This month, we’ve got another Giveaway for you! Some of the leading vendors in real estate technology are participating — including Rofo. We'll tell you all about Rofo here, but there are other gifts to explore. Click here to see your options.

Rofo’s Gift
Feature your team’s listings and sales on Linkedin for a year (up to 10 agents).

About Rofo
Rofo (which stands for Right of First Offer) is a real estate marketplace for business professionals and entrepreneurs searching for their next commercial space to lease or purchase. Users are able to search detailed listings, solicit proposals for their specific needs and send secure messages through the Rofo platform. Listings on Rofo include office spaces, warehouses, retail spaces, executive suites as well as property for sale. Rofo is always free to search. Brokers and MLS/Associations can list a property on Rofo as well as search for tenants.

The Rofo platform allows users to quickly post available[...]

Tagged: Broker Online Marketing

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Articulating what you want in your real estate brokerage is pretty straight-forward.

… sales associates who are dedicated and productive;
… managers who lead and develop people;
… top producers who are role models to others and support your brand.

But how do you take your goals and marry them to behaviors that will produce desired results? Here’s a quick example of a strategy virtually all brokers share:

Strategy: Present our company and agents in the best possible light so buyers and sellers want to work with us.

Goal: Have a compelling Real Estate marketing website that’s intuitive to navigate and has valuable, up-to-date information to help consumers make home buying/selling decisions.

Tactic: Provide a consumer with accurate information about our company and our agents on our website.  Here’s where a website powered by a first-rate Real Estate technology infrastructure shines.  Edits and updates can be handled by anyone.

Tagged: Broker

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Dropbox is the most deceptively simple of services. Place a Dropbox folder on each computer or gadget you own. Drag any file into that folder. A copy of that file automatically appears on every device where you put a Dropbox folder. It’s idiot proof.

But don’t let that simplicity fool you. Dropbox also epitomizes a revolutionary shift that is transforming our relationship to technology and turning the technology industry upside down: Cloud computing.

The “cloud” has been one the biggest buzz phrases for a couple of years now. In the past year, it’s moved from the talk of tech insiders into the minds of mainstream users thanks to the launch of services like Apple’s iCloud.

And in the coming decade, analysts are betting that cloud computing will be the defining trend in technology. Large companies like Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are rushing to overhaul their business to sell the tools that enable cloud computing services, while consumers are projected to spend $16 billion annually on cloud services by 2016, according to Gartner research.

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We spotted this article on the Showing Suite blog.

Are you guilty of checking your mobile device every 30 seconds, hoping for texts/calls/messages/tweets from your clients or leads and trying to achieve real estate success? Do you literally feel lost without your iPhone, or other mobile tools for real estate by your side at all moments? A study recently published in London suggests that a new phobia is one the rise across the globe: nomophobia.

What is nomophobia? Nomophobia (abbreviation for “no-mobile-phone-phobia”) is the fear of being out of mobile contact. Research shows that more and more people fear being without or losing their mobile device.Almost everywhere you go, whether you’re out at a restaurant or just walking down the street, you get the impression that people absolutely love and are addicted their handsets; maybe a little too much.

Tagged: Mobile Technology

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After endlessly searching the amazingly useful site of SEOMoz.com, stumbling upon the blog written by Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, was a delightful find. Jam-packed with highly important information to know when trying to gain traffic flow to your blog, it seemed as though Fishkin’s helpful insight needed to be shared further.

With the intention of being useful for all bloggers alike, here are some useful tidbits from Fishkin’s post modified in a way to best serve real estate agents. However, when

dealing with a blog and increasing traffic flow, it should be known that not every tactic will specifically work for everyone, but the following should be applicable or at least useful to many and spun to properly suite their own blog’s needs.

1. Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

First and foremost, know who you’re writing for. For most of you that will be homebuyers, be aware of how your targeted audience can possibly help to spread the word. By creating unique and enticing content, your audience will most likely[...]

Tagged: Blogging

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One of your key marketing tools is your website. It’s a good idea from time to time to take stock of the content and design of your website to be sure your marketing message is being delivered effectively. Your website serves multiple audiences – are you speaking to each of them?

What does everyone want? Up-to-date information presented in an easy to find format. Nobody likes to endlessly click on a website to find the information they need. Does your site have an easy to navigate menu system? When was the last time you added content to the site? I know that everyone hates to sit down and write content for the website. Be creative, sometimes all you need to do is provide a couple of introductory sentences and a link to a related article on the web.

What do potential clients want? Stop and think for a second… Why do your potential clients visit Broker websites? Most are shopping for a home in your area. Your website should make that easy. Most don’t.[...]

Tagged: Broker Online Marketing

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Give credit where credit is due. Keller Williams may not be the largest franchise organization in the US or the World – but they are working hard to get there, and are awfully close. They recruit like crazy.

Keller Williams is a franchise organization whose core focus is on the agent. They consider themselves mentors, trainers, and solution providers to support the agent in reaching their potential. Moreover, they profit share. If the company makes money, the agent wins. Last year, they made a profit of $38M across all 75,000 agents. The profit share works out to be about $506 per agent, or $42 per month. It is interesting to note that the $42 per month is almost equal to their technology fee.

"A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck."

-James A Garfield 1831-1881

I played hockey as a boy and I believe the most important take away from the experience was that those who worked hardest had the best luck. Or rather, luck was nothing more than putting yourself in position for fortune more often than the others.

In front of the net you battled, and lived off the discards of the opposing goal keeper. To force a goal from there meant you needed the courage and determination (read: pluck) to stand your ground in order to be in position for the easy put-back.

It's no stretch to claim that hard work & determination in blogging will put you in the best position to generate the deserved lead.

Tagged: Blogging

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Ever looked at your WordPress site and had this reaction?

Hopefully you haven't, but if you are not paying attention to routine maintenance you really can't complain if some nasty hacker destroys all your hard work and expense.

Last October famous real estate blogger Jay Thompson got hacked and spent 60 hours trying to sort it all out icon sad WordPress security Ignore at your peril

Now that WordPress is powering 14.7% of the top million websites in the world as of last August, there are more targets for those hackers.

So be sure that WordPress core developers take security very seriously and they regularly update the core software at the first sign of trouble.

WordPress have also made it much easier to install updates with just a couple of clicks.

There are some very simple WordPress security steps to follow:

Tagged: Blogging Blogging Tools Security

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Suresh Srinivasan posted the following on the ReachFactor blog.

For many real estate agents, the rise of the Internet was a boon to their business; to others, it was a major adjustment. As web giants like AOL, MSN and Yahoo gave way to a splintered, user-focused collection of social networks and then later to an always-wired generation of smartphone and tablet users, some agents have made the most of the marketing and communication benefits of online tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and of course ReachFactor to present their skills, reputation and listings to prospects. Others have, to put it mildly, not.

Last week, real estate marketer Matthew Ferrara published a listing of real estate marketing statistics pulled from the National Association of REALTORS, Pew Research, Nielsen, Morgan-Stanley and others. The results are broad and not easily metabolized, but there is definitely something in it for everyone. In a nutshell, the average homebuyer is slightly older, first-time homebuyer totals have dropped since last year, and younger consumers are using email less, texting more and of course more people are beginning their home searches online.

Tagged: Trends

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Guest contributor Showing Suite says:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen QR codes pop up just about everywhere. But why all the hype? First of all, a QR (quick response) code is  a bar code that can be scanned with a smart phone application that will redirect you to view a webpage, images, video, or pretty much anything you want. QR codes are especially ideal for real estate marketing products because they are extremely interactive, and can be used on anything from real estate flyers to email marketing campaigns. They are great because it makes it much easier for clients to visit your real estate website, listing photos and details, plus much more. If you’re curious, but still stumped on how to integrate QR codes into your real estate marketing products, take a look at how these other real estate agents used QR codes:

Sending out real estate postcards with a QR code can redirect[...]

Tagged: QR Code

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Another shoe is going to drop today. Howard Hanna, one of America’s largest brokerages will announce their new listing syndication strategy. This is an important announcement because it brings forth a new chapter to the ongoing saga of finding an online advertising paradigm that balances the broker’s needs with the publisher’s needs, in the best possible way.

Howard Hanna has spend the past 15 – 18 months studying. They study their website. They study the website of similar size brokerages. They have studied publisher websites. They became experts.

Howard Hanna has been testing. Howard Hanna ran lots of experiments with syndication. Turning sites on. Turning sites off. Turning listing enhancement on, and off. They made note of the results.

Howard Hanna has modified the data feed in multiple ways too. They reduced and increased the number of photos in the feed. Make changes to the property description text to include agent contact information. They explored and they innovated.

I just attended a really outstanding real estate technology seminar this week where I was lucky enough to learn some new trends and tips from industry leaders, Max Pigman and Steve Pacinelli. Both speakers gave great presentations on different material but one of the most interesting and relatively underutilized ideas was QR codes. Yep, I thought QR codes for real estate had run the course too but when combined with video the QR code is a quick and very direct way to get in front of your audience, which is the homebuyer and seller.

The example that was discussed was simple, yet ingenious. Instead of driving the person who scans the QR code from their mobile phone to a static website, the person was driven directly to a video which is one of the most popular methods of receiving information on the Internet today, (YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine after Google). A personal video about you and your services is a great way to market yourself but think about the audience that is most likely to access this video from[...]

Tagged: QR Code

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It is not too late you know. Remember that the first draft of your 2012 “To Do” list was created in the hustle and bustle of the year-end business cycle and the chaos of the holiday season. Before we slip out of the first quarter there is still time to take another look at the reality of the day and make a few adjustments. This piece has been created to give you some ideas.

First of all, remember that 2012 is a presidential election year. Regardless of your politics and philosophical perspective the fact is that somehow, magically, economies tend to get better around this event. There have been no small number of positive turns over the past sixty days. Unemployment rates are down and the Dow Jones really, really wants to blow past 13,000. The real estate marketplace is showing excellent growth and, for the first time in years, the media is beginning to report the “top ten places where housing values are going up.” Consumer spending is up (albeit on credit) and overall attitudes are looking[...]

Tagged: Broker

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Embedding a Wufoo form in your ActiveRain blog is a great way to capture real estate leads from Craigslist.

The agent needs to capture the lead so they can deliver the information they promises in the ad.  By embedding a Wufoo form in your real estate blog, you can create a landing page that will capture leads from Craigslist, Facebook Ads, Google PPC, and other advertising sources.

Here is an example of a Wufoo form embedded in a real estate blog:

Tagged: Blogging Blogging Tools Website/Blog Plugins

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In a report last week analyst Carlos Kirjner, via Bernstein Research, predicted that by 2016 the majority of web search traffic will come from mobile devices. Is your website ready for the mobile spotlight?

Tagged: Mobile Search

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Guest contributor Ricardo Bueno of Diverse Solutions says:

If you want to get noticed by search engines & site visitors, you need to write lots of high quality content.

But you knew that already.

You also know that it’s one of the more time intensive tasks when it comes to managing a real estate blog.

What will I write about today? Tomorrow? The day after that?

Well, here are a few ideas for using other people’s content to add to your writing routine…

4 Ways To Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing:

1. Invite other professionals whose content complements yours, to guest post on your site. 

So if you have a real estate blog, you might invite a professional home stager or mortgage professional to guest post on your blog. They can write about things like how to successfully stage your home for sale, financing options available to first-time home buyers, et cetera.[...]

Tagged: Blogging