The Charleston Real Estate Advisor

Technology Masterminds The Master Plan – Starting with your Website

Week One

In the first week we reviewed the grand strategy for increasing the number of leads to your Internet site.  Your homework assignment for this week is to:

a) identify your niche, specialty, and passions.  With these unique traits, you will build your special brand and Internet storefront.

Examples: buyer specialist, geographical farm, military specialist, investor, bank properties

b) select a domain name that includes your niche, geographical area, and what you are selling (real estate, Properties, homes, land,investments, etc)

Examples: charlestonmilitaryrelo.com, stonoferryproperties.com, charlestonbankproperties.com, charlestonbuyeragent.com

c) develop meta tag description -- A call to action that real estate customers will want to click on your site.  It should describe your niche and be different from other sites.

d) develop keywords (search terms for your niche/specialty)

Examples:  Charleston real estate, Charleston homes for sale, Charleston foreclosures, etc

Go ahead and add your results and compare with the rest of the class.

Charleston Real Estate Technology Masterminds Sign Up

Charleston Real Estate Technology Masterminds are starting Aug 18th, 2009 from 11am to Noon every Tuesday.

Each week, we will address a different topic providing in-depth discussion and solutions to improve online lead generation.

This mastermind is open to all real estate agents.

Class Schedule:

Aug 18th: The Master Plan - Starting with your Website

Aug 25th: SEO with Google

Sep 1st: SEO with Bing and Yahoo

Sep 8th: Optimizing your Listing Portals (Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow)

Sep 15th: Blogging for Leads

Sep 22th: Blogging using Video and Photographs

Sep 29th: Facebook

Oct 6th: LInked-in

Oct 13th: Twitter

Oct 20th: Special Portals (Walk Score, Dwellicous,Technorati, Real Estate Wiki etc)

If there is a topic you would like to see, please leave a comment and we will try to add it.  If you can not physically make the mastermind, we will try to provide a remote broadcast. 

To register for the mastermind, please leave a comment with your name and email so that we can send you more information for the masterminds.

Trulia Releases Charleston Real Estate Inventory and Listing Graphs

Trulia has released new interactive graphs displaying the Charleston real estate inventory and average list price by major MLS areas.  It is a fast way to get a good visual que to what is happening in the local Charleston real estate market and what the average Charleston home for sale list price is by geographical area.

Charleston Real Estate - Trulia

A Great Real Estate Blog Using Video

I wanted pass along what could be the future of real estate blogs and websites.  Ian Watt on the West Coast has developed a great site for real estate customers integrating video into his blog.   I like the format,  do you think Charleston real estate community would like this type of a real estate website?

There are no Lofts for Sale in Gastown Vancouver!!! from Ian Watt Vancouver Condo on Vimeo.

Go Offline with Gmail

Google Mail released a new program that will allow you to access your email even when you do not have an internet connection.  The program is called “Gears” and can be downloaded at the Gears homepage.  For more information see the Gmail Blog.

The Future of Real Estate - Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk was the keynote speaker at INMAN Connect 2009,  addressing the real estate audience on what he believes is the future of real estate.   He starts out saying his goal for the talk is   "not to see any real estate agents faces on bus stop benches."   Listen to what he says,  do you think he is right or should Gary stick to selling wine.  What are your thoughts?  Is this the future of Charleston real estate sales?

A Better Way to Track Properties for Sale

Dwellicous combines social networking and real estate websites together allowing the customer to see any updates on properties they are interested in from a one location. You can share the information with your family and friends on Facebook and social networking sites. 

For example, you have 5 properties you are interested in. You just bookmark the properties in Dwellicous and any changes in price, photos, comments, etc will automatically updated to you via a RSS feed.  No more logging into the real estate websites and checking the 5 individual listings everyday for any changes.  Dwellicous works on approximately 20 of the major real estate websites.  Try it and let me know what you think.

Photos: The Key to Capturing Buyers Online

Point to Agent completed a study in 2008 clearly demonstrating that online buyers want more photos and that the buyers look for homes online that have more photos.  Here are their key findings:

• Online buyers clicking away from listings with fewer photos - Double the interest and 200 percent jump in leads indicate photos key to help move real estate
• Compared to listings with only one photo, those with 21 or more photos generated more than triple the number of Detailed Views, more than double the amount of Interest, and double the number of Leads.
• Views, Interest and Leads jumped 20 percent or more as the number of photos increased from 15 to 16.

In our local MLS there are 1504  resale homes (not new construction) with only one photo online (Ugh!).  My question is why?  What are the chances of a home selling with only one photo online?  I know some agents will say the house is not very pretty, but unless the house is a tear down shouldn’t there be more photos? What do you think?