Internet Marketing 101: Advertising Listings on the Internet
August 26, 2008
By: Chad Huck
Author's Website: http://www.ChadHuck.com
Trying to figure out where to advertise listings on the Internet can be is a daunting task. If you went to every website that displayed real estate listings and added just one listing to all of them, well, it’s not really possible. With new listing sites appearing every day, it’s overwhelming to think that you have to add listings to every one. No, that’s not needed. There are site’s out there that make syndication easy for you, and best of all, they’re free.
As briefly mentioned in my previous post, Postlets, vFlyer, and ListHub are some sites that will syndicate your listings to a plethora of the more popular real estate listing websites. If you have a Point2Agent site and add your listings, Point2 syndicates the listings just like the others. (Note: Point2 sites are great for their price… FREE! Although you can upgrade for some other great features. Check out a test/training site I made in less than 30 minutes)
Syndication is important for a few different reasons. The first being that it saves you time for the reasons mentioned above. Enter your listing in one spot, and the rest is done for you. I want to point something out to those that are with a Realogy brand company (Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, Better Homes & Gardens and Sotheby’s) though. This is done for you via the feed from corporate. Syndication sites are below the corporate sites in the heirarchy set forth by third party real estate sites, so if the same property is featured on a syndication feed and a corporate feed, the corporate feed will win. From what I understand, third party sites ranking of claiming listings work like this:
Agents Direct Claim > Brokers Direct Claim/Feed > Corporate Feed > Syndication sites
If you aren’t from a Realogy brand company and you’re unaware of your company sending feeds to the third party sites, Jump ahead of the others in your company and area by using the syndication sites. If you’re a broker/owner, make your company stand out by creating an XML feed that the third party sites can access.
Other good reasons to syndicate listings are your listings are put in front of prospective buyers! Screw the newspaper, you’re trying to get the listing sold. There’s some stat out there where a lot of people use the Internet to search for their new home. And it’s easy! Very little technical skill needed.
Another way to advertise your listings: Blog about them. Don’t just give property specs though, they can pull that from another site. Write about the community and why someone would want to live there.
Okay, I hope you are ready to jump up and down that you’ve been waiting for me to shut up and let you go post your listings. I’m done.
Now go to Postlets, vFlyer, Listhub… (all do the same, just personal preference on which one you choose).
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Listings Syndication
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Comments
9 Comments so far
Kris Berg on August 27, 2008 7:16 am
Chad, Agreed with one exception. The corporate feed trumps my Agent Direct Claim every time. There is only one site I am aware of, one I won’t mention by name (Zillow), where if I win the footrace, I can claim my listing ahead of the Brokerage.
joe realtor on August 27, 2008 8:18 am
Great article, only comment is, ListHub is the only one that pulls the data directly from the MLS. Why does this matter? If you have a price change for example, you would have to manually change it on those other syndication sites, but not ListHub! Far superior than the other syndication products out there.
Jamey Bridges on August 27, 2008 9:50 am
Chad, great points. I am glad you focused on the syndication aspect because I think some real estate professionals are going blind trying to put their listings in every place to get exposure. With new aggregators popping up everywhere trying to charge real estate agents more money it’s a smart bet to find the freebie places where you can get maximum exposure.
Jeff in Hawaii on August 27, 2008 8:28 pm
There seems to be a lot of duplicate content on some of these sites. I sometimes see the same listing on Google Base and others from several different sources.
It would be great if some day there could be a National MLS. ListHub is a good one, but they need to increase the number of sites they work with as well.
Chad Huck on August 28, 2008 11:08 am
To all… thank you for your comments!
@Kris - That’s news to me. My agents have always been able to brand their listings on Trulia and Zillow. Will have to investigate further…
@Joe - Listhub pulls from SOME MLS’s, not all. And yes, every time a change is made, the agent does need to edit the listing, but better to do it in one spot (the syndication site), then every site that posts the property.
@Jamey - The one thing that makes me so mad about this industry is that soo many companies try to take advantage of us. I once received an email that said something along the lines of “Quit paying outrageous amounts per month for your blog, host it here for only $29.95/month!” Incredible! Most blogs are FREE!!
@Jeff - Duplicate content will always be a problem with multiple feeds. I’m assuming that the listing sites try to eliminate it as much as possible by using the address as the unique identifier, but if one listing says 123 Main Street and another says 123 Main St., that could be 2 different listings in the eyes of the site.
Judy Peterson on August 29, 2008 4:02 am
I’ll check and see if my Broker is wiping me on syndicated sites. That would be a bummer. I do like the postlets.
Russell Volk on August 31, 2008 6:28 pm
Chad,
this is a great post. I’ve been a member of Point2 for 2 years now and their listing platform is what makes them one of the best.
Great post.
Website Bucks County Real Estate
Bumpre - Real Estate on September 2, 2008 7:29 am
Internet Marketing 101: Advertising Listings on the Internet | GeekEstate Blog…
Chad has some great tips on why Syndication is important for Realtors and what you can do to maximize your exposure online for your listings….
Graham on September 30, 2008 9:37 pm
Chad,
Great points on syndication. For the brokers looking to create thier own XML Files, it should be noted that “One Size” does not fit all, something that ARTIS would be happy to help the with!
Graham
http://www.ARTIS-USA.com