RealBird Blog

Walkscore is now available for Canadian RealBird property websites

This one is for our Canadian members ! We just added a Walkscore page to your RealBird single property websites.

The feature has been available for US members for a while, but now RealBird users in Canada can also utilize this powerful neighborhood information. By default, this new page is enabled on all of the single property websites, but it can be turned on and off in the listing editor, like the other property site features.

As always, your feedback is highly appreciated.

Thanks and enjoy !

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com 

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 

WOW: 8 foot by 2 foot custom banner by Kiamichi Realty for their RealBird mobile real estate website

This is very cool. Rob from Kiamichi Realty just sent us a few pictures of their brand new 8 foot by 2 foot banner that they created for promoting their mobile real estate website:

We blurred out the SMS phone number so that we don't create additional charges for them through this post but you can still get the idea: Nicely design banner with large call-for-action message asking prospective clients to text the special RealBird keyword "M" to access Kiamichi Realty's mobile real estate information. They also added the a large QR code. If you have a QR reader on your phone, go ahead and scan it to see their mobile site in action.

Both mobile access methods redirect prospects to Kiamichi Realty's RealBird mobile real estate website showing their featured listings, their property search and the contact information with links to their social networks as well. The SMS text messaging platform also captures the prospect's phone number.

The picture below shows how large this banner is. Also note the cute dog - called Pedro - in the corner, relaxing after a job well done ! 

You can visit Kiamichi Realty's website to learn more about their services and read their RealBird success story on our testiminials page.

If you are new to RealBird, you can read about the RealBird mobile real estate marketing platform here. 

Great job Rob and team ! Thank you very much for sharing the pics with us !

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com 

What a difference good photography makes ! Or visual communication in real estate marketing

It's no secret that a correctly priced property in an active marketplace will sell in a predictable time frame.

However:

You could speed up the sales cycle, and even sell the property at a higher price by employing professional staging, higher quality photography, and using innovative ways for marketing the listing to reach more well qualified prospects..

As a RealBird case study, please meet this beautiful home on Audubon Lakes Dr in Baton Rouge ( courtesy of Mike Denham & Carmen Widmeier ) 

Click the image above to see the actual property website

Following are some of the highlights that make this property website stand out:

1. Visual communication #1: The background picture instantly suggests that the property is a golf property. No reading of the fine lines is required, it takes just a second for the visitor to realize it - it is visual and intuitive.
2. Visual communication #2: The property pictures are outstanding and hence suggest "luxury" and "quality". They also suggest that the seller of this property and the real estate agents marketing it take pride in what they are selling. This results in another powerful motivation: "trust". Again, without the need of explanation. It's communicated visually.
3. Visual communication #3: The primary photo taken during twilight is perfect for communicating "peacefulness" and "relaxation". At least that was my very first thought when first looking at the website. These are two very important considerations for buyers for calling a place a home.

As you see, attention to details like this is very powerful: within seconds of visiting the site, prospective buyers already know that the property is associated with "golf", "leisure", "luxury", "peacefulness" and "trust". Without reading a single sales pitch or digging through detailed descriptions. Powerful marketing right there.

Once these concepts are set as a baseline - as we noticed - Mike and Carmen have put a lot of effort into sharing the website with their network. They also started to announce the availability of the property on their Facebook page, days before it actually hit the market, hence building up excitement. If you click through to the property website, you'll see the growing number of social media shares (Facebook Likes, Tweets etc.) which again, add to the visual communication: New visitors instantly see the many Facebook Likes (35 at the time of writing this) and again, without thinking twice, those social counters provide positive feedback for them that the property is special and desireable, and in the case of an actual prospective buyer, this may create a sense of urgency. We also believe that the higher the counters on those social widgets are, the more likely that a new user will re-share it with their own network of friends.

So go ahead, "walk that extra mile", take good pictures, get inspired by other RealBird members' creations and make sure that you always share your own listings on your social networks. Those counters are part of the visual communication. And it takes only a few seconds.

Carmen and Mike - Congrats. Very well done ! And thanks for letting us use your RealBird property website as a case study. 

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com