Internet » Technology Tools for Real Estate

In a recent article, we reminded you that in the Internet age, there’s no excuse for prospects not being able to find you. Start a blog, establish a Facebook page, create a profile on LinkedIn: these are the minimum requirements for creating an Internet presence so a colleague or potential client can use Google to find you.

But “starting” isn’t enough. It’s just as important to stay active. The more active you are on the Internet, the easier it becomes for someone to find you; your name pops up more times when searched, prospects can see and learn more about you, your credibility grows. So, the real key to Internet visibility is to stay active online.

An important part of staying active is posting regularly to your blog. But there’s more you can do. Here are three additional activities you can undertake on a regular basis to increase your visibility on the Internet:

Comment on other people’s blogs. Add thoughtful ideas or follow-up suggestions to the comment sections of the blogs you read (You do read other people’s blogs, don’t you?) The keyword here is thoughtful. Be positive and respectful; make sure your comments add value. Comments on Active Rain are great, but for maximum visibility step outside the box and comment on blogs beyond real estate.
Write articles for online magazines. These can be rewrites of your best blog posts that you think will have universal appeal. (Don’t just copy and paste, but actually reword your magazine article to get it recognized properly by search engines. The best known online magazines are www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com. Both give you a space at the end of the article to tell more about yourself and to include a link back to your blog or website.
Submit press releases. When newspapers, magazines, and online publications need material or someone to interview, they read press releases to get ideas. Often journalists copy press releases word for word into their own publications. That puts information about you in front of more people. Anyone can submit a press release about themselves and the Internet makes it easy to do. Visit www.prlog.org to get started.

These activities have the added benefit of helping move your website closer to the top of the search result when someone googles your name. So stay active and do a little bit each day.

Recently, Chicago real estate professional Andrea Geller wrote about her frustration at trying to find the contact information of an agent in another state to whom she was referring one of her clients. She wanted to learn something about that agent and maybe even talk to them before passing her client along. But that out-of-state agent couldn’t be found on Google. In fact, it took Andrea a good bit of work to find a direct link to that agent on the Internet.

What if a consumer or another agent were trying to find you? What would they get if they googled your name? How much searching would they have to do on the Internet before they found your contact information? And if someone did contact you based on an Internet search, how long would it take you to answer?

Here are the five minimum things you should do to make sure prospects and colleagues can find you with ease:

Have a LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile serves as an online résumé that will come up whenever anybody googles you name.
Have a Google profile. Google also lets you create a profile, in which you can write a description of yourself, upload photos, and provide links to other applications you use on the Web.
Be on Facebook. A Facebook Fan Page is ideal because it lets you keep your friends and family separate from your professional image, and because the person looking for you wouldn’t have to have a Facebook account to find you.
Check Your Broker’s Site. Make sure your contact information is easy to find and up to date on your broker’s website. If you can’t control what’s on your broker’s site, get your own website.
Have Your Own Website. Even if you do have input regarding what appears on your broker’s site, you should have your own website. On your own website, you can express our individuality, show your professionalism, and demonstrate how you differ from your colleagues. A blog is even better than a static website because it allows you to easily update the site’s content.

There is more you can do. But if you can’t find yourself when you google your name, start with these.

A recently-released report by a California-based security company revealed that millions of computer users are selecting passwords that make it easy for hackers to gain access to their accounts. Are you one of those people?

The company, Imperva, analyzed 32 million passwords in December 2009, and discovered that:

30% of all computer users select passwords of 6 characters or less. The shorter the password, the easier it for a hacker to guess.
Nearly half of all computer users create easy to remember (and therefore easy to guess) passwords, using slang words, dictionary words, or familiar number combination. The most common password, for example, is “123456”. Among the top 5 passwords are: “12345”, “123456789” and “password”.
Half of all computer users use the same password for all the websites they visit. This means that once a hacker figures out a victim’s password at one site, it’s easy to invade that person’s accounts on other sites.
Almost 60% of users create passwords from a limited number of characters. Passwords should not spell out a recognizable word and should contain upper and lower case letters along with numbers and special characters such as “!@#$%%^”.

If you’ve made any of these mistakes, you should take the time to review and change your passwords. Choose strong passwords and use these techniques to help remember them.

Google continues its relentless effort to catalog all of the world’s data and make it available to be searched. Part of that effort involves real estate, as Google continually adds new features to allow consumers to find properties for sale.

For example, did you know that you can do a real estate search on Google Maps?

Click the drop down menu that’s labeled “More” and check the box that says “Real Estate”.
Enter an address or a zip code in the search field.
Refine the search by price, number of bedrooms and number of bedrooms.

The result is a list of properties for sale—certainly not the entire MLS right now but enough to get a consumer started. And you can be sure Google will add more features as time goes on, and improve the search so it draws from more sources.

Currently the listings on Google show multiple photos, property descriptions, maps, public transit information, and a button that makes it easy to e-mail the listing to someone else. If the property has been listed multiple times, data from each of the listings—including the listing broker, listing agent, and list price—may also show.

It’s interesting to note that properties offered by brokers are shown right along side properties listed on Buy Owner.

So, will Google someday replace the local MLS?

A recent incident at the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers an excellent reminder for real estate professionals.

First, the background story: ReadWriteWeb reports that an employee at a St. Louis area school lost his job for repeatedly posting vulgar comments on the newspaper’s website. The employee assumed his comments were posted anonymously. Meanwhile, the social media director at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch traced the IP address of the poster to a local school and contact the school’s administrator, assuming the comments had been posted by a student. Not so. The commenter was an adult employee at the school who was immediately fired.

People posting on the Internet often get confused and think that no one will ever know who they are. Or, even when their identity is well known—as when they’re posting on their own blogs—they think only a handful of their closest associates will ever see their comments. Neither of these things is necessarily true. Therefore, whenever you post something to the Internet, it’s important to use good judgment.

For real estate professionals that means:

Be Kind to People You’re Working With. Never write in an unflattering way about a client, another agent, another agent’s client, or anyone else involved in a transaction.
Be Kind to People You Don’t Know. Never make fun of a seller or a property you’ve seen, no matter how ridiculous the offer or the property seems to you.
Be Aware of Your Duty to Maintain Confidentiality. Never disclose any details about a transaction.
Think Before You Type. Never put anything in a blog post, in a comment, in an e-mail, or in any other electronic format that you might regret later. Once you hit the enter button, you can’t really ever take it back.
Remember that the Internet Never Forgets. Deleting or removing a post doesn’t necessarily get rid of it. Websites are often cached or archived so that deleted comments can still be searched and found.
Assume That What You’re Writing Will Be Read by Millions. Always write as if your words will be seen by people beyond your intended audience. Readers can link to your comments or forward them to others. Search engines can often find what you’ve written. Comments posted to sites like Twitter can be seen by everyone everywhere.
Know that You’re Not Really Anonymous. Few people are really anonymous on the Internet. Comments and e-mails can be traced by people who know how.