RealBird Blog

How to add a full-screen slideshow of your listing inventory to your smartphone

Did you know? Both the new RealBird Inventory Map and the new RealBird Gallery widgets are now fully mobile friendly. You can use both as an embedded widget on your website or real estate blog, but you can also use them on your smartphone and tablet for listing presentations.

Here are the simple steps to bookmark your own RealBird Gallery widget on your smartphone: 

1. Log into your RealBird member area
2. Assuming you have published listings already, click "Listing Marketing" on the top navigation
3. Then click the "Widgets" subnavigation link
4. Then select "Listing Gallery" from the available inventory widget options
5. Select the option to create a link for active, pending or sold listings (or any combination of these)
6. You can also configure the width and height of the gallery widget on this page, which applies only to the embed code. For the purpose of this example, just leave it as is, because we are going to use this inventory slideshow in full screen and these options will be ignored anyways
7. You also have an option to add your RealBird Featured Listings Map widget as the last item in the gallery
8. Once the options are set, click the "Preview and Get Code" button and you will be provided with the permalink for your inventory slideshow. 
9. Email this link to your phone, load it into your mobile browser and bookmark it onto your homescreen.

It's that simple. Now you have your listing inventory at your fingertips: just pull out your smartphone, load the gallery via the bookmark and you are ready to impress your prospective sellers at listing presentations. The gallery is automatically updated when you make changes to your listings in RealBird.

We hope you like it. More to come...

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com 

New Property Slideshow Widget Launched

We just updated the RealBird single property slideshow widget: Instead of the legacy Flash player, the new version is now using HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript to automatically create a beautiful slideshow for your listings on RealBird. It is now compatible with Apple's iOS and with most modern smartphones and desktop browsers as well, including the old but still in use IE7. See a few examples below:

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

How to get yours:

The existing "Slideshow" link on the Listing Management page will bring up the new slideshow code generator. Similar to RealBird's Craigslist embed code generator, it lets you set some options and preview and generate the code for as many versions as you wish. For this particular RealBird widget, the width and the height are the customizable options currently.

We suggest to use the maximum width of 800px and maximum height of 600px and do not create smaller slideshow than 300/300 pixels. But again, you can preview your settings before you post your slideshow code on your sites, so go ahead, log into RealBird and generate the code which fits your requirements. Here is an example screen of the RealBird slideshow editor:

Here are few things to remember :

• Your slideshow widget is cached for 5 minutes for performance reasons. In other words, it may take up to 5 minutes for your changes in RealBird to appear on the slideshow.
• You can upload unlimited photos for your listings on RealBird, but the slideshow widget rotates the top 30 photos only - again, for performance reasons. 
• Works in most major browsers including the still in-use, but really old version of IE 7 and 8. The slideshow should work identically in the rest of the browsers as well including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE 9 and also on modern smartphones.

These slideshow widgets are automatically generated for your properties in RealBird. Just simply publish your listing as usual and the ever growing visualization goodies are instantly generated for you.

Enjoy !

-- The RealBird Team
http://www.realbird.com 

Big numbers: 1,007 mobile real estate sites in 2 weeks and over 100,000 property websites since the beginning

Just in two weeks, over 1,000 mobile real estate websites were created on RealBird. That's more than amazing. Thank you all for making this happen !

In the meantime, another milestone has been reached. Actually it was passed without us noticing it a few days ago. We are pleased to announce that the the 100,000th RealBird single property website was created on March 13, 2011 6:24AM. The current count is now at 102,478. It's been growing fast ever since. This count includes both US and Canadian listings.

Over the weekend, we also launched a new feature for the mobile real estate websites. Besides your active properties, your mobile website now shows your pending and sold listings as well. If you had an active listing published via RealBird which is now pending sale or was sold recently, you can change its status through the Edit page. It only takes a few clicks. It will  not only show up on your mobile site under the Pending or Sold category, but doing so will also imrpove your SEO: by maintaining that page for longer period of time and via the cross promotion with your listings that are currently on the market. 

Stay tuned, more updates are on their way...

Thanks again for all of the RealBird members who made this happen.

-- The RealBird Team
www.RealBird.com 

Top 5 city names that are still available for the RealBird Mobile Real Estate Websites

Wow ! 805 mobile real estate websites have been registered since Tuesday on RealBird, in only 3 days ! Amazing feedback on this new RealBird service. Thanks everybody.

Here is an overview of some of the best practices:

• Try to keep the domain name as short as possible
• Download the QR code that is automatically generated for your mobile domain name and "tag" your print materials with it. Make it part of your flyer designs
• Make sure that you also print the domain name itself. Don't assume that everybody can or want to use a QR scanner app on their mobile phone just yet, even though more and more people are familiar with it. Use a double approach: use the QR code for techy customers and to set yourself apart from your competition but also use the domain name in print advertising
• Add your social media links to your RealBird account via the Profile page. Your social media icons with links will be added to the bottom of your profile that is provided on each mobile screen. Hint: if you want to link to your Facebook Business Page rather than your personal FB account, save the full Url of the Facebook Business Page.
• Since the competition for good domain names is pretty intense, register a "good enough" domain name first, then search for better ones. Once you registered one, you can try to update it with a shorter version and if it is not available, the original one will still belong to you. So feel free to play with the domain name options once you registered one. Please note that the QR code will change every time you update your domain name so make sure you do this before printing your QR code.

Having that said, below are 5 very short, very recognizable city abbreviations that are still available for registration:

1. LA.RealBird.com - LA is a well-known abbreviation for Los Angeles, a no-brainer
2. SF.RealBird.com - SF is also a well-known abbreviation for San Francisco
3. NYC.RealBird.com - no explanation required, everybody knows that NYC stands for New York City 
4. Philly.RealBird.com - Philadelphia, needless to say
5. SoBe.RealBird.com - South Beach, Miami Beach - very well known among locals

By the time you read this post, they may be reserved (they are going fast) but they were still available when we listed them here.

Get yours here on RealBird 
(requires RealBird PRO membership at $99/year)

 

 

Mobile real estate websites for smartphones and tablets launched

We are very pleased to announce that the first version of the RealBird Mobile Website is now available for RealBird PRO members. 

Features and compatibility

• The RealBird Mobile Websites are optimized for smartphones and tablets that support HTML5 and CSS3 
• Branded for you
• Your own vanity web address
• Shows all your RealBird listings
• Single QR code for your mobile website
• Shows your photo profile with link to your outside website, blog.
  Your clients can call you simply by tapping on your phone number
• Your recent blog posts are automatically showed under the "Real Estate News" section
• Built-in inquiry tool for your visitors to schedule showing and request more information on any of your properties

Below are the platforms that the RealBird Mobile Real Estate website is compatible with

How does it work?

The RealBird Mobile Website is available for RealBird PRO members. Existing PRO members can log in and reserve the city domain name by following the onscreen instructions. It takes less then a minute and your mobile site is up and running. The QR code is automatically generated for that Url and is ready to be used.

For new RealBird members the steps are easy as well:

1. Register / Login at RealBird.com
2. Upgrade to PRO - upgrades are instant via PayPal or call us for alternate payment method
3. Visit the Mobile Site tab on the top blue navigation bar 
4. Create your Mobile Real Estate Site instantly by reserving your domain name. Just enter your subdomain in the textbox, hit submit and if the vanity Url is still avaiable, it will be reserved for you instantly
5. Head over to the Listing Management section and start adding your current, active for-sale and for-rent listings. It takes only a few minutes per listings to create stunning listing presentations with syndication, single property websites, Facebook Listing Pages, social media sharing and now with mobile real estate marketing. 

Well, we hope you like it. Domain names are first come, first served, so head over to RealBird, log in and follow the on-screen instruction to get started. It only takes a simple form submission to reserve your domain name and your mobile real estate website will be created instantly. 

-- The RealBird Team