Categories
Content Marketing Social Media Wordpress Website Training Courses

Real estate agents turn vendors away with anti social Facebook behaviour

Social Media builds communities, but that can be hard

Everybody wants to be on social media because there is a fear of missing out, just like in many alleged stock market and property market bubbles that are going on in Australia (and China).

Every coach, adviser, website designer and online marketing expert is spruiking the benefits of getting onto social media to be discovered, but like most things you can’t just be there, you have to participate, otherwise you’re not really being social. In fact if you’re not putting in the right amount of effort, you might be seen as anti-social by sending people away from your Facebook page.

Do you want to be social or do you just want to shout?

If you’re the owner of a Facebook business page and want your page to be successful, actually add value and help build a community, then you’ll need a community manager and that can be a big expense and not practical for small businesses. Larger social media sites who have taken the time to hire a good community manager have mastered the purpose of social sites – they encourage members (call them likers, friends etc) to make comments as part of a group that adds value to the topics you’ve discussed. The best example I can think of is social groups for Mums and social groups for IT nerds (which is becoming most of us these days). When you go to one of these sites you learn some fantastic things you didn’t know and if they are really good (and genuine) you’ll feel like sharing your stories.

So if you still want to get onto social media with a Facebook page you can do things that people like and not have to spend too much time, effort and money, growing a community. You can share useful information and tell people about what YOU are doing that might interest them. Australians are VERY interested in real estate and they want to know what is going on in the market, what their own property is worth etc so you can add value and contribute using social media.

What to shout about!

There’s plenty to shout about if you want to share and be helpful, including:

  • Images of houses that are prepared beautifully for sale
  • Information about how many people are showing interest in open homes
  • Developments in the local area that affect house prices
  • Place to visit and have a great coffee, parks that cater well to those with kids

Social media sites like Instagram, Foursquare and Yelp all enable people to share images, videos, information and recommendations that other people are interested in and if you really want to participate in social media you’ll need to get on and connect with businesses you like and recommend and make comments about them.

The saddest thing to happen to social media

The saddest thing that I have seen at some Facebook pages is reposting, particularly if that’s all that happens. If you are a victim of reposting and don’t know it, you’ll notice it when everything you post (or repost) on your timeline just sends your visitors away to other sites. It’s OK to repost from time to time and particularly if you’ve just read something useful, but if someone is managing your Facebook page and they are just sending visitors away they are reducing the value of any other digital marketing you are doing.

There is another way – and it’s to create your own content (or have someone create it for you) and that’s what we do.

Content marketing can bring happiness and success to your social strategy

Content marketing is all the rage these days, but it’s actually been happening for many years under boring names like ‘business blogging’ and the humble ‘news’ section of websites. The great thing about content marketing is that if you do it right, you can link back to other great content you’ve created. Content marketing should be designed to provide useful information that your potential vendors are looking for; that they are searching for, and that they are interested in. If you do a great job then your readers will follow you and possibly even subscribe to your blog, newsletter, education series or whatever it happens to be.

Remember that not all of the people who read your website, blog or social media pages need you right now, but if they like what you write, they’ll want a way of being reminded of you for when they are ready to buy. That’s when they join your list or like your page.

If you just want to shout out on social media then do it using your own great content. That way you’ll be sending readers back to your own website – and not to someone else’s. You’ll then have more analytics to look at.

 

Categories
Content Marketing Google Analytics real estate agents Search Engine Optimisation Course Social Media Wordpress Website Training Courses

Why Facebook is #2 and sticky – what real estate agents can do about it

Facebook is sticky because users stay there

Website visitor information for facebook and why it is so sticky and good social media for real estate agents
Social media giant Facebook’s visitor stats what are your real estate agent website analytics like?

When a website is described as sticky it just means that visitors to the site stay their longer and click on more things. You probably do it because you find your friends, the things they do and the placed they go to interesting. Google and other systems that measure engagement of websites measure this using bounce rate, page views per visit and the time spent on the site each visit and that is something that we make our clients aware of in our quarterly digital strategy progress report for their website.

When you think about your own site, are their interesting places to visit? Are their stories about the people you work with, about your vendors or even about the buyers that others might find interesting? Some people have said to me that writing about real estate is boring but if you look at how popular ANY article that relates to real estate is in the press you’d soon find lots of things to write about and that is exactly what we do.

Content Marketing includes Words, Pictures and Videos

mobile friendly real estate agent websitesContent marketing is the buzz word in digital marketing these days but it has been popular for a long time. It’s commonly also referred to as blogging, business blogging or even newsletters (if you want to go back to more traditional terms). Content marketing refers to the writing on your wesbite but also to the images that you use (and how they are optimised for search engines) and the videos you create. The ultimate goal of all this content creation is to produce something that visitors to your real estate agent website want to see. If you tell a compelling story your visitors will come along on your journey.

Instagram is not as popular as Facebook

Website visitor information for instagram not as popular as Facebook but good social media for real estate agents
Instagram website visitor statistics and anlytics

Instagram was bought by Facebook in 2012 but it’s statistics don’t come close to those of it’s parent. Despite this Instagram is a good social media tool for real estate agents who want to appear as tech savvy and increase their content by taking photos and uploading them. Instagram is a tool that enables people to view great images and videos, like and share them and remain connected to people who they like so if you sell some great houses that you think people would like to know about its a good idea to give Instagram a go.

As a digital agency we can advise on all aspects of digital marketing and provide our clients with regular reports that demonstrate the statistics and analytics but focus on the goals and action points. If you’re a real estate agent and interested in 123ezy website for yourself take a look at our pricing but more importantly give us a call and ask us some questions, we’d love to help.

Categories
Content Marketing Video Analytics Video Marketing

Drop off in real estate video views noticed in agent website strategy

Videos keep property sellers engaged longer

There's a drop off in real estate video analytics view stats but they mean more than a flashy responsive mobile optimised websiteSome website visitors prefer to read the writing on your website while others prefer to watch videos but no matter which content marketing medium you choose, relevant and useful information on your website will keep visitors there longer and video analytics shows you what’s working.

You can have a sample video that’s freely available and if it’s good your “anonymous” visitors may subscribe and join your marketing list and give you permission to send messages to them in the future. This information is probably common knowledge to you if you have spent some time researching online marketing, but the most important thing for real estate agents to remember is that you don’t have to get it right or perfect the first time.

We provide our premium real estate agents with a regular digital strategy report which reviews their digital performance in all aspects of their campaigns, including:

  • popular landing pages,
  • results of online advertising like Google Adwords and Facebook Ads
  • click-through rates (CTR)
  • subscriber growth
  • social media influence, and
  • video engagement

The image in this post shows the drop off in video views for Derek Farmer, a McGrath Real Estate Agent in Sydney’s Cammeray area. At first glance you see a drop that may appear bad, but these statistics are actually very good. There is always a drop off as people make the decision early on if this video is worth watching for them. If viewers are interested your goal as the presenter is to ensure that viewers stay with you until the very end and as you can see in this chart most viewers stay watching for the entire course of the video – and the video goes for a whole 3 minutes which is a long time for many Internet viewers.

Video analytics guide you to change

Video analytics like these help you make decisions that change the course of your digital strategy by telling you that you need to change or keep doing more of the same. When we work on our real estate agent websites and their digital marketing strategies video analytics is just one of the aspects we review with them regularly.

It’s one thing to have a flashy website with glossy images of yourself and a couple houses you’ve sold but it’s another thing to make regular updates to your website with an end goal in mind. Learn more about how our 123ezy Automated Marketing Response System is helping real estate agents build credibility and grow their online influence.

Categories
Content Marketing Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

Content Marketing Differs from SEO

Content and Search Engineering!

It’s important to understand that knowing about online content marketing is vastly different to possessing a knowledge of SEO (or search engine optimisation) and we say this because many people seem to think these two skills sets are one and the same.

Your Content Marketing Strategies Count!

Online advertising may be more accessible than traditional advertising, especially for small businesses, but that doesn’t mean you should leave your online marketing strategies to just anyone.

Your business’ online marketing strategies should be approached in the same manner as you would any other marketing strategy — or, in fact, any other business strategy. For this reason, a business would employ someone who specialises in online marketing.

Online Marketing is NOT the Same as SEO

But too often, business owners mistake the need for an online marketing assistant with SEO experts when really SEO is just one part of your overall online marketing strategy (just like social media). The skills sets are also very different. SEO experts are highly skilled in the technical aspects relating to SEO, but usually do not possess any marketing knowledge; knowledge, which is quantifiably different from SEO.

In marketing, you get to understand demographics and how to reach them effectively through different marketing strategies. For instance, it’s widely believed that younger generations are the more active online than the baby boomer generation, but that’s actually not the case.

The baby boomer generation was really the fad generation — they embraced with great zeal, anything that came along, and they were also far more progressive than the generations before them. If you think about much of the social, political, economic and cultural change that has taken place in the last 50 or 60 years, it was the baby boomers who embraced it.

A marketing expert would know this, but would a technology expert? This is why online marketing assistants need to have skills that go beyond the technical know-how, to skills you find in most traditional marketing professionals.

We’ve helped Derek Farmer Use All

We’ve helped Derek Farmer get to page 1 in Google search by utilising all the skills of our team members:

  • Working with internal and external partners to achieve successful execution of your content marketing strategy
  • Social networks – distributing and tribe building
  • Web analytics monitoring and reporting against key metrics
  • Search engine optimization tasks – improving page content, ensuring site structure is efficient, keyword relevancy, product names and tags etc
  • Email marketing – list maintenance, segmentation, execution, monitoring, reporting.
  • Paid Search – budget control, key word success tracking, ROI reporting
  • Keeping up to date with internet and marketing trends and contribute this knowledge as an integral member of the team

Learn more about Derek Farmer and his online marketing as a residential real estate agent

Categories
Content Marketing Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

Specific is terrific for your website and online marketing

Niche Marketers are Rewarded by Google

Many website owners believe that they can create content and plonk it anywhere on their website and they’ll be inundated with emails and calls. They are missing the fundamental fact that people who are browsing the Internet have potentially 10-30 other websites to visit until they find the one that they like the most.

Here’s a couple examples of the goals I have for some of our websites.

  1. Get website visitors off your home page (otherwise they’ll bounce)
  2. Get people to take a short tour of what you can do for them (using images and maybe audio)
  3. Give people a reason to interact with your website (like a free sample or information report)
  4. Know the website goal and how to measure it (eg. the number of people visiting the website compared to the number of people who actually get to your Contact/subscription/ordering page etc).

Some fantastic news for you is that Google has all the tools to help you attract website visitors, funnel them to goal pages and measure your success (then perform some optimisation). Advertising with Google costs you money, but most of the other tools are completely free (like Google website optimiser and analytics). See some of the website analytics statistics available for website owners.

A great feature of Google Adwords is that you can actually target very specific potential customers to your website, customers who have typed in very specific search words and/or phrases. Better still you only pay for actual clicks to your website and not the people who just see your add (unless you get a display ad but more on that another time)

So remember that when you promote yourself online you are looking for people who want something very specific so you need to find them and then funnel them to your own specific goals for them. You’ll still attract a wide range of other prospects but you can create your content and make it sound very personalised for what they are looking for. Your 123ezy brand manager can help you create a content marketing strategy and Google Adwords and optimise your website for important keywords.

This post first appeared at EzyLearn in 2008

Categories
Content Marketing real estate agents

Your Personal Real Estate Agent Website: Much More Important Than You Think

Keep an Active Website

I’ve attended some business building and networking events and have been fascinated at the number of people who speak about the importance of good first impressions and having a professional website. What’s most amazing is that many of these people have a website that hasn’t changed in 2 years!

This is amazing because there are some very powerful website content management systems (CMS’s) like WordPress that enable you to get a website and change it whenever you want. You can even update the news section of your website (usually called a blog).

The most important thing about a website though is that it is often the first time potential customers get to know something about you and how you operate your business. Your warehouse and office are things that they may never see, plus, you can use your website to give them some important information that makes them buy from you straight away.

When we set up a professional website for real estate agents using WordPress, we add and modify the images and words regularly as part of their content marketing strategy, but if a member of their staff wants to make modifications they can – and we help them. Finally professional agents can have an online presence and build their online reputation. However, they can also make changes themselves if they want to.

Categories
Content Marketing Email Marketing

How Google Analytics Will Help Generate More Revenue

Split Testing and Personalised Email Marketing

I recently wrote about using web analytics to determine your website’s conversion rate, which can be used to generate sales leads but for those still unconvinced on the usefulness of analytics, I thought we’d break it down a little further.

Jump On Board the Web Analytics Train

If you’re not on board yet, here are four reasons why you should be!

  1. Search engine optimization: like it or not, SEO is still plays a huge part in how your customers arrive at your website. Using analytics you can see exactly what keywords and key phrases your customers are searching. Know this, and you’re able to create content that makes it almost impossible not to sign up for that newsletter, download an ebook, etc.
  2. Socially active: everyone knows that social media can drive traffic and result in leads, but what platform is best? Analytics answers this question without even breaking a sweat. For some businesses Facebook is the must-have platform, but for other businesses LinkedIn is more useful, so why waste your time on the wrong one if you don’t have to?
  3. A/B split testing: by combining the new-fangled world of web metrics with old school metrics like A/B testing, the internet doesn’t combust, but does, in fact, make fine-tuning your call-to-action strategies a cinch — particularly which ones to use and which ones to ditch.
  4. Personalise email marketing: ever wondered how to increase the open-rate of your newsletters and emails? Wonder no more! Say a user arrives at an ebook download and then subscribes to your newsletter — does that mean they’re interested in a certain product or service? Probably, so why bother them with irrelevant information? This is a particularly useful given the sheer number of emails most people receive today.

By now you should be asking yourself how and where you can find this analytics train so that you can board it. Your 123 brand manager will make sure your real estate agents website is setup for Google Analytics and highlight the most useful information for you.

Categories
Content Marketing Google Analytics

Google Analytics needs time and attention

Attention is What You Want From Readers

If you’re an average reader, I’ve got your attention for about 15 seconds, so here goes: many things we’ve been taught about the web are wrong. One of the biggest mistakes – thinking that clicking is the same as reading.

Not your average reader? Perhaps I’ve got you a while longer… I’ve mentioned on the EzyLearn blog that every business owner should be monitoring their web analytics – and it’s particularly important if you are counting on your website to bring in new enquiries and leads because it enables you to modify the journey and strategy to gain maximum benefit.

What Does Web Analytics Help You With?

Web analytics allows you to determine things like where your visitors originated from, your click rate and your bounce rate.

Google considers any visitor who spends less than 30 seconds on your web page before clicking elsewhere to have “bounced” – and the number of people who bounce from your website is your bounce rate.

Clicks and Conversions

Your click rate is the number of people who have clicked through to your website from a search engine, banner ad, or third party link. The goal is to keep your click rate high and your bounce rate low – this is supposed to demonstrate high engagement with your website, your business or your brand; it’s also supposes to guarantee conversions.

Except that it doesn’t – a fact that’s becoming clear to organisations with large web presences, as web users become more sophisticated as the way we use the web has evolved.

According to Tony Haile, of US company Chartbeat, which provides real-time analytics for companies like Time Inc, Forbes and NBC Universal, businesses should be looking towards something he calls Attention Web and away from clicks and bounce rates.

Time and Attention

Attention Web is not just valuing the number of clicks, but valuing the time and attention visitors give your site. “Time is a rare scarce resource on the web and we spend more of our time with good content than with bad,” Haile says.

For business owners this means you need to give your customers and clients, good, valuable content and start valuing the time they spend reading and engaging with it. Do this and your conversion rate will soar – and in turn, your bounce rate plummet.

***

A key cornerstone of our websites for real estate agents offer is the tools to measure how your online presence is performing. Read more about how we measure performance.

Categories
Content Marketing Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

Is Google Your Sugar Daddy

Content Marketing in Your Google Plan

I wrote in an EzyLearn post about marketing action plans, where I mentioned referral marketing and/or networking as a marketing strategy in your marketing plan. That may seem silly to some people, since networking doesn’t always translate to sales straight away, but we’ve discovered another reason why you should include it in your marketing plan: Google!

Google Outlines My Referrals

We were recently at our web stats using the Google Analytics app for Android, when we discovered that even Google separates the traffic to your website from other websites as ‘referrals’. This really highlighted the fact that you can be receiving referrals online from any news or content you make available on the web.

How to Create Great Online Content

The most accessible way to create good content online that will drive independent referrals for your business is to maintain a blog. If you publish a few posts each week that are highly relevant and highly targeted to your readers (your customers), the more likely they are to tweet, like or share your content with their friends, families, and colleagues.

Use YouTube

You could even take it a step further. Maybe you’re an IT consultant and you’re looking for other ways to connect with your customers and provide them with informative content – why not create a few YouTube tutorials that you can embed in your website and share on your social media platforms. With a little care, and some thought to the execution, you’ll set yourself apart from the other IT guys who only talk in gigabytes and mainframes.

Move Up the Google Rankings

The other upside of creating regular content is that you’ll move your way up through the Google ranks, which in turn, will bring you more referrals from Google, too. SEO also plays a big role in your Google rankings, but only so long as you’re creating the quality content that people want.

If you truly want a Google Sugar Daddy, then you need to keep pushing relevant, informative content online, so you can engage with your customers and clients online. Read about Automated Response Marketing Systems (ARMS) as another way of generating regular website visitors (Google likes returning visitors too)