RealBird Blog

Altos Research Market Intelligence

We had so many new features released with the RealBird Listing Publisher 3.0 that we did not have time and space to elaborate on each of them just yet. In upcoming posts, I will introduce the unique concepts behind many of them, including team marketing, new SEO features, virtual open homes and using viral marketing widgets in unusual ways. Let's start with one of our favorites: Altos Research charts  embedded in your single property websites. 

Through Altos Research powerful charts and reports your visitors can receive an instant and visually meaningful insight of the local market condition, right on your single property website, with an easy way to contact you for the full market intelligence report. It's a perfect mix of information transparency and lead capturing.

The core value of listing syndication is that you push your listing information a few click closer to online locations where the actual home buyers and sellers hang out. You reach out for them using technology, rather than sit back and wait for them to come on their own. It is proactive marketing at its best. The RealBird Listing Publisher - with the integrated MLS search and now with the embedded market intelligence charts - syndicates more than just your listing, it delivers your other real estate services and your value-adds to the edge of the Internet, using your current, active listing as a delivery mechanism.

This is such an important feature, that it certainly deserves a more detailed feature overview. Scott from Altos Research created the presentation below explaining the benefits of the integrated RealBird and Altos Research offerings and the feature set of their full subscription services.

As a special offer, they provide a 25% discount for RealBird members.

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird.com

Disclaimer: We receive referral commission from Altos Research if you buy their services through us. Having that disclosed, I strongly suggest that you consider their full offerings over the free charts embedded in your RealBird sites. I can't imagine any buyer or seller who would not be totally blown away with the market insight you can provide through your Altos Research services.

Using Flickr photos in listing presentations

Flickr is one of the most popular online photo sharing services and known for their high-quality photos - uploaded by amateurs and professional photographers. This tutorial will show how to use Flickr images with the RealBird Listing Publisher service for creating a great looking online listing presentation.

RealBird allows you to spice up your listing websites with background images. This is a great feature for visually highlighting some of the main characteristics of the property. Many of our members are using high-quality property pictures or a nature photo to capture the mood of the property, like ocean or mountain view or to emphasize that it is a horse property. The challenge for the high adaptation of this visually captivating feature is that many agents do not have access to high-quality, royalty free images to upload as a backdrop.

This is where Flickr comes for our rescue. Flickr provides a way for its members to decide under which licensing term they are sharing their photos with the public. While the default setting I believe is "All rights reserved", that is, fully copyrighted and no reuse is permitted, many Flickr users opt-in to share their photos under one of the variations of Creative Common licenses.

In order for you to reuse Flickr photos, you have to make sure that the creative common license is such, that it allows commercial reuse. There are other details which you have to pay attention to. See the tutorial below.

Let's take an example of property which has an ocean view. Probably you will want to upload a background photo of the ocean, sunset or similar. Besides searching for "ocean view" or "ocean sunset" on Flickr, you can also add some additional characteristics, e.g. California, so that the random images will more likely represent the natural attributes of the California coast vs Florida or the South Pacific.

While it is not a licensing issue, but more of a best practice consideration, selecting a general purpose design with no geographically specific visuals is advised, to avoid confusing your visitors. The background image is a very powerful visualization tool and you may mislead visitors unintentionally, if they think that the background photo was actually taken from the house or relates to your property. The goal here is to choose an image which symbolizes the main characteristics, but in the meantime, does not imply that it is an actual photo of the property or its surroundings. (Of course, this is not a problem if you are using your own images of the listing for the background overlay)

The tutorial assumes that you already created a RealBird single property website.

Step 1 - Search for photos with proper licenses

1. Go to Flickr's advanced search
2. Enter your keyword: ocean view
3. Check all of the following checkboxes for the following restrictions at the bottom of the search form:
   1. Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos
   2. Find content to use commercially
   3. Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon

Step 2 - Choose the photo and download it

Once you found the image you like, you will have to get the link to its high resolution version:

1. Click on the photo that you like in the list
2. Click on "All version" above the image on the left side
3. Select a large size version (1024x768 or bigger)
4. Double check that you performed a correct search. Below the image, it should state with the corresponding icons, that it is a Creative Commons-licensed photo, and most likely also, that it requires attribution
5. Click download image and save it to your local computer

Look for these logos below the Flickr picture:

Step 3 - Using the image on RealBird

One of the options of the RealBird listing website theme customization feature is using an uploaded photo as a backdrop. To use the Flickr photo downloaded in step 2, follow the steps below:

1. Login or register at RealBird
2. Add/edit a listing
3. On the list of listings page, find the subject property and click "Change design theme" on the right side
4. Select the "Single, large background image" tab
5. Upload the image from your local computer through "Browse..." and "Upload"

Step 4 - Attribute the work

From the Creative-Common license: "Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)."

The best way to do this is by adding a link to the Flickr photo page (the Url in Step 2, Item 2 above) at the bottom of the description of your property using the RealBird editor. The link should say something like "Photo courtesy of [Author's name]"

That's it, you are done.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful for your next RealBird listing presentation.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

I hate to do this in a blog tutorial, but since we touched some licensing issues, here comes the RealBird disclaimer: This is not a legal advise on how to interpret the legal context of the copyright and licensing terms on Flickr. We are providing a technical tutorial about how to use Creative-commons licensed photos if you decide that you have the rights to do so. Please do not use copyrighted material with RealBird, unless you have proper permission from the copyright holder.

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

RealBird mashed it up big time

Just in time for the Inman Real Estate Connect, - which we were a gold sponsor of - we introduced a new product and a bunch of new features. We mashed up new 3rd party services, such as Zillow, Yelp, Zvents, Yahoo Traffic besides the existing ones ( Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth and ValPak) With the new product release, we have a new business model also, which we believe will suit the fast changing real estate industry better.

We are going to write several posts tracking the development and best practices of different aspects of the new services. For starting, let me provide an overview of the new product mix and the most significant features.

RealBird Listing Publisher

After a lot of soul searching some fun brainstorming sessions , we made the decision to let RealBird fly free. The updated RealBird Listing Publisher is now a completely free service with no limitations and no advertising. It's a full featured online listing marketing tool for commercial and residential real estate agents and brokers. With the  Listing Publisher service, you can create unlimited property websites with unlimited photos, unlimited multimedia and content and  unlimited design themes. The system provides distribution to 3rd party classified sites via automatic syndication and via real estate widgets for websites and blogs. Real estate agents can use the service to create stunning listing presentations for properties or use it as a seller acquisition tool with "draft" flyers for listing interviews.  It's a free service, so why don't you take it for a test fly

Summary of features:

• Unlimited listings (both drafts and published)
• Unlimited, high-res photos and slide-show
• Unlimited multimedia (videos, panorama, slide-shows, audio)
• Unlimited content, rich-text editor for description and neighborhood info
• Unlimited design themes
• Maps, aerial photos, bird's eye view, 3D flyover, driving directions with your photo and contact info, real-time traffic and ValPak coupons around your properties
• Open house marketing
• Automatic distribution to SearchOnMaps.com, Google Base, Trulia, Edgeio, Local.com, Oodle,  Lycos, Vast.com
• Code to post listings to  Craigslist, Kijiji, Backpage, Facebook
• Support to encourage viral marketing
• Search engine optimization for organic search referrals
• RealBird works nicely with your existing providers
  • Link to your existing virtual tour or embed them in your listing website
  • Link to MLS details page or your featured listings on your website
  • Cross-market your blog posts: enter you RSS feed and we stream your latest post into your flyer
• Widgets to cross-market your listings on your website, blog or ActiveRain profile
  • Listing map widget
  • Slideshow widget
  • GeoRSS (RSS feed of your listings with geographic coordinates coordinates)
  • Maps and driving directions widget

Learn more about the features

or go straight ahead and sign up now FOR FREE

RealBird Real Estate Yellow Pages

We are glad to announce that we also released a real estate portal for consumers ( SearchOnMaps.com ) The service features a full-screen map-based portal interface with 3 main functionalities:

1. Find real estate professionals
2. Find properties for sale
3. Home valuation with agent referrals

The service mashes up quite many 3rd party services. Real estate data is provided by RealBird (listings via Listing Publisher and business profiles via the RealBird Yellow Pages service), home valuation by Zillow with local agent recommendations by RealBird. Data overlays include Yelp local reviews, Zvents local events, traffic incidents by Yahoo and nearby ValPak coupons. The service allows consumers to email, social bookmark and share properties, home valuations, business profiles or a specific map extent and to subscribe to RSS updates on a specific map via the unique "Watch this map" tool.

This is also one of the first services to promote the real estate blogs of the listed professionals along the yellow pages entry and  also with their  featured listing post. Real estate blogging is now mainstream  and promoting your blog just got easier with the RealBird Real Estate Yellow Pages service.

Another unique visualization feature is that the service shows the photo or logo of the listed professional when users hover over the  location icons. This gives a personal touch to the service and face recognition value to the whole deal, plus it looks cool, I think.

We welcome all kinds of real estate professionals to post their business listings including residential and commercial sales professionals, lenders, appraisers, builders etc.

Read more about this service

Visit SearchOnMaps.com to see how others are using it

RealBird Map-based MLS Search

We have released several updates for the map-based IDX search service too.  We made it very easy for members to link the map widget to their existing IDX service for property details and to configure main features such as hiding or showing the header and footer and property addresses. A widget configuration tool is also available to generate embed code with the desired width, height for real estate website and blogs. We applied several performance tunings and we are happy to let you know that we increased the performance by two folds. The service is significantly faster now.

Visit RealBird.com to learn more

As always, please send us your feedback, comments and RealBird sightings.

Thanks,

-- Zoltan Szendro

RealBird Inc.
http://www.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