With more than 277 million people using mobile devices (smartphones) today, are you marketing your home listings via their mobile phones?

Here are some tips to help you market your real estate listings to those potential clients who navigate the Internet via a smartphone device.

Assign a unique text code or mobile ID to each of your property listings. This allows potential clients to get details on the property and your contact information, as well as view photos of the home.

You’ll be able to use mobile IDs for other advertisements, such as ads online, for sale signs, ads in newspapers and magazines, your e-mails and even your property brochures. Potential home buyers can click on property links to see pictures in the text message and then will be taken to a mobile website that will let them view pictures of the property and look at additional listings.

Your mobile pages can be as simple as pages for a single property (with photos and details) on up to a more “standard” website, including the ability to search properties, an About Us page, a mortgage calculator, as well as links to your own social media site pages.

The ID also helps you because whenever a prospect texts to get a property’s details, his or her mobile phone number is captured and sent to you, allowing you to follow up in real time.

What’s more, your real estate company or personal branding message, logo or photo will show up whenever you send a text to a potential client.

RealtyTech.com’s iGoIDX Mobile IDX lets your clients search a neighborhood for listings and open houses while out driving a neighborhood via global position software. In addition, your name and phone number appears on every listing, even if it’s the listing of another agent!. What’s more, your clients and prospects will see all of the listings just by typing in your website’s name on their smartphone browser. The iGoIDX Mobile IDX instantly detects that they are on a mobile device and directs their browser to your mobile site (not your regular site, which usually is better suited for viewing on a PC or laptop).

Ready to go mobile? Contact RealtyTech.com today!

In addition to optimizing your real estate website, setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts so that you may engage potential clients via social media marketing, blogging, and sending e-mail newsletters, a great way to market your real estate services is through forum posting.

Posting on forums is free, by the way.

Forum posts often come up in search engine results as people search for information on a product or service. Literally hundreds of thousands of forums exist online and cover millions of topics. Real estate is one of the more popular topics.

Naturally, some real estate forums are geared just for Realtors

and other real estate professionals, some are for homebuyers and sellers (consumers) and others are for both.

We recommend you opt for forums where consumers congregate.

To begin, do a search on Google, Yahoo! or other search engine of your choice and look for “real estate forums.” You also should search for a forum that’s geared for your geographic region (“real estate forums Pennsylvania,” for example). Aim to find a forum with a good amount of traffic. You can check out Alexa.com, place the forum’s url in the form at the top and see how Alexa ranks it. The lower the ranking number, the more people visit it. For example, a site with an Alexa ranking of 7,500 is visited much, much more than one with a ranking of 955,000….

Register as a member of a couple of forums you think will be worthwhile. Write a short description or bio of yourself/your business carefully. Forum participants may check it out.

Yet one of the most important things you’ll do is the setting up of your “signature.” This is the information that will appear at the bottom of each and every of your forum posts. It is this signature that will generate leads to your real estate website.

If the real estate forum allows your signature to include your picture, by all means, include it. Your picture need not be a photo of yourself — it could be your company logo. But we highly recommend that you avoid placing one of those animated avatars, cutesie cartoons of yourself, etc. You want to come across as professional and knowledgeable, yet approachable, as possible.

You’ll want to be sure to include a link to your blog and/or website within your signature. If there’s room, include a link to your Facebook and/or Twitter pages. Place your branding tagline, as well. Keep it short (two to seven words) , but make it memorable.

Aim to post to the forums you’ve chosen at least two or three times a week. The more you post, the more your posts’ readers will see your signature and the better chance you have of getting the link to your website or blog clicked upon (and the more people will visit your website/blog).

The most important thing you can do (or, in this case not do) is “sell” on these forums. For one thing, forums usually don’t allow this. For another, blatantly offering your services, or claiming you can sell a home at full price in 30 days in a down market, or even just coming across as “I’m here only because I want to get clients,” will brand you as a forum spammer. It may even get you banned from the forum.

Instead, read posts by others that ask questions. If you can give an answer that adds to the conversation, one that is thoughtful and which offers good information, then answer it. Give solid advice, great tips, useful anecdotes, be helpful. People who read the forums will soon look upon you as a stand-up kind of person, one who knows his or her “stuff.” You’ll be seen as someone who can be trusted. They will click in your signature to your website/blog; you will start getting people asking you if you can help them buy or sell a home.

In addition to answering questions, you also can start your own forum conversations. Start a conversation by stating your opinion on something (whether housing in your area is poised for a comeback, for example), and then asking forum members for their opinion. Or you could ask if anyone has any experience in home staging, and ask for tips.

The reason you want to start conversations is simple — you have a better chance of getting your posts read than if you just reply to someone else’s post.

Posts sometimes can have upwards of 10, 25, 50 or even more replies. Not everyone will read all replies, but they almost always will read the original post. In addition, you should comment on other members’ replies to your original post — again, this gives you even more opportunities to get your signature seen.

In addition, as the person who starts a thread, you’ll soon be seen as an authority and a leader in real estate. You’ll really know you’ve become such when someone starts a thread by asking “Hello [your name]. Wondering what you think about the new housing start stats.”

Read your forum regularly. If possible, try to be one of the first people to respond to someone else’s thread/question.

If you’re ready to start a forum marketing campaign, contactRealtyTech.com. We can help you find real estate forums that cover your areas of expertise, as well as those that focus on your selling area. Contact us today.

We often talk on this blog about doing this, that or the other thing to create a search engine optimized website for your real estate business. So, we decided to offer you a basic step-by-step strategy for optimizing your realty website..

Step 1) Keyword Research

You’re going to need to find out what keywords your target audience uses consistently to find information about homes for sale in your area. You first should try “My City” + “real estate” and then “Neighborhood” + “real estate” and see what comes up. Also substitute terms such as “homes for sale,” “homes,” “homes for sale”+ “City,” as well as “homes for sale” + “neighborhood.”

Aim to get as specific as you can (use the name of a development within a particular community or city, for a example), as the more specific the keyword the less competition for it you’ll experience. Use the Google Keyword Tool, which gives you information on the estimated search volume for any keyword. The tool also provides you with additional keyword suggestions. You also may want to look into SEMRush. This site gives you search volume as well as Pay-Per-Click estimates and other useful information. SEMRush provides a basic search at no cost and charges $49.95 a month for a very detailed search volume information.

Step 2) Content

Keep that content coming! You’re going to want to be sure you have unique content on your site. You’ll also want fresh content, as well (Google loves “new” information on sites). Be sure you optimize the pages with keywords and keep the density of keywords to copy at about one to three percent. (Density is the number of times a keyword phrase is in your copy compared to the actual number of words on your page. So, for example, if you have a page of about 500 words, your keywords should be only about five or 15 of that number. Generally, you should aim to have your keywords appear no more than three or four times within your copy.)

Be sure that your keywords appear in your title tags, as well as your page’s headline.

Step 3) Link Building

Many search experts believe that links to your website from other sites (backlinks: they link “back” to your site) are perhaps the most important factor on getting ranked high in organic searches.

Here are some of the best ways to build links back to your site (link building):

• Start a blog. Write about your local real estate market, how about how people can help their home sell more quickly in a down market, how to wend your way through the mortgage application process. Just write on anything and everything remotely related to real estate in general, home ownership and your local market in particular. Place keywords in your blogs. Blog at least once or twice a week. (Daily or even three days a week is best, however.) Place a link in your posts to other posts (as relevant) on your blog. Check out blogging sites such as ActiveRain. You also can blog at WordPress and Blogger, of course.

• Start tweeting on Twitter and friending on Facebook. Twitter posts now are showing up in Google searches. In addition, people who find your posts interesting may check out your profile and check out the link there to your website.

• Be sure to comment on other blogs. Be sure also to include a link to your website (if the blog allows). Most important, offer a comment of value. Don’t spam. If your comment is thoughtful, you may see other comments or readers of the blog click on the link to your site and get to you that way.

• Send out news releases. Be sure to include keywords in your release.

So, that’s it! Follow the steps in this post and you’ll be well on your way to having a well-optimized site, one that brings plenty of targeted traffic to your real estate website. Just remember, that it does take time to gain SEO traffic and/or organic search results. If you’d like to hear more about how to optimize your site, contact us, RealtyTech.com. We live to create great sites for real estate professionals and we’d love to hear about your own goals for your real estate business. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Four Basic Elements of SEO Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simple, really (understand it’s not necessarily easy or quick, however). There really are only four basic elements of SEO for your real estate website that you need to know. They are:

• Backlinks
• Good, engaging and informative content
• Title keywords germane to your website and SEO
• A search-engine-friendly site.

Backlinks: Links from other sites back to your site (backlinks) are critical to your SEO success. The more links, all the better. But you need “good” links, which are those that come from sites that search engines trust. What are these sites? Article directories (such as GoArticles.com, EzineArticles.com and many others), blogs with a good number of followers, and Web directories such as SiteBeSeen and HotFrog.

Getting these links will require some work, most of it sitting down and writing articles and then submitting them to the article directories. You’ll provide a link to your site in the article’s “resource box” at the bottom. Get listed in your city’s chamber directory, even your local paper’s online directory. Write a blog post at least two times a week and then offer to write posts on area blogs of interest to you and your potential home buyers and sellers. Most blogs allows guest writers to post a link to their site at the beginning or end of the guest post.

Content: Don’t neglect your keywords, but don’t forget that people will be reading your website’s pages. Give them good information they can apply (how to ready their home for sale, how to buy a repo, news about the job market in your area, etc.) Give them news they really can use.

Title Keywords: Place relevant keywords in the title of each of your pages because search engine crawlers “look” at your pages’ titles in order to figure out what your site is about.

A Site Friendly to Search Engines: Got Flash? JavaScript navigation? Get rid of them. Or, at the very least, keep them to a bare minimum. Bells and whistles such as these just slow the crawlers.

If you would like to learn more about SEO and your real estate business, give RealtyTech.com a call. We’ve optimized the sites of many real estate professionals, bringing them great success in attracting new clients. We’ll do the same for you. Contact us today!

RT @mashable 28 Days Later: Say Goodbye to the Netflix New Release Rental http://bit.ly/6rYNiE

Its been a while since I last wrote an entry, but in lieu of recent events and the current state of the economy, I thought I would shed some light on some ways to market your business online. This will be a series of entries so please check back often.

Blogs

In today’s discussion we are going to talk about “Blogs” originally known as “Web log.”  To start I thought it would help to know what the technical definition of “Blog” is, so I pulled the following definition directly from Wikipedia.

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log“) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

There are about 5 different categories of “Blogs” that I have found on the internet, but the one I am going to concentrate on for todays entry is called “Business or Corporate Blogs” specifically used for the purpose of marketing, branding, and/or public relations.

By today’s internet user standards a great perk about having a “Blog” lends itself to a business’s legitimacy  and in many cases it makes You/Your Business the expert in your field (remember with great power, comes great responsibility). Another great perk, as it stands now, is that search engines tend to favor “Blogs” in regards to placement based on the subject matter of the posts. Oh yeah I forgot to mention one major perk; to get a blog started is FREE, but if you are looking to take advantage of search engine placement you may want to consider hiring a search engine optimization expert or company to enhance your posts.

With that being said lets talk about how you can take advantage of your very own blog. The first thing you will want to do is plan out your intentions for the “Blog” before you do any official blogging. Make sure you have a good idea of what type of information you want to publish as well as how it will be structured within your blog. You can create a “Blog” that speaks entirely about one subject or your “Blog” can cover a gambit of interests. One advantage of keeping the subject matter consistent throughout all of the posts you create is it will cater to search engine submission and placement. Additionally, think about how you intend on your viewers to interact with your blog.

To help you with deciding what your intentions are for your “Blog” below is a list of ideas that I pulled from the book WordPress for Dummies written by Lisa Sabin-Wilson(a great read if you are interested and quick too).

With your topic in mind, ask yourself these questions:

1. How often will I update my blog with new posts? Daily? Weekly?
2. Do I want to encourage discussion by allowing my readers to comment on my blog posts?
3. Do I want to make every post available for public display? Am I okay with my boss or my family finding and reading my blog posts? Note: Since we are focusing on business or corporate blogs make sure your company is behind your intentions if you are not the owner of the company. It will go a long way in saving you some heartache.
4. How will I categorize my posts?
5. Do I want the full content of my posts, or just an excerpt, published in my RSS feed?
6. Do I want my blog to be easily found by search engines?

Now that I have given you an overview of what a “Blog” is; hopefully you will now start to envision its uses in your business. If waiting for the next awe inspiring thing I write is something you are unwilling to do; please feel free to contact me and I would be happy to go over any questions, comments, or concerns you may have related to internet marketing and your business and/or business model.

To be honest I was very skeptical at first about a new browser that boasted being the ultimate in bringing together all of the communal portals, but so far I am super impressed with Flock. Obviously it is still in its beginnings because there ate still quite a few communal sites that cannot be added (i.e. LinkedIn to name one), but I am thoroughly impressed so far.

Keep up the good work.

~Rob

Tags: flock, browser, web, communal sites

I don’t know how many times I go through this conversation with my client’s but I do it so much I felt it necessary to broach the subject in a blog entry.

The subject I’am talking about is what I call “Fluff Vs. Functionality” and I will use a recent conversation I had (excluding names of course) as a way to convey both sides of th situation (yours & mine).

The other day I was talking with a current client regarding a service we provide called “Success Marketing Packages.” Now the reason for the conversation was provoked by a previous conversation we had had a few weeks back about using  the internet to increase their business. Since you all know that marketing is my forte I eagerly jumped into the conversation (with both feet) and began spouting off how the programs work and the previous success we have had, which included some phenominal stats on both search engine placement and user engagement.

Out of that conversation they came to the conclusion that if they were serious about utilizing the internet marketing packages that they needed to develop a team to handle every step of the process from managing the leads, delegating them, and closing them, which they did.

Long story short after they had gatherd the team they wanted they were ready to talk to me again. It seems they were ready to move forward with the exception of choosing their target markets. Following that the conversation went from technical to playful (which I don’t mind at all =)) and ideas were spouting back and forth across the table. As fate would have it those ideas eventually found their way to me in a form of a question. Things like can we add video to the site, chat features, or even video chat. Other ideas were interactive cartoons that would help the potential consumer on this site navigate.

Now being that my background is a marketing one and that my company can do all of the things they were asking and more (for a price of course) I did entertain their conversation and share in the laughter, but in the end I got back to business and started to explain why many of the ideas put on the table, although funny and different, would not work for the ultimate goal, ROI.

In my experience I have found that since an internet consumer on average has a 3 second attention span, time is of the essence, and getting a user to to use the site is more important than anything else.

But lets not take my word for it; I would like to get your feedback. Please use the poll below to help me get your opinion on the matter.

Starting July 1st 2008 the new California “hands free” law goes into effect.

The two new laws are:

1) Prohibits all drivers from using a handheld wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle (Vehicle Code (VC) ss23123)

2) Motorists 18 years and over may use a “hands-free device” while operating a motor vehicle. Driver’s UNDER the age of 18 years may NOT use a wireless telephone OR “hands-free device” while operating a motor vehicle (VC ss23124)

To read more about this law and its possible effects on you I have added this link to the California DMV, which gives you some very good FAQs regarding the law. http://www.dmv.ca.gov/cellularphonelaws/index.htm

Long story short for those of us that drive and work we need to check this out.

Safe Driving =)

Today we had an excellent turn out for the Lunch & Learn. I would like to thank all of the Realtors® that came out and participated.

To recap Guerilla Marketing for the Digital Realtor® was intended to enlighten agents as to more possiblities online and to get their creative juices flowing. At the very least I hope that everyone was able to take something away from the class.

At the class I handed out some information that gave tips & tricks for the digital realtor®. If you would like to receive this information; please feel free to email me and I will be happy to send you a PDF of the document.

Any comments, questions, or concerns can be made here regarding any of the topics that were discussed or any you would like to dicuss.

Thanks again,

Rob