In this week’s Real Estate Sales and Technology news, we look at New Technology for Luxury Real Estate Developers, How Google will rank .Realtor domains in October, How your Brokerage can go Viral like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Winning at Facebook without ClickBait and 21 Free SEO Tools.
New Technology for Luxury Real Estate Developers
Luxury Real Estate Developers are stepping up there game in the quest to closing high end properties. To widen their target market beyond the properties immediate area, developers are experimenting with new technologies to allow potential buyers a glimpse at the house of their dreams. San Francisco-based luxury real estate developer JMA Ventures LLC is using a system developed by Suitable Technologies Inc. to let homebuyers roam through its properties and communicate with sales agents in real time from anywhere in the world.
The Beam Pro, by Suitable Technologies, allows buyers to drive cameras mounted on remote-controlled vehicles through distant homes, venturing from room to room, peeking around corners and taking in near-360-degree views from multiple vantage points. Buyers see the surroundings through a wide angle camera as they use their computer to navigate as the Beam Pro speeds around the property at up to 2 miles per hour.
With agents using new technology like smartphones and tablets for live video tours, Beam Pro provides a much deeper experience with buyers coming away feeling as if they have actually visited a place. While Beam technology is still in its early days, this is a good indication of where we are heading with new technology for luxury real estate developers and agents on the cutting edge.
For Beam Pro pricing information and more, check out Inman’s article here.
How will Google rank your .REALTOR site in October? Are you ready?
Everyone is speculating on how the NAR will manage .Realtor domains and just how Google will rank them. So you should be wondering too: “How can my domain get to the top of google now?” while the playing field is still level. .Realtor domains will launch at Halloween of this year. Have you already pre- registered? The National Association of Realtors has offered the first 500,000 of NAR’s 1 million-plus members who register for a .Realtor domain at www.claim.realtor a domain free for one year.
The NAR recently received approval to manage the new .Realtor top-level domain from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. So now the Real Estate Industry is wondering how they will mange it. Inman is reporting that Realtor.com operator Move plans to let agents turn their profile pages on realtor.com into a stand-alone website featuring a Web address that ends in “.Realtor.”
GeekEstate is speculating that the NAR may end up with the same problems as AgentMatch – the “Most innovative real estate app” of the year but was none too popular with some agents. And if .Realtor automatically shows all your listings and closed transactions, along with their complete system for displaying client recommendations how will Google rank these realtors? Most likely, the ones with the most closed sales, the most reviews, and that have been around the longest will come up on page 1. This like AgentMatch, allows for the most experienced agents to rank the highest and basically shuts out newer agents with little previous sales. If you are a newer agent, how will you offset this?
Read more at GeekEstate here.
How your brokerage can go viral like the #ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
We’ve all seen the videos – from Bill Gates to Justin Timberlake to your local Real Estate Agent dumping buckets of ice cold water over their heads in the name of the ALS Foundation. Videos on YouTube started popping up towards the end of July then by August 26th, ALS was reporting they had raised almost $86 million this compared to almost $2 million during the same time period last year. That is quite a viral campaign. I’m certain this is well beyond what they even dreamed possible in such a short period of time.
This is a great case study for all agents & brokerages to consider. What unique qualities and advantages do you have that can allow you to step outside the box to create a compelling viral campaign? The key to success of the ALS campaign, as stated in this recent Huffington Post article, is Challenge + Charity = Success. Facebook is all about appearance, who’s doing what, when and how. It capitalizes on celebrity culture, and making a celebrity out of the little guy. So throw in some challenges and you have a lot of people trying to out “look good” each other and over a social cause and some hashtag activism (or slacktivism). That’s impossible to ignore.
ALS has already created this genius viral formula. And while no brand may be able to reproduce the wide scale success of this campaign, certainly on smaller scales it could be easily reproduced for anyone in the real estate industry. Tips to make your promotion the social media phenomenon that is the Ice Bucket Challenge: 1. Combine your promotion with a Cause 2. Make it a Challange 3. Make it Personal 4. Make it Feel Good 5. Make Your Call To Action small and easily achievable.
Read more reasons the Ice Bucket Challenge went viral at New York Magazine, Fast Company and Huffington Post.
Want to win at Facebook? Say no to ClickBait and yes to URLs
Just this week Facebook announced 2 big updates: #1 it is cracking down on ClickBait headlines and #2 Facebook will not prioritize link posts over photo updates that have URLs in captions. This is a huge change from the rush a year or two ago when everyone learned to only use photos with links. I’ve heard time and time again, if you don’t have a photo the link won’t get shared on most social media platforms. But over the years Facebook’s algorithm would automatically boost any photo shares and dismiss solo link shares in your newsfeed. Well, it is a new dawn.
In order to appease the masses and those complaints of Facebook being overrun by spammy “click here to see the full picture” posts, Zuckerberg has changed the game once again. So for realtors, this means adjusting your game plan with status updates on Facebook. Make sure what you are sharing is link driven not photo driven. Don’t worry, the photos on your blogs will still show up in the link preview of each status update and it will get a higher visibility rate based on the new algorithm.
Read more at TechCrunch, Hubspot and HuffPostTech.
Clearview’s Tuesday Tech Tip: 21 Free SEO Tools for Real Estate Agents
Buffer just released a sampling of the best free SEO tools on the market. They are fast, free and easy to use. If you are trying to rank at the top of Google, these tools will save you time in researching keywords, planning and finding out what’s trending for timely SEO opportunities. Check them out here.