Real Estate Search Marketing Advice From The Rismedia Real Estate Leadership Conference

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by solomonrothman

As I typed the first draft of this post in the airport, my head was still buzzing from the wild energy at the RISMedia Real Estate Leadership Conference, where Social Media Systems was an exhibitor. As head of technology and product development at Social Media Systems, it has been awhile since I did face-to-face networking. It was fun to chat it up and pitch pros from the top real estate companies in the United States. Like blogging and social networking, the conference was all about the conversation and we created a large buzz.

Our little booth was crammed with energy, we talked chatted, networked and, I think,  ”took over”. The networking started in the exhibit hall continued late into the night in the lounge and out to the sights and smells of Manhattan. Many of the other vendors came over to hang out and talk, and the was a great success for us. As I looked on at many of the less trafficked booths with large beautiful displays and bored looking individuals manning them, I wondered why they didn’t jump in, do more talking, and joining the conversation.

The conference had panels on all different topics including why Realtors should reduce brick and mortar costs, spend less on print and transition to using blogging and social media as well as focusing more time/money on the web. Of course many of them contained very basic information or were off-topic concerning things like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to actually improve your website rankings in any tangible way.

I talked to more than one company spending $100,000+ on buying leads from Zillow and Trulia, while neglecting to improve their own website and it’s rankings / traffic. Nearly all the real estate websites I looked at lacked essential social media features and had basic SEO problems (even companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars)

Most of the people I talked to saw the potential with social media and were excited about using these new technologies in the future, they just hadn’t taken the leap yet. One uplifting note is that nearly everyone I talked to was very interested in getting their agents to blog and promote themselves, but their approaches were disorganized and usually ended with scattered blogs on disconnected systems (which greatly diminishes their traffic potential).

It appears real estate companies with massive resources (content and money) are not using them to achieve even 10% of their potential to generate traffic and rankings. I am amazed at the market and knowledge gap in search marketing and especially social media website development. So after critiquing some of real estate companies I encountered, I am offering here some tangible advice on how to increase rankings and traffic for real estate websites.

1. Add social media features to your website. If your site doesn’t have features that enable conversation and interaction with your visitors, it is time for an upgrade. Stop thinking of your website as a large beautiful brochure and think of it as an evolving community designed to compel and engage your visitors. Think content, content, content!

2. Provide networked blogs for each of your agents / employees and use that information to create an “SEO Machine” to generate more traffic and leads. Spend less on buying leads and more on using social media and other technologies to promote yourself and generate your own leads. If you run a real estate company with more than 10 agents stop letting them blog on weak networks and on blogger.com - Give them a strong co-branded blogging presence originating at your very own website (authority source).

3. Treat your website as an evolving entity and not as a static, un-changing object . Stop delaying the jump into the 21rst century: having a static website while you buy leads for thousands of dollars is not efficient , and is often a waste of money. Start spending more of your budget on evolving your web presence and on generating the leads yourself. You’ll see a much higher ROI and build more value for your company as your website is an online property (like physical real estate) and should be treated as such.

4. Don’t try to in-house all aspects of your Internet marketing campaign- especially those using social media marketing. You can’t in-house everything. To many large companies just hire 1 web guy and then say “We have a good web guy”. Well this involves a lot more than just 1 web guy, it has evolved into a specialty and it is important to include the rest of the Internet community in the discussion . Having a web guy is great, but most of them are no competition for professional Internet marketers!

5. Add video to your website now!Not a single person I talked to had a video on their website in any major way. Translation: HUGE OPPORTUNINTIES for traffic and promotion by being an early market adapter for video. Right now most websites are lacking video - in the next 2-5 years we estimate that the AVERAGE website will incorporate video. This means eventually you will need to have video just to look modern and engage your audience. Why not start adding video now and start getting a huge boost by being an early market adapter (the video search engines are becoming more and more important, a whole new race is on!)

Generally the market always lags behind the technology: many real estate professional are just getting into blogging and barley understand the power of social media and the “new” web. Progressive companies will embrace these technologies earlier and will dominate online markets, while those lagging will continue to see lower and lower returns.  No time to dilly-dally! The time to upgrade is now.

I’ll leave you our tag line:

“Is your website a social media system?”

“Shouldn’t it be?”

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