Here is what Jonathan has to say about this week’s launch of Property Observer “I have been writing about property for more than 25 years, and I’ve learnt that getting passionate about property is easy. Getting it right is trickier. I intend for Property Observer to be property central, providing the essential news and analysis on the ins and outs of property. We will cover the capital cities, up and down the coast, and inland to the regional towns and the bush.

We will offer plenty of authoritative coverage about the homes we live in and the investments that top up our incomes.

Property Observer will showcase the best houses and apartments and all the big-name buyers and sellers. We will also keep a watchful eye on new developments, and the plush over-55 developments that seek out the growing band of empty nesters.

Property Observer will capture the changing seasons – we will write about snow homes, vineyards, fishing lodges, marinas and even the occasional beach bathing box. We aim to be of interest to the owner-occupier and the investor, given that population and investment funds are more fluid than ever.

I intend for commercial investment property to be a key component, especially the opportunities on high street – retail neighbourhood shops, small strata offices, pubs and industrial strata. All are suitable for the self-managed super fund investor.

The website will offer wisdom on winning ways with property commentary from key economic and industry practitioners. We won’t overlook the property fundamentals, conveyancing clues, legal rulings and tax advice.

We want input from readers on market prices in their local patches, facilitating shared knowledge through dialogue, so let us know about your stories, insights and properties.”

It’s not just about bricks and mortar, as Property Observer will personalise property with interviews of the movers and shakers.

We want our readers to get wisdom, not clichés. And that way we’ll all be the wealthier.”

The content is excellent and a great assistance for real estate agents writing blogs as it is full of relevant data, analysis and commentaries.

You can also follow Property Observer on Twitter – @Propertyobs Make sure you subscribe to the email alerts too.

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For new subscribers to Business2 – here are the previous stages.

Diagnosing your online position (warts and all) – Stage One

Constructing your perfect online real estate media platform – Stage Two

Without a doubt from my experiences real estate agents have little to no – understanding about what exactly defines an online business. Today, they remain a tangled online entity boasting a website with very little traffic and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – the lights are on and nobody is home. Direct online communications are next to non – existent simply because they are reliant on consumers finding them, as against actually delivering then driving online customer communications. Easy to fix so long as you are prepared to lock – up this online market.

Not only are you providing purchasers the best online service – more importantly offering vendors a stand-out real estate media platform. One that you created and paid for (I say this because real estate agents struggle using their own monies to invest in technology) hopefully your online platform model of choice will now  exceed your competitors too! Stop following the market – time to lead it.

Allow me to elaborate on that –  have you read – “Digital Marketing – Strategies for Online Success”? A great and easy read by Godfrey Parkin – a must for your online library (it’s now in mine).

“There is little point in building a website or fine – tuning your e -marketing tactics unless your strategy is right in the first place. To build a competitive strategy to capture the loyalty of your online consumers requires re – thinking your vision for your business from the ground up. It also requires an intimate understanding of what this online environment is all about, from the perspective of your business, from your competitors’ point of view, and particularly in the eyes of your target customers as individuals. Without those insights, you cannot begin to put together a digital strategy that has any hope of succeeding.”

So let’s best sum up where your real estate agency presently sits.

“The answer is that most businesses have an increasingly fuzzy vision of what their future should be, so their tendency is to clutch tightly to the past. As the world around them changes faster and faster, the future becomes even more blurred and uncertain. Without a bright light to head toward, they feel safer not to move away from their fundamentals and put their efforts into shoring up their defences. Those companies that do stumble forward usually head in the direction that they have always followed, tactically groping their way through fog, turning to dodge obstacles and grasping at opportunities reactively as they fly by. Without a vision, they have no idea where they are headed. Without a vision, they cannot put together an effective strategy.” Sound familiar?

“So why, are the brilliant examples of how it should be done so few and far between?” I’m not suggesting that our online strategy is such an example – rather this is what we do – with success.

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We have five non – negotiable online services that we adhere to on a daily basis. It is imperative that your online platform must strive to deliver so that you can claim this all very important point of difference over your competitors.

1. The largest online database within your demographic area – be proud that your online media platform connects to more buyers and vendors. Our proof is that we display on our homepage our subscriber sales to our online business which presently sits at $952,234,220.

2. Without using Google AdWords – use intelligent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods where your agency appears at number one position organically on all Google keyword searches within your demographic areas.

3. Write a weekly e – newsletter, send out daily email alerts, provide weekly data on the sales that have been recorded within your demographic area. Each week send out your upcoming open for inspection lists. Provide subscribers the ability to choose exactly which online communication they want to receive. Keep branding your business online.

4. Get a blog going – move with the times. Each comment adds another page to your website as well as on Google which drives your SEO. TAG keywords that appear within your e – newsletter as we try to add at least – 100 new pages to our website on a weekly basis. When you sell or lease a property keep the link live as the more live links on a website the greater SEO. We are over 3,000 pages and rapidly chasing down 4,000 pages.

5. Be relevant – not irrelevant. Use technologies don’t refuse it. Religiously translate your enquiries and open for inspection lists to connect to your online model. There will come a time (and it is happening now) where vendors and purchasers are restricting online communications from agents – where research has identified no more than five (three is the average) and that includes property portals.

When a successful online agency advises a vendor let’s launch an online campaign with a two week marketing strategy before having to commit to a much more expensive print campaign – guess who will win every time?

As Godfrey Parkin said“there’s a very simple, powerful, burning light that all of us need to keep in focus: properly used, the internet frees customers and marketers from the constraints of time and space, which in turn unleashes personal communication and experience – sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Our online communications are very up close and personal – how are yours? When you start digging at your online foundations make sure you use a developer that really knows what they are doing they are few and far between.

Stage Two – (for those who missed Stage One)

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A common theme within the real estate industry is when an agent speaks with a vendor who just completed a new home where they always say “we would do many things different with our next home” – the same too applies with agent websites.

Agents struggle to upgrade their own websites yet they boast the latest mobile phone technologies. Telephones are not the solution for generating market activity enquiries. Unless your online media platform is switched on and intelligently activated those telephone enquiries will diminish. In this new century agents/agencies are judged on what their respective online platform delivers where more importantly this involves the businesses driving the communication not vice versa. How many names, telephone numbers, email addresses do you presently have in “your” electronic database?

“You can run – but you can’t hide.” Don’t hide rather start seeking, delivering and then exceeding your online expectations. Move your business to the future given online technologies with aligned marketing strategies are moving at such a frenetic pace that even the most savvy of online real estate businesses are struggling to keep – up. The savvy real estate businesses are the first point of contact for new listings to prospective purchasers which are delivered via an email alert – your personal viewing invitation. Invite the call and invoke – The Law of Reciprocity.

We launched our online media platform back on September 15, 2000. Call it what you want just that at the end of the day we were actually chasing something that was yet to be recognised nor properly discovered for that matter. Five years later, Google entered the online world and the rest is history where today, it’s all about climbing that Google search engine optimisation (SEO) ladder. For all your individual demographic markets one has to explore so that you can then fast track your online SEO position. Just like market positions which are all about growing (not declining) so in which direction is your online strategy headed – better still, do you actually have one?

In life, we are all consumers where not a single day goes by that we don’t buy product(s). When you are buying something you are drawn to product presentation. Change hats – as a real estate agent ask yourself how you are presenting and communicating your properties on your real estate media platform. Are you tracking your online traffic on a daily and weekly basis – your property website as compared to the paid portals? Don’t rely on external forces rather concentrate on your internal deliveries to consumers. When you get the mix right your website must be the (primary) source and the property portals (back – up) secondary for your online communications. Drive your business not others that you invest with. Your online message to consumers has to be your number one priority.
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Online guarantees a market – print suggests a circulation market. Just because you buy a newspaper does not suggest that you want to buy a property – the smartest online real estate agencies work from within not without. I take Unique Browsers (UB’s) well over circulation figures any day – given that UB’s are consumer activated who specifically go to your website in search of information. When consumers are not chasing your website then something is alarmingly amiss?

With Stage 2 – I want to focus on the four key ingredients that I believe assure you of the perfect building process for your online media platform. Much like building a home these four points are what I consider the “bricks and mortar”. You need to build on your foundations first.

• 1. Technology
• 2. Database
• 3. Communication
• 4. Future

All four are actually intertwined although the key processes are the identification, application and integration is to ensure that you are applying best practice for your real estate media platform. When the right technology is applied you can effectively contact your database and communicate your business activity online to your key demographic markets.

TECHNOLOGY

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One word keeps resonating – WordPress which launched to the public on November 2005 a state – of – the – art publishing platform that is free. When I look at the leading websites globally they are all using WordPress. We have been running WordPress for just over twelve months now – and I am one of their greatest fans – the perfect online publisher. WordPress also, provides a fantastic database function that administers our daily database email alerts and also, the flight centre for our subscriber weekly newsletter.

In conjunction with WordPress we run Agentpoint which manages our website individual property presentations for all our listings (the back-end). The dashboard (control centre) required absolutely no training for our staff – a vital ingredient for business owners that struggle to understand online. The transition period to a smart online business must apply the Kiss Theory: Keep it Simple Stupid. If you understand it – you use it. If you don’t understand it you don’t use it!

DATABASE

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The Achilles heel for most real estate businesses – agents own vendors not buyers. If a business is running multiple databases it is terminally ill, where in all probability no one is singing from the one hymn book. Your business is simply a one agency platform that is collectively united or a divorced communication process. United we stand – divided your business will fall. The leading real estate online businesses are running the one (and only) database platform.

COMMUNICATION

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Remember the Telstra advertisement “Why didn’t you call?” Verbal communication is important – email alerts supersede memory loss provided you are managing your database correctly. Database entry = communication. For the cost of a postage stamp (not including an envelope) you can send out thousands of email alerts. Calibrate your business so that you can communicate with your online subscribers. Activate don’t detonate your online communication platform.

FUTURE

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When was the last time you used the White Pages (print edition) to look up a telephone number? Consumers use search engines for over ninety per cent (and growing daily) of their respective enquiries. We still use print with online where the global financial crisis offered an amazing Litmus Test – that being significant declines in vendor paid advertising (VPA). As a consequence we moved our business to online – (refer points 1, 2 and 3) and outperformed all of our competitors ($63,000,000 – June 2009 month sales.)

Which takes me to point 4 – you can’t expect to remain relevant unless you embrace, adapt and activate your real estate media platform.

Online is a magnificent tool – just you have to work on it. We all know what happens when the tools (of trade) go down – your competitors build something bigger and better. Otherwise known (as work in progress) where online today, is very progressive, aggressive and obsessive. Just look at what Google did to Microsoft (whom had many years start on them).

Sit back – take three breathes, and design your perfect online strategy for 2010 and beyond.

All I ask is that where is your online business today – not tomorrow? Today, it happens and tomorrow it follows. (Hmm, I should claim that quote.)

Why, then in Australia (and everywhere else for that matter) do so many real estate agencies struggle with the basic concepts of intelligent online activation strategies?

In this four- part series I will walk agents through our online platform strategies identifying from where we started to where we are today. The good news is that (Stage 1) won’t cost you anything where, more importantly this series is aimed at providing you with the guidance and tips that hopefully, will assist you in building your very own dynamic online consumer platform.

Otherwise known as your real estate point of difference – which is based more about, what you are missing in the online world and why, your competitors (may) have gained poll position in your market place. This four part series will address:-

Stage 1 -Diagnosing your online position (warts and all)

Stage 2 – Constructing your perfect online real estate media platform

Stage 3 – Lock –up stage and moving into your online business

Stage 4 – Growing awareness, acceptability and acknowledgment

This is much like when you go to a personal trainer and they assess you by way of that fitness test (otherwise known as the starting point). Remember it is not about where you start – rather where you finish. Believe it or not, this is where the fun begins as you are (hopefully now) about to self test your online business.

Let’s get started.

Open up Website Grader and enter your URL (ie www.yourwebsite.com.au) for analysis to get your grade. Test your competitors websites also, then  print out your reports so that you can identify exactly what you need to do to improve your website and score. This is a brilliant tool where we utilise this report and include it in our property submissions to potential vendors. The vast majority of real estate websites are in sleep mode – I’ll show you why!

Note: vendors are looking for an agency that leads the market as against those that follow. Online tracking can’t be forged as you have to earn your position where your competitors take it for granted based on the assumption that vendors don’t understand online machinations. It is very easy for a savvy online real estate agency to reveal your online weakness and when they do it is costly.

A website does not need to be a Ferrari rather a Ute as it should be working around the clock 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week – maximising your online position (so long as you continue to add content – when you reward Google they reciprocate). Each and every time somebody views (unique visitor) your website Google counts this and improves your ranking on their search engines.

Simply put: this is all about driving your online traffic and accelerating your Google ranking.

Open up Page Checker which allows you to ascertain your Google page ranking (enter your URL to receive your ranking). Rankings are from 1 to 10 (when you get to 10 you have mastered the Universe and online) where even SMH and NEWS get 8/10.  Our score is 4/10 which is pretty good for an individual website – we are pushing hard to get our score to 5 ( all that is required is adding more and more relevant pages to your website and getting more and more websites of consequence to link to you).

Prior to the Internet agents would spend vast amounts of money advertising in the Yellow Pages. These days’ vendors and purchasers use keyword searches on the search engines like Google. So open up Google and assess your online position.

Type in the suburb(s) that you specialise in (one at a time) and note on what page your business appears on the directory. Also, note which agencies appear before your business because now you are going to catch and pass them by organically growing your online business.

Next in Google, type into the search (your suburb) then the words “real estate” and again see on what page you appear. Again, make a note of where competitors appear. Also, do your suburb(s) typing in “real estate agents”. Keep taking notes so that you can monitor your progress where in time your goal is to appear on page one of each and every search demographic.

Again in Google, you need to see how many pages from your website that Google has captured so in the search bar type. Site: (your website) and count the number of pages recorded. Then do the same with your competitors to see how many SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) pages they have recorded. The greater the number pages your business has the higher your Google ranking.

Your goal overtime will be to focus on driving your online business ahead of your competitors – we have. In my opinion, you need to be managing and operating your own website as against, a corporate Head Office website that grabs all your SEO – after all you own the business so maximise your time on the www. Thanks to you they also grab fantastic third party revenues from your listings.

This series is all about building and gaining a greater understanding about how to improve, drive and benefit from making online your agencies point of difference.

Your homework is to search again in Google – How does Google work? As well as study your HubSpot’s Website Grader Report and make sure you read the “Learn More” advice.

There is a strong possibility that your competitors are reading this article too. Spend some time researching and planning your perfect website. What do you want?  More importantly, what are YOU prepared to do to make it better? Business models only change when you do!

Last, but not least – have a look at your website and count the number of pages on it. Homepage, properties for sale, properties for rent, agent profiles, past sales, about us and contact us etc. Our website has just over 2,500 pages on Google.

This is where it gets interesting as most agent websites have around 50 to 150 pages which explains why they appear “down the back of the bus” on Google searches. Average that out at 100 pages/per agency website. Past sales/rentals are a classic example – keep them alive simply because owners search their property addresses and guess who you want them to see first.

We add 100 pages of content nearly every week to our website (Stage 2). Personal trainers teach you how to lose weight and website trainers teach your online business how to add your website weight on that Google Monster.

Have fun with your online position – back soon with Stage 2.
Cheers

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