RealBird Blog

New virtual tours and a must have seller emailing tool. RealBird updates.

We launched a few new features last week and those are generally available now for all RealBird members:

Seller Emailing Tool: A must have for listing marketing

From the member area, you can now easily forward your listing websites and virtual tour to you sellers, asking them to forward the email to their friends, family and colleagues. You are not only demonstrating your marketing efforts to your sellers - which in itself is very important - but you may also utilize their network for listing marketing. And because all these RealBird email templates are private labeled with your photo and contact information, you will also reach larger audience with your brand and hence generating more referral business.

There are preset templates that you can customize for Just Listed, For Sale, For Rent, Coming Soon, Open House, Just Sold etc. so it truly takes only seconds to forward your listing to your seller. Links in these email templates are also tagged with Google Analytics campaign parameters automatically, so you can track the effectiveness of these emails.

Try the seller emailing tool today with RealBird.com

New, branded virtual tours

The new, branded virtual tours build on the popular unbranded version. They are automatically created for your listings on RealBird for your for-sale, for-rent, pending and also for sold properties.

Check them out. View them for your existing listings on RealBird or publish new listings today.

Updated listing forwarding tool on the single property websites

Listing forwarding by consumers from your RealBird property websites and virtual tours are now also branded with your photo and contact information, just like with the seller emailing member tool. This is an update of the existing forwarding tool on the property websites and virtual tours, but with the modern, pretty HTML templates including your information, it is a much better utility now helping you create referral business while marketing a current property.

Let us know what you think of these new features. We always appreciate your feedback.

-- The RealBird Team

RealBird.com

 

Updated MLS-compatible Virtual Tours are Available

We are glad to let you know that the brand new, shiny version of the MLS-friendly, non-branded RealBird virtual tours are now generally available. Just log into RealBird and you can get them on the list of listings page. For best results, make sure you upload many, large, high quality photos for your listings on RealBird.

Below is an example of a gorgeous property in Covington, LA, courtesy of Pam Head 

We'll be featuring listings using the new virtual tour for a few weeks, so if you'd like us to feature yours, just send us an email with your RealBird link.

-- The RealBird Team

ps. Check out our new blog post on Homes By SMS as well: The Sad Tale of Empty Flyer Boxes

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

 

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 

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

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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

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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

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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