Seth Siegler is the cofounder of Simplistate, an eco-friendly, virtual real estate brokerage. He is also the owner and founder of Robot Workshop – a real estate technology solutions company specializing in IDX and PPC based lead generation. You can find his real estate industry blog at www.sethsiegler.com. We are also pleased to announce that Seth will be speaking at Real Estate Connect NYC 2011 in January!

Most readers of this blog would probably consider themselves more tech savvy than the average real estate agent.  (But, that’s like saying you’re smarter than an average chunk of concrete …)

The truth is though, that most of you reading this actually are pretty tech-tastic but there may be a few small ways that you’re online presence make you look otherwise. 

Here are some critical mistakes that make you look tech illiterate.

1.  Your Site is Not at a Dedicated Domain

What’s the difference between jim.com and jim.wordpress.com?  The second choice makes you look like you probably write emails in all capital letters.  Losing the “.wordpress.com” part means that you’ll need to setup a Wordpress.org framework site on your own hosting package or server.  If you go with a hosting provider like Media Temple, and choose their bottom tier Grid-Service plan, you can set one up with one click.  Then you have an internet-universe full of themes that can make you look professional.  Plus your URL will give you the street cred that you think you already have… (And no, redirecting a URL to your .wordpress.com site isn’t the same thing)

2.  Your Logo is Ridiculous/Non Existent

You shouldn’t make it yourself, and you shouldn’t let your young relative make it (unless that young relative is an advanced design student).  Your logo is important and you should spend some money/effort on it.  If you have the budget, you should go with an experienced design team to brand your consumer experience.  If you don’t have the cash, it may be worth trying a crowd-sourcing site like 48hourslogo.com.  You can get freelance designers to compete for your business, offering logos for your brand and can award a prize as low as $79 to the winning designer.

3.  You Have an Email Address That isn’t on Your Domain

Do you think you’d get an email from someone who works at Ford from their Gmail address?  Or worse, an AOL or Yahoo address?  Your email address should match your website URL.  mike@mikerealestate.com  Don’t disconnect your old email address though.  Forward it to your new one and answer all emails from that new email address.

4.  Too Many Nav Options

The best sites are the ones that are simple to navigate.  Do you really need 15+ options on your nav menu?  Options should be simple for your visitors and all signs should eventually point to your contact info, your IDX or your blog.  Everything else is just an obstacle to lead conversion.  Plus it makes your site look crowded, messy and amateur. 

5.  Non-Existent or Bad HTML Title Tags

Take a look at the title bars of your website pages.  Do they simply say “home” or “index”?  Or worse, are they 50 words long, grasping for every last drop of SEO benefit?  Either way they make you look bad.  If you haven’t taken the time to add real, descriptive title tags to your pages, people assume you don’t know how.  (If you don’t know how, just Google it.)And by the way, Google doesn’t like artificially inflated title tags. 

6.  Auto-Starting Video on Home Page

If you have a video on your home page, make sure it doesn’t start automatically.  People often browse at work or with other people in the room.  If their volume is up, they could be startled and even embarrassed by the unexpected noise, and immediately leave your site.  Not good.

7.  Dramatic Brand Descriptions That Include Cheesy Buzz Words Like “leverage” or “revolutionizing.” OR Attempts at Words That Seem Big Like “Cloud Computing”

The word “leveraging” is so vague and overused that I force myself to imagine a kitten being killed each time I almost use it.  Also, remember that you want to relate to people.  If you are trying to blow them away with techy sounding words, it won’t end well for your bottom line.  And besides, when I see someone taking pride in using cloud technology for their CRM or email system, I know that they just learned the term within the last couple of weeks. 

8.  Your Facebook Profile Is Unlocked

Having a completely unlocked Facebook profile is most like being that weird 45 year old who hangs out at college bars with the top four buttons of his shirt open.  You can make it much worse by using a professional glamour photo as your profile pic and making your entire Facebook presence about your real estate business. 

Have I missed anything?  I’ll be the first one to admit that I have a few items I need to address in my own web presence.  How about you?  Did anything on your site make my list?

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Holly Schwartz (@hollyschwartzoc) is the Marketing Director for Torelli Realty, (@torellirealty) a boutique real estate company in Orange County, CA. She enjoys dishing up a daily blog about 365 Things To Do In Costa Mesa (“Like” the page on Facebook!) Prior to working at Torelli Realty she worked as a TV producer for the HGTV shows House Hunters and House Hunters International.

We all love Facebook and Twitter – they’ve quickly become a global sensation. The problem is that so many real estate agents feel overwhelmed by how much time they should spend on “social” media. While many of us use it for fun, the business application of it is becoming increasingly more important. And like everything in business, time is money. So how do you create a plan to keep social media from taking over your life? Here’s how I use social media for work without losing my mind:

1. Schedule a “work” time for Facebook and Twitter interaction. For instance, I check my accounts for about 5 minutes at the start of the day, another 5 minutes around lunchtime, and one last check at the end of the work day. During this time I focus intently on scrolling through the feeds and make brief comments or “likes”. Also, make sure to always shout out birthdays! One of these sessions is actually closer to 20 minutes and in the next step you’ll find out why.
2. For Twitter, I use Hootsuite, which is a great social networking app that allows you to not only see multiple Twitter & Facebook “streams” on the same screen, plus it also allows you to autopost tweets. This way I can schedule posts for later in the evening and the next day that are timely. (There are many other applications that do similar things, I just happen to like the Hootsuite app and it’s easy to use on my iPhone.)
3. Facebook and Twitter allow you to link your accounts so that if you post on one it will automatically update the other. Personally I suggest linking Facebook to your Twitter but I am not a fan of linking Twitter to Facebook if you post a lot on Twitter. Why? Because most people who use Twitter engage in multiple conversations and post multiple times per day and this will quickly get distracting (and annoying) for your Facebook friends who don’t know what you are referring to.
4. Reading the links to stories on Facebook and Twitter takes time. What I do is I email them to myself to read at a specified time (I do mine around lunchtime and I set aside about 30 minutes for this task). If an article is worth sharing with my followers, then I can retweet it or post it the next time I am scheduled for a social media time. Another perk – some of the articles can provide great inspiration or support for a blog post!
5. I think the biggest problem is that it can be fun to “play” on Facebook and Twitter. Why else would these websites be so popular? There’s no problem with “playing,” just make sure to do it during non-working hours. Otherwise it will be counter-productive.

There’s no doubt that using social media is a great way for real estate agents to keep up with clients and prospects as well as share real estate & community news and information. These platforms are perfect because agents do need to think about marketing and advertising plans. Facebook & Twitter are free and easy ways to reach your audience. However, like I said above time is money. Using these steps should help you manage your time so you can focus on making the deals that lead to paydays!

What are some of your steps for managing social media?

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Guest Blogger, Kevin Lisota, is CEO & Co-founder of findwell, a real estate brokerage helping people buy and sell Seattle real estate. Kevin left a career at Microsoft to put his tech skills to use in real estate and can be found regularly on his Seattle real estate blog.

All right stop, collaborate and listen, Vanilla Ice is doing home makeovers! Yes, the flashy pop star rapper Vanilla Ice, famous for his song Ice Ice Baby, is actually now a general contractor who specializes in remodeling and flipping homes. Robert Van Winkle, aka Vanilla Ice, actually landed a new remodeling TV show on the DIY Network where Ice and his crew are going to gut and renovate one room of a 7,000 square foot Palm Beach mansion each week on their show.

The show is called The Vanilla Ice Project and began airing last week on the DIY Network. They pitch Vanilla Ice as the "only home improvement expert with street cred," which is pretty funny, though apparently he has been fixing up houses for over 15 years now outside of his music career.

Ice’s life has been through lots of highs and lows since the breakout success of Ice Ice Baby, so it will be interesting to see how the show is able to revive his popularity. Bob Vila may have nothing to worry about, but the show looks like it will be entertaining, and Ice and his crew look like they are the real deal when it comes to fixing up houses.

If there is problem, Yo he’ll solve it! Word to your mother.

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Guest Blogger, Kevin Lisota, is CEO & Co-founder of findwell, a real estate brokerage helping people buy and sell Seattle real estate. Kevin left a career at Microsoft to put his tech skills to use in real estate and can be found regularly on his Seattle real estate blog.

Every real estate agent wants to be popular on the web. If you are easily found by consumers searching for an agent or a home, your pipeline of prospective business grows. Last week, Facebook and Microsoft made an interesting announcement that integrates Facebook data with the Bing search engine. Their announcement is a fundamental shift in how results can be found in a search engine, and will impact how buyers and sellers find you on the web in the future.

How search engines work today

For the last decade or more, search engines have functioned in pretty much the same way. They crawl around on all the websites they can find and create a massive index of pages and content. When a user types in a phrase in the search box, they match up that phrase with the pages that they think are most relevant to the query. With billions of pages out there, many with similar content, how do they choose which results to show? Well, for the most part it is a popularity contest based on how many other sites have linked to your page. The idea is if lots of people create “backlinks” to a particular page, it must be relevant and important for a topic, so those results are shown first. The more backlinks you have, the higher your results will appear in the search engines. They also give more authority to popular sites, so a backlink to your site from www.cnn.com carries a lot more weight than one from frankslocalcarrepairshop.com.

What did Facebook and Bing announce?

By now, you have certainly seen the Facebook Like button across many websites. You and your friends have probably been clicking on it to say that you like a particular web page, article, restaurant or product. What Bing and Facebook announced last week is that Bing will use Facebook “Like” data to enhance your search results with things that your friends on Facebook have liked. This is probably easiest to see in an example. Say your friend Adam has liked a particular steak restaurant in San Francisco. On your travels there, you type in “San Francisco steakhouse” looking for somewhere good to eat. Now with Facebook personalization, Bing can show you a list of steakhouses that your friends have said that they like.

How this changes the search game

Clearly web search results are better when you get recommendations directly from your friends, and I would certainly be more likely to click on them. This appears to be the first step in changing how web pages are ranked in search results, stepping away from the generic popularity contest that exists today and towards search results that are popular with people you actually know. The future of this partnership also looks interesting, as they see an opportunity to surface people in search results who are experts on specific subjects.

How is this going to change my real estate business?

When you search for a restaurant, you are looking for a specific type of food in a specific location. It also helps to know that the restaurant has received good reviews, and even better if those reviews are from people you know. Finding a real estate agent online sure feels similar to that. You want a local agent who has a specific area of expertise, and you want to know that they get great reviews and are recommended by your friends. If lots of people “Like” your real estate services on Facebook, your chances of being found on Bing just went up.

This integration between Facebook and Bing is just beginning, so it remains to be seen exactly how prevalent these “social search results” will become, but I think it will pay to be ahead of the curve on this one. Here are some basic steps to take now to help raise your profile in search results.

1. Have a presence on Facebook – No one can like your real estate expertise if you aren’t on Facebook, so you are going to need a profile there.
2. Implement the Like Button – If you have a blog, adding the Like Button from Facebook is pretty easy. There are lots of Wordpress plugins to help you with that and it gives your readers a chance to highlight your content to other folks that they know.
3. Start liking stuff – If you find real estate content on the web that would be relevant to your potential buyers or sellers, start hitting that Like button to help others in your social network.

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Hi FOREM fans! Please join us on Thursday October 28th at 10 AM (PDT) for a free webinar!!
TOPIC: The Missing Piece of Your Social Media Strategy

Sponsored by: Market Leader

DATE:  Thursday, October 28th, 2010
TIME:  10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (PDT)
COST:  FREE!!

You are using social media, but are you converting that traffic into transactions? Developing a comprehensive social media strategy for your brokerage is a great way to strengthen brand awareness and generate leads once you have all the necessary pieces. In this webinar we will discuss the benefits of social media, the best ways to capture leads and how to convert those leads into transactions.

This webinar is ideal for brokers, owners, managers and team leaders!

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Guest Blogger, Geordie Romer is a real estate broker in the mountain town of Leavenworth Washington where he specializes in selling vacation homes to folks in the Seattle tech scene. Geordie has been blogging about Leavenworth Real Estate since 2005.

As tech savvy real estate pros we all spend an inordinate amount of time and energy making sure we get found in the search engines. Of course, there are a few places you probably don’t care to make an appearance:

Photo By Bark

1. KeepinitRealtor – It’s a little sad that this snarky blog hasn’t posted since 2009. They describe themselves as “a non-profit organization devoted to championing and promoting excellence in all forms of real estate advertising and design.” In reality, they are championing the use of bad puns in real estate ads. Getting mentioned here is probably not a good thing.
2. Lovelylisting.com- There are some real doozies here. I think this is the best (worst?) collection of bad listing photos on the web these days.
3. Seattle Bubble’s “Real Actual Listing Photos” – Yet another ongoing collection of bad listing photos.
4. Your State’s List of Infractions (California for example) – It’s one thing to be made fun of by a bubble blogger, but being on this list is probably the worst press you can get.
5. Craigslist Rant and Rave A few years ago, I saw a competitor’s name show up here and it wasn’t pretty. Though I’d love to show you some examples, “Craigslist postings may be explicitly sexual, scatalogical, offensive, graphic, tasteless, and/or not funny. “

What are some websites that you hope to never appear on?

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Guest Blogger, Geordie Romer is a real estate broker in the mountain town of Leavenworth Washington where he specializes in selling vacation homes to folks in the Seattle tech scene. Geordie has been blogging about Leavenworth Real Estate since 2005.

I’ve been blogging in the real estate space for five years or so and I’ve learned over the years that two things keep readers coming back on a regular basis.

● Local real estate info, especially statistics, trends and charts
● Great images

Luckily for real estate bloggers there is a great new tool available that helps create fantastic infographics from your data : Tableau

Tableau started in the 90s as a request by the Department of Defense to Stanford’s Computer Science Department. The DOD wanted a way to make it easier for defense analysts to comprehend data. Who better to help than Professor Pat Hanrahan, a founding member of Pixar? In 2003, Tableau released software called Tableau Desktop. In 2010 came Tableau Public.

Tableau allows you to make great charts and graphs to share online that are easily embeddable and shareable. Once you upload your data (in Excel, Access or CSV files) Tableau gives you countless options on how to display the information. Tableau is also interactive and allows your readers to see the subsets of data and charts that interest them the most. For real estate agents, being able to tie data to maps and geographic locations is really incredible. Tableau is a free download for those willing to share their data publicly.

Here’s a great example by Matthew Campbell using real estate sales in Mecklenberg County , North Carolina.

Zillow is also using Tableau to help share its research. Recently they published a report on the links between APR, LTV, and credit scores.

In some locales like New York City, there is lots of data to work with. I found this visualization fascinating. And what do the charts tell us? Staten Island has very little graffiti, but the graffiti they do have lingers without cleanup.On the other side of the spectrum, Manhattan has over 2000 incidents of graffiti, but it is cleaned up in less than 17 days on average.

I’m excited about all the possibilities for my blogging. This seems like a great tool to show consumers which neighborhoods are “hot” (or not) and which neighborhoods are affected most by foreclosures. How about using Tableau as a tool to show which neighborhoods have older homes versus new construction?

Are you using Tableau? I’d love to see how you’re taking advantage of its possibilities.

As for me… looks like I need to enter some data into some Excel workbooks…

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Guest Blogger, Geordie Romer is a real estate broker in the mountain town of Leavenworth Washington where he specializes in selling vacation homes to folks in the Seattle tech scene. Geordie has been blogging about Leavenworth real estate since 2005.

I’m a huge fan of continuing ed in real estate and I think every agent should be taking advantage of the opportunities that exist. CRS and GRI seem almost mandatory and Real Estate Bar Camp, Inman News’ Agent Reboot™ and RainCamp offer great tools for learning about real estate technology. However, sometimes it helps to step away from the real estate field when it comes to expanding your horizons.

Photo by Nationaal Archief

Here is a pair of FREE opportunities that every business owner (and agent) should take advantage of:

Inbound Marketing University:
This course includes 16 one hour online classes taught by “professors” ranging from Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuck to Rand Fishkin. There is a test at the end for those who want to have the professional certification.

The Personal MBA:
Josh Kaufman‘s manifesto is that you don’t need to pay $150,000 for an MBA, you just need to read the best books about business. You can sign up for discussions and extras or you can just work your way through the 99 book reading list.

As for business websites I think every business owner should know about? Check out this handful:

Unbounce: Everything you need to know about landing pages. I wish I had this resource when I first got started. If you aren’t reading Unbounce, you have no business trying to market on the internet.

“It Starts with a Lead” B2B Lead Generation Blog: Real estate marketing is a lot like marketing in the B2B environment. It’s less about selling a product than it is about selling your experience, knowledge and service. That’s why Brian Carroll calls it “marketing for the complex sale.”

Small Business Search Engine Marketing: SEO for the little guy. Since Matt McGee’s wife is an agent there’s always plenty here for the real estate crowd.

Marketing Sherpa: These folks study what works with online marketing and then report on it. From PPC to SMM and email, Marketing Sherpa is bound to help your ROI.

How about you? Where have you found great education opportunities that weren’t from the school of hard knocks?

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Marty Boardman is a Realtor, real estate investor and instructor in Gilbert, Arizona.  He’s the Chief Financial Officer for Rising Sun Capital Group, LLC, a real estate investment firm that buys and sells distressed real estate in the Phoenix metro area.  He’s also an accredited instructor for the Arizona Academy of Real Estate.  You can read about his successes and failures on his blog, www.freerealestateeducation.com or contact him directly at marty@risingsuncapitalgroup.com.

I know certain things.  For example, I know that I should exercise at least three times a week for 30 minutes.  I know that I should eat a balanced diet of lean protein, fruits and vegetables.  I know I shouldn’t drink soda, smoke cigarettes, or drink alcohol excessively.   I also know I shouldn’t speed on the freeway or talk on my cell phone while driving.  I know I should floss my teeth every night before I go to bed and tell my wife that I love her.  So, if I know and accept these things to be fundamental truths then I must do them religiously and without fail right?  Well, if you’re anything like me then the answer is a big fat no!

Why is that?  Most of us know exactly what we need to do to be successful, from our diet to our fitness.  The trouble is following through.  Some experts believe it’s because as a society we are undisciplined.  That’s part of the reason but not the real answer.  I believe it’s because it’s just too darn easy not to be successful.  The consequences are often unrecognizable and far off in the distant future.

As a REALTOR there are things I know in my business too.  I know my listings will sell faster and for more money if they have lots of clean, well-composed, high quality pictures.  I know that potential buyers will most likely find my listing online and will call their REALTOR to see it because of the pictures.  The bottom line is that facts tell and pictures sell.  You probably know that too.  But do your listings show it?

I’m not advocating dropping thousands of dollars on an expensive camera and lighting equipment, nor am I suggesting you go back to school and study photography.  However, I do recommend you invest about $500 in a digital camera and learn some basic photography techniques like the rule of thirds.

I recently purchased a Canon G11 digital camera.  Keep in mind I’m no photo geek so I’m not going to bore you with the specs.  What I like about this camera is that it’s high resolution (10 MP), has a built-in wide angle lens (a must for taking pictures of houses) and is excellent in low light.  The Canon G11 is a hybrid between a standard point and shoot and DSLR.  It won’t weigh you down like a big DSLR but it has easy-to-use settings that allow you to switch back and forth between inside and outside shots.

Once you have a good camera it’s time to work on your technique.  For starters, turn off the date stamp feature and don’t ever shoot directly into the sun.  And unless you want to end up on UglyHousePhotos.com, do not to capture your reflection in the mirror while taking that picture of the master bathroom (a little tip here – kneel down below the mirror.)  Leif Swanson a REALTOR and creator of the site, also says you should never take pictures from your car or at night, and never have people or pets in the image.

There you have it.  You now know what you already knew.  What I have written here may not get you to the gym or prevent you from drinking a bottle of wine at dinner but at least you’ll start selling more houses.

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Marty Boardman is a Realtor and real estate investor in Gilbert, Arizona.  He’s the Chief Financial Officer for Rising Sun Capital Group, LLC, a real estate investment firm that buys and sells distressed real estate in the Phoenix metro area.  He’s also an accredited instructor for the Arizona Academy of Real Estate.  You can read about his successes and failures on his blog, www.freerealestateeducation.com or contact him directly at marty@risingsuncapitalgroup.com.

I see dead people.  That’s what Haley Joel Osment’s character said in M. Night Shyamalan’s first box office hit called ‘The Sixth Sense’.  It’s been 11 years since I saw the movie and I still remember that line.  Why is that?  If you’ve never seen the movie I don’t want to spoil it for you but this cinematic masterpiece had one of the most memorable endings of all time.

When I first embarked upon my quest to become a blogger (about 17 months ago) I posted this question on a Linked In question forum:  What is the single most important thing I can do to drive traffic to my blog? The answer may surprise you.  It wasn’t search engine optimization or frequent posting.  Almost everyone agreed that the best way to drive traffic to my blog was to write good content; much like M. Night Shyamalan did when he penned the ‘The Sixth Sense’ script in 1999.  So before I enter the blogosphere I remind myself that every post should:

1. Tell a story.
2. Have a beginning, middle and a memorable ending.
3. Contain me, us, my subject, me, us.

Tell a story

The best way to tell a story is to become a voracious reader.  Read everything from newspapers to blogs to books and even People magazine.  It’s amazing how much context you can give your posts when you incorporate funny stories, insightful anecdotes and timely real-world news.  Since I started blogging I’ve written about autopsies, roller coasters, golf, the Loch Ness Monster, Tiger Woods and Santa Claus.  I’ve managed to do this while keeping with a real estate theme.

Have a beginning, middle and a memorable ending

The other night I read my daughters Mary Poppins.  This story is perfectly constructed and engages the reader from page one.  Best of all, it incorporates a nice moral at the end.

I’m not saying you have to write a cliff hanger every time you blog or be the next Mark Twain.  To begin, share a story – it could be funny or sad – just make it engaging.  If you don’t know a good story then find one (that’s what the internet is for.)  The middle is the easy part; it’s your subject, the meat in the sandwich.  Your ending should evoke emotion (laughter, tears or at the very least an “ah-ha” moment.)  Again, if you can’t find the right words for your ending then go find some.  I love to use www.brainyquote.com whenever I’m stuck.

Contain me, us, my subject, me, us.

I discovered the me, us, my subject, me, us formula by accident.

From 2002-2006, I accumulated over $16 million in real estate assets.  Then suddenly in August of 2007 the music stopped and I didn’t have a chair.  It only took me about 6 months to lose my assets (with emphasis on the first three letters of the word.)  I was forced to stop pretending everything was going well when I traded in my Mercedes Benz for a 95’ Honda Accord.  It then occurred to me that few real estate professionals talk about their failures because it’s bad for business.  Rather than hide from my past I decided to share it with others on my blog.  And you want to know something funny?  By outwardly discussing my successes AND failures online I’ve discovered I can connect with people on a much deeper level.

These days whenever possible I begin a new post by talking about a mistake or shortcoming I have that a broader audience can identify with (the me, us part of the formula.)  I then jump into real estate stuff (my subject) and finish up with how the reader and I can apply the information (me, us.)

Does it work?  Yes, most of the time.  Just be memorable because that’s what keeps your readers coming back.  How do you do that?  By helping others learn.  It’s like Andy Rooney once said, “Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”

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