3 TIps For Lead Generation

You can be a closing Champion but if you don’t have the deals to close in the first place, then you’re no Champ at all. Farming (lead generation) will always be a necessary part of the Realtors profession, period! Generating leads online can be tough, especially with non-conventional forms of communication that come with the introduction of social media. Here are three simple tips to enhance your online lead generation.

Manage Awareness: In order to establish a relationship, the person must first know who you are, or be aware of you. This is where web 2.0 comes in. You can improve your online presence through the use of things like Social Media, Blogs, SEO, or even online press releases. These all great ways to start, the goal is to make sure that your name comes up when someone searches the keyword “Realtor” online.

Manage Consideration: Now that people know who you are online you have to give them a reason to consider you. First impressions are important so make sure whatever they first come into contact with is quality. You can try listing some legitimate positive testimonials on your webpage. This will give the consumer a little glimpse as to how you conduct business. Provide consumers opportunities to inquire about your service by Email subscription. You now have their name and point of contact to market to.

Manage Action: Now that you have names and emails you can follow through. It may seem like a lot of work but sending a semi-personalized email to each prospect can go a long way. No one likes to be spammed so do whatever you can to make it not seem like a huge email blast. It can mean the difference between retaining a prospect or being blocked forever.

Related articles

• Will Twitter’s Lead Generation Card Improve Leads? (business2community.com)
• Lead Generation: The Differences Between Online and Offline Leads [INFOGRAPHIC] (blogs.salesforce.com)
• 50 Ways to Generate Leads with Social Media (blogs.salesforce.com)

3 Features That Your Realtor Branded App Should Have

Todays’ technology makes it easy for Realtors to work remotely but having and maintaining a mobile application can be a little frustrating.

It can get overwhelming when deciding what features your personalized agent branded app should have.  While many apps have great features, some may have too many which can leave a buyer confused and disoriented.

The more features your app has the more places it has to glitch up and crash. The key to preventing your app from constantly crashing, confusing a user, and preventing you from having a constant headache is to simplify with these 3 features.

Mobile MLS Mapping – Most applications have this as a standard feature. When building your own app this is a must have. This feature allows the user to search for property from a “Google Maps” platform. It’s extremely user-friendly and anyone who has a smart phone (if they don’t they’ve got bigger issues) can use it.

Agent Branding –  This seems like a no brainer but you’d be surprised as to how many apps do this incorrectly. Agent Branding is simply making sure the app is clearly about you. You should have features that allow the user to contact you (by phone or email) regarding a property they find on the app directly from the app. This also leaves no room for another agent to get your client!

Home Spotter – I put this on the list simply because I think it’s extremely cool! This home Spotter feature allows the user to hold his/her smart phone or tablet up to a property (as if they were taking a video or picture) and get all the info for that property. Price, listing agent, how many rooms, everything is virtually displayed over the property! This feature is just for bragging rights. You can bet the other agent doesn’t have it on his/her app and it will definitely impress your clients.

 

Related articles

• Mobile website builder (mobilesitebuilders.wordpress.com)
• Why You Should Work With a REALTOR (monicosegura.wordpress.com)
• How to Optimize Your Mobile App for Search (iacquire.com)

Real Estate Report Card

There are a lot of Real Estate companies with applications that claim to be the “best choice for your Real Estate needs”. I’ve just recently come across an article that I feel accurately describes and grades a few of the major Real Estate platforms. It goes without saying that each review should be taken with a grain of salt. Most of these applications give you the same MLS listing results, so the majority of the reviews focus on design and touch user interface. The only way to find out which one is right for you is to try them all!

“Reposted from 1000watt Blog.” 

Zillow

Zillow announced that it will be the first publicly traded company to take questions from investors via Twitter and Facebook. It also re-launched its mobile apps, moving all the search options under the “hamburger” icon and integrated its Mortgage Marketplace into the experience.

Grade: B+

I think Zillow’s openness on social media has done wonders for its brand and I like the new design… but I don’t love it. Somehow it feels like it has lost a bit of its personality. Maybe I miss the green from the new all-blue look. (Too Trulia for them, perhaps?) Also, I’m really beginning to think that the map is not the best view for real estate listings on mobile. More on that in another post, though.

Trulia

Trulia’s suite of consumer products, its website, mobile apps and iPad app all got face-lift too. Photos got bigger. The design got flatter. And in the case of the search results page on their website, they lost the left rail altogether and moved to a two-column layout.

Grade: A

I like the direction that Trulia is taking its design. Deep-sixing that left rail of refiners is like a blast of fresh air across the page. Trulia was the last holdout of the major portals on this front. Vendors and brokers, if you’re still desperately clinging to that wall of drop downs and form fields on your website, do yourself a favor and move on.

Realtor.com

Realtor.com released school search in its iOS and Android apps this month. The feature lets you quickly find properties within specific school districts or boundaries with a quick tap. Great school ratings are integrated, as are important data points like teacher/student ratios. Parents everywhere rejoice.

Grade: A-

I love all the innovation coming out of “Move” on the mobile front. They were first out of the gates with a draw-to-search feature, which still feels like magic. School search is a such a no-brainer and their execution here is fantastic. I love the speed and responsiveness. My only hesitation in awarding them an A grade this month is that the app itself is starting to look a little tired, with feature upon feature being piled on. I think this is an app that is screaming out for a UI refresh.

Redfin

Redfin pushed out a major design overhaul of the company’s website a few weeks back. They buried the previous design’s “cadaver blue” and splashed the wall with Redfin red . The company’s tree logo also got felled. A quick survey of the comments on the blog post announcing the change shows people were none too happy with the change.

Grade: B+

The new identity and red makes a ton sense. After all, the color is in the company’s name. I really like the cleanliness of the new site too, but its mobile apps still look like they’re the walking dead.

Photography and Your Listing

As many of us already know, photos play a major role when it comes to publicizing a property. Photos and videos grab everyone’s attention whether it’s on Facebook, printed marketing materials, or your blog/website. The photo/video must be clear, crisp, elegant etc. To achieve this many Realtors hire professionals to make sure the photos are  of quality, but what happens when professionals are not available? We’ve all been in a position where you are  touring a property for a client and you want to send them a quick pic or video to gauge their interest. Or maybe you’re not satisfied with the pictures on the MLS but you don’t have time to hire anyone. How do you make sure these photo/videos are quality? Here are a few tips for you to follow.

The Rule of Thirds – The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. The iPhone Makes this easy with its grid feature. If you break the image into nine sections, how do your subjects fit in those spaces? You don’t always want them in the middle.

 Use a Tripod (when available) — this will allow you to take a longer exposure and give you crisp, clear photographs with available light.

Use all of the available lighting  — in the home, being careful not to shoot directly at bright light coming from windows unless you are using multiple exposures or exposure adjustments. When the camera sees the bright light coming from the window, it thinks there is enough light for a proper exposure; what will actually happen is the room will be underexposed and detail will be lost.

Wide-Angle lenses are best for photographing rooms, as they will show more of the room, which will enhance the space.

Never Shoot at Mid Day — When shooting the property from the outside its best to avoid shooting at mid day, this is when the Sun is at its peak and the light will cause the camera to under expose the picture.

These are just few tricks that can help you when taking photos of your listing. Happy Clicking!

Related articles

• Exercise: Measuring Exposure (theartofphotographybysuzy.wordpress.com)

Benefits of Info-graphics on Your Website

Info-graphic or Information graphic, are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends. The process of creating info-graphics can be referred to as data visualization,information design, or information architecture………Sounds boring doesn’t it?  Of course it does, but it can actually stand to make your website more exciting. To put the above paragraph in simpler terms an info-graphic takes data (usually numerical, statistics, ratios, etc.) and puts it into a fun and easy to understand picture.  Here is an example of an info graphic depicting Social Media use as it relates to the Real Estate industry.

 

Simple, to the point, and most of all it’s interesting! What took me an entire page of text to explain can be done in seconds with a simple picture. We live in world of instant gratification. People want you to get to the point immediately or they’ll lose interest. Placing an info-graphic on your website will not only help you organize your information into an easy to understand format but it will also help you keep the reader’s attention.  Chances are the info-graphic in the center of the page is the first thing you looked at and from there you decided to read the text. As a Realtor you should use this to your advantage.

So how can you as a Realtor use info-graphics? Any way you want to. I’ve seen them used to announce new listings, community updates, and used to chart a certain Realtors success for the past few years. The uses are only limited to your imagination.  Here are a few sites that will help you design an info-graphic quickly. Each has its own unique graphic generator but all create quality info-graphic. Try all and see which one you like the best!

-> Infogr.am

-> Visual.ly

-> Piktochart

 

 

The Value of Pairing a Video with your Property Listing is Priceless!

As we all know Real Estate is an industry that gives the power to the individual. Sure there are huge companies like Realtor.com, MLS.com, Zillow etc. that have thrown money at having the most listings and data but none of them actually SELL the property. The Realtor is the deciding factor in that arena. To paraphrase some of my earlier post, the advance of technology has literally put the power in the realtors hands. This power (technology) actually gives the realtor an advantage over a lot of these huge realty companies and today I’m going to point out a very simple but very powerful tool available to everyone. VIDEO! I saw a realtor do something that I thought was brilliant at an open house that I recently had. She asked me if I was ok with her taking a video for her client. Naturally, I said “Sure”. It’s what she did after taking the video of the house that caught my attention. She proceeded the record the neighborhood, and the traffic of a near by intersection. That’s when I realized that SHE WAS A GENIUS !

Video is something that just about everyone has access to through their computers and/or their smart phones. Much like a photograph, video can convey a sense of personality and intimacy. These traits are what make video such a powerful tool to the realtor. With a video you now have the ability to capture things that a huge company cannot. With tap of a button you can send your client a realistic view of the condition of the neighborhood, the neighbors (that’s always important), traffic, schools, construction(if any), condition of home, etc. The uses are endless. This creates a deeper level of trust between you and your client, something that is sure to be conveyed when recommending you to a friend. Current Technology not only allows you to share the video instantly but it allows you to stream live if needed.

Video is a crucial addition to realtors who want to take their business to the next level. Going the extra mile to create a quality video could not only be the deciding factor in your sale, but it could also be the deciding factor in the potential for future listings. So before posting your next listing think about using video to do something “outside the box”.

Related articles

• Realtor.com To Provide Comprehensive Commercial Listings (virtual-strategy.com)
• Realtor.com tracking data at the property level (jeffmertlrealestate.wordpress.com)
• Here Is What’s Wrong With Zillow and Trulia (blancoryan.wordpress.com)