Guest blogger Jay Thompson is the designated broker and co-owner of Thompson’s Realty in Phoenix, AZ. You can find his award-winning blog at PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com. His latest blogging adventure is RealEstateBlogPro.com.

Do you ever wonder what and where people are clicking on your website or blog?

You should be wondering.

Most people have some sort of traffic analytics installed (Google Analytics, SiteMeter and Get Clicky are popular) – as you should. These programs will help you understand how people find your site, where they come from, and where they go to. But they do not always tell you what people do when they get to your site.

And what people do once they land on your site is critical. After all, you can have all the traffic in the world, but if they don’t do something that ultimately allows you to “capture” them as a potential prospect and “convert” them to a client, then what is the point in having a real estate web site?

Enter the heat map.

A heat map is a visual representation of where people click on a web page. Darker/more intense colors indicate a greater amount of clicks.

Here is a heat map for my blog’s home page for the first two weeks of September:

Note the areas that I outlined in red. They show a high density of visitor clicks. Given that clicks in all these areas will lead a visitor to a home search – which is exactly where I want them to go – this is a good thing.

Yes, my Google Analytics will tell me that a lot of people go to the home search. But what Google Analytics won’t tell me is where on the page people click to in order to get to the home search. A prime example is in the “Quick Home Search” area, which is outlined in red on the right sidebar in the image above. That quick search used to be located further down the sidebar. I noticed, via my heat map, that not many people were clicking on it. So I relocated that widget to the top of the sidebar and the clicks increased dramatically.

Heat maps are a fabulous tool for testing placement of design elements.

Another use for heat maps is finding where people are clicking but with no result. The last thing you want is for a site visitor to click something and have nothing happen. This frustrates visitors, and a frustrated website visitor will swiftly leave your site.

Here’s a perfect example. The theme and skin I use for my blog places an image for the most recent post alongside a snippet of text. By looking at my heat maps, I noticed a lot of people were clicking on that image:

The problem is, when people clicked that image nothing happened. They were expecting to be taken to the article, but they got nothing. So I added some code that would send the visitor to the full article when the image was clicked. A few minutes of work and we now have fewer frustrated site visitors.
Without a heat map, I never would have known how many people were clicking on that image.

So, how do I get a heat map for my site?

There are a few options for adding heat map capability to your site analysis arsenal.

ClickHeat: The images above are generated from ClickHeat, an Open Source (free) software program from LabsMedia. Installation can be a little tricky for the novice, as you have to upload files to your server in addition to placing some code on your pages. ClickHeat doesn’t have the depth of features available on the more commercial products listed below. On the plus side, there are no limits on the number of clicks and pages you can monitor with ClickHeat.

Crazy Egg: Crazy Egg is a very polished, very powerful heat map generator. Installation is straightforward: Crazy Egg will generate a small piece of code that you need to place on every page you want monitored (if you’re installing on a WordPress site, placing the generated code in your footer.php file will put the code on every page). They have various account levels based on visitors and number of pages monitored. Prices range from free to $99/month. The free level will track up to 5000 visitors/month on one page

ClickDensity: ClickDensity is very similar to Crazy Egg. Similar installation, features and pricing. Their pricing tiers range from free to $400/month, but their $5/month plan will store 10,000 clicks on unlimited pages – probably the best deal of the pay versions.

Which of these versions you should use depends on your needs. Personally, I want to track a large number of clicks on a large number of pages. So I opt for ClickHeat. It’s not as flexible as Crazy Egg or ClickDensity but I’ll live with that and save $100/month. If you don’t need to track as many visits, why not check them all out and pick the one you like? The free versions of Crazy Egg and Click Density may fit your needs perfectly.

Be careful, heat maps can be addicting…

Are you currently using a heat map on your website? Let us know how you like (or don’t like) that product. Any other tips?

Share on Facebook

Guest blogger Tina Merritt is a Realtor® and Real Estate Trainer in Virginia and recipient of NAR’s Realtor Technology Spotlight Award.

Image courtesy of www.reallyrottenrealty.com

We’ve all been in this situation: you just listed a property and are desperately searching for something…anything…positive to say about the property in an ad designed to entice a buyer. Thanks to the Department of Mathematics at Washington State University and the ConstructionDeal.com Blog for their definitions of real estate terminology.

I have a few of my own to share:

Feel free to comment and add your “definitions”. Have a great weekend and thanks for reading my posts this week!

Share on Facebook

For many real estate agents, starting a blog can be a daunting task. Let me first say this: if you don’t enjoy writing, or it is a chore for you, blogging may not be for you. However, the great thing about blogging is you don’t have to have your Master’s degree in English to write a great blog.

Your blog is your opinion on various subjects.

For real estate agents, your blog will probably include your opinion about your local market area, the communities you serve, local and national real estate laws, local lending trends, opinions about schools and neighborhoods, and much more.

Here are 5 elements to having a successful real estate agent blog:

1. Be consistent. One of the most important elements to blogging is to write consistently. When I first started blogging for FOREM, one thing that made a huge difference, was setting a blog schedule. For me, I am committed to 3 blog posts a week. By having that commitment, it makes it a priority for me. It also lets my readers know that I am serious about this blog, and readers more likely to follow it because they know content will be fresh! Tip: Look at your calendar and schedule 2 to 3 days a week that you will post your blog posts. Factor in the time needed to write, edit and publish.

2. Post local content. If I was a real estate agent, one of my blog posts every week would be a fun fact about the community or fun community event going on in the area. You hear it time and time again, but being the local source of great content is key. Still don’t think there is value in local content? If you haven’t already, check out this Facebook page started by a Realtor in Washington – all those posts originate from his blog. Did you see how many fans he has? As of right now, he has almost 9,000 fans! That’s the power of local content. Tip: Get local content from chamber web sites, downtown association web sites and your local newspaper online.

3. Post market stats BUT in an easy to understand way. Let’s face it: charts, graphs and an excessive amount of numbers are not very exciting for most of us. So post great market stats, but keep it to a couple graphs. The KEY is to add your opinion and your input to the market data. What trends do you see? What are some great finds you saw on Brokers Tour? What are your clients saying they are looking for. The story behind any stat is what makes a blog post engaging to read! Tip: Get local market stats from your local MLS, regional association, or from Altos Research – one of my favorite market stat companies for agents.

4. Do not post negative posts. There are many schools of thoughts about what type of blog posts to post – but in my experience it is best to ‘take the high road’ and not use your real estate blog for your ’soapbox’ of negative experiences. Keep it positive and people will respect you even more. Tip: If you aren’t sure whether to post something or not, write it, save it as a draft, and re-visit it the next day. Giving time to mull over a blog post gives you time to think if it is worth publishing.

5. Promote it! You can’t just ‘build it and it will come!’ You need to make sure you are promoting every blog post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and through your email list. For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn you should re-post your blog post 3-5 times. I know many people think it is a “no no” to repeat content but I completely disagree – just ask Guy Kawasaki who notoriously repeats content on his Twitter stream. By re-posting your blog posts 3-5 times on these channels throughout the course of 2-3 days, your web traffic will be much higher. Remember, most people are only on their social networks for pockets of time throughout the day – so if you promote your blog on Facebook in the morning – you may be missing afternoon traffic.  Tip: Use Hootsuite – you can integrate your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles AND control what day/time your post goes out. Once you have your blog post done, log into Hootsuite and post a quick message with your link to your blog post and schedule the same message 3-5 times over the next 2 days. Here is a great blog post about all the things you can accomplish with Hootsuite, including some exciting new updates that happened this week.

Bonus: Want to see some great real estate agent examples? Check out this blog post Stacey Harmon just posted with examples of 32 real estate agent blog sites!

Do you have a blog you’d like to share? Do you have any tips to add to this list? I would love your feedback, please leave me a comment below!

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

Share on Facebook

Check out the Blogger’s Connect keynote speech by Curbed.com’s Lockhart Steele.

Share on Facebook

ActiveRain, the popular real estate social networking platform, has launched what it’s calling “Outside Blogs” – a new feature that lets AR members take their content outside of the walled-garden of the ActiveRain ecosystem.

From their blog post announcing the sneak preview:

A few of the highlights of our outside blog platform:
* You will be able to host your blog on your own domain. For example, you can have your posts feed to bobisgreat.com if you own that domain.
* You will be able to customize the look and feel of your blog.
* It’s easy to set up your outside blog. You can be up and running in less than 15 minutes.
* You will be able to build your posts in ActiveRain. You won’t have to learn a new platform.
* You will be able to decide where you want your posts to publish. Do you just want your outside blog to be about local content pertinent to your local market? You will be able to decide which posts go where. Send your local market reports to your outside blog. Send your real estate industry related posts to ActiveRain. The choice is yours.
* You will be able to benefit from the SEO knowledge and power of ActiveRain.
* You will be able to brand your own blog while at the same time staying connected with the ActiveRain community. Your comments will be syndicated between your ActiveRain blog and your outside blog.

This makes a lot of sense, as it lets bloggers move beyond the sandbox that ActiveRain currently provides. Until now, many budding real estate bloggers cut their chops on ActiveRain before seeking other alternatives (Wordpress, Typepad etc.) that allow them to move their blogging onto their own domain. Outside Blogs (needs a new name) allows them set out on their own yet retain their pre-existing content and still leverage the feel-good aspects of the ActiveRain community.

ActiveRain has slowly been rolling out features that begin to answer the lingering question of how they intend to monetize their flourishing community. ActiveRain Ads were the first step; Outside Blogs are, presumably, the next step.

Costs for this new feature, as yet, are un-announced.

Share on Facebook

Monitoring your web site statistics is an important part of maintaining an online presence and there are many excellent tools you can use to keep track of your raw traffic numbers (see Statistics and Analytics: Tools).

But traffic isn’t everything however. For content producers in niche verticals (like real estate) – numbers alone can’t and don’t tell the whole story. Basically it reduces to the old quantity versus quality argument – does have a lot readers mean more than having the right reader?

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around one for the last couple of weeks. What are the measures of success for a blog and what metrics can be used to keep track of them?

Technorati authority, Alexa rank, Google PageRank (see Signaling A Retreat From Multi-Author Blogs), inbound links, indexed pages are all metrics one can consider – but none offer the definitive answer. For more on this, SEOMoz has a get breakdown on How to Use Search Engines & Web Data to Conduct Competitive Brand Analysis.

One stat I’m personally paying more and more attention to is the number of RSS subscribers a site has. Why? Because it signals the audience’s engagement/loyalty to the blog.

As a publisher, RSS stats are hard to come by, but If you use Feedburner to manage your RSS subscriptions, here’s a great tool from Feedperfume (Feed Analysis v1.0) that will give you some in depth reporting on your numbers.

You need to output your Feedburner stats in CSV format (instructions are on the site) and then upload them to FeedPerfume and it will churn out some graphs and do some of the heavy number crunching automatically for you.

By way of example, I’ve embedded the results from FOREM. As a blogger, I find this fantastic information to measure my site’s growth.

• Monthly Increase Range: -92-495 Average Increase / Month: 156
• Total Increase(Last 3 Months): 591 Monthly Increase(Last 3 Months): 197

Growth Rate

• Growth Rate (Last Month): 12.65%
• Average Subscribers (Current Month): 3,117
• Predicted Subscribers After 3 Months: 4,456
• Predicted Subscribers After 6 Months: 6,369
• Predicted Subscribers After 12 Months: 13,016

• Best Day of A Week: Friday
• Worst Day of A Week: Saturday

What other metrics are you paying attention to these days?

[poll=3]

(h/t) Problogger

Share on Facebook

Here’s something that will really “bake your noodle“. I’m blogging about a video blog of bloggers talking about blogging.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jla2jOkA96s[/youtube]

Courtesy of Dan Green, Bring the Blog.

Technorati Tags: real estate bloggers, real estate blog, blogging

Share on Facebook

I unwittingly set off a firestorm of comments on my post about the impact of Google’s PageRank shift and my (mumbling) musings how it might affect traffic generating efforts like blog carnivals (see Is the link party over?).

by cromacom

But as I read more and more on the subject – one thing became increasingly clear. PageRank doesn’t really matter any more. Hear hear. I rarely ever checked my blog’s PageRank and care even less about PageRanks of the blogs that I read and link to frequently.

by Murfomurf

But amidst all the navel-gazing (bloggers talking to bloggers about blogging) that Google’s move provoked, a few more sacred cows in blogging have started to be questioned as well. One oft-touted maxim is that posting often is the secret to blogging success.

Marketing Profs wrote a stellar post challenging this widely held view on Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore. To sum up:

What will matter more and more is what you write and how you engage, not how often you write. As the blogosphere matures, the measure of success will shift from traffic to reader loyalty.

The RSS subscriber count has become the new PageRank.

One tactic that’s been used often to build post frequency has been the creation of multi-author blogs. The equation seemed quite simple. More writers = more posts = greater search engine presence = more traffic.

Tech blogging is chock full of examples of multi-author blogs. Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, etc.

The real estate blogosphere is no different, and the multi-author blog seems to have become the trend-de-jour (FOREM is guilty as charged). Perhaps this can all be traced back to Dustin Luther’s ground-breaking work building RainCityGuide.

But as this medium matures, personally I find myself retreating from multi-author blogs – simply because the volume of posts is far too frequent. I can’t keep up.

I surrender.

by fulmini & saette

In many cases, multi-author blogs = more noise. And more noise seems to me to be contrary to building reader loyalty. How many times a day do I find myself J’ing through Google Reader or clicking Shift-A just to make all the new posts on some of these blogs go away?

Looking deeper at my own consumption habits (Google Reader’s Trends can tell you what you’ve reading), I find that more and more I’m being drawn back to the single voices; trying to find the authorities, the personalities, the perspective. In real estate, I’m drawn to the Jeff Corbetts (XBroker), Jonathan Millers (Matrix), Michael Wurzers (FBS Blog) and Jeff Turners (Turner’s Perspective). Outside this space, it’s the Seth Godins (Seth’s Blog), Jeff Jarvises (BuzzMachine) and Greg Sterlings (Screenwerk) that keep me coming back.

And that’s the heart of the problem I’m starting to think comes with multi-author blogs. They bury the individual voices.

That’s not to say there aren’t still some great voices to be found in multi-author blogs. But I sure wish there were a way to filter them out rather than having to sift through all the white noise.

by sonicdoubt

I’d love to be able just to get Mike Arrington’s perspective on TC or Marshall Kirkpatrick’s posts from RWW or Pete Cashmore’s contributions to Mashable for example and cut out all the rest.

To use a (loose) analogy – I’d liken many multi-author blogs right now to my local cable company. They’re bundling an awful lot of channels in my cable package that I don’t want.

One thing that would help if more multi-author blogs feeds aped the a la carte cable model (which is sadly lacking right now too), or like podcast subscriptions in iTunes. These blogs ought to clearly let me pick and choose the authors I want and bundle a unique feed for me based on my selections – not just stuff everything down a pipe at me.

Am I way off in my assessment? Has anyone else felt overwhelmed? I know Disruptive RE Broker does.

Share on Facebook

[Ed. Note] Erik Hersman, formerly of Realty Thoughts, joins FOREM as a contributing author today. Erik been blogging about technology in the real estate space for a couple years and he now works as an independent blogging and social media consultant, operating out of Florida.  You can also find him on an Orlando-focused real estate blog called Roofable. 

Widgets and third-party tools on your blog can be useful to your readers. However, anyone who has been blogging for any time realizes that they are a tricky thing to deal with. Limited space means that we all have to balance usefulness, value, fun and quantity in that ever-so-small sidebar.

There’s definitely no “right” answer for which tools you should use, but I submit that there are some guidelines you should follow:

Relevance
Whether you are a broker, agent, vendor, pundit or real estate blogger of some other type, you will each have different angles and need. Make sure that the tools you put in that precious space are relevant to your site.

Value
Every time you see a shiny new widget that you covet for your blog, first ask yourself how useful it is for your readers and yourself. If it will be rarely used, then you should probably think twice about adding it. Your most valuable website real estate should have your most valuable information and/or tools.

Let’s run through the items that you are likely have in your sidebar buy default:

• Blogroll
• RSS feed
• Categories
• Archive
• Recent comments
• Recent posts
• Search

(can you feel that screen real estate shrinking?)

A couple that you might consider using, though this is highly relative depending upon why you blog – and PLEASE don’t use them all…

• Chat – Plugoo or Meebo
• Listings – vFlyer or Postlets
• Market stats – Altos Research, Trulia or Bankrate.com
• Community – MyBlogLog, Flickr or Technorati Links
• Feed Subscription by Email – Feedburner
• Of course, you might also have ads, or your own widget if you’re a vendor.

Share on Facebook

The guys at 1000Watt Consulting have mapped out the full spectrum of Real Estate 2.0 companies to create a (near) complete map of the Real Estate 2.0 universe. Print it out and stick it on your wall so you can see who should be on your radar screen.

Many of the old guard are there; Redfin, Zillow and Trulia, but so are some of the young turks; WellcomeMat, Vflyer, Realtyger, Real Estate Shows and Active Rain, proving you don’t need to have millions in VC financing to make an impact in this space.

Inc.com just finished a comprehensive look at entrepreneurialism in the U.S. and released a list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in America.

You can view the rankings sequentially or, for the first time this year, navigate the list using a Google Maps mashup that plots each company geographically. Of course, you can also browse the list by industry, which give us the top 100 fastest growing private real estate companies.

Interestingly, none of the companies in 1000Watts’ universe made the list and the top three real estate companies were engaged in more “bread and butter” business models; #1 Noble Investment Group (development), #2 Great American Title Agency (title), #3 Atlanta Investing (foreclosures).

Mapping a list geographically seems to be a trend these days. The InmanWiki just launched a map view of its Real Estate Blog Directory. The directory, which has over 580 real estate blogs, has been growing at a fantastic pace and now you can search by city or state for real estate blogs in your hometown. (Full disclosure: I work for Inman News and helped steer this project).

Finally, if you are already feeling overwhelmed by all the places you can post listings online these days, International Listings has put together a list of 37 Places to List a Home where they’ve broken it down into destinations for US, International, Vacation and Luxury homes. If that’s not enough to make your head explode…

Share on Facebook