Tweet all about it – The social side of property marketing
Posted on September, 28, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Social Media is undoubtedly an influencing factor in our lives. It has not only changed the way we interact with friends and family but also the way we do business. In fact, a new study by Cison has discovered that more than a quarter (28%) of UK journalists believe social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are essential to their job and therefore essential to PR’s jobs too.
2012′s Social Journalism Study highlighted that using social media tools have become part of a journalist’s daily work routine with the majority using two or three social media tools regularly for professional tasks according to the study.
As a result of social media’s popularity, Google is placing more and more emphasis on its power considering social “signals” account for five of the six most influential factors in Google’s search results, according to a June 2012 study from Searchmetrics.
On this note, results from a BrightEdge survey published early this year discovered that 84% of search marketers say social signals such as Facebook likes, Tweets, and Google +1s will be either more important (53%) or much more important (31%) to their SEO in 2012 compared to 2011.
Commenting on the importance of social media and which channels are most important, social media expert, Roy Bristow explains,
“The importance of social media platforms is the immediate ability to converse with potential and existing customers on a regular basis as well as the media. Because of this, it requires an “open all hours” approach that should allow you to provide a voice and a response. It also requires a professional approach to manage each and every channel you select.
“The channels you engage with, certainly from a property PR aspect, need to amplify your existing online marketing strategy and whilst the premiere channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn, should form the basis of your campaign you need to ensure that you only use the channels that you can constantly update with new content.”
Bristow continues,
“Think about what you want your audience to do with your content on the social channels you’re using. Are you trying to get them to read, share, reply, click, purchase or engage? Be selective, be visually rich in your outlook, and be responsive, but most important be accountable. Measure your social activities so that you can learn which copywriting strategies are successful, which aren’t and how you can improve.”
For more information on the power of social media, a service which AB Property Marketing offers exclusively for the property industry contact Charlotte Ashton on 0845 054 7542 via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or at http://www.abpropertymarketing.co.uk.
Recommended Solutions & Services
Agents and developers can list property for sale on our network of overseas property portals.
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Save up to 4% compared to high street banks on currency exchange for you or your clients.
If you’re getting a bit bored with property investment opportunities, then why not consider the alternative?
With so much of the print media focused on property, PR or Public Relations is a must for marketers!
How to create good quality property sales videos
Posted on September, 24, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Looking to bring your property listings to life? Lead Galaxy’s new service lets you do just that by creating a property video with none of the hassle of cost.
But how can you make sure your video will drive up your conversion rates?
Here is how to create a good quality property sales video:
Sign up to LeadGalaxy
LeadGalaxy.com operates an international network of property portals, including TheMoveChannel.com and A Place in the Sun. Attracting a total of over 600,000 real estate buyers from around the globe every month, Lead Galaxy’s property lead generation for international agents and developers is unrivalled.
Add photos to your listing
Lead Galaxy’s unique property sales videos are created from your property listing – and that means pictures. Upload as many photos of your development as you can and keep them as big as possible (the maximum size of each image is 800 x 600 pixels). These will form the basis of your video, presenting your property in a dynamic, colour way.
Tag the images
When you upload your images, they can be tagged as “Local Area”, “External” or “Internal”. Taking the time to tag these properly will make sure that they are shown in the right order in your video, creating the strongest possible impact on the viewer.
Add descriptions
Descriptions accompany tags to make sure your photos are as informative as possible. Use up to 36 characters to explain what your images are showing and prospective buyers will be as informed as possible: and the more informed a lead is, the higher the rate of conversion.
Pick a main image
Your main image is the first thing a lead will see, so pick carefully: this will act as the thumbnail for your video as well as the central photo for your property listing. The better quality the picture, the better quality your leads.
Pick a good title
The title of your listing needs to attract property leads: again, the more informative the better. Keep it punchy, keep it clear and keep it search-ending friendly. Mention rates of return, location and property type where possible. “2 Bed Villa in Marbella, 10% NET” is great. “Property opportunity” is too vague. And remember: the title will be the name of your video as well.
List the investment’s key selling points
Much like an email campaign, key selling points are what will determine how successful your sales lead generation is. Why is your opportunity worth investing in? Your top six selling points will appear inthe video, so be clear as well as creative.
Put your listing on the map
Lead Galaxy’s listings service includes a dynamic map provided by Bing – and now that geographical information can be shown through video as well. Part of the video will zoom in on your development, showing the area around it. Simply use the embedded map tool to pinpoint where it is.
Opt in to the video service
Once you’ve created a property listing with Lead Galaxy, the video part is easy. Just choose to opt in to the service and – for a fee of only £2 per property per month – your video is automatically added to your listing. Listings with videos will be shown above the other properties advertised on TheMoveChannel.com, allowing investors to watch it directly from the search results page.
All videos are also added to TheMoveChannel.com’s dedicated video-only sister site, www.TheMoveChannel.tv, and distributed to TheMoveChannel.com’s YouTube channel, providing you with maximum exposure. And videos are automatically updated every week as well, keeping your listing as up-to-date as possible.
Beware the penguin: Google promises “big” update
Posted on August, 24, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Google’s next update will be “big”, the search engine has warned.
Speaking at the SES conference in San Francisco this month, Google’s Matt Cutts said that the next few updates to the Penguin algorithm would be “jarring and jolting” for webmasters across the internet.
“You don’t want the next Penguin update,” he joked.
The comments have sent small shivers through the SEO community, with property lead generation firms now preparing for the eventual arrival of the next update.
Brett Tudor at SEO Professor comments: “Property companies will need at the very least to develop a winning content strategy.”
But others will take comfort from Cutts’ additional comments at an SES roundtable, which suggest the tweaks will take some time to introduce.
“If you remember, in the early days of Panda, it took several months for us to iterate on the algorithm, and the Panda impact tended to be somewhat larger (e.g. the April 2011 update incorporated new signals like sites that users block). Later on, the Panda updates had less impact over time as we stabilized the signals/algorithm and Panda moved closer to near-monthly updates. Likewise, we’re still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals, and as a result will have more noticeable impact. It’s not the case that people should just expect data refreshes for Penguin quite yet.”
Are you preparing for the new regulations? Read Lead Galaxy’s SEO tips for property portals on how to feed Google Penguin.
SEO Monthly: 5 Cool Things You Can Do in Bing Webmaster Tools
Posted on August, 09, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Sorry, what? Bing Webmaster Tools? … Bing? Really?
Yes. That’s what we said.
Now, Bing gets a lot of bad press: Google is, of course, the daddy of search engines. But take a look in your Google Analytics. We had a glance at TheMoveChannel.com recently and 5.22 per cent of our traffic comes from Bing. That’s not a lot – but it’s still thousands of visitors each month. So it’s worth paying attention to Bing too. Even if it does have a silly name.
How do you do that? Bing Webmaster Tools. Any SEO expert worth their link juice will recall that Bing recently introduced a whole host of new updates to their free service. And to demonstrate just how useful it can be, here are five cool things we like in Bing Webmaster Tools:
1. SEO Reports
SEO Reports scans your site once a fortnight and gives it an SEO health-check using 15 different best practice techniques. A tool that lists (some, not all of) your webpages and tells you how to make them rank better? That’s a useful thing to have.
Does your image tag have ALT text defined? Are you missing an <h1> tag? Do you have too many? Those last two are what Bing ranks as “High” severity. How well do you know the code on your site? It never hurts to double-check.
2. Link Explorer
Head to “Diagnostics” and “Tools” and you’ll find the equally handy Link Explorer. It does exactly what it says: explores links to help you find where backlinks are coming from. And not just for your site: for your rivals too. Planning to sell property in Spain? Look at the big Spanish real estate portals and see who likes to link to them: learn what link building techniques have worked. Then beat them.
3. Disavow Links
Of course, if you’ve been a naughty SEO boy (or you’ve been a victim of a negative SEO attack), there’s always a chance of some bad backlinks coming to your site. Now this is where Bing Webmaster tools has beaten Google to it: head to “Configure My Site” and you can disavow inbound links that you don’t want, a vital way to cancel out shady associations.
4. Submit URLs
There’s nothing quite as annoying as waiting for a search engine to re-crawl your site and update its index. Luckily, Bing feels your pain: you can now submit URLs of new content to get it crawled as soon as possible. You can submit up to 10 pages each day – or 50 per month.
5. Schedule Crawling
No one likes it when a website stops working – especially a property website. One bad image or delayed loading time is enough to stop a lead going through. And leads cost money.
At the same time, you want search engines to crawl your site as regularly as possible. How can you limit the impact the crawling traffic has upon your non-robotic users? Bing lets you name the time of day when you have the least visitors – and then its robots won’t stop those leads coming through. After all, every little helps.
Have you used Bing Webmaster Tools? What’s your favourite thing you can you do with it?
SEO Monthly: The billion dollar eHow question
Posted on July, 05, 2012 by Ivan Radford -“How do I create a high quality content farm?”
That’s the billion dollar question eHow answers. More than changing a fuse or installing an operating system, the knowledge database, full of instructive articles targeted at specific Google keywords, tells the world how to build a network of SEO-designed content – without suffering at the hands of Google’s ever-changing algorithm.
Indeed, Search Engine Watch points out that eHow attracted 54 million unique visitors in May 2012, higher than their 49.8 million visitors from March – an increase that spanned the arrival of Google’s Penguin.
Demand Media describes their work:
“Our innovative studios listen closely to millions of consumers, then create the relevant content they’re asking for.”
But if a site can use a team of freelance writers to create a massive infrastructure of interlinked articles to generate traffic, which critics allege are of “low quality”, does that mean we can all get away with it?
Long before joining Lead Galaxy’s team, I myself tried writing some content for eHow. Since then, users have been prevented from submitting their own articles to the site, leaving the content creation to a (very large) pool of experienced writers, of which I am presumably still a member. Each piece of content is then revised and edited multiple times to ensure the quality is good – or, at least, good enough to satisfy Google.
As a result, the traffic figures keep pointing upwards. So is eHow pointing the way to a new SEO approach?
SEW did some interesting research into the area:
Web search interest in “how to” has doubled in the past five years, while web search interest in “news” and “reviews”, by comparison, has remained relatively flat, according to Google Insights for Search. And web search interest in “how to” is forecast by Google Insights for Search to continue growing over the next 12 months.
Whether or not you believe that “content farms” can have high quality content, it’s certainly worth thinking about writing a few more “how to” articles – and eHow have already got the first one all sewn up.
Best of the Web: Eye-catching property videos
Posted on June, 29, 2012 by Ivan Radford -Casting our eyes over the world of online property marketing, a couple of property listing videos really caught our eye this week.
Why? Because they were different, creative and professional. And as Sell My Property explained to us on TheMoveChannel.com’s podcast this month (“Why is my house not selling?“), being creative and using videos can make a big difference in selling your house.
The first video we liked highlighted the best feature about 782 Savannah Way: the kitchen.
What did Lincoln Crum do to focus on his unique selling point? He created a cookery show (Home Cooking with Lincoln) and taught buyers how to make a chicken dinner. Tasty.
The second promoted 218 Cottingham Street. Playing up the lifestyle of the Toronto home, Sage Real Estate thought about the kind of person who would buy the property – and then added in music. And characters. And a dog. Engaging, impressive marketing.
As you may already know, we at Lead Galaxy love the power of video in advertising property. We have a whole portal dedicated to it: TheMoveChannel.tv.
How can TheMoveChannel.tv help you to create equally effective real estate videos? Watch this space…
You’re only ever 140 characters away from front page news
Posted on April, 12, 2012 by Ivan Radford -In today’s PR world, it would seem that social media is king with latest research from PR company, Text 100, revealing that a staggering 86% of journalists now use Twitter to source stories and information.
On average it is reported that a journalist will use 2.6 different social media channels every time they research a story with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn the most popular. No longer simply for keeping in touch with friends or family, over 40% of journalists now use a Facebook account to manage their professional relationships with PRs, companies and spokespeople with LinkedIn frequently being used as a search tool for industry experts.
For companies keen to obtain column inches, be they on or offline, it would seem that those embracing social media hold a distinct advantage. Quite often a 140 character news snippet, sound bite or statistical update can make front page news with today’s journalists constantly competing for the very latest story.
Charlotte Ashton, Director of leading property PR agency, AB Property Marketing Ltd, comments,
“Over the last 2 -3 years we have seen the number of journalists using social media, especially Twitter, to communicate with us and source news stories rise significantly. Often now the fastest way to distribute client news, social media has almost made traditional press release distribution techniques such as email and certainly post seem archaic which is why all press material we release is posted in real time on the most popular social media channels.”
Ashton continues,
“PR is push and pull and not only do we use social media to distribute newsworthy content we also use professional channels such as LinkedIn to engage journalists directly. According to the research 84% of journalists are happy to be approached via LinkedIn and we find it a very useful tool in connecting our clients with relevant journalists.”
Going one stage further, the research from Text 100 also highlights the importance to journalists of dedicated blogs when researching companies or products. Of the social media channels surveyed, the most useful, given a ranking of 63% were official company blogs with Wikipedia in second place with 60% and third party blogs at 58%.
Interestingly, the most recently launched mainstream social media channel, Google+, despite its heavyweight funding and promotion did not feature highly with journalists with only 29% maintaining a professional profile, less than half welcoming PR contact via the channel and being ranked the least useful tool when undertaking research for articles.
Charlotte Ashton concludes,
“With nearly half of our journalist database now active on some form of social media, the majority being on Twitter, an increasing proportion of our time is spent communicating with and pitching stories to the media in 140 characters or less. Whilst not a substitute for good old fashioned verbal conversation, social media is becoming ever more important to today’s PR and thus, in line with this, it is essential for clients to have an active presence on as many channels as possible to be heard.”
For more information on how to PR properties or using social media in property marketing, contact Charlotte Ashton at AB Property Marketing on 0845 054 7542, via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or at www.abpropertymarketing.co.uk.
Recommended Solutions & Services
Agents and developers can list property for sale on our network of overseas property portals.
The multi-listing solution for private owner property listings – pay once and list everywhere!
Save up to 4% compared to high street banks on currency exchange for you or your clients.
If you’re getting a bit bored with property investment opportunities, then why not consider the alternative?
With so much of the print media focused on property, PR or Public Relations is a must for marketers!
Survey: Two-thirds of Buyers Use Mobiles for House Hunting
Posted on April, 03, 2012 by Ivan Radford -When it comes to real estate and technology, we always seem to end up talking mobiles.
Smartphones and tablets, apps and websites – we’ve all got the message. Mobile internet is here and property portals need to get on board. But there are some interesting new stats from a survey by The Real Estate Book that are worth sharing.
The property search site did some research between January and February this year among people who had shopped for a house or apartment in the last 90 days. Out of the 4,051 participants, 52 per cent of them had used a mobile device for house hunting – and 46 per cent of those said it was “essential” to their search.
But (and here’s the impressive figure) 68 per cent of the people who arranged to view a property did so as a result of their mobile searches.
“Our research supports that homebuyers are turning to their smartphones and tablets in their search and taking action to reach real estate professionals,” The Real Estate Book’s president Scott Dixon said.
Dixon added: “The time is now for agents and brokers to add mobile tools in their marketing mix to increase traffic and reach home shoppers right when they are actively engaged in their search process.”
Once again, we’re talking about mobiles and their importance for real estate marketing, but these kind of research findings are becoming increasingly consistent. It’s hard to argue that mobile web traffic is irrelevant to generating real esate leads – and yet there are still websites we see every day that do not have mobile-optimised sites or dedicated apps. When will that change?
The full press release is here (with a hat tip to Inman):
New study finds nearly half of home shoppers consider mobile tools essential in their home search – Network Communications Inc
Insider Linking: The Low-Down
Posted on April, 02, 2012 by Ivan Radford -External links are the first port of call for any SEO-driven site, but what about internal links? Not only are they useful for highlighting relevant content to search engines but they’re also important in keeping visitors on your site and directing them to relevant content.
In case you’ve forgotten the basics, Search Engine Watch has the definitive low-down on internal links and how you go about inserting them:
Draw a sitemap
Sitemaps are crucial for any property portal, linking to the top-level pages on your site. An XML sitemap containing all your portal’s URLs is an effective additional option, offering the maximum number of internal links possible in one search engine-friendly chunk.
Use relevant text
Anchor text is more powerful than image links for navigation, so make sure your use relevant words for your links. Keyword phrases are great, but related terms or phrases are also acceptable. The bottom line? Don’t use “click here”.
Use your footers and breadcrumbs
Footer links and breadcrumb links appear throughout your site, so make the most of them. Why just have “Terms of Use” or “Privacy Policy” in your footer and give them all the link juice? Choose the pages that you want to receive the highest number of links and feature them evenly across all your main sections.
Calls to action
A significant part of internal linking rests in calls to action. If you want someone to browse your property listings in Spain, is your call to action above the fold of the page? Make sure your aim is clear and consistent across the page so that your user can easily follow through and lead to a successful conversion.
For more tips, read the full article here:
Internal Linking, the Other Linking – Search Engine Watch
What Business Apps Do You Use?
Posted on March, 27, 2012 by Ivan Radford -What business apps do you use as a real estate professional?
Inman News have started a new series of articles featuring recommended apps by people in the property industry. First out of the blocks is Chris Nichols, a broker from Utah. Here are two of his top business apps:
Google Calendar
Organisation is important – where would we all be without Microsoft Outlook’s Calendar? – but what’s the best way to manage appointments, viewings and conference calls on the move?
“Google Calendar keeps me on track as a broker,” he tells Inman, “serving at our local, state and national associations, and the many other things I have going on in my life! I’m not sure how I (got all of this done) before Google Calendar!”
Path
Social network management is now a vital skill for real estate marketers – and we’re increasingly required to do it on the move. Path isn’t an app we’re familiar with, but Nichols highlights the need for convenient mobile social media:
“I don’t really use it as a stand-alone social network (while it is that); I really use it for the ease of posting to, say, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare all at once.”
Read his full list of top apps – then bookmark the series for a steady stream of reliable recommendations:
Top 6 business apps: A real estate broker’s faves – Inman News