RealBird Blog

Got feed? Create property websites automatically using your existing featured listings XML feed.

Over the years, real estate agents and brokers published and syndicated over 360,000 single property websites though RealBird. This is an amazing number of listings,  considering that all of these properties were manually entered on RealBird.com 

While the RealBird listing management page was designed to be quick and easy to use and entering a listing only takes a minute or so, we also realized that for those who manage large inventory - e.g. brokers, offices and top producing agents - manual data entry and maintenance can be challanging on the long run.

We are thrilled to announce the availability of the new
RealBird® Listing Publisher™ AutoPilot service level.

With this new release, the RealBird listing marketing service levels are now as follows:

• RealBird Free - Manage up to two active listings. No "sold" property websites, no rentals, no SMS marketing included. Ideal for agents with few listings a year or to try out RealBird's capabilities before upgrading to a more advanced level.
  
  
• RealBird PRO - Manage, market and syndicate unlimited listings, including "solds" and rentals. Requires manual data entry in the RealBird member area. Ideal for agents and brokers with average listing inventory and who are serious about getting the maximum out of online real estate marketing.
  
  Subscription fee is only $99/year.
  
  
• New ! RealBird PRO AutoPilot - Manage, market and syndicate unlimited listings, including "solds" and rentals. Does not require manual data entry. RealBird can add and update your listings using your existing XML featured listing feed.
  
  Subscription fee starts at $299/year for individual agents or team of two. Contact us  for customized office/broker pricing which is based on the number of agents or the monthly listings you have.

How does the RealBird PRO AutoPilot service work?

Once your RealBird PRO account is upgraded to the AutoPilot level, the process is fully automated. The system will notify you every time a new listing is added or an existing one is updated on RealBird during the daily run. All the powerful features of the RealBird service are available for AutoPilot members and even better, you have the option to add custom content to your listings, should you want to customize your service.

Below is an example screenshot of one of Gina Tufano's emails. She receives these emails from the system, when new listings are imported into her RealBird profile, or when there are existing listings updated. Thank you Gina for letting us use your email and listings as an example

As you can see on the picture above, there are "Preview" links that point to the automatically created RealBird property websites, links to optionally "Edit" the new or updated listings and one-click sharing buttons to make it easy for you to share your listings on your social networks. From here on, these listings are also automatically syndicated to real estate portals and SMS marketing keywords are also setup for them as well.

Should you be interested in upgrading to the RealBird AutoPilot service or if you'd like to learn more, please don't hesitate to call or email.

-- The RealBird Team

New syndication partner: OLX

We added a new syndication partner site last week: OLX.com 

From now on, all your listings that you publish on RealBird will be automatically syndicated to OLX.com Changes to your RealBird listings will automatically reflect on OLX as well.

Unlike most of the other RealBird partner sites, OLX does not link back to your RealBird property website, but rather, consumer can send you their inquiries through OLX's lead capture tool. Make sure that you monitor your emails for leads coming through OLX as well.

Stay tuned: more syndication partners are working on implementing the RealBird feed. We'll let you know when your RealBird listings are live on those sites. 

-- The RealBird Team
www.RealBird.com

Weekend update: Upload large photos up to 9 MB each

With our recent update to the photo management tool, you can now upload multiple, large Jpeg, Png or Gif images at once for your listings. Images can now be up to 9 MB in size each, up from the previous limit of 4 MB and therefore you don't have to pre-process and shrink most high-quality, large photos any more. 

We also fixed a bug and now the branded and unbranded virtual tours are correctly rendered with an HTML5 slideshow on iPads as well. Thanks for those who reported this problem.

Should you have questions regarding these updates, please don't hesitate to contact us.

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com

 

Mitula, RentMLS, LeaseMLS and Mylionra distribution added

Another week, another feature announcement. We added a few more distribution sites for your RealBird listings:

Our first international syndication partner, mitula is a highly popular vertical search engine for properties, cars and jobs classifieds. Their portal is available in 33 countries and 12 languages and has millions of unique visitors per month. This is an automatic RealBird listing syndication option and no extra steps are required from you, just post your properties on RealBird as usual and we'll take care of the rest.

Mylionra.com

Mylionra is a Ning based social network for real estate agents. We developed a special embed code that is optimized for Ning networks in general, based on the specs we received from Mylionra. We recommend to join Mylionra for free and start posting your RealBird listings there  (besides Craigslist, ActiveRain and your social networks of course)

RentMLS is a dedicated consumer facing portal for residential rental properties and we are now automatically syndicating your RealBird listings with "Residential Rental" type to them. No additional steps are required from you.

LeaseMLS is a portal of commercial lease properties. It is another new syndication destination where we send your RealBird listings to. The properties with "Commercial Rental" type on RealBird are syndicated to this portal.

We hope you like these new distribution channels. Should you have questions or feedback, please let us know.

-- The RealBird Team
RealBird.com 

 

Updated Featured Listings Map inventory widget

One of the original RealBird listing inventory widgets, the Featured Listings Map is now updated. The new version provides many improvements, including:

1. Much, much better performance
2. Shows up to 200 of your recent listings published on RealBird (active, pending, sold or the combination of these)
3. Mobile-friendly and responsive: works the same on smartphones, tablets and desktop screens
4. Ability to configure it to use standard Google icons instead of default color coded house icons. This is important when you manage listing inventory, for which the house icons could be confusing, such as for rural farms or apartments in Manhattan
5. You can now set to cluster icons at high zoom level, which makes the map widget more user friendly and usable if you manage a large inventory

This update is backward compatible, all the existing, embedded maps on your website and blogs are automatically updated, no change is required. If you want to take advantage of the new configuration options (icon settings, clustering), you can easily generate new code in the RealBird Member Area (Member area > Listing Management > Widgets > Listing Map). 

Below are a few, live examples showing different configuration options.

Combination of active, pending, sold homes on the US Virgin Island listed by Lorine R Williams, with clustered and standard icon options

Sold listings in SoCal by Laura Baptista, no clustering and color coded house icons

For-rent and for-sale properties in Manhattan by Senad Pali, no clustering and standard icons

We hope you like this update.

-- The RealBird Team