Future of Real Estate Marketing » Roost

5 Tools to Turbo-Charge Your Social Media

Katie Lance — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:59:06 +0000

Guest Blogger Alex Cortez is a Realtor in Hawaii, specializing in Maui Condos. Visit his Maui Real Estate Blog for local market information.

The importance of social media in a real estate professional’s marketing plan is undeniable. And although there are many different approaches as to how to best implement a strategy, the need to streamline the SM integration process on a day-to-day basis grows constantly. Below I have listed 5 tools that have helped me tremendously in effectively managing time and increasing efficiency. Use one, a combination thereof, or all of them!

1. Tweetdeck – Initially made as a desktop application for Twitter, now it has grown to incorporate Facebook, Myspace, Linked In, and the most recent updates include Google Buzz and Foursquare. The purpose of Tweetdeck is to connect the user with contacts across different social media outlets, allowing you to tweet, update Facebook status, change Myspace user moods and much more all from a single application. And the fact that it supports iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad makes it a mobile command center for all your social media needs.

2. Gist – Although still in the beta stage, you can consider this to be your ultimate Customer Relations Management (CRM) for social media. This application allows users to combine contacts across multiple mediums and organize data based on contact priority, thereby providing a full view of your social network. Gist will continue to be my social media CRM of choice, especially as it has an app specifically tailored to work with Gmail.

3. Roost – In order to establish and maintain a successful social media presence it is critical to provide useful/relevant information. The Roost application for Facebook, aptly named Social Real Estate, is a free, easy-to-use tool that gives consumers the information they want and agents the ability to further engage their target audience. Data includes Altos Research market stats, walkability scores, education info, and a market snapshot. Not all real estate markets are available yet, but expect big things from this forward-thinking company.

4. Chatterbox - The more people you follow on Twitter, all the ‘chatter’ makes it more difficult to stay updated on the topics that matter most to you. Chatterbox allows users to organize and prioritize their tweets based on keywords, Twitter handles, tags and an assortment of other criteria. Think of it as your single-point of reference for all your Twittering needs. This tool is of particular use to large real estate brokerages that have strong Twitter presences, as it allows specific areas to be assigned to individual agents who can better engage followers with timely responses and local expertise. Although currently it only works for Twitter, look for other services to be integrated in the future.

5. Social Radar – As the Carolyn Capalbo story has made the RE.net rounds, it illustrates the importance of proactively managing online reputation. Social Radar by Infegy provides users with the ability to get updated information of what is being said about them. It scours the ends of the Internet, literally billions of messages 24/7, so you don’t have to.

As the hours in the day seem to be getting shorter and there are always more things to attend to, it is important to use technological advances to work more efficiently.

I welcome you to post tools that have helped YOU work smarter and more effectively in your social media efforts.

Share on Facebook

Roost Redesign Radically Changes Experience

Joel Burslem — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:41:51 +0000

MLS powered search site Roost launched a brand new redesign last week (see Roost.com announces redesign).

Unfortunately, it undid a lot of what I thought made the old site great. But hopefully we only seeing the first iteration of this next generation site and the site will continue to evolve.

Here are a couple things I picked up on:

Speed. The old Roost used to blaze — it was one of the very fastest search tools out there. Search a zip code and the results would pop up very, very quickly. Now it takes a great deal longer for the results page to return and when changing search filters there is a noticeable lag. Hopefully this is just a hiccup in the database that can get optimized over time.

Photos. In the old Roost – photos thumbnails were inline with the results and you could expand the listing to see more images. Now the photos have been moved off to the side and buried below the map. I like the new slide show option but I really couldn’t get over how they seemed to be so hidden on the page – I kept forgetting to look down there as I clicked through listings. To my mind they would be much better above the map in that right rail.

Listing Details. I love that Roost now hosts all the details themselves and doesn’t push you off to a broker site like it used to (see Roost Changes Up Their Game) but the new pop up windows don’t work for me. In fact, I couldn’t even see the listings until I disabled my pop up blocker. Again. hopefully this is only temporary until they can do some kind of inline display like Estately. Also I found it very hard initially to find the View Details button for any listing until I found it at the very bottom right of the page.

Refining Search. Roost’s blades (see Roost Redesigns Search Results) were not universally loved. But they were a novel way to quickly adjust the number of listings you were looking at. Now it took me a few minutes just to figure out how to change the price range, before I spotted Refine Search link next to the search box. Personally I found the green on white text very hard to see.

On the plus side. I did really like the new map search view. You can access that by clicking on the Expand Map link.

In addition to a revamped Roost.com, the company is now offering its search tool to brokers and agents, co-branded of course. So participating partners can benefit from any traffic generated at the main site as well as offer a greater experience to visitors to their own sites.

If they can clear up a few of those nagging issues I mentioned above, I think it could become a very competitive offering to other IDX solutions.

Share on Facebook

Roost Changes Up Their Game

Joel Burslem — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:14:42 +0000

We haven’t heard much from Roost, the IDX driven search portal, as of late. Last we heard of them they had redesigned their search pages to deal with a growing overabundance of search filters (see Roost Redesigns Search Results).

But news this week that they have expanded the markets they serve (see Roost Makes Its Nest in Jacksonville, FL) caused me to go back and take another look at the web site.

Turns out they’ve been really busy.

Roost has totally revamped the way that listings are displayed on their site. Under the old system you’d get an abbreviated property description and a handful of photos. For more information you’d click through to their preferred broker’s landing page for that individual property.

While I always liked the speed and functionality Roost provided, this aspect of the search experience was always somewhat problematic.

Any time you pass off that visitor to the broker site the problem is those landing pages are a mixed bag – some look half-decent, most downright miserable. This has been particular beef of mine for a while (see Building a New Real Estate Home Page).

It also causes the user hop back and forth between search results and property pages, making for a confusing and less than optimal experience. Frankly, the same holds true for Trulia too. And this was one of the reasons I’d moved my own personal searches off these sites and onto a more contained experience.

Seems like Roost recognized this problem and has taken steps to rectify this while at the same time changing up the value proposition they deliver to their advertisers.

Under the old model they ultimately were trying to sell the brokers the traffic they generated on their listings but it was up to the broker to capture and convert any visitors into leads.

Now pulling up a property on Roost gives you the full listing description straight from the MLS. No need to go anywhere else.

However, Roost’s advertising brokers show up as the contact information for the listing, brand and all. As a prospective buyer you can choose to schedule a showing or ask that broker for more information on the home. Clicking on any of these links pulls up a more traditional lead capture form, which is then presumably delivered to the advertising broker as a hot lead.

Interestingly, the listing broker is noted but is displayed in tiny grey text. And there is no longer any link to the listing brokers website either.

Other IDX driven search sites certainly use similar lead generation models (Estately comes to mind). But none, to my knowledge, go to quite so great a length to brand and establish other brokers as the primary point of contact for a listing. Certainly many broker web sites do just this when they display IDX listings on their own sites, but it’s definitely interesting to see a third party adopt this type of model.

Nevertheless, as a user, the new experience is far more pleasant and brings it more in line with some of the other online portals. And Roost definitely still rules with the speed it returns its queries.

It may have just regained a spot in my home searching arsenal.

Share on Facebook

Roost Goes Negative

Joel Burslem — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:46:41 +0000

In a move reminiscent of the current US election campaigns, Roost, the MLS-driven real estate search engine released a series of YouTube videos today showing how its results best those returned by Trulia, Google and Yahoo.

Check ‘em out.

Trulia
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtjC5SKH4qI[/youtube]

Google
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS5mFDyjHQQ[/youtube]

Yahoo
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1FL-yH8E7U[/youtube]

Roost’s conclusion? That using these sites “homebuyers waste tons of time searching through homes that aren’t actually for sale.”

The company, which previously released a commission report claiming its search superiority (see Quantity, quality vary at real estate search sites), seems to be hammering relentlessly on this point. It remains to be seen whether it’s a message that resonates with consumers however.

Share on Facebook

Roost Reveals the Brokers in its Nest

Joel Burslem — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:24:17 +0000

Roost has announced its network of broker partners and it’s a pretty impressive list. Just a few of them named in their press release:

If you remember, unlike Trulia and Zillow who source listings from broker feeds, Roost gives each of those brokers an individual IDX-driven site to which it, in turn, drives its search traffic to. It’s an approach that has generated a fair amount of controversy so far (see the comments in Roost.com Kicks over the RE Search Cart).

Roost says it has “more than 40″ broker partners signed up so far and as they continue to launch in new markets that number will surely grow. But right now it’s an interesting mix of agent teams and small, medium and big brokers. Which raises a few questions.

I wonder how John L Scott, for example, will react to the fact that traffic being sent to one of its agent’s sites and not to its corporate site? Let’s say the ‘mothership’ gets involved, are the agents then shunted to one side? Or are all sites treated equally in Roost’s eyes?

I’m also curious if all of these partners are paying partners (Roost’s stated business model is based on the brokers paying for the traffic sent their way) and if so how much? Anyone want to spill the beans?

Share on Facebook

Roost.com Kicks over the RE Search Cart

Joel Burslem — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:00:23 +0000

I do a ton of flying for business these days and one of my favorite travel search sites is Kayak.com (Farecast is another great search tool too). The idea was pretty simple – Kayak took a look at a crowded category on the Internet (travel sites) and told themselves they could do it better.

Roost.com, which launches today into public beta, is trying to do the same thing to real estate search. Coincidentally, the major investors in Roost (they received around $5 million in VC dollars to build the site) are the same folks behind Kayak.

So what does Roost think it can do better?

First and foremost – it’s fast. Blazing fast. The search experience is, quite frankly, awesome. Adjust a slider in a market and the property results update immediately through some slick AJAX. To attain this speed, properties are displayed in a standard hierarchal list. A map view is also available, but it been pushed to a secondary tab – and I actually don’t really miss it.

Additional photos of any property are viewed inline and through some more slick AJAX, can appear and disappear with the click of a button. Rollover any thumbnail and you get a popup of the larger image.

Secondly, it’s complete. My biggest issue with the other Real Estate 2.0 sites is their incompleteness. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great sites; but the bottom line is that Zillow and Trulia don’t have all the listings and until they do, I just can’t recommend them as a tool for consumers or buyers. Period.

Roost, on the other hand, is not striving for national coverage. As CEO Alex Chang put it when I spoke with him last month, “We don’t want to launch nationally and be lame.”

Rather, Roost has cultivated partnerships with local MLS’ and brokers’ IDX feeds to provide complete coverage in each market it enters. It reminded me of the approach another of my favorite search tools, Estately.com, has taken.

Unlike Estately however – which only works in Washington State – at launch Roost will be live in 14 markets. These include Atlanta, Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Orange County, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento/Modesto, Washington D.C. and San Diego. Chang expects by the end of 2008, they will be in close to 40 markets.

How it works is, in each market, the search results are sponsored by an individual broker (e.g. “Portland listings brought to you by…”). As a consumer, if you want more information on any particular listing, including contact information, all the traffic drives through to that sponsoring broker’s site.

Every market however, can have an unlimited number of sponsors and the sponsors rotate in based on the amount of traffic they have bought. This is perfect for some of the smaller brokerages that may not have many listings to market themselves (and therefore can’t participate in Z or T’s listings feeds) but are still looking to court buyers online.

Roost also offers those brokers a co-branded/private labeled search interface they can embed into their site too.

Personally, I really like the approach Roost is taking. (And as a buyer myself right now, especially thankful they chose to launch in Portland!) Like Estately, I think they may have very well nailed the right mix of best of breed search and having the total package when it comes to listings.

They have a bit of catch-up to play in terms of building their consumer traffic; Z and T have a good headstart – but just like Kayak, I think I may have just found a new favorite.

Share on Facebook