I agree with Joel that Facebook is kind of a big deal and I wanted to get some feedback from the Geek Estate audience. It’s now a given you should have a Facebook strategy. For the agents and brokers reading this, how are you using Facebook Pages as part of your day to day business? Do you have it set up as a fan page for you as an individual, or as a community page (such as Brad Coy’s San Francisco Real Estate page or Dale Chumbley’s 365 Things to Do in Vancouver page)? What is your strategy toward content creation, freshness, and features on the page? Is your page working (generating inquiries or engagement) for you?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I’m genuinely curious what’s working and what’s not.

The question constantly being asked by agents within my brokerage is, “how do I use social media websites like Facebook and Twitter for real estate lead generation?”

At a recent Inman conference I had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation by Bill Tancer of HitWise (check out his book Click). During his talk Bill shared some interesting statistics:

• Social media accounts for 3% of online business.
• Of that 50% comes from Facebook (or 1.5%).

With so little opportunity coming from social media sites why are agents worried about using them? For one thing, it has been a successful traffic driver for other business models. So it’s natural for agents to jump in, not knowing how to apply it to the real estate industry. Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to share something with you today that is really, really cool. It’s Mobile Tagging: the Interactive 2D Barcode Reader from Microsoft. What if your potential customers (both buyers and sellers) were walking around with a 2D barcode scanner in their pocket? Well, they are. And the next question is how can this impact your business?

Here’s a summary from Microsoft about the Microsoft Tag technology:

Microsoft Tag is a breakthrough technology that transforms everyday things in the real world into live links to online information and entertainment.

From your mobile phone, simply snap or scan a Tag image anywhere you see it – in editorials, advertisements, product packaging, signs and storefronts – and gain instant access to Websites, videos, reviews, schedules, contact information, social networks, discounts, promotions and more!

All you need to do is download the free Tag reader on your web enabled camera phone and when you see a Tag, snap or scan it to interact with the world around you in new ways!

For today’s demonstration about the new technology from Microsoft, I set out to see how hard/long this would take. I’m happy to report that it took less than 5 minutes to get setup and running with Microsoft Tag. That’s right, I had this technology implemented and running on my phone and my site in under 5 minutes.

In today’s example, I’ll be using my profile from a new site that we launched this week – Real Estate Agent Resume. The possibilities are endless for real estate applications.

Example of using 2D Barcode Reading on your social profiles

 
After working at CareerBuilder for all those years (8 actually), resumes are very near and dear to my heart. I always thought it would be cool to give real estate agents a way to share their ‘public’ real estate resume if you will…and those ideas all culminated into the launch of a new site which we rolled out this week: Real Estate Agent Resume.

I’ll be using my profile on REAR as the example of how the Microsoft Tagging platform can be implemented, but you can easily use any link, URL, landing page, etc. for combining Microsoft Tags and your online presence.

You might be wondering what the differences are between Microsoft Tag and QR Codes. That article goes over the advantages/disadvantages of each type. In a nutshell, Microsoft Tag will allow you to create a unique tag that can be tied directly to any page, site, URL, etc. (Think your home page, Twitter URL, Facebook Profile, you name it). You can then print that tag out, put it on a listing flyer, business card, heck, even your car window if you wanted.

Next, anyone with a mobile device using the Microsoft tag reader just snaps a picture of your tag and voila, they’re taken directly to your URL that was associated with that Tag.

Creating and using your first Microsoft Tag

 
Creating a new tag is very simple. Once you’re logged into your account, just click create Tag, then assign a URL to the tag you’re creating. After tag creation, you’ll see it in your list of available tags to manage like so:

From here, you can download, email, print and take actions on the tag. If you wanted to get the tag as a PDF or JPG to use inside a flyer or on a site, just download the tag. Here’s my tag I created for my profile page on Real Estate Agent Resume:

If you’ve downloaded the Microsoft Tag Reader to your phone – (Currently supported OS/Devices include: Android,Blackberry,iPhone,J2ME,Java 2 Micro Edition,PalmOS,Symbian S60,Symbian S60 1st Edit,Symbian S60 2nd Edit,Symbian S60 3rd Edit,Symbian S60 5th Edit,Windows Mobile,Windows Phone), take a picture of the tag above with your phone and you’ll be taken directly to my profile page on REAR.

There are so many uses for this application in the Real Estate space – I’d love to hear what you all think? Do you think Microsoft Tag will catch on? If so, how can you see yourself using it?

Cheers, Matthew

Useful links from this article:
Download the Microsoft Tag Reader to your phone
Tag and QR code differences
Microsoft Tag

If you’ve spent any time at all in the real estate social media and tech space, you’ve run into Mike Mueller. I remember my first time very well. He pointed a video camera at me (without warning) and started interviewing me at an event in San Francisco. He’s become a good pal over the years.

Mike is self-professed “Tech Geek” that just happens to be a former mortgage banker. It’s not included in the profile he sent to me, but it’s no secret that Mike is a huge fan of motorcycles and hockey too.

Mike specializes in Social Media Consulting. He is a builder of engaging Custom Facebook Business Pages, blogs and social media engagement plans for his clients.
Mike writes AreWeConnected.com, a blog dealing with social media and technology as it pertains towards real estate. He publishes articles in the San Francisco Examiner and the BusinessWeek Exchange. AreWeConnected is listed in Alltop and ranked by AdAge. He has been interviewed and quoted in articles for BankRate, Scripps, the San Jose Mercury News and others, (including the front page of The Wall Street Journal for writing mortgage related Haikus)

I have no doubt Mike will be providing GeekEstate users with some of our best content. Join me in welcoming him aboard!

I’ve decided to carry on with Drew’s “Links for Geeks” feature. I’ve identified a few gems from my feed reader that perhaps you haven’t seen in the past week.

How To Set Up a Self Hosted WP Blog
Steve at Zeek Interactive (The Company Behind Real Estate Shows) has a concise and simple outline for hosting your own WP blog at Go Daddy.

USB Wall Adapters
How many times have you wanted to charge your iPhone and felt too lazy to hunt down your adapter? This is a Geek “must have”.

GE Sells Supra
GE has sold the Supra system to a company you’ve probably never heard of. Not sure how this will have an impact on the future or your lock boxes. Hopefully the new company is innovative enough to start bringing some much needed technology improvements to the stalwart “holder of the keys”.

Food Not Forks
It’s still hard for this industry to come to grips with the fact that they look more like media companies and content publishers.  I watched a Keller Williams broker outline a web strategy yesterday in Austin that was about as comprehensive as it gets in contemporary real estate. It could have just easily been a VC pitch for a content publisher. Not much has changed recently. There is still entirely too much hand wringing and over thinking taking place when it comes to technology. It’s really not about the technology. Cameras don’t take great photos, the person behind the viewfinder does. The technology in the camera is never going to be capable of framing the shot of a lifetime. The creation and distribution of content being employed by The Good Life Team and others like them will become the bellwether by which brokers of the future will succeed. One of the more impressive moments of the presentation was learning that this company made an investment in Sales Force as a CRM tool. Business is still business and understanding the differences between tactics and strategy haven’t changed. 1000Watt says it again in this great post.

Flickr Photo Credit: clairity

What the heck is a Barcamp? I’ve been helping answer that question for a couple of years now. Luckily enough, you will find a plethora of information on the REBC web site. The short of it? It’s a free event where people show up and set up the topics of discussion and those who will moderate them right there. On they fly. In the moment. No pre-planning. Think of it as a controlled Chaos. It’s unlike any event you have ever attended before. Each one that I have attended in the past has resulted in people saying it was one of the most productive things they have accomplished in long time.

Tomorrow will debut the first Austin Texas RE Barcamp. I’ll be there. So will Drew Meyers, and a bunch of other folks smarter and a damned sight better looking than me (o.k. Drew isn’t but there will be others). Visit the RE Barcamp Austin site and RSVP if you haven’t already. I look forward to seeing you there! Remember, if you have a real estate technology event coming up, submit it to the Web’s most comprehensive calendar of tech events today!

Where: Third Base Austin
1717 West 6th Street
Building 2, Suite 210R
Austin, TX 78703

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We all know the benefits of a killer domain name, but the online real estate market is so crowded and competitive it seems that all the great names are taken.  Instead of just placing a backorder for a domain and hoping, take a look at Mike Davidson’s post: How To Snatch An Expiring Domain.

He thoroughly examines the surprisingly complex world behind grabbing expired domains, referred to as “getting in on the Drop”.  The whole article is worth a read, and full of useful knowledge like the fact that domains don’t actually expire when they say they do:

If the owner of a domain does not renew by the expiration date of the domain, the domain goes into “expired” status. For 40 days, the domain is in a grace period where all services are shut off, but the domain owner may still renew the domain for a standard renewal fee….After 40 days are up, the domain’s status changes to “redemption period”. During this phase, all WhoIs information begins disappearing, and more importantly, it now costs the owner an additional fee to re-activate and re-register the domain…Finally, after the redemption period, the domain’s status will change to “locked” as it enters the deletion phase. The deletion phase is 5 days long, and on the last day between 11am and 2pm Pacific time, the name will officially drop from the ICANN database and will be available for registration by anybody.

Read the full walk through here: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain#ixzz0hKldA6Dc

Perfect for busy, on the move real estate agents – Line2.com adds a second line to your iphone and allows you to make calls over 3G, Wifi and Cellular. From their website:

“Line2 adds a second number to your iPhone that works over 3G, WiFi or Cellular networks using the same number… an industry first. Ideal if you have poor cell reception or just want to reduce your cell bill.”

Here is a video from Line2.com’s CEO Peter Sisson:

Take a moment to check it out. The first 30 days are free to play around with it.

I’ve started putting together a few Wordpress tutorials and thought I would share.  This is a fantastic plugin that allows you to show introductory text, and the user can expand the text (on the same page) if they want to read more.  This way, you can keep your listings higher on the page for users that want to see those, and allow users that want to read more about an area or neighborhood to do so without leaving that page.  Nevertheless, here it is:

Today’s feature: An interview with Real Estate Webmasters CEO Morgan Carey about the SEO benefits of indexable IDX.  He reveals hard data on the resulting increased traffic, and the ability of individual agents to compete in the elusive quest for search results.

There’s been a lot of chatter about some of the newer listing scrapers and IDX wordpress plugins and what they can do, and what the value is or isn’t of having a spiderable IDX products.

I’m interested in this topic because I got a spiderable IDX in May of 2009 from Real Estate Webmasters. So far the numbers look good, but I want to know what the potential is, and whether people’s concerns about the topic have any validity. So, for my own research (and yours), I’ve decided to do a case study on my blog that looks at the effects of having a spiderable IDX on my site, and on sites that have higher authority than mine. I’d like to see where my traffic will be in a year or two!

Also, after reading all the posts at Active Rain and Geek Estate Blog, I decided to speak with Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters to see if he could answer some of the most common question/concerns regarding spiderable IDX.

Question: If I have an indexable IDX, will I get a duplicate content penalty if others also have an indexable IDX?
Answer: No, that’s a myth. From Google itself: “Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a ‘duplicate content penalty.’ At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that. Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.” Furthermore, although it is true that everyone is starting with the same “data set” – not everyone will implement it as effectively or in the same manner. Diversification and creativity makes having this kind of data hugely valuable if leveraged correctly.

Question: Will a spiderable IDX help my site compete with the big guns (Redfin, Trulia, Zillow etc.)?
Answer: Yes of course. It’s weird – folks seem to be thinking now that the “cat is out of the bag” about spiderable IDX (we have been doing it for over 6 years btw, it’s hardly new) that there is “no point” in having spiderable IDX because companies like Trulia or Zillow also have spiderable listings (many powered directly by MLS feeds),so don’t even try to compete. The fact of the matter is – there is a very small amount of these super powerful aggregators out there, and there are 10 spots on the first page of a search engine. Even if you couldn’t outdo these sites, why not be in the fray? #4 for any keyword on the first page is really not a bad place to be. That being said – although these sites from a “domain” perspective are very powerful – they must distribute this power to their most popular / desirable targets and cannot possibly dominate or even focus on all listings in all areas. Many times just by having a spiderable IDX and a decent site, our customers easily outrank the big guns on address and MLS # related searches. One thing is for sure – without spiderable IDX – you aren’t even on the field, let alone in the game.

Question: I have a high authority site, great rankings – if I add spiderable IDX how will this change my stats?
Answer: Well, check out Jay Thompson’s case study, or take Gary Ashton’s site. Gary got a spiderable IDX at the beginning of January, this year. You’ll notice the massive jump in the number of pageviews on his site:

His traffic’s also increased over the previous month by about 45%, while his bounce rate has dropped by 36%. Users are spending about 2 1/2 times as long on the site, and they’re exploring an average of 8 pages on the site, whereas before when he had an iframed solution, people were only visiting about 2 pages on the site.

Question: I have spiderable IDX and I only have a few hundred pages indexed – why not all of them?
Answer: Chances are you do not have the authority (domain) required to keep that many pages indexed. A solution is to improve your overall pagerank, and also work on your internal linking and architecture as much as possible to leverage the pagerank you do have. Still not the end of the world though – that’s probably 350 more pages driving traffic to your site than you would have had without it. Chin up – keep building links and working on your site structure, and your pagecount will reward you with a ton of long tail traffic over time.

Question: There are many websites (with as much or more pagerank as me) in my area that have spiderable IDX. How can I compete?
Answer: Again, build your authority / pagerank is step one – whoever has the most juice (domain) has the best chance. However, there is something to be said for differentiation & augmentation. If you can come up with creative ways to rewrite your information using algorithms (titles, meta data etc.) so as to provide a “different look” (layout) and additional information on the page, then your chances are far better to generate additional long tail traffic than those simply using “out of the box” spiderable IDX. Also try to find unique ways of getting your users involved – does your MLS allow after-listing comments? Why not have users contribute comments about their favorite listings, thereby adding valuable visitor-generated, “unique” content to the page?

Here’s a question brought up by Jeff Corbett: Does the SEO value evaporate, since everyone will effectively have the same content?
Answer: I would say that everyone needs to make sure that outside their IDX data, their site has unique, quality content, period. This will help differentiate your site from the rest of the pack. As for the listings themselves, as I mentioned above, you can modify your titles and meta data to make your listings different from everyone else’s. Focus on the basics of good SEO, and the listings will only help your site in the rankings–as well as improve user experience. BTW – unless you are in a market like Austin, TX where everyone seems to be on the ball (example http://www.jimolenbush.com), then chances are you only have to compete with 1, maybe 2 sites – again, although it’s not exactly a secret, it’s also not like anyone is taking advantage. How long exactly do you want to wait before everyone but you does have spiderable IDX and there is actually some competition? Life rewards originators.

Question: Is there anything people should be aware of before they decide to get a spiderable IDX?
Answer: Realtors should stay away from IDX vendors with RSS feeds – these people are violating the NAR’s guidelines with respect to their obligation as vendors to protect IDX data from scraping or misappropriation. If the MLS board was informed (and educated as to why) RSS should not be allowed, chances are they would pull the feed. Furthermore, any solutions (such as the DS IDX wordpress plugin Jay Thompson references in his post) – should be avoided as well. My feeling is that because these plugins put complete control into the hands of untrained webmasters with no regard for regulations or compliance, the various boards will very soon pull the feeds (and perhaps the vendor agreements) of those not adhering to the quality standards expected of IDX vendors. The boards already have enough problems with members reporting members on items that are not even real issues. Imagine what will happen to a board’s compliance staff once these IDX’s (now in the control of untrained webmasters / Realtors) start gaining popularity. The MLS board is going to have so many legitimate complaints, they will virtually become buried. They obviously don’t want that, which is why they have “approved” vendors and a compliance process in the first place. Any spiderable IDX company however that does have a compliance department, and is responsible and “accountable” with regards to the MLS boards’ terms of use should be fine.

As a new regular feature of Geek Estate blog, we will be shining a spot light on select real estate technology events. If you know of a technology related real estate event, please add it to the calendar.

Our first featured event is RE Tech South. This is the 3rd event for the Atlanta based conference. I had an opportunity to interview the event organizer, Brad Nix. Take a listen. If you’ve attended the event in the past, let us know what you think. Use the hashtag #retso to follow the event on Twitter.

No Flash? Click Here To Listen To .mp3.

Click Here To Subscribe To Podcast in iTunes

I would love to get some real hard facts from agents that are actually tracking stats with goals through analytics. Not just agents that think one way is better than the other based on their feelings and their comfort level, but real data. Most likely the agent that is not going to call somebody that signs up is going to feel that a voluntary sign up is better than requiring a user to sign up and the agent that loves calling users as they sign up is going to have the opposite opinion.

The goal here is to compare real stats to see how agents can convert more business from their sites. I would like to share some stats from my Hawaii site from goals we set up and we will hopefully get some agents contributing what they are doing and their stats.

Here is how my site works so you can get a better idea of the stats and what they represent: It allows the user to search easily and get results quickly. I then have it set up to load the actual property detailed page when they click on a property from the results to get more details. Then a light box sign up form is displayed to them. They can see what they are going to get. I think this is the most effective way if you are going to require a sign up.  (It can also be set up to let them view a few properties and then prompt the sign up process.  I ran A/B testing and found the way I am currently doing had a 4-5% higher sign up rate.)

Here is 2 months (end of last year) of stats with goals set up in Google Analytics:

Sign Up Form Displayed = 14,816

Sign Up Form Completed = 3682

Email Requests Submitted = 766

Actual sign ups were 26% and of those who signed up almost 21% sent in an email request about more information. That gave my team 3682 people to call and 766 to engage in further conversation about real estate. Plus we also had 3682 people now signed up getting daily email alerts of new properties, which will result in more contacts with the potential homebuyers and sellers. I truly believe the more chances you give yourself to make contact with your users the more sales you will be able to do.

I would be interested to see if anybody has some stats on either required or voluntary sign ups. I would really like to see some stats that somebody has been tracking on their voluntary sign up sites (Percentage of users to sign ups and percentage of those to email requests, etc….).

If you are not tracking these things you probably should start so you can make a business decision based on real stats instead of just feelings.