Glenn Batten

Can The Apple iPad Save Real Estate Newspaper Advertising

by Glenn Batten, on 9th February, 2010 • 11 Comments

Can The Apple iPad Save Real Estate Newspaper Advertising

Newspapers are on the decline! A very fast decline. Readership and revenues are down and profits seem very hard to find anymore. Because of that decline agents appear to be dropping their support of print media a little bit more every year.

Even the prestigious New York Times has fallen on hard times and in the same year as picking up 5 Pullitzer Prizes last year for journalism, the second highest yearly haul by one paper in history, they also received a cash injection by Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim Helu of $250 million dollars just to keep it afloat.

Now the New York Times is probably no different than the vast majority of newspapers out there. They were simply overrun by the internet in the early days and their attempts to play catch up have in general been far from successful.   Leading newspapers have all invested very heavily in slick websites that in many cases generate huge traffic,  but they have failed to capture enough online advertising revenue to support the massive expense of running a newspaper.

So when advertising does not cover the running costs the next revenue source to consider is the readers themselves. But here is where the problem lies as consumers are loathe to pay for something on the internet at the best of times. There are many things that are working against  the newspapers charging for content. There seems like an  endless amount of  other sites that offer the same news for free so the perceived value for news content is very very low. The rise of blogging has increased the amount of opinion based content on the web and there is only so much time a consumer can spend reading.

But the biggest hindrance to digital newspapers has been that readers are bound to their computer. You can’t take your computer out by the pool, or during morning relief visits, at least not without some significant discomfort and space issues.

This is where the Apple iPad kicks in. Now all you Apple fans better skip to the next paragraph because firstly I have to say that nothing that the iPad brings to the table is revolutionary. In fact they are tackling a market place that others have literally failed at capturing for years as there have been full blown tablet pc’s for quite awhile and even lesser powered internet tablets in recent years. So if the iPad brings very little over others before it then what has caused all this fuss. It’s the Apple flavour…. the brand….. the user interface!  Apple can make it look cool and just the apple name will get it into people’s hands and once there they will love it. All in all I reckon they will have a massive success on their hands!

Tablets to date have seen very little takeup by consumers and have been very limited to niche business markets. In fact one of those niche markets for tablet pc’s in the US is real estate agents for the very reasons that Greg mentioned in his article on how the iPad could be used for the real estate industry.  Agents in the US have been using tablets successfully for years and according to recent tech surveys in the US tablet pc use amongst agents is increasing rapidly.  But to date, Microsoft and the hardware companies have failed to capture the consumers interest in tablets. At the CES Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas recently Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer failed to get much interest in the HP tablet he showed the crowd. In contrast, Steve Jobs from Apple has had the world talking about the iPad since it was announced last month.

Overnight we have consumers around the world salivating over a tablet pc.  Apple can do what everyone else has struggled with and make it look cool and trendy.  When it launches you can bet the system will be slick and super fast. Like the iPhone Apple may cripple some more advanced functions to ensure the general usability remains  very high. The iPhone cannot  do true multi tasking, applications widgets can’t be placed on the home screen and the security is a nightmare for developers such as an applications cannot change system settings based up on gps input.  The hardware and software can do it but all quite easily but at the risk of stability and speed.  As an example if the iPhone was allowed to multitask a user may open 10 programs which could slow their iPhone to a crawl but they won’t blame themselves for pushing it beyond its limit, they will blame the iPhone for poor performance.  So Apple just does not allow it and whilst a few will complain of being constrained by Apples limitations placed on its products the vast majority will love the speed and usability.

The iPad has eReader software built. Because it operates on backlit screen technology like a computer screen I can’t see it taking over from the likes of dedicated digital e-ink screen readers for novels. An e-ink reader such as the Amazon Kindle has no backlight which eliminates the eye strain allowing you to read for long periods at a time and is why Amazon and other dedicated ereader manufacturers chose the e-ink technology. Backlights also suck battery power so whilst an iPad’s battery life is measured in hours an e-ink based reader is measured in weeks  Last year there was over 3 million eReaders sold and that is expected to at least double this year.  Our household now has two e-readers and I know of 8 that were purchased by friends after viewing having a play with one of ours.

Novels could really only be consumed in comfort on the iPad over short reading periods which is fine for those on a bus, or a flight this is not going to work for most readers. But unlike reading a novel, newspapers and magazines are normally only read over a short period and the iPad appears to be the perfect marriage for digital newspapers.   E-ink technology is only just moving in to colour but because of the limitations of the technology itself the pages will only ever be static. In contrast the screen of a tablet pc is just like a computer screen and you can view and zoom in on high resolution pictures and video embedded into the articles. So the eReader software on the iPad is great and would make an excellent platform for reading a digital newspaper but even better are custom applications purpose built for the iPad such as the one released by the New York Times to provide an ultimate newspaper experience. The best of both worlds!

You can bet that with the consumers interest in tablet pc’s on the rise that other manufacturers will now jump on the bandwagon and be developing similar consumer orientated models. Because the iPad and its tablet predecessors and soon to follow clones offer an excellent mobile reading solution that seems perfect fit for the digital newspaper the media corporations might finally be able to instill a sense of value into subscription and paywall options and start generating some of that desperately need revenue.

The possibilities for real estate advertising over such as delivery method is absolutley mind blowing. High resolution images, audio and even video tours embedded into your ad and direct linking to your website as the reader sips on a drink poolside may soon be a reality. If they want to stay relevant, and some would say even stay alive, the likes of News Corp and Fairfax have to seize  on this opportunity and develop solutions that the public would be happy to pay for.  Finally old media could properly leverage the new media  they have been trying to tame for years and we as agents could jump on for the ride.

It’s a big step for them to take if they hope to convert from a print to a digital medium and only time will tell. The massive media corporations around the world might be behind in the fight but do they have the second wind and the will to battle to the bell? Media executives around the world will be watching the  New York Times like a hawk but the first stage of success will the public’s acceptance of the Tablet form factor.

Would you pay for a digital edition of your local newspaper if you could view it on something like the iPad? I know I would, its just the price that may be the issue! It stands to reason that if readership was again on the rise  and a new cost structure based on a digital delivery method then agents spending on newspaper advertising would return and the media executives would not have to feel so guilty taking those big bonuses.

11 Comments »

Greg Vincent

10 Ways Real Estate Agents Could Use The Apple iPad

by Greg Vincent, on 4th February, 2010 • 14 Comments

10 Ways Real Estate Agents Could Use The Apple iPad

Will the recent launch of the Apple iPad mean the end of the Listing Presentation Folder or FlipChart style presentation? Will we see agents showing off their listings via the iPad? Or perhaps they’ll be using it to watch real estate training sessions or live streamed sales meetings? Either way, could it be a Game Changer?

Whilst a lot of these things I mentioned can already be done using a laptop, with the recent launch of the Apple iPad and the low entry price for their product, I can see that there will be a large number of potential uses for the iPad for real estate agents.

Just like a restaurant could use the iPad for taking orders or displaying their menu, real estate agents can use the iPad to demonstrate how professionally they can present a potential sellers home, show comparable sales and create a marketing campaign digitally.

The pricing of the iPad means that Apple have provided an affordable way that an agent can make their company appear more high tech out in the field.

Here’s 10 Ways That Real Estate Agents Could Use The iPad…

  • Use it for digital listing presentations
  • Show property photos and videos in high definition
  • Visit websites for doing CMA’s and show other related sites
  • Create a Demo Individual Property Website for a client right before their eyes
  • Instant database entry at open homes
  • Get directions
  • Show off real estate iPhone apps on a larger screen
  • Portable client management
  • Show details of current listings to buyers on the run
  • Checking email enquiries & setting appointments

The launch of the iPad also provides an insight into where Print Media is heading. The iPad is going to make it a better reading experience for people to get their news digitally, which will ultimately have an effect on the physical distribution of printed newspapers.

Local Press may not feel the same affect for a while, but it certainly could have an impact in the amount of physical printed local newspapers distributed long term.

My hope was that the introduction of digital readers like the Apple iPad and Amazon’s Kindle may help to bring the real estate print media prices down to a more affordable level for agents and sellers, but unfortunately it may actually increase.

With the iPad, the newspaper experience will become more engaging, plus the digital newspaper will help to drive more website traffic across to an agent’s website than the printed version ever has. Whilst physical distribution will be down, the electronic distribution of newspapers could explode via the iPad & advertising space will become more popular, hence more expensive.

Whilst I see some great uses for the iPad for real estate agents, there are some developers who feel that Apple could have gone a lot further with their development, eg here’s 8 Things That Suck About The iPad.

I’m sure Apple will include a number of these extra features to the iPad very quickly, just like they did with the iPhone.

But for now it looks like they have made something that is very appealing to the majority of people & have priced it affordably enough that the iPad should end up becoming just as popular as the iPod and the iPhone.

While agents will have to wait to get their hands onto an iPad, over the next few weeks there is a perfect opportunity for agents or franchise groups to prepare a digital listing presentation in time for its delivery.

If you can think of any other uses for the iPad I’d appreciate any other thoughts or ideas.

Disclaimer: I am the director of a company that provides Individual Property Websites for real estate agents.

14 Comments »

Peter Fletcher

How to use Foursquare to build a hyper-local brand

by Peter Fletcher, on 3rd February, 2010 • 4 Comments

How to use Foursquare to build a hyper-local brand

Foursquare is rocketing up the social media popularity chart. It’s hyper-local social networking that lets you share insider info on your favourite hangouts.  In their words:

Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

The service allows you to check into a location – coffee shop, restaurant, movie cinema – using your GPS coordinates. That lets your friends know where you are and what you’re up to. It’s a great way to meet new friends who enjoy the same places.

Foursquare users are encouraged to share brief tips about the places they visit. These experiences are then shared with others who check-in to the same place.  For example, if I leave a tip about a special blend of coffee at The Imp, the next time you checked-in there Foursquare would pop up a notification telling you that I suggested you try The Imp’s special blend coffee.

Here’s a few tips for agents wanting to get the most out of the service.

Get an iPhone and download the Foursquare app

Foursquare works brilliantly on the iPhone and on Android powered mobile devices. It’s a two-second operation to get working on the iPhone and it works like a charm.

Link your Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook accounts

It’s not often I recommend linking social media services but this is one exception. Once your accounts are linked when you check in on Foursquare your Facebook and Twitter status will be updated automatically (you can turn this off if you want to do a private checkin).

Add your own business location to Foursquare

Provide clients who check-in to your location regularly with loyalty rewards. Offer incentives for people to write tips that mention you by name e.g. “Go to Jones Realty and ask for Sally Jones. She knows Jonesville like the back of her hand.” It’s a great way to generate word-of-mouth referrals.

Check-in to a local coffee lounge

Invite your friends to catch up for an early morning coffee. Be spontaneous.

Introduce it to local businesses

The more people who check into a location the more tips it generates. Suggest they offer discounts or special offers to Foursquare users who write tips about their business or who become the Mayor of their business. Offer to show them how it works and how they can make sales from using the service. Become their social software go-to person. Help them out by introducing their business to your Facebook and Twitter network.

Check-in when you’re doing a home open

Let your friends on Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter know you’re out working hard. Your Foursquare checkin provides a map to your location so friends in the area can stop by for a chat.

Advertise that the property is open for review on Foursquare

Mention in your web advertising that you’ve added the property location to Foursquare. Invite home open visitors to write a review. Their review will be available to other Foursquare users.

Ask your colleagues to check-in when they show the property

Get them to add a brief review while they’re at the property on an agent caravan or when showing buyers.

Have you come across any other ways to use Foursquare?

This article was originally posted as How to Become a Local Legend Using Foursquare on The Real Estate Marketing Maven.

4 Comments »

Charlie Gunningham

Trend for 2010: “It’s Mobile, stoopid”

by Charlie Gunningham, on 29th January, 2010 • 6 Comments

Trend for 2010: “It’s Mobile, stoopid”

Gordon GeckoRemember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a smile, just like those beige box-like floppy drive PCs of the same era.

Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century, and the current generation of mobile phones are really pocket PCs, things that might have impressed Flash Gordon or Captain Kirk in earlier eras. We check our emails, surf the web, listen to music, take pictures, download and pay for apps – from anywhere. It slips into our pocket, we own it, it’s ours. With the iPhone, it’s stylish to be a geek, and if you’re a newcomer to all this, welcome to the party.

A year ago, mobile traffic to web sites, and real estate sites in particular, did not rate. Yet already 23% of Australians with mobiles use them to access the internet, even though total internet traffic is estimated to be less than 1% through a mobile device (ABS). Still early days.

Part of this could be the catch up of consumers, part of this could be the lack of mobile-ready websites and the small number of ‘real estate’ apps in the iphone App Store. A recent search of “real estate” apps turned up only 5 Australian ones (plenty of American), among these a couple of multi-office real estate agencies, and among the main portals only Domain are present.

In the States, Zillow.com were reported as saying up to 35% of their weekend traffic comes from mobile devices. Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia.com, claims (more believably) their mobile traffic is in the “5 to 10% range”, while a year ago “it was negligible”. Although iphones account for only 8% of our mobile devices, 50% of mobile traffic is coming from iphone apps. Realestate.com.au, in Australia, reported “exponential growth” to its mobile site in December (150,000 unique visitors), claiming this to be “additional” traffic.

Whatever the claims and stats being bandied about, it would appear that mobile is going to be the trend of 2010. Social media is “…like, so 2009”.

It makes intuitive sense that mobile traffic should figure more this year – the technology is here, you can be walking down that beach watching the sunrise and getting your real estate fix. There are apps being developed where you point your camera phone at a building and can see which properties are for sale, at what price and what has sold recently. Househunting is an activity that still takes us out and about, checking into home opens, trawling suburbs in our cars, walking down streets. With the mobile in our pocket, do we really need anything else?

So get ready for the upsurge of mobile web designers and iphone app developers. (There will be snake oil salesmen among them.) And with that, the question – do we “mobilise” our web site or get an iphone app developed, or both, or neither? The former allows your site to be accessible on most, if not all net-ready mobiles (much more fiddly to have coded than you might think). The latter allows people to download your app, have it in their menu making it easily accessible. Apps are sexy and cool, great PR spin, but are more expensive to develop. And how do you get YOUR app downloaded, especially when (in say a year or two’s time) there are hundreds of Australian real estate apps in the iStore, rather than 5? This is the brave new world we seem to be moving into.

Photo Credit – Jamie Riddell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieriddell/2166586104/

6 Comments »

Glenn Batten

Real Estate Portals Costs – It Could Always Be Worse!

by Glenn Batten, on 28th January, 2010 • 15 Comments

Real Estate Portals Costs – It Could Always Be Worse!

In the past month I have purchased a new Subaru Liberty 3.6R MY10 model and I took some time out during that process to check out how the internet, emarketing and social media is effecting the motor vehicle industry and I was genuinely surprised by the results.

First I tried to do some research on the make and model I was looking to purchase and found very very little information on the car itself outside of the standard manufacturers blurb. Even all the online driving reviews were only 10 to 20% original and the rest was padded out with the manufacturers press releases word for word.

I visited a number of dealer websites and they were flashy enough but provided very little substance or information.  I found only one business based site that went to the trouble of creating unique content and conducted significant research. The only other websites that provided anything original were the enthusiast websites and forums.

I could not find any blogs run by Subaru dealers, nobody on Twitter tweeting the latest news for that manufacturer or any dealer fan pages on Facebook. No matter what I tried emarketing seemed to be non existent.

I started searching outside of Australia and found excellent examples of Motor Dealers embracing social media. Austin Subaru for instance has around 4000 facebook fans. Every time they post something to their facebook page 4000 local subaru enthusiasts get the message and when one of those 4000 fans comment or click on the “like” button all their friends get the message too.

The next thing for me to check out was the Portals. The motor industry online is dominated by several portals the same as the real estate industry but that is where the similarities stop. What I did not notice at first was that you do not see on the portals any dealer contact information anywhere. The portals completely control all contact between the dealer and the interested party. To make a phone enquiry you have to dial a number and punch in the car ID to be connected.

As a prospective purchaser this was downright annoying but it wasn’t till I realised that the portals were controlling every single enquiry so they could charge an enquiry rate that I was really disgusted as it made the whole enquiry experience very frustrating.

So how much was a dealer being charged for a single enquiry? What would you think would be fair? I was thinking $2 or $3 maybe. I naturally asked my dealer and was shocked with the answer. They told me car dealers are paying well over $30 per enquiry and apparently many are paying much more than that as well. That’s $30 for every phone call or email generated by the portal. Apparently it’s not unusual for a potential customer to continue to use the portals phone number to contact the dealer again which just magnifies the whole cost.

As you can imagine large car dealers are paying a serious amount of money to these portals every single month. It appears to me that because they have not created their own online presence or invested in other forms of emarketing they are locked into using these portals and their extortionate prices.

Now this is the part that really confused me. The keyword tools in my Google Adwords account tells me that the average CPC rate for  keywords like subaru, subaru liberty and subaru impreza is under 40 cents so if you are going to pay that much for each enquiry from the dealers why dont they invest in pay per click campaigns targeted specifically at new car purchasers. Google Adwords allow you to geographically target your ads down to a particular town or city which is perfect for the car industry. Real Estate agents generally operate in much smaller areas, as small in some cases as one or two suburbs of a whole city. This means that geographic targetting can have mixed results for our industry but not so with car dealers.

I ran a few searches online for Subaru cars and all the ad slots were filled with the different car portals including carsales.com.au, carpoint.com.au, privatefleet.com.au and carsguide.com.au. Not one local dealer trying to generate enquiries at a fraction of what the portals would charge.

Now real estate portals use adwords too but because of the per enquiry charge rate  of the car portals they are effectively engaging in a form of “Enquiry Arbitrage”.   They buy an enquiry or a click for $1 from Google then they sell it to a dealer for $30. Now not all those clicks will convert to an enquiry but what if they get just a 10% conversion rate that’s still a 300% return on their investment.

Too often we look back and say that real estate agents as an industry have not done enough to insulate themselves against the sheer market strength of the real estate portals. But in light of how the motor industry are treated maybe we should be looking at the glass half full not half empty.

On another note, maybe REA should look at the motor industry. A corporation has to be constantly growing or its share prices suffer. Because they have saturated the Australian market they tried to expand overseas but was obviously no success and they ended up retreating out of some markets and blowing their investment. So instead of ramping the prices up on agents why dont they diversify in the motor industry. They have the experience in online classified advertising and their model would compete well against the per enquiry models.

Now I am the first to admit that my experience with the motor industry online is pretty limited so if anybody has anything to add on the subject I would love to hear it.

15 Comments »

Peter Ricci

Google to buy up real estate sites!

by Peter Ricci, on 21st January, 2010 • 27 Comments

Google to buy up real estate sites!

When Google ventured into real estate listings many of us thought it would signal the end of annual fee increases being charged by the likes of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. I mentioned how it will eventually force these organisations to change their business models and build simpler, smarter platforms and I still do!

Despite making it clear that it will take time, some industry heavies quickly began commenting on how little effect Google was having on sites like realestate.com.au with increased share prices /revenues traffic figures. The most vigorous of these was writing on just about every single notable real estate blog (including his own) how it wasn’t making a jot of difference, I thought at the time, it was pretty short sighted from a person who should know better!

I also made it clear that it will take time for Google’s impact to occur. Only when Google Real Estate has similar volumes of listings and only when they include the searchability of these listings directly within the search engine will it begin to have an impact on the majors.

Now it seems Google is stepping it up a gear……..is this an aggressive phase for Google?

During a session at the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect conference in New York, Sam Sebastian, Google’s director of local and business-to-business markets, was quoted as saying “We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month.”

Read this again………
“We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month.” This statement speaks volumes of just how important Google thinks real estate is to their overall search strategy. It tells me they really do think it is one of the most popular search markets. Many people are talking of Google purchasing the likes of Trulia, Roost and some other independent companies. Personally, I think they will buy into products that compliment and drive traffic to their search and real estate website rather than buy other search engines and portals, they will also more than likely delve into products to compliment their Andriod operating system and new phone offerings.

Life without Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au?
One thing is for sure, in a few years the real estate landscape will be completely different. Once Google has comparable listings and if it is confident it has a faster way to search then all that needs to happen is for consumers to become aware and use the systems and things will get tough for the portals.

Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au continue to provide a decent service to agents, however it is the control that agents are wary of – no one likes having monopolies or duopolies, it only serves the few and each and every time hurts too many businesses and stifles innovation. Google’s involvement in any major industry allows a fair price to be charged for services, forces innovation and will make companies like Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au offer better support and services for their money.

27 Comments »

Glenn Batten

Video Tutorial: How to Create a Free Real Estate Blog in 25 minutes

by Glenn Batten, on 19th January, 2010 • 7 Comments

Video Tutorial: How to Create a Free Real Estate Blog in 25 minutes

The word Blog is short for the word “web log”.  Blogs first started in the late 1990’s but really became popular around the year 2000 and today there are hundreds of millions of blogs around the world. You are even  reading a blog right now.

Social Networking followed blogs by about 5 years and started gaining momentum soon after the millennium. Websites like Facebook and Twitter have gained hugely in popularity and proactive agents have been early adopters of social networking.

The problem with social networking from a marketing perspective is that their instantaneous nature means that they are very much like throwing handfulls of snow in a snowball fight and hoping some of them hit home. Stop throwing and you will stop hitting people. This means that to get great results you have to be constantly posting which can be very time consuming for many agents.

Tweets on Twitter have a lifespan measured in minutes and will normally be most effective within 10 to 15 minutes of posting. Facebook posts are a little longer lasting but their effectiveness is still measured in days. Blogs posts on the other hand keeps on giving days, weeks, months and even years later.

At Nerang First National we have had our blog going for a little over a year now and during that time we have posted up 57 articles which equates to around 1 article per week. Posts that I made in the first month are still being read and attracting visitors over a year later.

In the context of our snowball fight think of blog posts like rolling your snowballs down the hill at the opposition. You write an article just once and every day it’s readership is just getting bigger and bigger with no further work from yourself.

To illustrate  this here is the statistics for two o four posts.

Funny Real Estate Photos was posted in July 2009 and has been one of our more popular articles.

Thinking About a career in Real Estate? was written in late August and even with a limited audience that this subject would appeal to the views have been very good.

Then you get more time sensitive posts like “Local Christmas Lights on Display” which attracted about 400 views in just the few weeks before Christmas.

The first two articles were written when the readership was only a fraction of what it is today. If they were written today they would have much bigger peak in the first few weeks.

Every month the readership of our blog increases and in the past year we have had close to 10,000 views on the website. If the month on month growth continues we should see well over double that traffic over the next 12 months. But blog readership is not all about web visitors as articles can be read a few other ways including an RSS reader like Google Reader, and through email subscription. Unfortunately tracking those views is far more difficult.

In addition to our own readership we have also been lucky enough for about 7 or 8 of our blog articles to be picked up and republished in the Gold Coast Bulletins Lifestyle Guide with full credit back to our agency. We also use many of the blog articles on our facebook page and in our email and printed newsletters.

I talk with other agents all the time who want a start a blog but are often put off because they believe that it costs a lot or is beyond their technical skills to setup. So to show people just how easy it is I decided to take setup a blog another First National member and use screen capture software to capture the process and offer it up as a video tutorial.

The Blog I set up was for Bushby First National in Tasmania.

I asked them to provide me with just three things

  1. Create an account on Wordpress.com. I could have done this as part of the process but this way they get to select their username, password and email that they want.
  2. A header image  to suit the theme I was going to use which was 770 pixels x 140 pixels
  3. Copy of a first article with matching pictures.

Using just those resources I was able to setup a blog on Wordpress.com and post the first article in around 25 minutes and it was all absolutely free. I took a couple of calls in between so you may see the video jump around where I stopped and started a few times.

Now what you will not see is an amazing professional Propvid style special effects, professional voice overs or mind blowing editing. What you (hopefully) will see is a quick and easy way to get your first blog up and running today. So be kind with my video skills… even you Brett!! :)

Wordpress.com is not the only free blogging service around but it is the one I recommend. The services uses the Wordpress blogging platform albeit a very locked down version to provide a free blogging service.

Wordpress is the underlying blogging platform that runs the Business2 blog and in a followup article I will cover options of how to upgrade your blog. This will cover domain mapping and even upgrading to a self hosted wordpress solution just like Business2 or my personal blog at glennbatten.com. A self hosted version of Wordpress allows you to install your own plugins and themes and provides greater functionality but you need to crawl before you walk and so a Wordpress.com blog is the perfect start that provides you with access to a powerful upgrade path for the future.

Anyway on with the show. The whole tutorial covers three separate videos thanks to Youtubes 10 minute limitation.

You will notice that the address of the blog in the video is bushbyfn.wordpress.com. Since creating the site Bushby First National has since purchased their own domain bushbyblog.com.au and used the Domain mapping upgrade on Wordpress.com (about $US10 per year) to map this new domain to their wordpress blog.

If you follow the tutorial and use it to setup your own blog please share it’s address with everyone in the comments section. Also, if  you are a real estate agent and already operate a blog for your agency then please share its address and your experiences to date so those considering setting up a blog can be inspired and learn from your experiences.

I would highly recommend any agency who wants to interact with their community, increase their brand profile and leverage more visitors to their main website consider starting up a blog. You don’t have  to go into as much detail in your articles as I have  on some of them.  Keeping it topical, opinionated and up to date is far more important.

Anybody who has been reading my articles on this site will notice the occasional cross over articles on our blog where I have written on the same subject but just from different angles. The article titled “Google Real Estate and Nerang, Highland Park, Carrara and Worongary” is the perfect example. Just write whatever comes into your head that you want to share. At first it may seem a bit foreign but you will soon be knocking out articles with ease.

7 Comments »

Leanne Pilkington

The 10 Most Common Failures of Bad Leaders

by Leanne Pilkington, on 19th January, 2010 • 10 Comments

The 10 Most Common Failures of Bad Leaders

Harvard Business Publishing summarised the 360-degree feedback data on over 11,000 leaders from a study completed by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. Here are the 10 most common leadership shortcomings. Interesting to note that the most successful and least successful differed most significantly in their energy and enthusiasm. How many of them apply to you or your leader?

1. Lack energy and enthusiasm
2. Accept their own mediocre performance
3. Lack clear vision and direction
4. Have poor judgement
5. Don’t collaborate
6. Don’t follow the standards they set for others
7. Resist new ideas
8. Don’t learn from mistakes
9. Lack interpersonal skills
10. Fail to develop others

10 Comments »

Brett Clements

GOLD COAST FOR SALE. On Network Ten

by Brett Clements, on 18th January, 2010 • 13 Comments

GOLD COAST FOR SALE. On Network Ten

http://www.goldcoastforsale.tv Or. The questions, and issues surrounding aggregating ‘content’ and giving new relevance to old media.

A lot us talk about doing stuff. And certainly there’s a 101 great ideas for shows of all types and sizes on property. I’ve had about a dozen myself.

But there’s a country mile between the talking and the doing.

The ‘doing’ is called going ‘the extra mile’ – and there’s not a lot of traffic on it.

Which is why I raise my ‘cowboy’ hat to a guy called Shane Gore, who’s managed to pull together a two-hour show on Gold Coast real estate – with rates, Shane explains, that go head-to-head with The Gold Coast Bulletin.

I don’t understand media buying, as I’m not in that game. So I can’t comment.

But any exercise in draining VPA from ‘The Establishment’ is not going to make for a very happy camping ground.

It has taken Shane about three years to pull it off; and he’s done so by looking at all the content suppliers on the Gold Coast, and then, very gracefully and creatively ‘pimping’ all of our services; mashing them up in a very GC show – that’s being posted by the super slick operations of BlackLab and Cutting Edge.

And these outfits are VERY SUPER BROADCAST SLICK. No doubt about that.

Plus. I use the word ‘pimping’ in, actually, a very complimentary fashion.

And no doubt Shane will take great exception to the term. But I was ‘pimped’ before I knew it, as a lot of content was downloaded from the Internet and cut into a ‘pilot’.

Without our knowledge. But there’s no great gain without a great risk.

And I like Shane and what he’s trying to do.

I’ve even signed my Non Disclosures and my Copyright waivers; and supplied copies of the $21 million in public liability insurance we need to operate in public as property ‘video’ shooters.

In fact, I have never been ‘pimped’ any better, in what is the ultimate exercise in aggregating existing content and re-purposing it for what I reckon is a dead duck medium.

And that’s TV. Closely followed by newspapers. Its a rolling bet which line of dominoes falls first.

Short of the next series of UNDERBELLY on Nine, I see nothing compelling about what’s on offer on TV anymore.

TV needs all the help it can get. I mean it IS there. We turn it ON. But it is still an idiot box.

Concepts like Shane’s that can bridge the gap and drive viewers to portals are interesting.

In fact. I wish I’d thought of GOLD COAST FOR SALE myself but I’m still very much in the bridge-mending or bridge-building stages, between myself and various competitors, so I can attempt to deliver some impartial postings – post the controversial ‘Banning Adjectives in Property’.

Shane approached most of the content suppliers on the Coast; from those offering the dreaded ‘Ken Burns Slide Show’ – which is not video, despite the fact it happens to be ‘moving’ (while anything and everything in the frame itself remains ‘still’) – and most of the digital cinematographers specializing in property.

From the GC to Brisbane.

The good. The bad. And the ugly.

I’m supporting GOLD COAST FOR SALE and we’ve licensed about three years of Gold Coast HD lifestyle for this new series.

The Burning Questions:

Will two-hours of Gold Coast real estate ‘rate’ on a Sunday morning? I’ve personally lost half a million investing in a series called JUST FOR THE RECORD on Ten. Which didn’t. The Comedy Company got my slot and the rest was history.
And will it sell property?

These are two real hard hurdles to jump.

If GOLD COAST FOR SALE can clear them, the ground rules will change.

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Greg Vincent

How To Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money – Part 2

by Greg Vincent, on 16th January, 2010 • No Comments

How To Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money – Part 2

Before uploading your listings onto realestate.com.au, it’s important to look at what you are trying to achieve within each part of the site. Plus, it’s important to look at realestate.com.au from an internet marketing perspective, rather than simply uploading your listings and hoping.

With this in mind, this article takes a look at how agents could improve their results from the perspective of an internet marketer and achieve the best click-thru rate that they possibly can from realestate.com.au.

In the first article on ‘How to Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money’ I discussed the Find An Agent Section of the site, in today’s session we’ll look at how to get the best results out of the Search Results Pages of realestate.com.au

The Search Results Pages are that part of the site where someone does a search for property within your area and all your listings plus your competitors’ listings appear all together under an area search, price range search or both.

For example, here’s the Search Results Pages for a search on the suburb Balmain.  http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?id=balmain&a=qfp&cu=fn-rea&t=res

Within the Search Results Pages of the realestate.com.au site, 10 listings are displayed per page, (except for the first page where the ‘Guaranteed Top Spot’ listing appears, to make it 11 listings).

When looking at how to market your listings effectively within the Search Results Pages, it’s important to learn 3 simple internet marketing concepts.

1.    The Image Catches Their Eye
2.    The Heading Grabs Their Attention
3.    The Text Makes The Sale

Now there are a lot of agents who write ads that may look alright on paper, but these ads don’t actually convert very well once they are uploaded onto the web.

Plus, normally the same ad that is placed in print is also used online, which means that typically the same AIDA method of advertising ends up being adopted onto the web.

A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action

Whilst the AIDA method still works online, to get the most out of your advertising on realestate.com.au it’s important to use AIDA twice within the same advertisement.

You see, with a typical AIDA style advertisement the call to action is left at the very end of the copy, which ends up appearing on the Property Details Page.

On realestate.com.au it’s absolutely critical to capture Attention, create Interest, develop Desire and include a call to Action within the very first part of the advertisement, because this is what the majority of people will see within the Search Results Pages.

Now you may be thinking that’s too hard or even impossible. I can assure you it’s not, because when you look at what the first call to action really is, you’ll discover that your job as a marketer within the Search Results Pages is simply to ‘Sell The Click’.

That’s right! Your listing within these Search Results Pages of realestate.com.au is racked up side by side with 9 other listings (or 10 other listings in the first page ) and your strategy at this point should be simply to ‘Sell The Click’ because once the browser has clicked open your listing, that’s where all the magic happens.

At this point the browser has not only opened the Property Details Page but at this point…

  • That’s when you get a visit registered against that listing
  • It’s where the client can find out your contact details
  • Where they can see how professionally you promote a property
  • View videos, virtual tours, floor plans & see more photos, etc
  • They can share the listing with their friends on Facebook
  • Send you an email enquiry or email the listing to a friend
  • Print out a brochure of your listing
  • See how many visits the listing has had
  • View a map, get local sales information & write a street review
  • Gateway to them finding out more about you & your company
  • And, if you use a strategy that I’ll be teaching in an upcoming article in this series, there’s a good chance that more people will end up clicking through to your company website as well.

But, none of this happens unless they click the red ‘View Property Details’ button in the Search Results Page & open up your listing.

Here’s How To ‘Sell The Click’

There are a number of ways that you can ‘Sell The Click’ from within the Search Results Pages.

Firstly, upload the best photo of the best part of the home as the main photo (or Hero Photo as some like to call it). The main photo should preferably be an interior photo or an enticing outdoor entertaining area photo.

By using internal images, you’ll stand a better chance of catching the browsers eye because people love looking inside other peoples places. Also, you’ll find that your listing will not only stand out from your competition, but browsers will also have a tendency to click open the listing to see what the front of the property looks like too.

Additionally, selecting the right main photo to use for your listings will also have an impact on the number of visits you generate from the new Gallery section within realestate.com.au.

In the new Gallery section 10 listings appear per page, displaying only an image, property address, price, icons for number of bed – bath – garage & a red “View Details” button.

Secondly, use a great headline, not the same old boring copy like ‘4 BR Home + Pool’ or ‘Don’t Miss This One’. Put some real thought into it.

Thirdly, remember what I said earlier, that “The Text Makes The Sale”. You’ve got approx. 300 characters to write some copy at the beginning of the advertisement that can help you to ‘Sell The Click’.

You’ll find that’s plenty of space to build Desire, Interest & include a call to Action.

Finally, you may not get this right the very first time & it may take some practice but that is the beauty of the internet, you can easily make changes as you go.

I hope this helps you to drive lots more traffic to your listings on realestate.com.au without costing you any extra money.

Back soon with the next instalment. Cheers. :)

PS: If you’re not great at writing short copy that converts well, try using Twitter where you only have 140 characters to ‘Sell The Click’ or seek out a professional copywriter for some help.

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