RealBird Blog

Summary of new RealBird features launched in 2011

Today is the last business day of 2011 and we thought it is the good time to summarize the main new RealBird features that we launched in 2011. 

Switched the RealBird Property Search from Google Base to Oodle data

As you may recall Google suddenly announced in January '11 the discontinuation of Google Base. Because the RealBird Property Search was based on data from Google Base, we had to find another solution. We successfully ported the application to use real estate data from Oodle, soft launched in March and made it available for all RealBird members in June. The new search application has been working great ever since and has delivered thousands and thousands of buyer leads to RealBird members.

New listing inventory widget replaced the old version, with color themes and custom transition effects

We retired one of our legacy sidebar listing inventory widgets and replaced it with a brand new one, which can be configured with custom color theme and custom transition effects.

The first version of the RealBird Mobile Real Estate Website was launched

In March, we launched the first version of the RealBird Mobile Real Estate Website service with vanity domain name and QR code support. Within weeks, thousands of mobile sites were set up by RealBird PRO members. It also received coverage from Inman News.  

The second version of the Mobile Real Estate Website added Property Search support

Soon after the initial launch, we also completed the mobile user interface for the RealBird Property Search and added to the RealBird Mobile Property Website service. Update to the platform (and the new desktop IE support) also made it possible from then on to embed the mobile real estate website on regular blogs and pages with the handy RealBird widget, including the inclusion of the QR code and a call-for-action message.

Default Property Website Theme editor added

One of the powerful features of the RealBird single property websites has always been the versatile theme editor. We realized however that even with the easy-to-use interface, it has been an unnecessary hassle to set up the custom design for each listing one by one, so we introduced the same powerful theme editor tool as a global configuration option. In other words, RealBird members can now set up a default custom design once and all new property sites will inherit this theme.

Introduced 3 Facebook Real Estate Page applications

Just in time for Facebook's application platform overhaul during the summer, we released three Facebook applications for different RealBird services. You can now easily add your listing inventory widget, map-based property search and your mobile real estate website to your Facebook business page.

Diligent SEO work brought major results: video thumbnails of your property websites are now shown on Google

We've been always focusing on SEO best practices, but 2011 brought some break throughs: Finally, over 1 million pages on RealBird has been indexed by Google and to our great surprise, RealBird became one of the few real estate information providers whose pages have been enhanced with video thumbnails on the Google search result pages. This is a very positive and stunning SEO news and together with the high ranking of the RealBird property websites, it represents a major improvement in visibility for our members.

Tighter integration of your RealBird featured listings and map-based property search

We also introduced a small, but powerful feature for RealBird PRO members. The RealBird map-based property search can now be configured to show your own featured listings as "sticky", highlighted icons on the map. We call them "sticky" icons, because they are shown on the map independently from the actual search criteria, as long as their location falls within the current map boundaries. This a great, non-intrusive advertisement of your own properties to home buyers using your map search.

United Kingdom coverage added to RealBird

We also extended support for most of the RealBird services for estate agents in the United Kingdom. With this launch, RealBird now provides online marketing services to US, Canada and UK agents and brokers. 

Brand new, major redesign of the flagship RealBird single property website platform launched

It's been a long time coming and finally, in October, we launched a major redesign of our flagship RealBird Listing Publisher property website platform. The system has many, many improvements and new features, while remaining fully backward compatible: new layout design, improved SEO, improved load speed, deeper social media integration, better lead capture, more automatic integration with 3rd party services such as Walkscore, ability to add more custom pages and content and many more features. We were very happy to receive an overwhelmingly positive response from all of our members regarding this major update.

New Craigslist property ad generator released

A revamped Craigslist property ad generator was launched in November, making it much easier for RealBird members to create a Craigslist ad with unlimited color theme options. Craigslist is one of the most popular classifieds ad platforms and this new tool makes it way easier to create much better looking ads for your RealBird listings. 

SMS keyword property marketing added to your mobile marketing toolkit

Just in time for the holiday season, we added a new listing marketing service to the RealBird mobile toolkit. We integrated RealBird with the leading SMS technology provider, Twilio and introduced SMS keyword marketing for your properties with an amazing, automatic lead capture feature.

Last but not least, 7,616 real estate professionals joined RealBird in 2011. This is our highest yearly registration number ever and we thank you all very much (long time and new members as well) for trusting your real estate marketing on the RealBird platform. 

We Wish You All A Very Happy & Successful New Year !

-- The RealBird Team
RealBird.com 

Customizing the contact information area of the RealBird single property websites

The following customization was originally conceived by Larry Brzostek and it is now fully supported by the new, wider layout of the RealBird property website platform.

Instead of the live chat widget, one can add a personal video intro to the property websites in the contact information section. This is an area below the fold, under the property information section, next to your photo and contact information and social media links. You can click through the image below for a live example of the property at 4111 Green Tree Ave, Sarasota. Make sure you scroll down to the contact information area.

You can see another example by Katerina Gasset on the listing website of 826 Shore Dr, Boynton Beach, FL

There are two ways to achieve this for your own RealBird listings:

Add a video to all of your listing with the global settings tool

1. Log in at RealBird
2. From the Dashboard or the Listing Management Page, click "Settings"
3. Switch to the "Live Chat/Video intro" tab
4. Paste the embed code from YouTube or other hosted video services
5. Save settings

Add a video to a specific property

1. Log in at RealBird
2. Click "Edit" for the particular listing's record
3. Scroll down to the "Live Chat/Video intro" section
4. Paste the embed code from YouTube or other hosted video services
5. Save changes

Suggested width and height for the embed code:

The examples above use 350px for width and 223px for height This is the suggested video size. 

You can use embeddable widgets from any other 3rd party providers. If you use YouTube, make sure you generate an embed code which disables the related video previews at the end of your video as it may show your competitions video otherwise. 

There are many great uses for this section of your RealBird single property website. With this larger layout design, you can actually utilize that additional space of the contact information section to deliver more information. I suggest to use it for generic information about your business and services vs. listing specific video as for those, there are now 6 customizable pages that can be added (more about this in our next post)

If you have a custom and unique RealBird implementation, we would love to hear about it. Please share it as a comment below and feel free to link to your property website below.

-- The RealBird Team
RealBird.com 

 

Introducing global settings for your Single Property Websites

We just launched the first version of the global settings tool for your RealBird single property websites

This is a long due feature and now with the first release , you will be able to do way more in way less time and you will be able to utilize advanced RealBird features easily.

Up till now you had to set up otherwise common features every time you created a new property website (other than your contact information set in the profile like your name, social media sites, blog, photo etc.) While these were actually small issues, we realized that when you manage dozens or even hundreds of active and sold listings on RealBird, these few seconds of extra time add up quickly. 

A good example was the very unique and powerful live chat feature that you could use to turn your RealBird property websites into virtual "open houses". Even those people who originally added this feature to their listings, eventually stopped doing it due to the extra time it took to set it up for each new listing.

Not any more, the global settings tool for the Listing Publisher now allows you to set these features once and all your new listings will default to these settings. You can of course apply these new settings to all of your existing listings as well.

Listing courtesy of Ashton Coleman. See it live here

What's included in the first version of the Global Settings utility?

1. You can add the Listing Broker info at once and all your new listings will default to this value. You can change it to something else listing by listing, in case you list somebody's else listing with their permission.
2. You can turn common features on and off for all of your listings, including Google Local Search, showing of your recent blog posts on the property sites etc.
3. You can create an additional page, one that is added to all of your listing websites. A good example is an "About Us" page that allows you to talk more about yourself, link to external resources like your website and even add your Facebook Real Estate Page to establish relationship with your visitors (tutorial)
4. You can add a live chat widget (Meebo, Plugoo) to your listing websites and you can turn those into virtual open houses, your clients will be able to chat with you live while on the website.

What's next?

In our next release of the global settings for listing websites, we will add a website theme customization option. As many of you know, you can customize RealBird listing websites with stunning background designs and make it look completely unique, beautiful and engaging. Right now, you have to do this one by one, with the next version, you will be able to create a global design theme for all of your listings rather than using our default theme and only customize individual listing designs if needed. 

We will announce these additional features as soon as they are launched. Until then, make sure to check out and use the new Settings feature on RealBird. It's a one time task and your existing and new listing websites will be so much more powerful tools for online marketing. 

Well, we hope you like it and that this new feature will make you even more productive. Should you have questions, just email or call.

Thanks

RealBird.com

Facebook Listing Pages - Open Graph and RealBird integration

We just released the Facebook Open Graph integration with RealBird. This new feature enables you to create a Facebook Listing Page from your RealBird single property website and use it as a social media notification platform. When you have an open house to announce, just add it to this page and all the people on Facebook who liked your property will get notified instantly via their News Feed. Pretty neat, isn't it? You can use it for posting many different kind of updates and attach video, photos and links, just like with any other Facebook Page status updates.

Below are the simple steps you have to do to enable this feature on your RealBird account and to create a Facebook Listing Page for your listing. It takes literally less then a minute to set it up and then a second to create a Facebook Listing Page. 

1. Login to RealBird or register here for free (free for up to 3 listings and only $99/year for more). 
2. Connect your Facebook account with RealBird (takes only 5 seconds)
3. Visit your own RealBird single property websites and click "Like" (takes 1 second)
4. An "Admin Page" link will appear next to the Like widget at the footer area of your RealBird website, above the translation tools. Clicking that will take you to the automatically created Facebook Listing Page. It is also auto-populated with your main property photo, listing info and link to your property website on RealBird

Here are some screenshots showing the simple steps:

 

 

 

 
Listing courtesy of Mike Conner of City Realty inc in Olympia, WA

More details on why we think this is a big step in social media marketing can be found on our ActiveRain blog

-- Zoltan 
 RealBird.com

 

Sharing habits of RealBird agents and consumers

The RealBird Listing Publisher provides a convenient way for agents in the member area to quickly share their listings on social networks and social bookmarking sites after publishing it. The chart below shows the sharing habits - the distribution of sharing destinations - of the RealBird listings. Since this particular sharing service is different than the one available on the RealBird single property websites and used only by RealBird members, the chart represents the importance of these destinations as decided by real estate professionals. 

The second chart shows the sharing distribution by consumers from the single property websites. This stats might include RealBird member agents as well, so it represents a different data set. Facebook and Twitter rule as well, but LinkedIn is #2. I suspect that LinkedIn sharing - being a professional network - is used by the RealBird member agents again and not by consumers.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com