RealBird Blog

Facebook Profile listing widget, new ActiveRain and blog embed code and other feature updates

We had many feature releases in the last couple of weeks, plus many improvements of existing features. The article below summarizes the result of the last month R&D efforts here at RealBird. I organized the new and updated features by products, but note that some of the improvements are interconnected, hence providing additional benefits by channeling visitors from one of your RealBird services to the other.

But first thing first. Check out these examples of the just released embed code optimized for ActiveRain, Localism and your regular blog with SEO in mind. Just enter your listings in RealBird as usual and use the new link on the member management page called "Embed it in ActiveRain & blog post". You can configure the width and show or hide contact info and center or left align the widget.

New RealBird embed code examples

PGA NATIONAL GOLF ESTATE - Escape To Your Private Oasis

Overview Maps Photos Features Description Video Neighborhood Market Stats

$2,499,777 Single Family Home For Sale Main Features 7 Bedrooms 6 Bathrooms 1 Partial Bathroom Lot: 0.86 acre(s) Location 5 Rabbits Run Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418

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Nestor and Katerina Gasset International Properties and Investments, Inc (561) 753-0135 coachkaterina@gmail.com http://www.wellington-luxury-homes.com Listed by: International Properties and Investments Inc.

Our recent listings Short Sale Historic Grand View Heights-West Palm Beach FL 33401 Short Sale Condo with Ocean-IntraCoastal and Pool Views! Short Sale -14289 Calypso Ln Wellington Florida 33414 Short Sale - 752 Lake Wellington Drive Wellington 33414 3419 Pony Run Wellington Florida 33467 Short Sale Subscribe to our listing feed

See more Palm Beach Gardens, FL real estate for sale

Unforgettable Views Olympia Waterfront

Overview Maps Photos Features Description About Olympia

$999,000 Single Family Home For Sale Main Features 4 Bedrooms 3 Bathrooms Interior: 3551 sqft Lot: 0.64 acre(s) Location 7500 Sandy Point Beach Rd. NE Olympia, WA 98516

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Mike Conner City Realty, Inc. (360) 970-4408 mike@cityrealtyolympia.com http://www.cityrealtyinc.com Listed by: City Realty, Inc.

Our recent listings Stylish New West Olympia Condo Unforgettable Views Olympia Waterfront Perfect West Olympia Starter Multi-Family Zoning Near Downtown Olympia Gorgeous Olympia Rambler Subscribe to our listing feed

See more Olympia, WA real estate for sale

Live Work TownHome in Market Common - Incredible Location and Price

Overview Maps Photos Description

$329,900 Townhouse For Sale Main Features 2 Bedrooms 2 Bathrooms 2 Partial Bathrooms Interior: 2150 sqft Location Howard Avenue 2834-D Myrtle Beach, SC 29588

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MIRELA MONTE BUYERS' CHOICE REALTY (843) 251-2378 Mirela@BuyersChoiceSC.com http://www.MyrtleBeachHomes.US Listed by: Mirela Monte

Our recent listings Windy Hill Dunes Oceanfront Condo for Sale in N. Myrtle Beach SC Kenley Court - Apartments for Sale in Loris, SC Live Work TownHome in Market Common - Incredible Location and Price Adorable Home in Cherry Grove Beach The Best of Both Worlds: Ocean and Marsh Merger Subscribe to our listing feed

See more Myrtle Beach, SC real estate for sale

RealBird Listing Publisher - new features

• "Homes for Sale" tab widget for both your Facebook Profile and Facebook Page
• New ActiveRain and Localism optimized embed code with stunningly good looking slideshows (see examples above)
• New Photowall listing inventory widget
• Updated configuration tool for the Featured Listings Map widget with Google Earth 3D view and options to generate maps for your sold and pending inventory as well
• iPromote integration
• Your RealBird single property websites now link to your RealBird Property Search, providing more comparable properties for your visitors. All leads go to you.

RealBird Property Search - new features

• The search RSS now includes MediaRSS extension
  Photos are now attached to the RSS items with the industry standard machine readable MediaRSS extension, hence allows advanced reusability, e.g. tou can use it now to create slideshow and other media widgets using 3rd party services
• Mapped search results as default option
  PRO subscribers can now configure the service to show the mapped results by default.
• Advanced configuration options.

• Configure the service so that clicking on the property search result keeps the details page in the same iframe. The default behavior is to break out of the embedded frame into new window.
• Hiding header and footer for smooth integration.
• These are PRO options as well. Please contact us for instructions.

• Your featured listings are now promoted on your Property Search interface.
• Cross-market and showcase your own listings under a prominent "Featured Listings" tab. This is a PRO feature also.
• The RealBird widget for Facebook Pages and Facebook Profiles also links to your RealBird Property Search

New PRO subscription option - go monthly for only $11.95

Some of the new features are RealBird PRO only options, like the industry-first Facebook Profile and Facebook Page widget, MLS-compatible unbranded virtual tours, ad-free Property Search. To make your upgrade decision easier, we introduced a monthly payment option for only $11.95/month. You can upgrade instantly through the member area. Just log in and click the Upgrade link either on the member landing page or on the listing management page

If you like these new features, please consider upgrading to the PRO account in the RealBird member area. It's only $11.95 per month (equals only a few bucks or less per listing per month)

-- Zoltan 
RealBird.com

 

ActiveRain closes on to reach the 100,000 members mark

ActiveRain - one of the leading and certainly the most dynamic  real estate social networks - has 91,690 members, as of the time of writing this post. ActiveRain is free service and the value is unprecedented in terms of access to the vast amount of information shared by other real estate professionals and online marketing in general.

We call on all of you, real estate professionals (agents, brokers, appraisals, stager, mortgage lenders etc.) to join for free and let's help them together to reach the 100,000 members count.

• ActiveRain is a blogging system in the sense that it
  enables you to write articles, it lists them in chronological order,
  syndicates it via RSS and feeds the search engine monster for maximum
  exposure and clearly identifies you as the author and authority.
• ActiveRain is a training ground:
  Many of us come to ActiveRain for advice, discussions and to learn from
  each other. Training each other on business, marketing etc. is what
  creates the loyalty and incremental benefit, and this sets ActiveRain
  apart from other services.
• ActiveRain is an ecosystem and a team marketing platform:
  One participant's success depends on the success of the overall
  ecosystem and AR members directly and indirectly enhance each others
  marketing efforts. For example, there is such a deep interconnection
  between the 1 million+ AR pages Google knows about, that search engines
  pay extra attention to content published via ActiveRain and value the
  content as highly relevant.
• ActiveRain is a unique social network:
  Valuable social networks are those, where the connections between the
  participants create a value-add, which would not exist without these
  connections. That is, there are 1) new and 2) valuable information born
  from these relationships. In other words, the relationships between
  ActiveRainers are as important as the content generated by individuals.

To celebrate ActiveRain's contribution to the real estate industry, we - at RealBird - have released an ActiveRain Social Network Widget, which can be used to merge your ActiveRain and RealBird account into a handy, great looking, team marketing platform.  Market your ActiveRain associates (the ActiveRain members you selected as your inner circle), each other's business profile, each other's listings (published through RealBird) and each other blog posts!

Below is an example of the widget with viral marketing capability built into it:

The widget above shows our own RealBird ActiveRain associates, their RealBird listings and the blog posts. To get your own, join ActiveRain and RealBird (both for free) and get your own widget from the RealBird member area.

Enjoy the benefits and let's give ActiveRain a helping hand to reach the 100,000 member mark.

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird.com

Two colorful ones from Florida

Two Mini Single Property Website Widget picks. Don't you just love the colors !

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

RealBird Listing Publisher 3.0 released

It's been a while since our previous major feature release of the RealBird Listing Publisher single property website and listing syndication service. We have been adding and improving features on-going, like support for the Google Street View widget and Microsoft Bird's Eye View, embedded slideshow and new default theme, and today, we have a major upgrade to announce with many unique and powerful presentation and marketing features. See below the list with examples.

Virtual open house - Live chat with your visitors

For the first time, you can use your single property websites as interactive presentation tools; effectively: virtual open houses. You can engage your visitors right on the spot, interactively, real-time, before they browse away to check out other listing websites. The new Listing Publisher provides you a way to add  3rd party chat widgets of your choice. Just like with the 3rd party video and slideshow support, we do not limit you to a particular provider, use one of our recommended services or add your favorite chat application. You can use Plugoo.com, Meebo, or Kyte.tv for audio and video chat, LivePerson.com for proactive chats or any other services you prefer. Many of these chat services also run on mobile devices so you will be able to participate in conversations even while you are on the go.

Tip: You can even provide live shows and market reviews using ustream.tv or similar services. Just like with syndicating the embedded RealBird MLS search tool, and getting additional real estate services one step closer to potential clients, you can  use the distributed single property websites to capture traffic for your live real estate shows. The options are pretty much endless.

I highly recommend to add the Plugoo.com chat widget to your RealBird sites, at least. With Plugoo, you can keep using your regular IM (Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger) to interact with your property websites' visitors, even from your mobile devices.

Example: Tina Merritt's listing : Popular Baylake Pines

Real-time market stats and lead capturing - powered by Altos Research

We met the guys at Altos Research more than a year ago, and we have been talking about integration ever since, but never got the time to actually do it. This time we pulled it off! For over 6,000  zip codes in the US we are now automatically include a "Market Stats" tab, a large, up-to-date median price chart for the zip code and a lead collector for your visitors to request more market research data. Within 1 hour of the release, one of our client received the first lead via this service. IT WORKS !  This is one of my favorite new features. New markets are added ongoing, so even if it is not yet available in your market, keep this feature on, we will include the charts automatically as soon as your market is available.

Example: Stunning Custom Home in Keller, Texas - www.705wickhamcourt.com

Mini Single Property Website widget to embed in sites and blog posts

The Mini Single Property Website is a new, powerful listing widget in your viral marketing toolset. If you like the original slideshow widget, you will love this one. Besides being nice and effective it has two major improvements. It is a viral widget: it provides you and your audience a way to quickly and easily grab and share it on social networks, social bookmarking sites and through email. The widget also maintains the visual theme of your single property website including the unique photo backdrop feature and custom color theme. No more boring widgets, spice it up as much as you wish. Stay tuned for new  RealBird viral marketing widgets coming soon. We are already working on some. See the current set of real estate widgets RealBird provides.

Example courtesy of Janie Coffey

Update: Embedded widget removed due to some bug with the Typepad blog hosting platform. Thanks for Rick at Phoenix Real Estate to point this out. We found the fix. the widget is back again below

See it in action on Janie's Horse Properties blog or see one embedded in this Philly real estate blog

What's nearby: powered by Google

This new feature turns your single property website into a local information hub. Your visitors can easily map any points of interest around your property with the built-in Google Local Search. Most importantly: schools and city amenities. Check it out on Bill Gassett's Medway, MA single property website. E.g. Enter "schools" in the text box on map and get instant nearby results.

Bargain alert - Notification if your list price is below Zillow's Zestimate®

The new Zillow API mashup will show a bargain alert on your site if your list price is below Zillow's Zestimate®. It is an automatic marketing pitch for grabbing the attention of the visitor, using the industry standard Zillow Zestimate® for emphasizing bargain pricing. If you property is priced above the Zestimate®, the feature becomes automatically hidden. We only use Zestimate® when it helps you with your online marketing efforts. This is an optional feature, you can turn it on and off, just like with most of the RealBird features, but I think this is an excellent tool as it merges the best of the features of RealBird and Zillow and only used when it benefits your marketing efforts.

Example: Highlands Ranch, CO listing  or Wonderful Ranch Home

Printable flyer with a twist - private labeled driving directions included

Many of you have been asking for it and now we have the solution: a printable version of your single property website. We also added an invaluable tool to it. You clients can print driving directions together with your flyer branded for you with your photo, logo and contact information. A new editor is provided in the member area which lets you configure the description and feature highlights. Having an optimized content for printing helps you create a flyer which prints pretty without changing the content on your full-featured property website and also helps you with search engine marketing by providing a second version indexed by search engines with related by slightly different content.

"Listing slug" - excuse us for the name, but this is powerful SEO

We borrowed the term from the Wordpress blogging platform, which uses "post slugs" for blog post Url customization. The concept is the following: having relevant keywords in the Url may increase search engine ranking. Having some variation between your property title's keywords (also important SEO content) and your Url keywords may increase ranking even more.  Besides helping you getting better ranking, this feature can also help you with better click-through rates once your property site is found by search engines.  Google and the other search engines also highlight keywords in the Url on the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) which increases click-through rate. By default we use your property website's title in the Url, but for even better keyword targeting, you can override the single property website's Url keywords with related, but slightly modified terms. This is an advanced feature. If it is confusing, you can just skip this feature. RealBird will generate this for you automatically using your listing's title. To access this feature, use the configure tab in the listing editor.

International distribution

Through our syndication partnership with DotHomes ( a UK company ), we are now bringing international exposure for your listings. This is an automatic syndication feature. Publish your listings on RealBird and they will be automatically distributed to DotHomes.com (They are in the final stage of the implementation so it may take a few more days from the date of this post to have your listings appear)

Tracking more details of the property website activity

For those of you who are crazy about web analytics, we added more tracking via Clicky's new Ajax tracking code. Please note that this feature is only available for Premium Clicky subscribers.

Private labeled real estate yellow pages

Last but not least, we have released our first service of a series of upcoming team marketing tools. The RealBird Private Labeled Yellow Pages lets you private label the RealBird real estate yellow pages portal at SearchOnMaps.com. See the example below. Enter a US city, zipcode or address and see the private labeled portal.

Benefits:

• Branding and lead generation
• Team marketing - the RealBird community markets each others' listings
• Backlinks to your site and blog from a portal with high PageRank
• Single property websites are co-branded also
• It's free

Example widget:

See it also on Katy Schaff's blog embedded in the right sidebar

If you like to be featured on this blog by showing one of these features on your own RealBird listing sites, just comment on this post with your RealBird link included or send us an email.

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird.com

Central Valley MLS

Just a quick note, that we received a heads up from MLSListings Inc. (formerly known as RE InfoLink ) that their IDX feed now contains Central Valley MLS data. They are in the process of merging local MLSs and it seems Central Valley is already part of the unified feed. That's a good news for another 1000 California real estate agents and brokers. The RealBird Map-based Search service is now available in San Joaquin, Stanislaus and West Merced counties. Start a free trial and test-drive RealBird's novel IDX map and widget technology. That was quick. A few days after our MRIS release we have another area covered. That's what I am talking about ! More coming soon, so stay tuned.

 

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird.com