I had an opportunity recently to speak with Jeff Bernheisel (@JBern) who is the the Marketing Director for M Realty in Portland. Jeff has a proven track record for Search Engine Optimization results for his company when it comes to VERY competitive search terms like “Portland Real Estate”.

Jeff has built several websites that dominate Google including one that was dedicated to the ever popular Angry Birds game! In less than 5 months he ranked the site in the top 5 results of Google for the search term “Angry Birds”, in the process generating 20,000-30,000 hits a day!

I wanted Jeff to share in our interview some of his best SEO tips and how agents can achieve comparable results in their own market.

(Can’t view the video? Click here)

My takeaway? Content and links are king.

Angry Birds, Viagra and real estate SEO all in one interview. Surely worthy of 3 golden eggs.

I hope you enjoy our chat and if you have any specific questions for Jeff after watching feel free to leave those in the comments below.

Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist, Inman News, @chris_smth

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I have a fondness for my iPhone. I know many of you feel the same. Waking up and checking Twitter, email and the like with one eye open is typically the way I start my day. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one, but the data we are seeing coming from the mobile space tells us otherwise. It actually tells us that there has never been a more rapid technology platform shift, ever.

So if I love my phone and you love your phone we need to concede that there is a decent chance that today’s tech savvy buyers and sellers love their phones as well! Do you have a mobile marketing strategy? Have you started using text message or QR Code options on your marketing pieces? Is your site mobile optimized? All questions for another day. Today we start with something simple to execute and sure to impress.

Uscapeit wants to become the Google “street view” for the masses. They have created a must download iPhone only app (for now). Their inspiration seems to have come from Google. For those of you that are not aware Google actually sent cars up and down every street in the U.S. and took 360 degree images that they layered into their mapping systems. Uscapeit wants you to be able to do the same from anywhere, anytime including of course a home you are trying to market!

The process of creating what they refer to as a “Scape” is very simple. You hold your phone and spin around in a circle as to capture the entire 360 degrees from where you are standing. There are a number of cool photo apps that accomplish this element already like 360 Panorama for the iPhone and Photaf for the Android. Where Uscapeit takes the technology one step further is that they allow you to stitch together the Scapes you have created into a collection and they then add Googleesque arrows between each one as to allow the end viewer to walk around the collection of images you have gathered.

You could start with a Scape of the front of the home, then lead into the foyer for another, the living room, master bedroom, kitchen, etc… Many of you may remember the virtual tours of the early 2000’s on websites that would allow the web visitor on your site to control a camera in any given room and pan/zoom fluidly. This is a very similar concept but instead of being very pricey it is FREE and instead of being on the “regular” web it is mobile optimized which is where all of the eyeballs are rapidly shifting. No need to call a company and pay big bucks, just head over to the iTunes store, download Uscapeit and start creating great Scapes. Once the Scapes have been created there is one button share functionality with Facebook and email which makes getting them out to your sphere of influence a breeze.

Overall I am very impressed with the Uscapeit app as it relates to a potential marketing tool for Realtors. They have several demo Scapes that you can check out inside the app including one of an apartment for rent which I feel really gives a good demonstration of the potential power of the app for real estate purposes.

Any questions feel free to leave those below. One that I anticipate is “How about something like this for the Android?” Let’s have some fun with that one and I will ask any Android users who find a comparable app to leave a link in the comments below.

Written by: Chris Smith, Chief Evangelist, Inman News, @chris_smth

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Guest post by: Matthew Smith, Public Online Marketing, Dell

Go ahead and open Google and search for “your city” real estate agent. You should see an image like this:

These results you are seeing are called Google local results. They are local businesses in the area Google thinks matches whatever term you just searched for. As you look over these results think to yourself, do you see your real estate company or your competitors? If you don’t see your company, you are missing out on a free opportunity to attract leads. To give you an example of what you are missing out on the word “Austin real estate agent” is searched 210 times in Google every month!

In this article we will teach you how you can rank for your local terms to and attract those potential customers over your competitors. We will first cover how to get listed in Google local and then how to rank above your competitors.

Firstly you need to go to Google Local. To register your business you will need a Google account so create a free one if you have not already. Once your account is created, you will be taken to a screen that asks for your country and telephone number. Make sure to put the phone number you would like listed in Google maps. Google may actually call this number to verify the business listing and this number will be shown in the Google local map. Once you have inputted your phone number, Google will check to make sure that number isn’t already associated with another account; if it is not you will be taken to this screen to create your business listing.

Company – Simply add your business name.

Street Address – Here you want to add the address of your business. If you do not have a physical address you can actually just put your home address and set Google local not show your address on the maps.

Main Phone – This is the phone number you want your customers to call when they see your listing.

Website – Just put your normal website.

Description – In this space you want to add a description of your business that includes the city you are targeting. So for my example I am targeting Austin real estate agents. Therefore in my description I said we provide the best Austin real estate agents in the area. This inclusion of “Austin” tells Google that my listing is specifically related to that search. Think of it like this if you searched online for Austin Texas Pizza you wouldn’t want to be shown pizza places in Dallas. Saying your local area in the description helps show users and Google what your businesses focus is.

Category – Here you want to add the 5 best related categories. So for the first category you would most likely put Real Estate Agency.

Service Ares and Location Settings – Here is where you will set what geographic areas you serve. I mentioned in address that you could turn off your location, and this can be done by checking that do not show my business listing box.

However, only set that if you do not have a physical location. You should always set your areas served or distance from one location. If you type your zip code in the distance you can actually pin point a geographic area you work in. That way you can ensure your listing is only being shown to people that live in the general area as you.

Hours of Operation – You do not need to put your hours of operation unless you want to. However, if you do have specific hours and a physical location people can visit I would add it.

Photos – Here is one of the tricks to ranking well in Google local. You need to add business photos. This can be as simple as your logo, the geographic area you serve, or anything real estate related. If you look at the first image in this article you will see a few of the listing show fancy buildings. You want this image to pop and make your listing stand out. Google also likes listing a lot more that have pictures versus those who don’t. I would recommend adding at least 3 pictures to your page.

Videos – Another trick to help you rank in Google local is to add videos to your business listing. A great video would be to quickly film your building and your interior space and then upload it to YouTube. You need to understand that Google wants to show local listings that actually appeal to customers. They do not want to show a local listing that has no profile flare or information people will find interesting.

Additional Details – Here you will add a few additional details about your business. These little additional details actually help you rank in Google local so it is important to complete. For my real estate example I added “Real Estate Areas Served” and then added “Austin” you could then add it additional area you serve.

Once you have added all these details you can click submit at the bottom of the screen. This will then bring up a few verification methods. Google will sometimes offer a verify by phone method. This method is the easiest and involves Google calling your phone and giving you a code that you input into the verification box. However, the other method is to verify by postcard. In this method they will send a postcard to your physical address that you will need to input. Once you verify your listing by one of these two methods you are ready to go.

So now you have your listing created let me quickly cover once method you can now quickly implement to get ranking in Google. If you look at a local result you will see reviews next to most listings. Your goal is to get just as many if not more reviews then your competitors. What you can do is contact any customer you worked with in the past that you had a rapport with and ask them to review your business. I would recommend emailing them and following up with purchase, also add in how much you enjoyed working with them. At the end of that email you will add your business listing link so that they can easily go and review your business. The goal is to make the review process as easy as possible. You do not want to burden your web reviewer but you want to encourage them to give you honest reviews. Once you start getting the reviews your rankings will increase along with customer trust.

This is just the beginning of what it takes to outrank your competitors and drive leads. If you would like more information or have any questions please feel free to email me at matt@theseovoice.com . You can also visit me online for free seo tips and more.

About the author: Matthew Smith has been working professionally in the SEO industry for over five years – working for both small and large SEO firms and now work at Dell doing what he loves. Matthew can be contacted on Twitter @smith_matthew or on LinkedIn.

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Whether you are new to real estate, or a true veteran – the expertise you have is one of the key things that sets you apart.

Here are a few simple keys to help build your credibility and expertise online:

1. Consider creating a “how to” video.
One of the most popular phrases searched for on YouTube or Google is “how to.” That means that if you want your video to be found by the most people, make sure you use the words “how to” in the title of the video. In terms of the content for the video, think about some of the questions you most commonly get from your clients. Think of the tabs on your website – I bet you have information on site such as:

• Getting your home ready for market
• Pricing your home right
• What to look for in a Realtor®
• Who pays for what (closing costs, etc)
• Why you should stage your home
• When is the best time to go on the market

Any one of those topics could be quick 30-45 second videos. You could easily shoot a short video and edit it with a Flip Cam or the Kodak PlayTouch. Upload it to YouTube and then post it on your Facebook page, web site, blog, etc.

Quick Video Tips:

• When you shoot your video practice what you are going to say a couple times before you shoot it and keep it short and to to the point – under a minute is best!
• Make sure you start your video with something like:

“Hi this is ____ from ______ (company)”

This is very important because video (especially if done right) becomes viral, so when your video gets forwarded around, you want people to know who you are and how they can reach you!

2. Answer questions online. There are tons of places where people are asking questions about real estate. Here are a few of  my favorite:

• LinkedIn Answers
• Trulia Voices
• Zillow Advice
• Quora
• Your own Facebook page!

Each of these is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your expertise – whether it is with 1st time home buyers, luxury listings, vacation/second homes, people downsizing, REOs/short sales, etc. You can also speak to your expertise within a certain county, city or community.

Create an account at one of these sites and then search for relevant questions. Try to make it a point to answer one to two questions per day based on your expertise. The key, just like anything else is time. I recommend starting with just one site and getting your feet wet. If it’s something you are comfortable with then spend more time on there or expand your expertise to the other sites I mentioned.

3. Publish content that is “evergreen.”
One of the best things you can do is to create a piece of content that is “evergreen” – meaning it has a very long shelf life. Consider writing a paper on something you are the expert at – something people ask you all the time. Perhaps you create a white paper, or a short PDF – something that is uniquely you.

You can leverage this in many ways. You can keep it on your website or blog or use it as a “carrot” for people to sign up for your email newsletter. You could easily take one of the topics mentioned above and expand upon them in a 1-2 page document that becomes your evergreen content.

One last thing…

Nothing turns off more people than touting “I am the expert!”Instead, use these tools to prove your expertise without actually having to say you are the expert. Actions speak louder than words, right?!

I’d love your feedback on this subject. Have you done any of the above? Leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News @katielance

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Guest blog post by David Cummins co-founder of Faceified

Frequently updated Twitter account? Check. Slick Facebook Page? Check. Dedicated YouTube channel? Check.

Here’s the thing: your potential customers don’t go to these respective social media sites looking to buy or rent property.

Let me repeat, buyers don’t shop on social media sites!

While having a strong social media presence enhances your personal brand, social media should be utilized as a compliment to your other online marketing efforts. Selection is what attracts buyers. When it comes to breadth of selection of real estate on the web, Craigslist reigns supreme.

Below I will discuss how cross-promoting, personalizing, and measuring your listings’ performance will help you build your online reputation and generate more leads on classifieds sites like Craigslist. I will also describe how Faceified can help you get started generating more leads.

Cross-promotion: Show buyers what you’ve got. Before potential customers even begin to care about your brand or reputation, they want to feel like you might have the property they are looking for. If you don’t have what buyers want, they’re on to the next listing. The best way to give buyers that warm a fuzzy feeling is to use each listing as a window into as many of your other listings as possible.

Cross-promoting your listings will maximize the number your listings that each person sees and increase the number of leads you generate. When someone views one of your listing, this should just be the tip of the iceberg. Make it easy for interested parties to discover your other listings.

Personalization: Buyers want to see the person & reputation behind the listing. Once you’ve demonstrated to buyers that you have one or more properties that roughly fits their requirements, buyers will then ask themselves “can I trust this real estate agent?” Your reputation is your biggest asset, and you should proactively use it to help you sell.

Just like in the offline world, your face and reputation should be visible and accessible from all of your listings. It isn’t enough to have static testimonials tucked away on your website or ratings scattered around the web. Your reputation must be consolidated, portable, and visible in all of your listings. Buyers looking at your listings want to see your face, read reviews from your past customers, and get a sense of who you are via your social media presences while they are looking at your listings (i.e. in the buying mood). Make it easy for them to do that!

Performance: Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. While it is true that it doesn’t cost anything to post listings on many classifieds sites, that doesn’t mean that posting is free. Your time is valuable, so it is important to clearly understand which strategies for posting to classifieds sites move the needle and which ones are holding you back.

A classifieds listing is an ad. Like any other online advertiser, you should be constantly measuring the performance of your listings. Many real estate agents know how many phone calls they get per day but not much else. For instance, do you know how many views each of your listings receives? Do you know which title or body generates the most interest from buyers?

Without this type of insight, it’s impossible to know if the 5 calls you got yesterday is a good yield or not. Actively measuring, testing, tweaking, and optimizing your classifieds listings is essential for making the most efficient use of your time and generating more leads online.

Ok, I get it. How do I get started? We built a free tool called Faceified to help you generate more leads by personalizing each listing, cross-promoting and measuring listing performance, and unlocking your online reputation with customer reviews.

Here’s how it works:

1. Personalize your classifieds listings with your Faceified Seal. Inserting your Seal into all of your listings will bring instant personalization to your listings, helping you to stand out. Simply create a Faceified account (it’s free), fill in your profile information, and copy the code of your Faceified Seal. It takes 2 minutes.

Paste your Seal code into your Craigslist listings, and your Seal will be visible to buyers

People who view your listings can click on your Seal to read your profile information on Faceified and discover your social media presences on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more.

2. Cross-Promote your listings and track performance. People who click on your Seal are able to see all of your other listings that also contain your Seal. Inserting your Seal into as many of your listings as possible enables you to expose you listings to as many people as possible, maximizing the leads you generate.

You will also be able to see valuable analytics data about your listings (i.e. # a views today, # of views overall, etc.), which will help you to tweak and optimize your listing performance.

3. Enhance your reputation by requesting reviews from customers. No reputation is complete without reviews. Potential customers love to hear what your past customers say about you.

Use Faceified to request reviews from your past customers. When buyers click on your Seal they’ll be able to read real reviews from your past customers, increasing trust and helping you to stand out. You have complete control over who reviews you.

Now it is time for you to get busy building your reputation and generating more leads by personalizing, cross-promoting, and tracking the performance of your listings. Give Faceified a try www.faceified.com and let us know what you think.

Feel free to send your thoughts, comments, and suggestions to support@faceified.com

About the author: David Cummins is an entrepreneur and co-founder, along with Manyu Lui, of Silicon Valley-based Faceified ( www.faceified.com ).  Faceified is a service that helps real estate agents unlock their reputations and generate more leads on classifieds sites.  You can follow Faceified on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/faceified

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Guest post by Joe Salcedo with Chase International in Reno, Nevada.

Imagine a business – a real world business – that offers ABC service, where “ABC” is something very specific and unambiguous.  Whenever this new business introduces themselves to new clients, they always explain “we’re in the ABC business” or “we offer ABC” and the text on their website, print marketing and elsewhere reflects this.

Now consider that this business has competitors.

Likely, thousands of them and all those competitors are also saying “we’re in the ABC business” because, well, that is THE way to describe what they’re offering.

At that point, the company that owns ABC.com or ABC.appropriateCCTLD (country code top level domain) has a MASSIVE advantage.

Never in the history of real estate can an unknown agent catapult herself into the arms of a pre-determined market need.

This is where prime real estate domains give you unprecedented edge, because these terms are what home buyers are searching for via search engines.

After all, their URL matches what they do, so whenever somebody sees the URL they already know what service they can expect to find there. There’s no need to start the marketing dialogue with “We’re coined-brand-name, and we offer ABC”.  Suddenly, you’ve slashed your marketing budget, as you’re piggybacking on the “train of thought” of their new and existing customers, who are looking for a company that offers “ABC”. 

In 2007, a very well known and respected agent in Reno ushered me into her office to prod me why I wasn’t advertising at Homes and Land.  She told me that people needed to know about the brand “Joe Salcedo” and if people didn’t know I was still in the market, how can they do business with me. She made sense; problem was it costs $800 to get a full page ad that ran for only two months.  I didn’t have a budget but it got me thinking: “in the presence of our colleagues here in the office there’s no way I could compete with the brand of this well known, loved and respected agent, but outside our office doors she really didn’t have much of an advantage over me.  Nobody really knew who we were.”

That same day, I dropped all my print advertising and marketing projects and decided to go all-or- nothing in building my online presence.  My goal was to build my brand, at the same time target generic real estate searches that buyers typed in search engines. 

My plan was three-fold:

1. Research what my potential buyers were actively searching for
2. Build remarkable content around it
3. Make every effort for people to find it.

Hence, my first site: “A Reno real estate agent who lost $50,000 is on a mission to understand the market just a little bit better.”    I wrote every day and pretended that people were actually reading it.  I researched about keywords, links and later on invested in a new site design.  It took me a year before I got the leads; but boy was it quality.

But one thing I learned that I wish I knew when I started: invest in the best domain you can find. It’s worth it.  It’s market defining.  It’s instant respect.  And because a successful real estate site is achieved through great content and marketing it, a solid domain name can cut your marketing expenses by half.

It’s also important never to lose sight of the fact that a URL is not just useful online. It could be used to show up in TV and radio ads, newspaper and magazine ads, press releases, news stories, on invoices and packing slips, on the side of vans and fleet vehicles, on billboards and posters, and in potentially hundreds of other distinct types of location.

In every single instance, it will be easier for a new customer (who’s got the idea of needing ABC in the back of their mind) to remember ABC.com/ABC.cctld than ANY other conceivable URL! Basically, you’re dropping the seven repetitions that are typically needed to make a marketing message sink in down to one.

How to search for demand:

• Seobook keyword suggestion tool (free, but requires registration).
• Google adwords tool
  

Note: real world testing is a lot better, these tools could give misleading numbers.

Here’s where you can start finding domains

• Godaddy.com (sometimes you can still find decent domains for $9, only for low to medium competitive markets)
• Robert Schilling’s massive inventory (expensive but he has some of the best names in the business. Reno realestate.net’s asking price was $24,000)
• Sedo.com (has some good names for reasonable prices.  Most of the names you can bid on)
• Buydomains.com (good secondary market seller.  Can give great discounts if company owns the name)
• Afternic.com (can help you search for the sellers who owns domains you like)
• Memorable domains (some of the best .co.uk domain names for $2,000)

Additional thoughts:

• Let the domain age. Start building now. Put up a basic WordPress site, host it on your host server (like pair.com), put up decent content and point a dozen links to it (directory and blogs).  Google trusts older domains.
• If you’re curious what American Real Estate terms are usually searched for: (city name and area precedes these terms):    “__Homes”, “ _____Real Estate”, “ _______Homes For Sale.”  “Real Estate” seems to be the most expensive and sought after.
• In moderately competitive markets you don’t necessarily have to invest in generic real estate terms.  In many low to medium competitive markets you can build a branded name and point targeted links to it (“Boise Foreclosures Guy”).  And that could pull rank.
• Long tail keywords (“Reno Short Sale Expert”) are the most profitable and easy to rank for.

In conclusion, real estate has been depressed the past 4 years. Realtors and brokers are gun shy and have remained passive in their marketing.  Now is the time to search for good deals.  I just bought a Nevada related major keyword for less than $700.  It has an estimated 800 searches a day on Google alone (broad search).  Even at less than 10% of that volume, I still can get 80 searches/day on just one keyword.

About the author: Joe is more fascinated with business models than supermodels.  He writes for a Reno real estate blog since 2007 and is currently experimenting on his brand new domain Lake Tahoe Real Estate.

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When I saw FOREM’s founder Joel Burslem on the Real Estate Connect NYC agenda, I knew it was a “must see” session. Joel gave a fantastic presentation on email marketing entitled “Email is not dead – The un-sexy but massively powerful tool marketers and communicators must master.”

I agree that email is definitely not dead – especially in the real estate industry. If I was a real estate agent today, I would make sure before I got on Facebook or Twitter, that one of my top priorities would be to set up a simple monthly email newsletter to my clients and sphere of influence. In 2011 – it is simpler than ever and there really are no excuses for not making this happen.

There were 5 key points that really stood out to me in Joel’s presentation:

1. “Forward this email to others.” In the body of the email include the text, “forward this email to others” as well as a call to action to subscrbe to the list (as people forward it, you want there to be a call to action for people to sign up.) Simple!

2. Test different designs and use a professional email platform (stop using Outlook!) Joel suggested two websites: Litmus.com and PreviewMyEmail.com to test and view different email designs and how they will be viewed in Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. I found this to be extremely important because so often emails that look one way in one account, look completely different in another email account. Didn’t realize this happens? Oh yes – it happens all the time!!

The beauty of technology today is you don’t need to hire a web designer to have awesome looking email marketing templates. Invest in a professional email platform like Mail Chimp, Campaign Monitor or Tiny Letter. Why? They guarantee delivery and they can track your open rates, click throughs and forwards. STOP using Outlook for your email marketing! You may not realize this but many times emails coming from Outlook get blocked or end up in junk mail.

3. Always be asking yourself, “How can I grow my list?” This is a great reminder for any real estate professional. 100 top-quality people that know and trust you are worth 100 times more than a list of 1000 names you purchased or acquired. Personally, if I were a real estate agent, I would look at every opportunity to grow my lists: associations I belong to, colleagues, friends of friends, mom’s clubs, people I meet and connect with on Facebook and Twitter, open houses, networking events, and the list goes on and on. My advice – set a goal: how many people are on your list now and how many could you have by June 1? How about Dec. 1?

Are you saying right now, “oh I really need to update my list” – well join the club! I think every real estate agent says this. Be the agent that does something about it. Spend 2 hours on a Sunday and clean up your list. Get it all into a database or at a minimum into Excel. You can’t start and email campaign without a list!

4. When you’re writing your emails, you should always ask yourself, “Who gives a shit?!” Joel actually did say this on stage and I absolutely love this. So many times in emails we go on, and on, and on, and on. Sometimes I feel like saying “is anyone out there? is anyone listening?” (“Bueller…. Bueller….. Bueller…..:)”)  Hire a professional writer if you need to for your email newsletters – just get it done!

5. Write killer headlines – obsess over it. Half of the reason people click on an email is because of who it’s from and the other half because of the subject line. Think of how you go through and delete emails – don’t you do the same thing? So don’t write something boring!

If you are an Inman Premium Member, you can watch Joel’s entire presentation here >>

Do you have any email marketing tips you’d like to share or just have a comment? I’d love your feedback below!

Stay tuned for more from Connect NYC!

Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News @katielance

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It’s late Sunday night as I write this, and I’m getting ready for the week ahead – the week post-Connect NYC. Among the stack of business cards and receipts are tons of notes taken in New York last week. These notes will turn into multiple FOREM blog posts because there was simply too much good content to put it all into one blog post.

This is me in Times Square last week for Connect NYC (I had one glove off so I could use my iPhone!)

Earlier today, I logged onto our site, Inman.com, to watch some of the Connect videos that had been uploaded. Some of the videos are already up on our site, and many more will be up there later this week. One of the things I love about coming home after Connect is being able to sit back, in the comfort of my own home, and watch videos from the sessions that I either a) missed or b) loved so much that I needed to see them again.

Here’s a 1 minute “freebie” to give you an idea of what Connect was all about!

I want to take a moment and give a completely unabashed plug for becoming an Inman Premium Member if only for the sole purpose of watching the Connect videos. I was blown away this year by so many of our speakers and panelists. And quite frankly, the content is so, so good.

As I was watching Brad Inman’s inspiring opening address about Central Park, and then David Carr’s (NY Times) completely candid, brutally honest and poignant message on stage, to Adam Hirsch’s (Mashable) humble manner and voice of real estate tech experience (who knew not only was he a total tech guru but has a real estate background?!) – I felt utterly compelled to whip open my computer and urge all of you reading to invest in an Inman Premium Membership. As you know I work for Inman News, but let me tell you from the bottom of my heart, that I think becoming a Premium Member is one of the best investments you can make in your business this year. It’s only $149 for a yearly membership. For basically $149 you can watch the entire conference online! Regardless if you were came to Connect or not, I highly, highly recommend that you become a member today – and of course in addition to the videos, you get a ton of other awesome benefits.

So, for this 1st post-Connect blog post, I’d like to share some of my big take-aways from one of my favorite parts of the conference – the Internet Marketing Workshop:

1. The first session in this workshop was all about web copy and forms – and getting right on target with our copy and forms. Now, I’m sure you’re thinking – “forms” – really?? Sounds boring right? I found this to be such a refreshing topic and so important for real estate brokers and agents to soak up.

• The first speaker was Kevin Hale, co-founder of Wufoo – a products that helps to create forms, payments and event registrations without knowing a single piece of HTML. Kevin did a fantastic job talking about forms and the psychology involved when someone fills out a form online and essentially becomes a lead for you. (side note: if you have never watched the 1000 Watt Consulting video “I am not a lead” you need to do so now – awesome, awesome reminder).
• Kevin talked a great deal about how to optimize forms on your website or blog, looking at label placement (single column v. double column), how many fields you should have, ‘page nation’ (having one page of forms or multiple), buttons, incentives (he recommended checking out RewardLevel.com which offers coupons or free services you can offer as incentives for your web visittors to fill out a form.), and the psychology when someone gets to your site to fill out a form.
• He recommended two sites I plan on checking out: ABTests.com and VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com – both help you determine what areas of improvement you have for your site and where your people are more likely to click!

2. Next up was Natalie Tomasso a journalist from WhichTestOne.com. Their whole site is devoted to showing marketers examples of AB tests, and asks the question “how good is your gut?” – which I think is brilliant!!

• Natalie talked about what true AB testing is -  to take your traffic and split it into two equal segments at the same time, and show them two different landing pages.
• She recommended Google Website Optimizer which is free (gotta love free!) to do this type of AB testing. She said the goal is to get a higher conversion rate with the same amount of traffic. I like that!
• As I’m sitting in this session I think this is a huge opportunity for real estate agents and brokers. After working in a real estate brokerage for many years, I know first hand that many website design decisions are made to make the agent happy, or for no other reason than it is “good enough” – but more often than not, it is a big guessing game, like playing a game of darts – and just hoping they stick to something. By taking the time to do AB tests, agents and brokers could have a true sense of what text or buttons makes the most sense and which ones convert!
• Are you getting a good amount of traffic but have a terrible conversion rate? Or wonder why no one is filling out your forms on  your site or contacting you? Then perhaps there is something simple you can change about your test. I encourage agents to do this – and if you do, please keep me posted, I’d love to hear your resutls!

And for those of you reading this that say ,“Well, most of my business comes from past clients and referrals and I don’t really get a lot of web traffic”…… to you, I say this: “WHAT IF YOU DID!!”

What if you did get more traffic?

What if for every 100 people that came to your site you were able to add 5 more into your database to market to? What if you had a strong referral business and a strong “lead” machine coming from your web site?

One of the best parts about Connect NYC is that it is in January – a time to give youself a fresh clean slate. I challenge you to make this the year you fix your website (say ‘no’ to bad clip art!) AND you start getting business from it!!

I have so many more notes to go through – I can’t wait to share them with you… stay tuned – more good stuff to come!

Leave me a comment below – I’d love to hear from you!

Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News @katielance

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Matthew Shadbolt is the Director of Internet Marketing for The Corcoran Group, Manhattan’s largest real estate brokerage.

Follow Matthew on Twitter at @corcoran_group

The web is really good at connecting people. Really good. It’s also incredibly efficient at holding people at a distance. As connected as we are, our attention spans are collectively being pulled in ever increasing directions all day. Attempts to own more aspects of our digital day is becoming the key competitive strategic play of Apple, Google and Facebook.

All week here I’ve advocated problem solving, connecting and helping people as the key driver behind everything that’s done online, and I believe the main way to do this is to have fun. When I think of the things I enjoy about the internet, they are very rarely because they made me think about a business model in a new way, or that I loved the way they worked or even what they looked like. What I love about them, and why I’d repeatedly go back, is because they were fun.

This is where many online marketing strategies struggle. Facebook is fun. Facebook for business is inherently not fun. YouTube is really fun. YouTube for real estate, is very, very rarely fun.

The process of purchasing a home is one of the most terrifying, life-changing and thrilling things you could ever do in your life, especially if you’re a first time buyer. That feeling of opening the door to your new home, taking a deep breath and saying “this is mine” is one of the most incredible things you’ll ever feel. How is this experience being translated online? Is it fun? No. It is checkboxes, drop-downs, and pages and pages of ‘matching listings’.

‘Browsing listings’ is a far cry from ‘finding homes’. It’s like asking someone ‘how’s the market?’ and being presented with an Excel spreadsheet. Sure, there’s been some primitive attempts at ‘lifestyle search’, or ‘visual search’, but nothing that resonates with the real-world process of home buying. One of the main reasons home-purchasing or selling is so intimidating is that it’s essentially NOT fun. How different would it be if it was? This is one of the big lessons the real estate industry can learn from working online. Why do millions of people use social media every day? Because it’s FUN. Why are people NOT visiting your website or your Facebook page, or watching your home tour videos – because they’re NOT fun.

Many of us in the real estate marketing world equate confusion, anxiety and frustration with the technology inherent in using these services. Thankfully, this is a short-term problem. As technology gets smarter, it starts to disappear and become invisible to the user. The iPhone or Facebook’s new messaging service are great examples of this. I can only imagine the intense complexity behind these services, yet it’s not there when I’m looking up restaurants nearby or chatting with friends on the other side of the world. I just don’t care how it works.

This is one of the big challenges for our industry. ‘Browsing listings’ needs to transition into ‘finding homes’, and we’ll hear less and less about the ‘conversion funnel’ and more and more about long term customer advocacy across many different types of platforms. As a truly impatient New Yorker, I can’t wait to see what comes next.

And speaking of truly fun ways of connecting people, here’s an old one, but a great one (32 million views anyone?):

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Matthew Shadbolt is the Director of Internet Marketing for The Corcoran Group, Manhattan’s largest real estate brokerage.

Follow Matthew on Twitter at @corcoran_group

One thing social media comes with a lot of, is advice. And perhaps big numbers. Very, very big numbers. I hear the word ’should’ a lot in conversations about how real estate professionals are shifting their thinking about their online marketing. There’s a lot of conflicting conversations directed at them from ‘gurus’, ‘evangelists’ ‘jedis’ and ‘ninjas’. I was recently presented with a business card that read ‘Sales Assassin’. Really? I asked if it was supposed to read ‘Sales Association’ and if there’d been a mix-up at the printers. I received an eye roll for my curiosity.

I hear that “your blog is the cornerstone of your business” or “you really should get into the foursquare thing”, even “if you’re not on Twitter your business is dead in 3 years”. Very often the agent is left feeling confused, overwhelmed and simply not knowing where to start. Is this you?

A side effect of this conflicting advice is the multiplication of problems that never existed before. Many agents feel like they have to ‘be everywhere’ in order to reach as many people as possible, so they start a blog, set up a fan page, begin a twitter account, upload videos, check-in everywhere, and generally do as many things as they possibly can to distract themselves from the process of helping people find homes. What happens is the multiplication and syndication of bad content. Poorly maintained blogs, fan pages that cry out to be hidden, adding open houses to Foursquare, or video tours that speak more about the agent than the home are unfortunately rampant within online real estate.

What’s missing in this conversation is consideration of the unfortunate recipient. The value of your content is not its value to you as the creator, but its value to those people RECEIVING those messages. It’s an old idea, but one very much brought to light recently through social media. If you’re not solving business problems through doing this, why are you really doing it?

Take status updates in Facebook or Twitter. If you’ve elected to use those platforms to build your business, what is the real, lasting value of what you’re writing? Is there one? How interesting is it REALLY that you have an open house this Sunday? Or that you checked-in at your office and blasted that announcement to all your connected social platforms?

It’s one of the hardest things we struggle with as marketers – the transition from ’selling’ to ‘helping’ as the key metric for your marketing success. It’s not a print vs. web thing, or even a web vs. mobile thing. It’s not how many fans you have, but what they’re doing, especially amongst themselves. It’s ‘how many people did we really help today’. We often hear the discussion of attempting to quantify the ROI of social media. Helping people isn’t the same as a transaction, and this makes people understandably nervous. Helping people doesn’t immediately pay the bills.

But which is more powerful for your business in the long-term? Answering someone’s question about a neighborhood, or showing them the same banner ad 50 times? Sharing information about where to buy the groceries they love nearby to an apartment they’re interested in, or a 4 line open house announcement in the newspaper?

Banner programs will drive a large volume of people into your site, especially if you buy them in a smart way. But what happens to those visitors once they arrive? Think about the metrics you look at when dissecting an ad program. A 0.2% click through rate is considered very, very healthy. 0.2%! And the likelihood of those people simply bouncing in and out of your site as they go between brokerage and syndication sites is all too common.

In many ways what we see make strong online presences is what real estate professionals have always done best. Sharing local expertise, personalized customer service, and the notion of genuinely helping someone find a fantastic home. Working online is no different, whatever the platform. So the idea of doing one thing well instead of 20 things poorly becomes something that many have begun to think about. Stretched too thin from a content perspective, many have elected to pick a platform, and build their businesses in a more focused, strategic and problem solving way.

Ask yourself, you’re doing a lot of things that are sucking your time right now. What problems are you really solving by doing this work?

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