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

---

Nestor and Katerina Gasset International Properties and Investments, Inc (561) 753-0135 [email protected] 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

---

Mike Conner City Realty, Inc. (360) 970-4408 [email protected] 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

---

MIRELA MONTE BUYERS' CHOICE REALTY (843) 251-2378 [email protected] 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

 

Vertical real estate search engine - co-branded with revenue sharing

The following post is reblogged from our ActiveRain blog

---

Medway Homes for Sale

Encouraged by the positive feedback from the real estate community about the initial release of the "Search The Real Estate Web" custom search engine, we are pleased to let you know that we released a co-branded version as a free service. We also offer a unique revenue sharing advertising model for those agents who deploy this co-branded version. But first thing first.

Vertical real estate search engine

The RealBird vertical real estate search engine allows consumers to search for any real estate terms across thousands of real estate sites and networks. It utilizes the familiar Google user interface and utilizes Google's technolgy to provide state-of-the-art content ranking and lightning fast results. Rather than searching the billions of pages in the regular Google index, this search engine focuses on hand selected professional real estate content. While the selection is focused, the number of content pages are still large and aggregated from distinct real estate sites. In other words, the vertical real estate search engine provides a more focused, but robust result set for the consumers and hopefully a very accurate search experience of real estate content.

Co-branded - your traffic, your brand, your links

With the current release, real estate professionals can create a co-branded version of the same service for themselves. It is a free service. The co-branded service provides you with a version of the service which carries your photo, name, links to website, blog and featured listings on ALL pages and upon subsequent returns of the same visitor (see Bill Gassett's example on the right). This branded information is presented to all consumers who arrives through your very own link. The co-branded version also comes with a branded search widget which you can add to your blog and ActiveRain sidebar. Embedded in this post below is Janie Coffey's live widget for demonstration. As you can see, the widget itself carries your brand and links and all searches submitted through a particular widget maintains the branding information. Furthermore, when a consumer shares your widget through social networks, bookmarking sites or via email, it maintains your co-branded version also, so that you get incremental traffic to your own co-branded search engine from additional placements.

Revenue sharing

As you can see, there are advertisement above, below and on the left of the search result. We thought that it is only fair that we share the revenue with you for the traffic and click-throughs originated through your co-branded service, your blog's traffic and through your social networking activities. The system is designed in a way, that you can add your own custom content to the footer section of the search result pages. Not only the header will carry your profile and links, but you can also add further revenue generating and promotional content below the search results. In short, click through traffic from the built in ads above and on the left will generate revenue for us and all click-thrus below the results will generate ad revenue or traffic for you (assuming you configured the service with your own ad code) .

SEO benefits

One of the beauty of this design is what I like to call "chain-linked" SEO. This may sound like a complicated concept, but in practice it is very easy to accomplish. The idea is that you deep link from your websites and blogs to your co-branded search engine result page with specif search terms, "do follow" links and proper anchor tags. When Google's main search engines indexes your content again (your website, your blog etc.) and it finds these links, it will follow them to your own RealBird search engine result pages and it will index those pages also. Those pages contain your search engine friendly links. These links are pointing back to your website and blog. Ideally, Google will follow these links to your 3rd party sites and consider them as backward links. The RealBird system allows you to create as many "deep links" to specific result pages as you want hence making Google follow and index even more pages with your own links on them. In turn, this may very well increase your website and blog ranking even more. We suggest that you set up a few direct links for search terms for which your own content comes up first (your name, your brokerage, your local market and your name) and add those links to your website or blog. You can also add a few to your ActiveRain sidebar, under the link section, which will be populated to all of your AR blog posts. Within the RealBird member area, we provide a handy tool to create these links in seconds. Furthermore, because hopefully many of you will create deep links, the overall number of pages Google will know on the same domain name (search.realbird.com) will increase drastically.

Here are three more examples:
Virginia Beach real estate
Healdsburg Real Estate Blog
Akron, OH homes for sale

Myrtle Beach Real Estate

Transparency - the value proposition

We love transparency, so here we go: the value proposition for everybody involved is the following:

Consumers - They have access to a focused, easy to use, general purpose vertical real estate search engine

Us at RealBird - We receive ad revenue on the portion of the traffic

YOU - Free marketing and branding tool for you. Provide an invaluable service to your visitors. Increase the SEO of your own content and generate additional revenue with the revenue sharing model, if you opt-in to do so.

Additional content

We are continously improving the search engine by adding more related websites and networks to its index. With this release we have added content from RISMedia, Real Estate Shows, ClassifiedFlyerAds, Zipvo, Postlets and VFlyer to the growing index. As always, if you do not find your own blog or website after searching for your name or your domain name, just let us know. You can request the inclusion by commenting below.

Best practices

I hope I could successfully explain the benefits of this new, free service. It's cobranded, all your visitors who comes through your widgets and co-branded links will see your own photo banner no matter what they searched for, the revenue sharing or additional promotional options and SEO. If you decide to utilize this service - and we certainly hope you will - than we suggest that you promote your co-branded version as much as you can. Here are a few tips on how to do it:

• Use the built in social bookmarking feature on the co-branded widget - share the link on Facebook, delicious, Digg, Twitter and others
• Create good, meaningful direct deep links using specific search term and your co-branded Url. Chose the ones which directly benefit you and make sure that the link's anchor tag has related, meaningful name and title.
• Add the co-branded widget to your blog and website and share it through email as well. Ask your network (farm, friends) to share it with their friends as well.

How to get started - it's free

• Existing RealBird members: Access the widget configuration page in the member area (login required)
• New to RealBird? Register for free and configure and grab your private labeled widget on the "Widgets" => "Search The Real Estate Web™" member page

Finally, please share this announcement with your network !

As always, we do appreciate if you share this post by Re-Blogging, through FaceBook, via Twitter other networks or by simply emailing it to your collegues.

Thanks and do not hesitate to contact us with your feedback.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Capturing buyer leads from portals

Our CEO, Gabe Gross, wrote a whitepaper published by some major real estate media outlets recently (Rismedia, Brokeragentnews, Inman News).

The concept described in the whitepaper and supported by RealBird for the first time in the industry is  the following: A large segment of online home buyers start their searches on major classifieds portals. By "pushing" your real estate services (e.g. IDX Search) with your featured listings close to these portals, you can create new channels for capturing some of this traffic and not only for your own listing (the original value proposition of listing syndication), but also for your local IDX  search services (the new value proposition). Some portion of these home buyers, once they arrived to your single property site, will continue searching for comparable properties on your own, private labeled tool embedded in your own featured listing website. Furthermore, since your RealBird single property sites are indexed by Google and other search engines while they are active, once the property is sold, you can still use your sold listing sites with the embedded IDX Search to continue capturing buyer leads. In other words, rather than waiting for home buyers to visit your website and eventually contact you for assistance, you create multiple entry points for your services via your own featured listings and sold inventory at high profile portals and search engines. The concept is very similar to the value proposition of real estate blogging. Blog syndication (via RSS, blogroll, search engines) enables you to capture visitors on remote online locations and after you "pulled" them back to your blog, you can provide additional real estate services (comparables, IDX search, market stats etc.) With RealBird's new listing publishing technology, you can use your featured listings and sold inventory to do the same: use it as a marketing vehicle to "push" some valuable content the meaningful online locations and "pull" visitors back to access your additional services on your single property websites.

Gabe's article is below.

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird.com

====

A Novel Approach to Lead Generation for REALTORS®

by Gabriel Gross, President, RealBird.com

A “virtual” paradox is happening in real estate: the Internet has become the major medium for real estate information, yet real estate agents find it increasingly difficult to generate good leads using their Web sites. The cause for this is quite simple: The majority of early-stage home buyers will start their search with the major classifieds portals and so individual agents rarely stand a chance to be even “seen” by these consumers. Yet, these are clients that could be the most valuable leads because at this stage they have probably not yet committed to another agent.

Another way of looking at this problem is that no matter how interesting or informative an agent’s Web site, it will be only as useful as the traffic it gets. This of course leads to the need to generate traffic to the Web site, and the options for this are limited and expensive: keyword advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads, blogging, e-mail farming, or “traditional” media advertising. In truth, agents will find that in most markets even these methods will only produce spotty and unpredictable results because the majority of agents and brokers employ those same strategies, and therefore it is increasingly difficult to achieve differentiation even with the best agent Web site.

Another problem with the traditional traffic-generation methods is the low quality of leads that they produce. The best leads for an agent are those consumers who are early in their home-buying process, the ones who have just started “looking,” as these clients have not yet committed to another agent. However, surveys show that the majority of consumers will start looking for listings that are on the market on the major online classifieds portals- Realtor.com, Craigslist, Google Base, Trulia, Zillow, etc. Most consumers will not start their home buying by looking for an agent to work with, and so they may end up establishing a relationship with a listing agent that they contact from a listing that they see and like on the classifieds portal that they happen to visit.

So what can a Realtor do to “fish” for leads in the big Classifieds portals pond? The obvious solution is to post (syndicate) featured listings to these portals using one of the several Single Property Web site services. These services allow you to create compelling Web sites for your featured listings, with photos, slideshows, even video, and then post them with a click of a button to several classifieds ad portals and search engines. Many brokers and agents already are syndicating their listings, either on their own, or using one of the many service providers available.

A common mistake that agents are making is to assume that their listing will be indexed by the search engines simply because they are available in the “featured listings” section of their own Web site. This is not the case. Another common perception is that simply because their listings are syndicated in bulk by their broker it is not necessary for the agent to promote these on their own. Listing syndication works just like advertising - the more the better, and given the low effort and cost involved this should be a “no-brainer,” must-do activity.

As with any marketing activity, the results achieved are usually depending on how unique your approach is, and how you stand out from the crowd. With listing syndication it is no different, and in most markets the majority of listings are already being posted on classifieds portals, so posting a few listings will not be as effective as it was one or two years ago. Also, it is quite unlikely that a homebuyer who finds your listing will actually consider it to be a good fit with their need, and if that is the case then they will just click on to the next listing and you will have lost them forever!

An out-of the-box, novel approach to increase the effectiveness of your lead generation using single property Web sites is to embed an interactive MLS search into each featured listings Web site. The resulting benefit is that if a home buyer finds your listing on one of the classifieds portals, they can immediately see MLS properties and start a full search, directly from this listing that they are looking at, instead of having to click over to your Web site, which they would never do because at that time they are in the frame of mind of searching for and viewing listings on that particular portal.

In other words, instead of just trying to “pull” potential clients to your site you are “pushing” your branded MLS search to the best locations where most early-stage home buyers go when they start their search for a home.

This ability to search the whole MLS with an interactive map focused automatically on the area of the client’s interest greatly increases the probability that they will contact you for more information for any of the listings that they find using your MLS Search and can produce dramatically better results.

For an example of such a listing, please see this Single Property Web site: http://www.58Northgate.com. Note the “Nearby Homes for Sale” button and “MLS Search” tab.

With each active featured listing that you publish to the major classifieds portals, you create several additional “touch points” on the Internet. Compare this with only 1 - your own Web site where normally the MLS search resides. What’s more, you can do this even if you don’t have any listings of your own - all you have to do is borrow some nice, sellable listings from a colleague (with the listing broker’s blessing) and ask for their permission to advertise those on the Internet (make sure that you have written and that you display the listing broker and that you comply with your local MLS’s rules). All this takes maybe 30 minutes to do, and you can do as many as you have time for, with each published listing creating multiple locations on the classifieds portals where they can find your own, branded MLS search.

But wait, there is more: once the listing is sold, instead of deleting it from your account you can change the status to “sold,” and so your “sold” listing Web sites which by now are already indexed by Google will accumulate on Google to a growing number of additional “touch points” for your active MLS search tool. Again, this cumulatively increases over time the likelihood that home buyers will find you and will also create an “organic” lift effect for your search-engine standing. If, for example, you sell 10 listings each year, then the number of Google-indexed “entry points” increases in one year to 10 and after two years to 20, in addition to the active listings to be found on the major classifieds portals, as outlined above. Again, each of these sold listing Web sites will have your MLS search embedded, and thus whoever finds these listings on Google or some other search engine will be able to search for active properties on the market from right there, each “sold” listing thus becoming a potential conduit for new leads.

For more information, please visit http://www.RealBird.com

Map-based MLS Search 2.0

Introducing the RealBird Map-based MLS Search 2.0

It's been a while since our last major update of the RealBird Map-based MLS Search service. I am pleased to announce that the new version is now available for real estate agents and brokers in our current MLS coverage areas. (More MLS coverage is added ongoing)

There are many, many new features and novel benefits of this new release. I am going to post tutorials on a regular basis of concepts and techniques about how to best utilize these features. At this time, let me  emphasize a unique marketing concept, which enables real estate agents to reach out for home buyers beyond their website, via syndicated featured listings, viral marketing and social networks.

The problem

Your IDX solution is only as good as the level of traffic you receive on your website. Unless you have sufficient traffic coming to your site, the most advanced technology locked up on your site will not bring you business, simply because nobody knows about the value it provides. One of the most powerful real estate marketing techniques is blogging and not just because you can show off your expertise and niche while building brand and trust (the content), but for being a technology solution which reaches out for buyers and pulls them back to your online presence, your blog or website, where you can provide them with additional services (the reach). Since blogs are syndicated by default, expressed via machine readable RSS and loved by search engines, your content (and online business identity) can go a really long way to reach consumers by feed readers, aggregators, fellow bloggers sharing and tracking back your content and most importantly by search engines. In short: you "push" your information via blogs to meaningful destinations where consumers search and research and "pull" them back to your website for more. This is very powerful, no question about it.

Following this marketing concept established by real estate blogs, we decided to port the technique to single property websites:

The solution

For the first time in the industry, the RealBird Listing Publisher enables you to create Single Property Websites with Map-based MLS Search embedded for instant, live showcase of nearby for sale properties.  Take the following scenario for example:

1. You create a single property website with RealBird and embed the Map-based MLS Search application
2. Your listing site is automatically syndicated to Google Base, Zillow, Trulia, Geebo, Oodle, Vast and more and you can easily post it to Craigslist, Kijiji and Backpage for even more traffic
3. A home buyer finds your featured listing on any of those highly popular portals
4. The home buyer clicks thru to visit your RealBird single property website
5. If your featured listing is not a perfect match, the home buyer is provided with an instant option to see similar for sale properties without ever leaving your site. In other words, you capture a portion of the traffic of home buyers from major portals. That portion can be huge relative to your regular website traffic.

Your IDX search solution (the home buyer lead capturing tool) is pushed one click closer to high profile destinations, to portals where most of the online home buyers start their search. Similar to blogging, the RealBird Listing Publisher pushes your information to 3rd party sites with high consumer traffic (portals and search engines) and "pulls" home buyers back to your full IDX solution.

Since the RealBird Listing Publisher also allows you to manage and promote your pending and sold inventory, listings sites which are already indexed by major search engines will continue to bring cumulative traffic and leads to your IDX solutions via your single property websites even after your own listing is sold !

The Listing Publisher is available for agents and brokers in the US, nationwide. For the embedded MLS Search option, please check the coverage on RealBird .com (You can also request coverage there. We'll do our best to implement new MLSs as soon as possible, based on user demand)

Below are a few examples of live single property websites with the Map-based Search integrated:

Stay tuned for the upcoming tutorials on other new features such the visually stunning MLS Hotlist widgets.

-- Zoltan Szendro

RealBird.com

Cross-market your listings on ActiveRain

We have released a widget for your RealBird featured listings, which you can use to promote your recent listings on your website, blog and importantly, on ActiveRain.

Most of you probably have heard about ActiveRain already, one of the most popular real estate networking site. If you are not a member of ActiveRain yet, do yourself a favor, register with them for free and be part of the this growing network for educational, networking and marketing benefits (click here to sign-up with ActiveRain now)

One of the upcoming, important trend in online marketing is cross-marketing, that is, marketing your different online contents (your blogs, your online listing etc.) via your different online presences or via your partners' sites. We at RealBird were one of the first one to introduce a feature for our single-property website builder product (RealBird Publisher) which promotes your blog posts on your newly published listings and effectively cross-markets your blog . It provides relevant information for your visitors previewing your listing and also improves your search engine marketing efforts.

Our newly released "Just Listed" widget for your RealBird listings enables you to embed your recent  listings into your ActiveRain sidebar. With a few clicks and one-time settings in your ActiveRain profile, your network and readership will have instant, non-intrusive access to your recent active listings when reading your articles or communicating with you.

Below is an example screen-shot demonstrating how we included the "Just Listed" widget on our own ActiveRain blog. This particular implementation shows the recent listings across all of our members inventory. The method described below will have an option to show only your own listings in the sidebar.

This is how it works:

1. You have to be a Professional service level member of RealBird (Click here to sign up now to RealBird)
2. Login to ActiveRain or sign up now to ActiveRain
3. Once logged in, under your ActiveRain member-page, on the top left side, find and click the link called "My Settings"
4. On the "Blog settings" screen, the second text area is called "Blog Description". Customize and copy  the "Just  Listed"  widget's HTML code (see below), and click "Update" to save your settings.

That's it. From now on, your listings will be streamed automatically into your ActiveRain's blog as a sidebar widget.

The "Just Listed" widget code

<iframe src="http://listings.realbird.com/justlisted.aspx" width="200" height="270" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

The code above is the general purpose "Just Listed" widget showing recent listings across all of our RealBird members' inventory. To show only your own listings, add your RealBird ID to the end of the justlisted.aspx in the code using the following syntax:

http://listings.realbird.com/justlisted.aspx?id=[your code]

E.g. Allyson Hoffman's  "Just Listed" properties:
http://listings.realbird.com/justlisted.aspx?id=F5B4D2E3

You can find your own RealBird ID by copying it from the link of either one of your RealBird single property websites or from the link of your private labeled driving directions, maps or map-based search.

Should you need help with how to configure the widget or locating your RealBird ID, please do not hesitate to contact us.

-- Zoltan Szendro

RealBird.com