And so it got me pondering the state of how we get our information these days, and how quickly media has changed. The blog itself is something I would never had read without the advent of the internet (itself only a 20 year old invention). By the time I read it, it had already attracted 50 comments.

On election night (morning in Australia), I found myself searching #ukelection and #ge2010 twitter themes to read what people were saying as the results came pouring in. Most of them were watching the same telecast I was half a world away (I found the BBC player online somewhere which had been blocked on the official BBC web site). They were reacting to the same commentators and politicians pontificating in front of us, which we were all viewing in real time. Yet, it was these live twitter comments and reactions which drew me in. They had far more validity and were much more entertaining and “real” somehow. They were from people who I did not know and would never meet, but whose opinion had more power and meaning than the pollie spruikers set up in adversarial mode by an aggressive media front man bating them into actually saying something.

Opinions poured forth over the twittersphere – every minute I could refresh the screen to read dozens more updated “tweets” (those 140 character short messages served up by twitter users).

I turned to an ex school friend of mine (a passionate Liberal Democrat and someone I’d not physically met in 30 years and only recently got back in touch with thanks to Facebook) and discussed the outcome with him and his ‘friends’ (we have only one in common, another ex school friend I’ve not seen in 3 decades).

As we collate information (on anything) directly from the sources of individuals whose opinions are as good as anyone else’s ‘in the media’, so we are simply returning to our tribal roots. It’s where we all came from (and still are really) – learning, teaching and sharing.

Of course, this is devastating news for traditional media who have much invested in their print presses, TV and radio stations. Over the past 100 years (a miniscule time frame in the grand scheme of things) they have informed us on what they believe we want to hear, read and view, and when we can get that information too. Our grand children (and maybe our children) will think it quite twee that we all once sat down together with our families at the predetermined time to watch TV programmes (I remember what an ‘event’ the 6pm nightly news was every night in our household in the 1970s). Those days are over.

If someone wants real information on property, who better to tell you than your knowledgeable local ‘tribe’ member? The person selling real estate who lives around the corner from you, the property manager who’s seen everything a thousand times and in a patient manner organizes the leaky gutters to be fixed for the hundredth time. They are the experts, and they ‘know local’ like no one else. 20% of those looking for rental properties in Australia search rentals on twitter. Of the 7 million Australians on Facebook, half tune in every day, and more are aged over 40 than under 20.

If you’re not there, you cannot be noticed or listened to. In this way, twitter, facebook, blogs and the like are merely tools of communication. No silver bullets. No one can give you the scripts and dialogues, but if you view this all in the right manner, you’ll know what to say when the time comes. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll learn it by doing (and listening). Join the conversation. We like to pass on interesting snippets, we like to help, we are good people. It’s tribal, it’s in our nature, it’s who we are.

Photo Credit: Maasai Tribal Dance

I discussed the ugly side of Twitter about a year ago and in that article I said “Social networking and the internet in general has allowed a voice for everyone including your biggest critics”. Realestate.com.au found that out better than anybody as the new site went live.

Now this article is about that handled their complaints but to be fair there was a lot of praise amongst the twitter stream and facebook  as well.  But like always its the mud that sticks the longest and what people remember the most so its important that any company handles its complaints well even when they are the size of REA and there were a ton of complaints. The really impressive part was that it appears they were prepared for it and had an action plan in place that was executed brilliantly and agents should take notice. .

Someone was actively searching Twitter for any references to the relaunch and responding directly to the tweets concerned. They did not just respond to tweets directed at there twitter account of @realestate_au but they were actively seeking out anybody tweeting to their followers about the site, good and bad.

So when tweets like these started to show up

NathanKrisanski: New realestate.com.au website live today. what do you think? seems a little busy to me, but it is quicker & easier to use. DM me ur thoughts

alcro: Hey Realestate.com.au, your new site doesn’t work #REAfail

glenn_batten: @realestate_au Technical issue with your new site which may be causing more than a few people problems. http://bit.ly/bzaHuC Please fix :)

Brett_Hales: What is up with #realestate.com.au – if I search for a property everything is left justified. Looks ugly, check it out http://bit.ly/3wqDg

AnnalisaW @realestate_au can’t get it to load properly. Cumbersome. Most of content blocked by office filter.

portek I think the realestate.com.au suburb select for rentals is broken. Airport west is NOT North MElbourne.

they responded quickly to each person with:

realestate_au: @NathanKrisanski thx for your Tweet earlier today. If you have suggestions on making it less busy wld luv to hear them http://bit.ly/98znQe

realestate_au: @alcro Sorry to hear you are having issues with search – let us know the issue here and we will look into it – http://bit.ly/98znQe

realestate_au: @glenn_batten Thanks Glenn – already looking into it. Will keep you updated.

realestate_au: @Brett_Hales Glad you have been trying the new site – if you have suggestions for the search results share here – http://bit.ly/csJ79a

realestate_au @AnnalisaW sorry to hear you’re having issues – if you can, try another browser. if still having problems, let us know.

realestate_au @portek ok, might be best if you drop us a line at enquiries(at)realestate.com.au – we can direct your issue to the tech boffins there. thx

Their facebook page had similar sort of comments the only difference was that because it was on their wall they did not respond to every single comment as that would have seemed a touch too contrite.

The fact that they took the time to respond to so many consumers and agents was really fantastic and I was not the only one who thought so either:

charispalmer Impressive: @realestate_au getting back to everyone that has commented on the new site on Twitter

Rolling out a site the size and traffic load of Realestate.com.au would be a huge challenge and predictably there were problems that cropped so they didn’t just listen to the complaints on the social media  but the technical team also used to identify real issues in a live environment. They were cross referencing live tweets with server logs to fix problems very quickly even before users filled out feedback forms..

I was a victim of one of the more obscure ones where an incompatibility between our isp’s proxy server and the realestate.com.au servers caused a certain css file to be delivered blank. This meant any search result pages had no styling applied at all and was just an ugly bunch of left justified text and photos.

Now I noticed the problem during the beta testing but since I never received an invitation I had to piggy back on a somebody else’s access I never reported it through the official beta feedback. But once the site went live I and others brought it to their attention of the technical team pretty quickly. Because I had some fantastic help from Nick here on this blog they they tracked down the cause very quickly and even went so far as to ring and work with individual isp’s to track down the problem.

There are certainly still problems outstanding that team are still working on including some fairly major suburb related issues. One of these causes absolutely no properties show for major suburbs but for the most part the site is running extremely well now.

So whether you like the new style or not you have to admire how realestate.com.au handled the complaints.  Up till recently large corporations would normally respond to each call or email with the obligatory “you are the only person to be experiencing that issue” stock standard reply. But social media like Facebook and Twitter means you cant do this anymore. Everyone is far more educated and word spreads like wildfire.

Real estate groups and individual agents alike can learn a few lessons from how Realestate.com.au handled the recent release:

1. No matter how good a job you do you are never going to please everyone and there are going to be days where no matter how hard you try you just make some mistakes.
2. Be prepared and regularly monitor Twitter for tweets good and bad about your agency and your brand. Realestate.com.au probably dedicated a staff member to this job over the launch but agents thats not viable. Twilert was really good for this but it closed down because it could not handle the sheer success of Twitter but it has recently relaunched again and is a fantastic way to monitor your brand on Twitter.
3. Similarly Monitor your facebook fan page for feedback from your fans. This is certainly easier because Facebook can email you with every comment as it has been added to your wall.
4. Respond quickly, professionally and most importantly listen and be respectful.
5. Ideally offer a different more private forum to receive further information on the problem and to discuss the issue.

Of course not everything went to plan and the funny thing is that if you are looking to handle complaints about the performance of your new website, directing them back to that problematic website was probably not the best idea in hindsight. Of course there is a lesson in there as well:

jasb @realestate_au i just submitted your feedback form and got could not be found! Check ur search results layout in chrome, its screwed!

Brett_Hales @realestate_au Thanks for the opportunity to provide some feedback – didn’t go too well upon submit http://twitpic.com/1fjap1

]]> http://www.business2.com.au/2010/04/realestate-com-au-show-real-estate-agents-how-to-handle-twitter-and-facebook-complaints/feed/ 16 http://www.business2.com.au/2010/03/10-things-i-absolutely-positively-love-about-facebook-twitter-and-linkedin/ http://www.business2.com.au/2010/03/10-things-i-absolutely-positively-love-about-facebook-twitter-and-linkedin/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:02:18 +0000 Glenn Batten http://www.business2.com.au/?p=2713 Just to provide some balance to the Hate Article.

1. There is absolutely nothing in this world like Facebook for connecting with all your old friends. The most successful people in real estate truly understand that networking is one of the real key’s to this industry and setting up a Facebook profile is drop dead easy thing to do to take advantage of it. Most of your old friends probably did not even know you were in real estate anyway. In sales the BIGGER YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE THE BETTER.
2. Facebook and Twitter are truly opt-in marketing. There can be no chance that you can ever have provisions of the the privacy act thrown at you as they chose to follow you and they still WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
3. Testimonials are like gold for real estate agents and Linkedin allows you to write and receive business testimonials from other members. Testimonials that you approve become part of your profile for everyone to see. WHO DOES NOT WANT ANYMORE TESTIMONIALS?
4. Ensure your following the right people on Twitter as it is simply the best barometer on the real estate industry. Everyday you will get the latest training tips, strategies, news and commentary and all in just 140 characters each. On Twitter follow few and follow quality and YOU WILL BE REWARDED. Try to follow too many and it all just turns into noise.
5. Networking with others in and associated with our industry is just as important as networking with potential clients. When you are looking to contact someone you have never met Linkedin shows you who in your network already knows them and how. Linked in allows you to BUILD RELATIONSHIPS AND CONNECTIONS INSIDE THE INDUSTRY.
6. Twitter Search is a fantastic way to keep abreast of just what people are saying about your company, your brand or a recent advertising campaign. You get to see exactly what consumers are TELLING THEIR FRIENDS ABOUT YOU.
7. If they find it interesting or worth sharing,  your friends and followers will spread your news for you when they retweet, comment or like something that you post. The power of social networking is INCREDIBLE WHEN IT GOES VIRAL.
8. Tweets are now integrated live into the Google Search Engine Results Pages. Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter Lists are now in the Google Index which makes setting up a Twitter Account and Facebook Profile the EASIEST SEO ON THE PLANET.
9. If you dont like someone or they are posting or tweeting rubbish… you can just DELETE THEM!
10. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are 100% FREE…  at least for now.

Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach are holding ‘The Edge’ on Saturday 17^th April 2010 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.

Brett Clements from PropVid sent me the ‘Hot Off The Press’ promo video yesterday.

Now for such a big event I’m sure that there has already been a lot of promotion done by the Gold Coast Network in the lead up till now & it looks like there is going to be a whole lot more promotion done between now and ‘The Edge’.

But I thought I might throw my 2 cents worth in & share some ideas on how Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could leverage Social Media & the web more effectively to help spread the word.

Here’s ‘The Edge’ video promo.

The video went live on the PlatinumHD.tv site a few days ago & was uploaded onto YouTube 3 days ago. Whilst I think the video is really powerful there are a couple of things that could be changed to improve its conversion.

Changes to the Video: Within the video I’d have the agents website address GoldCoastNetwork.com.au appearing underneath the Ray White Broadbeach, Ray White Commercial Broadbeach, Ray White Mermaid Beach slide (which appears at the 2 minute mark within the video).

Also, towards the end of the video a slide appears saying “Spaces Limited Book Now”

Whilst I think it’s great to include a call to action. It’s important to define what you want people to do. Are they wanting vendors to book their property in now for the auction? Or do they want buyers to book their seat now? Or both?

On the web there is no room for confusion. It’s important that people watching the video know how to Book Now.

Improve Online Conversion: One suggestion could be that if you include the agency website address within the video, then on the home page of the Ray White website they could embed ‘The Edge’ promo video into the top right hand corner (probably cutting out the end of the surf life saving flag or surfer image) and then have a button underneath to say Click Here to Book Now for ‘The Edge’.

I would then send them to a long copy sales page that features some of the benefits of why they should be involved in ‘The Edge’ and provide an opt-in section which identifies if they are a buyer or a seller.

This will allow Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the traffic that they already get to their website from Google and their other marketing, plus improve conversion from the people who view their professionally produced ‘The Edge’ promo video.

Obviously, with only 6 weeks to go till ‘The Edge’, to allow for the 4 week cut-through marketing campaign that they mention in the video, all sellers would need to be contacted straight away to include their listing in ‘The Edge’ marketing campaign.

I can imagine that the agency will need to have all properties listed by 20^th March, but due to the size of the promotion & the incredible exposure there’s a possibility that they could include a few extra listings within a few days after this cut-off date. But, that’s obviously up to them.

Here’s a few other suggestions…

YouTube: One of the first things I noticed is that the video could also be optimised a lot better on YouTube. The wording used in the description & tagging has no chance of being found on Google by someone searching for real estate on the Gold Coast & I’m not sure that having it uploaded under the Entertainment category is going to help either?

Blogging: They should integrate a WordPress blog within their company website. This will not only help to market ‘The Edge’ but it will help with their SEO.

They should write a daily blog post about some of the build up towards ‘The Edge’ and ask all the staff to tweet or share each article with their followers on Twitter & their friends on Facebook.

When sharing the articles on these sites they could also ask people to click the like button when uploading onto Facebook and ask the followers to ‘Please RT’ their tweets on Twitter.

When posting daily updates on the blog it’s important to leave the comments section open on the articles because this may get people asking questions about how to be involved & could provide an additional lead generation strategy.

This could also provide an opportunity to set a deadline for the last day before properties will be allowed to be submitted & could create an extra sense of urgency for potential sellers and/or could encourage friends to tell friends to contact the agency so they don’t miss out on ‘The Edge’.

To protect the integrity of the event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach are the administrators of the blog so they have control to monitor comments too.

Facebook: I also noticed that Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach have a personal profile on Facebook. Whilst they currently have 67 friends, they should really have this as a Fan Page, because Facebook has a limit and once you get to 5,000 friends you have to change to a Fan Page.

Any company thinking about creating a presence on Facebook should start off with a Fan Page. They are better for business.

Celebrities, etc should also create a Fan Page. eg. One of my friends on facebook, Jack Canfield sent me an email the other day to ask me to join him at his fan page because he had reached his limit of friends.

Jack now has the task of getting all 5,000 of his friends that he has built up on his personal Facebook profile to go over & connect with him on his new Facebook Fan Page.

( Update: I found their company Facebook Fan Page – See Update at bottom of this article )

Twitter: With regards to Twitter I can’t seem to locate a company profile for them. At this point there appears to be no Twitter account linked to their site & no blog within their site.

Whilst ‘The Edge’ is an amazing concept, there are so many different things that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could do to make this the most incredible real estate event ever through Social Media.

(Update: I found their company Twitter account as well see Update at bottom of this article. I searched both facebook and Twitter for Ray White Broadbeach and Ray White Mermaid Beach. I finally found them under the Gold Coast Network.)

Print Media: Having seen the magnitude of the print media campaign from last years event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach should be advertising something like,

“For the daily inside scoop on ‘The Edge’ become a Fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter” within their campaign.

This could help them to build a huge network of people connected to their company who live within their service.

It’s never too late: Even though ‘The Edge’ is only 6 weeks away, when you think about the real-time nature of Web 2.0, there is still a lot of time available for Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the power of the internet & use this impressive Video Production from PropVid to generate the most amazing impression within their marketplace.

2 last things: A geo-targeted Pay Per Click campaign on Google could help overcome some SEO issues, plus a targeted Facebook Ads Campaign would help drive targeted traffic to their video campaign and/or their Facebook Fan Page.

The amount of ‘Free’ online PR that could be generated around ‘The Edge’ could be massive.

If Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach get this right, ‘The Edge’ could become so much bigger than they could have ever imagined.

And, if you tallied up every strategy that I’ve mentioned, they could make a huge difference to their whole campaign for around $500 – $1,000 plus time spent writing a daily update on their blog about ‘The Edge’.

PS: There’s a few more ideas I have about what they could do on realestate.com.au and other strategies, but at this point I just wanted to paint the picture of what is really possible, if a real estate agency embraces Social Media and uses the power of the internet the right way.

Please feel welcome to share your thoughts & ideas.

UPDATE: After writing this article I noticed that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach do in fact have a Facebook Fan Page under ‘Gold Coast Network‘ and a Twitter account at Twitter.com/raywhitebroad with their username as ‘Gold Coast Network’. It’s great to see that they have established a fan page and a Twitter account.

At the time of posting this update, they have 97 fans on Facebook and 23 followers on Twitter, but unfortunately all the company seem to be posting is there sold listings & providing a link to the Open Homes that they have on each weekend.

Their Gold Coast Network Fan Page could become so much more engaging and simply because of its name, Gold Coast Network, it has the potential to become one of the biggest real estate fan pages on Facebook if they shared some other information about what’s happening on the Gold Coast as well.

Facebook Ads.

OK, I was the same too – deeply skeptical as I was of all Web 2.0, self-indulgent bloggers, twits and lamebookers. I’d heard all about alleged ‘click frauds’ last year (search ‘Facebook click fraud’ and you get 18 million results).

About a year ago I attended a small business seminar where the concept of advertising on Facebook came up, and a quick demo was run on how easy it was to setup and how quickly results were viewed. I had try it for myself. I put up an ad (it was easy to do), aimed it towards 35-55 year olds who live in Perth (I hail from there) and sat back and watched the results.

Now 11 months have ticked over (long enough time to measure results I feel sure), the ad has been served up almost 22 million times (22 million!) to my target audience and it has cost me a tad over $3500 (or $300/month for 2mn views/month on average). I humbly show you the stats (screen shot of my Facebook Advertising account below) and invite you to pore over the numbers.  [Note: $ values are US dollars]

Being a small business owner with a limited marketing budget, I have experimented with many things over the years (local papers, radio, billboards, cinema ads, car ads…) but the results of my Facebook advertising have blown me away.  I don’t know anywhere you can get potentially millions of directed ads ‘served up’ into your local market for this cost. It equates  to an average CPM (cost per thousand views) of 16 cents.

CPM for my various Google ads run at over 10 times that, and I can’t (as easily) send my ads to people on Google as determined by their age nor where they live. Moreover, all Facebook ads include a thumbnail image of my choosing. Google ads are mainly text based.

If you compare Facebook advertising to more traditional advertising (local papers, cineads, billboards and the rest) the latter tend to follow the old media rules of a ‘shotgun blast at a target’ approach, which is (literally) ‘hit or miss’ at best and (to stretch a tired metaphor still further) provides less ‘bang for the buck’, Charlie Gunningham

As audiences reach for their own divergent media, an advertiser can get lost in the choice, or use that choice to target people directly. I know of an experiment done by fellow Business2 contributor Peter Fletcher who targeted a Facebook ad to be viewed by ONE specific person. As Peter knew their profile settings, he could send up an ad on to their pages when that person next logged on to Facebook. The ad garnered 7 views and was clicked on once – by that person. You can’t get any more targeted than that! I’ve seen shorter Ad campaigns targeted at filling a seminar room and this has been their only marketing spend (about $50) to fill a room of 100 paying $200 a ticket. (That’s a pretty good ROI). No need for brochures, mail outs, email campaigns. Grab people where they are, and who you want to grab.

Moreover, you can run as many ads as you like, set a daily budget (you never go above it), determine your cost per click, pause and delete the ads whenever you want. You can send ads onto Facebook pages of people living in different cities and countries in different age ranges. Enter your credit card details and it gets billed automatically, with notifications of amount spent. You are in total control, can view the results and adjust your ads and settings whenever you like.

Over 6.6 million Australians are on Facebook. 300 million globally (75 million in the States). 1.6mn over the age of 18 are on Facebook in Sydney, 1.4mn Melbourne, 885,000 in Brisbane, 562,000 in Perth… (To check these stats yourself and research further, go to ‘Advertising’ in the footer on Facebook and click ‘Create an Ad’ – under ‘Targeting’ you can play with the variables).

What surprised me at first is that more people over age 40 are on Facebook  than under age 20. It’s a myth that this thing is for kids. And 90% of Facebook users are active (login more than once a week) and 50% login daily. Often 2 or 3 times a day. Do you think these people are interested in real estate?

A few caveats at this stage. You’ll notice that my ad had 22 million views and ‘only’ 6000 or so clicks. A pretty poor ‘click thru rate’ (CTR) you might say (a miserable 0.029%). However, that was deliberate. Being a penny pinching sort of guy I adjusted the settings to maximise possible views (which are free). I was doing it as a branding, differentiation and “getting your name out there” exercise. (You can also set them up to get traffic to your properties, profiles, home page and pay per views if you wish.)

The real estate advertising applications are obvious

• real estate reps can put a photo of themselves, a brief heading and 135 characters of text, and link the ad to their own profile page
• individual properties can be put up (as a normal part of every marketing campaign) linking to their individual pages on the agency’s own sites
• Auction campaigns with standalone web sites or individual pages within sites
• Simple branding ads sending users to your home page, or better yet, some specific landing page (competition, offer, new blog post…)
• Ads linking to your Facebook page to drum up ‘fans’
• Use these ads for recruitment of staff (e.g. you’re looking for a property manager and can using age, interests and possibly gender targeting)
• Setting up these ads as a normal way of doing things could make you look extremely tech savvy with your vendors and other clients

It would seem something to (at least) consider; but if all the above is true (and I have probably missed most of the advantages others can see straight away) is this the future of targeted advertising – if not on Facebook, but on social networking sites in general? What does this mean for traditional media who rely on local advertising?

Facebook.com is already breaking even on this advertising stream. I believe they are going to earn a mint from this, in the same way Google did from Adwords. I have reduced my Adwords spend and moved the money to Facebook. If more and more do the same, what will this mean for Google?

By sending visitors across to the major portals, agents are diluting their marketing message & sending potential customers to a website full of their competitors.  At least if agents send them to their own website the customers can read more about the agent & the agency. Plus, the customers have the opportunity to opt-in to receive more information from the agent via newsletters, blog posts, etc.

Real Estate Agents do more than enough advertising for the major portals via posters in their windows, talking about the major portals at listing presentations, etc.

If agents are going to post a link for one of their listings into either a blog post or onto Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc then they should make sure that they direct the traffic back to the listing appearing on their company website.

I can understand why there would be  some agents unintentionally sending visitors across to the major portals from Twitter, mainly because posting listings onto Twitter is still a relatively new concept for a lot of agents & many agents aren’t aware that they can use a URL shortening service, but when sharing listings on Facebook there’s really no excuse for it.

“URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web where a provider makes a web page available under a very short URL in addition to the original address. For example, the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TinyURL&diff=283621022&oldid=283308287 can be shortened to http://tinyurl.com/mmw6lb .” Source: Wikipedia

The URL shortening services are free & most have stats so you can use the shortened URL to measure the response from your Social Media marketing campaigns at the same time.

There are over 100 or more sites to choose from. Here’s just a few of the URL shortening services that make it really simple to link across to a web page on your company website.

tr.im
bit.ly
ow.ly
budurl.com
tinyurl.com
su.pr

Well, what used to be Word of Mouth, has now become World of Mouth, simply because it is now very easy for people to share their customer experiences with their friends over the web.

One of the most powerful examples of a customer using Social Media to complain about receiving poor service was a song written by Dave Carroll, uploaded to YouTube about United Airlines breaks guitars.

Over 5 million people have now viewed the song on YouTube & Dave Carroll has just released a second song about the staff member at the centre of all the negotiations & allegations.

Worldwide there’d be millions of good & bad customer reviews shared daily over the web via sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Yelp, etc.

Whilst I appreciate that customer reviews over the internet aren’t a recent thing & understand that people have been posting reviews about products & services on the web via blogs, forums & social networks for quite some time.

For example, here’s the real estate section of an Australian site called Product Review.

However, recently I’ve noticed that there have been some important developments regarding customer reviews which could have a big impact on real estate agents.

1. New Australian Real Estate Agent Review Site:- Realty Ref
A new site has just been launched called Realty Ref where the site asks customers to share their real estate customer experience.

The site is currently asking consumers to share their experience based on…
“Feel cheated? Tricked or pressured? Lied to? Warn Others: Or Recommend Great Service.”

Unfortunately, with the public perception of real estate agents still below par, as per the annual Roy Morgan Image of Professions survey, real estate agent review sites like this are likely to become an online real estate complaints department.

2. Customer Reviews Located At The Top Of Google Search
The other day I was checking the ranking of a real estate agent’s site in Balmain & searched Google for the keyword “Balmain Real Estate Agent”.

At the top of the search Google came up with “Local business results for real estate agent near Balmain NSW”, plus a map & a list of 10 real estate agents identified from ‘A’ to ‘J’.

Amongst the list of agents that appeared, 2 real estate agencies had customer reviews appearing right beside their listing on Google.

Whilst the reviews weren’t bad reviews, one was definitely better than the other & could impact which agent a potential customer selected.

3. Customer Reviews via Mobile Phone.
There are a couple of major developments that are happening in the world of Augmented Technology that I read about in a post by Jeff Bernheisel.

Augmented Reality allows places to be identified using a collection of data that has been uploaded onto the web.

Augmented ID uses similar technology to identify people’s faces. Here’s a quick video from TAT demonstrating this mobile phone face recognition technology.

Imagine going to a Listing Presentation & before signing the agency agreement, the potential seller points their phone at you to check you out. Alternatively, imagine being able to use Augmented ID via your mobile phone to identify the people visiting an open home.

Whichever way it happens, customers armed with easy access to customer reviews, whether they be good or bad reviews, will have an impact on our industry as we move forward.

Whilst I still believe that real estate agents should be using Facebook for marketing themselves & their real estate business, after reading this article about Facebook Click Fraud it may be better for agents to proceed with caution if they intend to use the Pay Per Click advertising section.

Many companies use Facebook’s Pay Per Click Advertising platform because the demographic information collected about Facebook users enables companies to target their marketing campaigns within the social media environment.

Some companies also prefer using Facebook’s Advertising rather than waiting for the SEO on their site to kick in and/or they feel that it’s better value than having to compete for expensive keywords within SEM campaigns on the search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing.

Facebook advertising generated $280 million in revenue in 2008 & they are expecting $550 million this year. But with the grey cloud of Click Fraud hanging overhead, Facebook will be keen to rectify these issues very quickly.

For the moment, agents may be best to limit their Facebook marketing to the 3 Free strategies.

1.    Building your personal Facebook profile
2.    Creating a Facebook Fan Page for your company
3.    Creating a Facebook Group

These online marketing foundations could be adopted as a good start up strategy for any new agent or simply a way that agents can build their profile & generate more business.  Either way, to begin building your online profile these first 4 steps are probably the best place for an agent to start.

1. Personal Domain Name

Secure your personal domain name. eg.YourName.com or .net.
To order your domain name, there are lots of domain name providers to choose from & the cost for domain names seem to be getting cheaper all the time. There are sites like GoDaddy.com, PlanetDomain.com, Intaserve.com & CrazyDomains.com just to name a few.

If your domain name has already been taken you can try putting a hyphen into the domain name. eg. Your-Name.com. There are lots of hyphenated domain names that are still available.

At present, there doesn’t appear to be any real benefit in securing the .com.au or .net.au unless you really want to. Your TLD, (Top Level Domain) YourName.com is better to secure if it’s still available.

Simply register the domain name & don’t sign up for the hosting packages because in a future post, I’ll show you ways that you can get your hosting for FREE.

2. Twitter

Secure your personal name on Twitter.
Once a Twitter username is registered then no one else in the world can create the same username. That’s why, even if you don’t want to use your Twitter account for a while, it’s still better to secure your username.

If Twitter.com/YourName isn’t available then you can use ‘underscore’ to create Twitter.com/Your_Name or you can even have the underscore at the beginning or the end of the username, like _YourName or _Your_Name.

The reason why it’s important to have your name within the username is that it forms part of the URL and this can help somebody find you easier on Google, Bing & other search engines if they type in your name.

3. Google Profile

Register your Profile on Google.
Having a Google profile enables you to provide a biography/profile of yourself on Google’s site. You can also include links back to your company website & links to any of your other profiles/websites.

Simply go to www.google.com/profiles and register today.

The same applies with Google Profiles, once the username is gone it’s gone, so it’s worthwhile going & securing your Google profile before someone else in the world with your name does.

4. Facebook

Register your profile on Facebook
Facebook has recently announced that as of this Saturday, June 13th at 12.01am New York time (2.01pm Sydney time) Facebook users will be be able to choose a username URL for their Facebook account.

It’s designed to make it easier to direct friends, family, and coworkers to a Facebook user’s profile.
This move by Facebook will also mean that people’s Facebook profiles will start to appear a lot more on personal name searches within the search engines.

For example, the new Facebook URL will become Facebook.com/YourName which can make it a lot easier for people to connect with you on Facebook.

Usernames will be issued on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and any other Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting http://www.facebook.com/username/.

Facebook Pages are designed for your business. There appears to be are a lot of agents & businesses that have started registering Facebook fan pages for their businesses & it may be a good idea to secure the Facebook username for your business at the same time. Eg. Facebook.com/YourBusinessName

Whilst there are lots of others sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, etc that you may want to register with, these are the Top 4 things you should do first.