For those of you unaware, Coke has started a campaign designed to get people really involved via a simple voting process. Okay, well not really so simple. You see the video in the poll from ProProfs below sets up a funny and fun, scenario where social media and even mobile Super Bowl fans can interact with what amount to digital heroes, heroins, and antiheroes. For Twitter buffs, the hash-tags #CokeCowboys. #CokeShowgirls, and #CokeBadlanders are significant variables. But the depth of the Widen+Kennedy ad agency genius stroke is not so simple.

In creating this game the agency exhibits a keen understanding of social media, for one thing. In case you are in the dark, Facebook and even Twitter are social hangouts where games and intimate connectivity go on. Marketing these spaces has always been a delicate matter. The social networks are bad places for the so called “hard sell”, when all is said and done.

So, once you’ve investigated what Coke has going on with their Coke Chase, maybe figuring out how to “sabotage” your own competitors won’t be so hard? You’s see what I mean, just play along.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a web-based marketing strategy that is used to direct incoming traffic straight to your website using keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant and relate specifically to your target market.

The most common pay-per-click providers are the major search engines—Goolge, Yahoo!, and Bing—but PPC is also now accessible through Facebook and other popular social media outlets. When searching anything using Google, for example, several web links will always appear at the top of the results page in a highlighted box with websites relating to your search. How and why are these websites there? Simple-The owners of these websites have setup a pay-per-click campaign that allows their website to populate when users and potential customers type in a search that matches the keywords they input into their PPC account.

Pay-per-click users with a real estate website understand that half the battle is getting clients to their site. The more traffic you can attract to your site, the likelihood of generating more possible sales leads from your site shoots through the roof. And while PPC may sound like a pretty smooth transition, it’s often the most misused web marketing tool by real estate agents trying to capitalize on its potential. Researching keywords, keyword phrases, and the local competition is critical for maximizing your pay-per-click campaign and getting the desired results you need to make it worthwhile.

The best advice for real estate professionals considering pay-per-click advertising is to spend adequate time researching how it’s used and how to setup a campaign that works for you. If you don’t have time to learn or manage your PPC accounts, hire a web marketing firm to do it for you. The cost you’d spend to have professionals set it up right will almost always be lower than the money you’d waste by not targeting the right keywords that will get you the best return.

There’s no doubt PPC will help jump start your website traffic. But savvy real estate agents will still understand that budgeting money for additional SEO is almost always a better long-term strategy. Without a high organic search ranking, your website disappears from page 1 on Google when the PPC is turned off. However, once you finally achieve that high ranking, the need for PPC is now gone while the web traffic continues to flow—at no cost.

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working as a Market Research Associate and writing published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, Joe now works as a Web Marketing/SEO Specialist and is a managing partner at Real Estate Web Creation, LLC.

Joseph A. Horning & John P. Horning

When first I read about a real estate company doing such, especially one in way up there Wisconsin, I thought, “Uh huh.” Writing this on the fly, You and I can discover the low down on this interesting branding and online engagement move. On landing at Shorewest, my mixed feelings came rushing in.

Site Design Takes Back Seat to Social

Shorewest’s new website is anything but ugly, but by the same token it is not exactly stunning either. The worst I can say for the landing is that 200 cities to scroll to to get to the end of the page, this is not what anyone would call “edgY” design or thinking. Aside this, the look of a decent realty site sinks in. What makes the site nice is what’s underneath, tabs lead to all manner of services and info, filtering types galore, and so on. Complete where function goes puts the Shorewest entry up there with the top ones, at least in Wisconsin.

Joe and John P. Horning are supposed to be Wisconsin’s biggest names in real estate. I guess First Weber’s 50 offices may take a back seat to Shorewest, but not in the online search positioning. What does matter for the latter group is that aesthetics and function wise, the Hornings just handed First Weber’s James R. Imhoff, Jr. (CEO) his hat. Imhoff’s site is bottom tier and his company’s only has a residual engagement in social media. This brings us to the next valuation for Shorewest.

Nice, but nothing out of the ordinary

Lined up across the Wisconin firm’s spanking new website, the developers have strung buttons for just about ever social media network there is. Clicking, and remember we are looking at this real time here, reveals online moves akin to…

• Facebook – Very nice, 1578 likes, nearly daily engagement, relevant and interesting posts, good design
• Twitter . Very good, nice design, daily tweets, relevant, but with only several hundred following
• G+ – Shorewest dropped the ball here, but the profile is there plus not many care about G+ so much
• LinedIn – Advanced, Shorewest has a super nice profile and value proposition here
• Pinterest – Shorewest is one of only a few agencies that seems to understand “Pinning’s” value
• YouTube Channel – Shorewest is not MGM, but they do utilize the channel

Bragging Rights

TV commercials about real estate website and channel resources to sell your home? I doubt Shorewest’s claim that no other agency in the nation has as many resources is exactly true, but it has to be for Wisconsin. And this is a bit of what matters. The video below, yodles the viewer into an acute sense of WTF! I must say, it is one of the most effective such ads I’ve ever seen, a bit like the “Go Compare” ones we all know.

Back to being critical of the website, the company probably needs to put the site on a dedicated server if it is not already, it loads very slowly in Chrome. Also, some of the function does not exactly work flawlessly. I tried to find a mini farm outside of Green Bay via the map search, it hung up in my browser. Add in tiny images of the home listings, and Shorewest could have done better design wise.

Has Shorewest got anything to brag about though? Well, they made Inman and our news, and that says a lot from a brand and visibility aspect. Add in some refinement of adjacent pages, bigger images, and a blogger that knows blogging, and maybe. Point is, Showewest got on the radar, their competitors did not really. So where are you going to house hunt online when you move to Wisconsin?

Announced yesterday on the Zillow® blog site, the new TV commercial, titled “Find Your Way Home,” will premiere this fall and highlight website features that include a custom, user-drawn boundary search and a map of nearby neighborhood amenities from each listing. The context to the new Zillow® ad features a woman at home on the couch searching for real estate on her tablet, while dreaming about growing into one of those homes with her family. As she decides that this home may be the one, she then proceeds to fill out the contact form to get in touch with a local real estate agent–who we’ll assume is purchasing Zillow’s “Premier Agent” ads seen throughout the company’s main website.

With other innovative products such as the Premier Agent Websites now used to expand their presence in the real estate industry, it seems surprising that it’s taken this long for Zillow® to start rolling out national advertisements on television. But as the old saying goes, however: better last than never.

The overall vision for airing new TV commercials is to further strengthen their position in the real estate game and increase the ability to grow and become an even bigger giant in the business. And by marketing themselves in creative, high-quality production television commercials, I think there’s no doubt they’ll accomplish just that. To get a sneak preview of “Find Your Way Home,” check out the Zillow blog page.

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working in market research and authoring published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, Joe now works as a Web Marketing Specialist and is a managing partner at  Real Estate Web Creation, LLC.

Ensuring a presence on business listings websites will help both your SEO and your reputation © Graça Victoria – Fotolia.com

Setting up your business listing page on Google Places is a very simple process. The first piece of information you’ll want to include is your full address and phone number. Be sure to include this near the top of your listing as failing to do-so will put less weight on search engine bots to recognize your page. Next, you’ll want to include your geographic and service keywords in your business title. So if your company name is “Heath Realty Company”, perhaps phrase your business title as “Heath Residential Real Estate Company – Chicago, IL.”

Finally, don’t just include your images to describe who you are and where you are located. While a great image with your company logo, name, and contact information satisfies users, it fails to satisfy search engines. In order for a search engine to pick up this information, it has to be able to “read” the photo through image titles and alt text. If your photo fails to have adequate search engine optimization, it will do little for you business listing in terms of getting recognized by Google, Bing, or Yahoo!

Along with Google Places and Yelp!, other national business listings sites you should investigate include: Bing Local, Foursquare, Yahoo! Local; but don’t just stop there. Depending on what market you’re located, there are usually lots of local listing sites such as www.newchicagoliving.com, which is a free listing site for new businesses around downtown Chicago, including real estate offices.

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working in the market research sector and authoring published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, Joe now works as a Web Marketing Specialist and is a managing partner at  Real Estate Web Creation, LLC.

Blogging tips

So what’s the best way for you to help readers find previous posts they may find relevant or interesting? Create blog categories.  Most blogging platforms allow users to organize every post into specific categories that can easily be customized. Most often, blog categories are listed in the blog sidebar, which is easily viewable to all your readers. Depending on the purpose of your blog, examples of real estate categories may be New Construction Homes, Homes Just Listed, Downtown Real Estate, etc.

But in order for your categories to be useful to readers, it’s important you follow some guidelines. The purpose of blog categories is to keep all your blogs organized.  Obviously there is little value to having categories that don’t make sense or have little organization themselves; so for instance, if you are a real estate agent who often blogs about homes or condos that recently sold, avoid having multiple categories relating to sold homes. Along with creating categories, bloggers also have the ability to create sub-categories, which more often than not, are not used enough on real estate blog sites. “Homes Recently Sold” is a category. “Waterfront Homes Recently Sold” is a sub-category—it’s that simple.

In addition, make sure that when you add each post to a category that it’s actually relate-able. Of course this sounds fairly obvious, but many bloggers will often put each blog into as many categories as possible as a way to get the most views as possible. Not only is this ineffective, but it makes you and your real estate blog look bad. If your readers can’t easily find the information they’re looking for, or even worse, are in the right place (or category) but quickly realize the wrong information is there, I can guarantee those readers won’t be following your blog much longer.

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working in the market research sector and authoring published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, Joe now works as a Web Marketing Specialist and co-owns Real Estate Web Creation with his partner, Ted Guarnero, a 25+ year real estate veteran.

The ListHub Syndication Network is the largest online syndicator of real estate listings in the country. In addition to listings, the Network provides performance reports for brokers, Multiple Listing Services and franchises.

What does this mean for Trulia.com users? It means access to additional listings available from over 47,000 brokers, as well as listing data derived from 400 participating MLS services.

Matt Dollinger, Head of Industry Relations at Trulia, Inc. said, “Trulia is committed to ensuring the highest standards of data quality and integrity for the real estate industry. We look forward to working with Listhub as a trusted partner for syndication and communicating Trulia’s metrics through their reporting products.”

Brokers will also have a valuable way to track the ROI of their marketing efforts because Trulia will provide ListHub with performance data which it will use to create their ListHub Channel Scorecard – a marketing report which offers a comparison of 126 real estate websites – truly empowering brokers to create the best possible marketing plan for their business.

Trulia will also be included in the listing of publishers on ListHub’s syndication dashboard. This application allows users to rate and choose publishers according to criteria such as “no re-syndication”, “timely removal of inactive listings”, or “shows broker contact information”.

Luke Glass, general manager and vice president of Listhub stated that, “ListHub is focused on helping brokers reach large audiences of buyers through an easy to use managed syndication platform that respects their rights as owners of the content. By adding performance metrics from Trulia, brokers have even greater insights into the effectiveness of their online advertising, while clearly understanding how their content will be used on publishing sites. We’re very pleased to offer the convenience brokers and MLSs want when syndicating within a controlled and transparent platform.”

Source: http://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?resourceid=5355232&access=EH

© N-Media-Images – Fotolia.com

Most at least know that SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and that it has something to do with getting a higher ranking on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and various other obscure search engines.However, beyond that is where things tend to get a little hazy for a lot of real estate professionals who have yet to embrace today’s tech-driven world.

So for those out there needing a crash course on the very basics of search engine optimization, I’ve compiled a list of the 8 most common SEO terms that every Realtor® with a website should know:

SEO/SEM: Of course by now, you already know that SEO stands for search engine optimization, but its process involves working to naturally get a website or web page to rank higher among search engines. Similarly, SEM stands for “search engine marketing,” which is simply the name for applying these types of web strategies and services.

Search Algorithm: A step-by-step method for search engine’s to locate the most relevant websites and pages. Major search engine algorithms use hundreds of factors such as website content, title tags, Meta tags, and how long the domain has been active to determine what web pages will rank during a simple search.

Title Tag: Arguably one of the more important aspects of SEO, a title tag is the actual title of a web page. When determining what to use for your title tags, always use the keywords for what that particular pages happens to be about. In most web browsers, the title tag will appear in each tab you have open.

SERP: SERP stands for “search engine results page” and is pretty self explanatory. If you Google anything, the results that appear with relevant and suggested pages is the SERP.

Keyword Density/Keyword Stuffing: Keyword Density is found by dividing the number of times a keyword is used by the total number of words on that page. While the answer can vary on what an acceptable keyword density is, generally your keyword density should be around 5 percent. Using a high number of keywords and significantly boosting your keyword density is referred to as keyword stuffing, and can actually penalize you in terms of SEO-so don’t so it.

Duplicate Content: Any content that is used on multiple websites or web pages is known as duplicate content. If you own multiple domain names and are using each site for a similar purpose, don’t get lazy and re-post your content. Having duplicate content will most definitely get you penalized among major search engines, so be careful as to what you post on your site.

Backlinks: Backlinks are basically just hyperlinks directing visitors back to your site. And despite what you may have heard, having quality backlinks over the quantity of backlinks is the name of the game. Make sure backlinks pointing to your site are on high-ranking websites with similar subject matter. Poor backlinks will penalize your site tremendously.

Blog: Most of you likely know what a blog is on a website. But with the rise of social media and sharing, blogging on a regular basis and updating your site with fresh new content is absolutely critical in achieving a high traffic volume and keeping your site relevant with major search engines.

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working in the market research sector and authoring published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, Joe now works as a Web Marketing Specialist and co-owns Real Estate Web Creation with his partner, Ted Guarnero, a 25+ year real estate veteran.

This is especially true for those of you working in the real estate business, as logic should tell you that the more units that are on the market and available to home buyers, the more chances you have to ultimately find those same home buyers a new place that will suite their lifestyle and satisfy that long list of demands on a long-term basis.

In Chicago, this is no different and the idea of new development of any kind always brings a sense of excitement among local residents. But with something seemingly always opening or being built, it’s often hard to keep track of just what’s been around and what’s new on the scene. I can’t count how many times I’ve been driving around Lakeview or Lincoln Park and seen a new restaurant or chic looking three-flat or small condo development and wondered, “is that new?”

Well now, a brand new website available to Chicago locals, www.newchicagoliving.com, has recently launched and aims to be your guide to new development all around town. The site highlights anything from new restaurants and bars to newly open small businesses and new construction real estate.

If you’re not familiar with the NewChicagoLiving.com, the website has some pretty cool features which include an interactive map to search specific development categories, a blog that talks about a variety of new development topics, and listing pages that businesses and new construction real estate representatives can add to at no cost.

But what’s really great about NewChicagoLiving.com is that if you’re a local real estate broker and want to promote yourself as the listing agent for a residential new construction project, you can submit a blog, written by you, that details the project and will link back to your business page or social media accounts. All you have to do is e-mail NewChicagoLiving.com your blog, and they will do the rest. It’s really that simple.

If you’re a real estate agent in Chicago and want some additional exposure at no cost, do yourself a favor and submit a blog post to info@newchicagoliving.com. If you’re a reader of my articles here on RealtyBizNews.com, you already know I’m a huge fan of blogging on a consistent basis. It boosts SEO and keeps you relevant among homebuyers scanning through the hundreds of real estate websites that are available to them today.

So the next time you’re writing a blog for your real estate website, write a second blog post and submit it to NewChicagoLiving.com and take advantage of a different, built-in audience—there’s really no downside to it other than taking up a bit more of your time. Remember, outside-the-box opportunities can sometimes mean the difference between even one extra home sale a year—and this outside-the-box web marketing opportunity is free…so get writing!

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working in the market research sector and authoring published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, Joe now works as a Web Marketing Specialist and co-owns Real Estate Web Creation with his partner, Ted Guarnero, a 25+ year real estate veteran.

© artisticco - Fotolia.com

Realtor.com has teamed up with RealBiz Media to offer realtors yet another way to get their property listings in front of a target audience – television. While we’ve all seen listings on television before, this will be a bit different in that the same properties will be made available for viewing in ways that consumers use the most – computer, mobile and television.

Starting in the second half of this year, agents will be able to reach more than 55 million U.S. homes via Cox cable network. Discussions are in the works to expand to other networks as well.

Steve Berkowitz, Move’s (Realtor.com) CEO said, “Realtor.com is continually improving the real estate search experience with emerging technologies to make it easier for millions of people to connect with real estate professionals ready to help them find the home that’s right for their family. With ‘for-sale’ inventories down across the nation, having convenient, fast and fun search options, along with the partnership of a professional agent, is important. When the Realtor.com Channel has launched, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing, Realtor.com will be with you.”

Through the Realtor.com channel, realtors will be able to reach their target audience on a geograhic basis. Property listings on the channel are based on location and will be shown by price range. The Home Tour Network will show the listings which will include both high quality photo and video together with descriptions provided by agents. Using their remote, viewers can contact agents for more information.

“We’re excited to be teaming up with Realtor.com on this new venture that will help millions of people find what we hope becomes their piece of the American Dream – a home,” Steve Marques, CEO of RealBizMedia shared.

“Our experience in launching our proprietary video platform positions RealBizMedia to leverage both organizations’ assets and provide home buyers and folks simply interested in checking out the local market with a new way to discover real estate and connect with real estate experts across the country.”

The listings will include only the most up to date properties available and can be found on Realtor.com as well as on the Realtor.com channel, which include offerings from more than 850 MLSs across the country. About 85% of the Realtor.com listings are updated every quarter hour by the MLSs, with the remainder updated every hour to 24 hours.

Now, all we need is for them to accept credit cards for the down payment and we’ll be set!

How about you? Do you think you would use this feature if you were shopping for a home?