It looks like I’m going to be busy…
So, what sites do you use for listing promotion (or just reading classifieds)? Backpage.com looks like a promising up and comer. Anybody use postlets.com to assist in your online classified ad management? Anybody using Zillow, SubmitYourListings.com, or Ebay for listings promotion? Is paid advertising worth the expense when the free online classified marketplace is exploding?
Sphere: Related ContentRealtor.com takes a step closer to Trulia October 19, 2006
Come spring, Realtor.com won’t have access to the Northwest MLS, so only houses from agents who pay to participate will show up. Trulia.com, a site the “crawls” broker web sites to fill its database, will probably have more listings from western Washington from that point going forward (the NWMLS still has the most).
Usually I believe that access trumps all, but it is unseemly for an organization like the NWMLS to give its data away for free to a corporate giant, but block all other interested parties. Realtor.com, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to the rest of the world, where you either have to work with a licensed broker and play by the rules, accept listings for free, or crawl the web to find listings.
Sphere: Related ContentIs Trulia totally clueless? September 27, 2006
In a post I’ve been meaning to blog about, Trulia asks Is the MLS Totally Clueless? Why is “the MLS” totally clueless (they mean all 1,000+ MLS systems)? According to Trulia, because they don’t allow For Sale By Owner properties to be shown alongside MLS listings. (Is Trulia right, is this dumb? Probably, but I’ll leave that for another discussion.) What is Trulia’s solution? They don’t allow For Sale By Owner properties to be shown alongside their broker listings (see answer number 1). Sounds like someone shouldn’t be throwing stones.
Will Trulia ever allow FSBO listings? My guess is the moment that Trulia gets enough traffic for consumers to care if their house is listed on Trulia, the tables will turn on the brokers they are so eagerly courting right now. FSBO: check. Smaller links to broker sites: check. Data added by users: check. I don’t think they’ll do this out of greed, rather they’ll do it because they have to: if they keep the site the way it is, with limited information about properties and links to agent sites, the rest of the industry is going to pass them by.
Note: Trulia is not a member of “the MLS” and does not need to follow any MLS rules. There was some reader confusion about this.
Sphere: Related ContentI believe that real estate agents are either in marketing or… August 27, 2006
- Google is doing a major update on their backlink calculator. One of the updated datacenters is showing over 1600 backlinks to RCG while the regular search is still only showing 733. This is great news! The more often Google re-indexes backlinks the better because we get so many more (recognized) backlinks than the typical agent website and I’ve noticed that each time Google updates these backlinks (they only do it every 3 to 6 months), we placed much better in organic search results shortly thereafter. Yum!
- Talking about organic search results, I let Greg know that I thought he was potentially hurting himself in Google by posting identical articles on both his regular blog and his ActiveRain blog (no longer available). Put very simply (and definitely an oversimplification), when Google sees two identical articles, they are forced to make a choice in determining which article is “good” and which one is “spam”. Assuming you don’t want either of your sites to be labeled “spam”, then don’t have identical content floating around in full. (When a spam site copies your articles in full, you’re just have to trust that Google will figure it all out!) If you’re going to put articles on more than one site, make sure that you change things up a bit, or better yet, summarize the article and link to your main site where the full article can be found. I would point out some of the other people besides Greg who are doing this same thing on ActiveRain, but it appears that word travels fast via email and most of the guilty have taken their ActiveRain blogs down (Joel being the only exception I’ve found at this point… and he really should not be doubling up his content at this point considering he’s still in the process of “teaching” google about his new domain.)
- However, all this makes me feel bad… Matt, I promise my intentions were good and I wasn’t looking to get people to drop their activerain blogs. I think you’ve got a great platform and others should definitely consider blogging on your site. I just wanted to warn people that they might be committing googlecide (a great phrase coined by Greg!) if they post identical content in both places! For everyone’s benefit, Matt Cutts gives a comprehensive explanation on how to get re-included in Google searches should your site ever be listed as spam, but I don’t think that should be necessary as the re-inclusion request is typically for sites that have actively tried to trick Google in ways much more devious than duplicate content.
- Steve Hurley let me know about his new blog for the Tacoma area (South Sound) and he asked for some advice on how to get more readers. My advice: start linking to other real estate blogs! There are a lot (a ton!) of real estate blogs with good content that will never get “discovered” because they live in their own bubble (yes, real estate has lots of bubbles!). I think a lot of real estate agents have a view that they are smart enough to be the one and only resource of real estate information. Even if that held water, very few agents are good enough to break out of the mold without some major help from other real estate bloggers. So, regardless of how good your stuff is, find someone else to link to in every post! Really, every post!
- Another way to drive traffic is to leave comments on other people’s blogs. The nice part about leaving a comment is that you’ll get a link back to your blog with each and every comment. However, that won’t generate traffic nearly as effectively as if other bloggers are linking to you within their posts. What is the most effective way to get the attention of other bloggers so that they will link to you? Link to them! Want more? Here are the three most important elements of real estate… blogging: Linkation, Linkation, Linkation.
- Greg: Ardell’s going to kill me for that title. I promise I wrote it before I became a believer in the church of Ardell! I really wish I could give you a “on a related note” to this story, but I simply can’t blog about a meeting I had last week with the master of real estate marketing…
- I agree with Chris Pirillo that social bookmarking buttons have gotten out of hand. I’ve not added any to RCG because it seemed like it took up valuable real estate and I’m not sure it provided a valuable service to our readers. The only one I’ve considered adding is del.icio.us, but considering most del.icio.us users have a button installed on their browser (they tend to be a tech-savvy bunch), I’ve never bothered. Adding a button for a site like digg (let alone sites like reddit) seems pointless for a real estate blog since I’ve never seen one real estate article promoted by those communities. (In other words, why would I give them an ad (i.e. their logo) on every one of my posts if they are never going to send me traffic?)
- I want one… Sony is preparing to introduce a light-weight geocoder with software to make geocoding photos easy. Although I wish geocoding photos was easier than dragging along another device…
- Taken one step further (and two steps too far): Wouldn’t it be great if you could search for an item based on where you were when you were working on the file? As in, “I remember taking those notes while in San Francisco…” and then have a document filter based on where you were when you made those edits (obviously, this only makes sense if you’re working on a laptop or mobile device). The secret weapon in this idea would be taking advantage of the wifi positioning from Loki so that you don’t have to lug around another device…
- Everyone knows that Loki was the god of mischief, right? (Due to a simple twist of fate, I know a lot more about Nordic gods than I do bible stories, but I can’t go there because I’ll get to sidetracked…). Well, the mischievous people over at Trulia have blocked Move’s IP address so that I didn’t read what Greg liked so much about their post until I got home. (I know I could have proxied in, but I didn’t bother). Anyway, the article is hilarious and definitely shows the benefit of not taking yourself too seriously. Tell your kids: real estate is fun!!!
YouTube as a Marketing Tool? August 6, 2006
Ardell asked about the meaning of “web2.0″ yesterday and David G of Zillow gave an easy-to-understand definition that Web2.0 is the “read/write web”. In an unrelated thread, Ed pointed us to a rap video sang by the Trulia Markermen… These conversations converge in that the cost of producing and hosting videos in a web2.0 environment is so low as to be negligible.
Watching the markermen walk around SF Connect, I couldn’t help but be reminded of when I was living SF around 2000 and couldn’t go downtown without bumping into an Ask Jeeves character passing out free stuff (he’s now retired by the way). Nonetheless, it is a fun video and it reminds me of biting faux-rap video (the uncensored version is even more biting!) I saw yesterday on YouTube called Suburbanites. I’ll post it here for your viewing enjoyment:
Considering the edginess of YouTube, is there a place for professionals (real estate or otherwise) to get involved? I’m not sure how effective these videos are at generating leads, but I think videos like the following one put out by Cheryl, a broker in NYC, are extremely effective at demonstrating an agent’s knowledge of the local market. Considering the cost of producing a video like this is minimal and the hosting fees are zero, it’s seems like something any tech-savvy real estate agent should be exploring.
Note that this ad for her services has already been viewed over 1500 times by people who want to hear her message. Incredible!
Sphere: Related Contentolder posts »
