Top 10 Widgets for Your Real Estate Blog
By Drew Meyers | August 16, 2007
There are a wealth of blog widgets out there that can help you satisfy your readers’ desire for real estate information — some of which are excellent, some which aren’t. Here’s 10 widgets that I’ve seen that provide value to consumers:
- Criteo Auto Roll - Give your readers some other recommended blogs to read — without the effort of manually adding all the sites to your blogroll.
- Meebo - Chat with your blog readers in real time (assuming you are on instant messenger).
- Trulia Map - Display to your customers where all of your listings are located on a TruliaMap, with a brief description and pictures. When a user clicks on your listing on TruliaMap, they will link directly to the posting on your site.
- Mortgage Payment Calculator (by vFlyer) - Give your readers the ability to quickly and easily estimate loan payments.
- Altos Charts & Altos Stats - Give your readers access to real-time market statistics via an integrated chart. You can either display the average days on the market or median price of homes in a particular area.
- Wordpress Plugins Developed by Realivent - Realivent has built a number of useful plugins for the Wordpress platform, including a home search integration, property watch, and an agent details page.
- iBegin Weather module - If you are building a neighborhood or city resource, displaying weather in your area gives your readers another reason to visit your blog on a daily basis.
- Event Calendar (for Wordpress blogs) - Educate your readers by publishing a community “calendar of events” that is displayed in your sidebar.
- Zestimate Look-up Widget - Gives consumers a way to query a Zestimate right from your side bar.
- MyBlogLog - The “Recent Readers” widget humanizes blogging & can be seen on almost all the real estate blogs I read. Seriously, who doesn’t like seeing the faces of others reading the blog you are reading?
I have all of these widgets listed, along with several screen shots, on the “Blog Widgets” page of the Carnival of Real Estate. If you have other widgets that you find valuable, please leave a comment on this post with a link to the widget and I’ll add the widget to the Blog Widgets page.
Other widgets can also be seen at HousingWidgets.com.
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Author's Website: http://www.zillow.com
3 Responses to “Top 10 Widgets for Your Real Estate Blog”
Comments
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August 18th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Great list. A lot of those I’d never heard of before. I’m going to try the Meebo one out right now. Thanks!
August 20th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for giving AutoRoll the top spot on your list, Drew! More and more bloggers are certainly realizing the benefits that come with an automatic recommended blogroll.
Brandon Watts
Criteo Evangelist
August 21st, 2007 at 10:10 am
I would add the vflyer widget, though I am liking the Trulia widget. Just have not had it as long.
And for me, plugoo is far superior to meebo. Meebo was unstable, and did not take messages off line when I was attempting to use it. Plugoo does not require a separate login-you login automatically whenever you are logged in to your im program. And, finally, it is wc3 compliant, and meebo was not.