Screenshots of the Showing Suite(R) Mobile Site

Imagine having the power of the Showing Calendar® and HomeFeedback® service on the go with Showing Suite Mobile!

Soon ShowingSuite.com members will have that dream become a reality when the Showing Suite® Mobile Site rolls out in August.

With Showing Suite Mobile, members everywhere will soon be able to do the following straight from their smartphones:

• Book showing appointments, approve/deny pending showing appointments, or check on the status of other pending showing appointments.
• Request feedback on real estate showings and view any new home buyers’ feedback logged.
• View your listing information including the property photo.
• View and edit seller information – plus all of your other Showing Suite contacts.
• EZ search your contacts and call or e-mail them from your phone.
• See all of your latest leads captured from your real estate website.
• Send e-Blasts to announce important listing changes (price reductions, repairs, etc).
• Add marketing notes to log your marketing efforts – choose whether your seller can see the note from inside their account or if you want them to receive it via email.
• Add new listing tasks as they come up; you can even set a reminder for yourself so you don’t forget!
• Plus many more features not listed here with more to come!

Any changes or updates made within Showing Suite Mobile will be reflected inside your full ShowingSuite.com account, making it even easier for you to complete your everyday tasks on a daily basis.

Showing Suite® Mobile is compatible with all major smartphones, including the iPhone, Blackberry, Android-based phones (DROID), and Windows Mobile phones. An Ultimate Showing Suite plan is required to use.

Be on the lookout for Showing Suite Mobile, coming soon in late summer 2010!

USB Flash Drive w/ Coca-Cola Logo; Could be Your Company Logo!

In the past I’ve suggested a few creative and fun real estate agent marketing ideas that you can use to draw in more clients and promote your brand offline.

I’m sure you’ve noticed after awhile it can get a bit stale using the same traditional methods of sending flyers and emails – although these methods can be very effective – so I thought perhaps now would be a good time to mention a couple more fun and unique REALTOR® marketing ideas:

Vinyl Stickers

Usually if you’re on the road you will see a vehicle with a company name, short bullets on products or services, and a contact number, right? Why not add the very same idea to your REALTOR® marketing strategy? It’s simple and prone to lots of exposure – after all, when’s the last time you went a day without driving?

USB Flash Drives

With a growing number of people using USB flash drives, it might be worthwhile to broaden your real estate agent marketing horizons and check out getting some made with your company name and logo printed on them. People can learn about your company when their friends allow them to borrow their USB flash drive.

NotePads / NoteBooks

Previously I’ve mentioned how adding pens to your real estate agent marketing strategy was a cheap and effective way to get your brand out there – why not go full circle and provide the paper to write on as well? Order some notepads / notebooks with your real estate company information printed on them for the extra advertisement!

Tape Measure

Ordering tape measures with your company information printed on them is a great real estate agent marketing move. Now your clients will think of you whenever they measure something around the house. And of course, leaving reminders of the services you provide with past clients is the best way to get repeat clients and referrals.

Umbrellas

If you live in an area that’s prone to a lot of rain (take the northwest of the US for example) then you should definitely add umbrellas with your company logo and information to your real estate agent marketing strategy. Make sure you pick a unique color or pattern to make the umbrella catch more attention – don’t forget to hope that it rains!

What fun and unique advertisement method have you used in your REALTOR® marketing plan? Comment and share your ideas and experiences below!

Photo Credit: molotalk

Getting your real estate website to be in tip-top shape can be quite the task and you may find yourself constantly tweaking your broker website to make it more SEO friendly.

While there are plenty of ways you can make your real estate website, some SEO methods are more talked about than others, so I’ve compiled a list of 4 SEO tips that are most commonly overlooked:

Include Keywords in the Domain Name or Page URLs

If you’re still trying to decide on a domain name for your real estate website, you may want to consider including a long-tail keyword in your broker website’s domain name or page url. By doing this, you’ll increase the number of instances for targeted keywords which contributes to page rankings. Not only that, but if the keywords in your real estate website’s web address match what a visitor types in on a search engine, they will be in bold – drawing more attention to your broker website’s entry.

Place Keywords in Image Name and ALT / TITLE Attributes

Another way to get more targeted keywords on your real estate website is to include keywords in the file name of images used. Along with the actual file names, you can include keywords in the “ALT” and “TITLE” attribute on broker website images. The “ALT” attribute sets what will appear should an image fail to load (or if a visitor has images disabled) while the “TITLE” attribute is the text that will show when a user hovers over that image on your real estate website.

Structure Your Site with Proper Header Tags

Header tags allow you to set a structure for your real estate website page content to help both visitors and search engine spiders read the page. Header tags sort the importance of content text and it’s crucial that they’re used in the proper manner. The easier it is for search engine spiders to read your page, the better.

Register Your Real Estate Website

If you haven’t done so already, make sure you take a moment to register your real estate website with all of the major search engines; many of them allow you to also upload your sitemap. Only downside is some of them charge an annual fee, but its well worth the investment. Business.com, Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ.org, and BOTW are all directories you should be submitting your real estate website to. For those who have a real estate blog, be sure to register it on Google News.

While the 4 SEO tips I’ve outlined above are nothing new, they tend to be overlooked or forgotten in all of the excitement that comes with creating and optimizing a real estate website. Be sure to apply them to your real estate website to make sure you have the best chance to reach an online audience and build your client base.

Photo Credit: ffuentes

SAN DIEGO (May 18, 2010) –  Showing Suite, Inc., a leading provider of Internet-based tools that help real estate professionals sell homes faster, announced today that Prudential California Realty, Southern California will implement Showing Suite’s technology in their 58 offices.

Since 2001, Showing Suite’s HomeFeedback® system has been the industry leading solution for gathering showing feedback in over 150 US and Canadian markets. Agents average a 71% response rate across the United States and Canada. Agents are able to customize the feedback questions for each property as well as eBlast every Showing Agent that has viewed the property updates on any price reductions or property changes with the click of one button – making the system a true time saver!

Mark Johnson, Vice President of Marketing and Technology for Prudential California Realty, states, “HomeFeedback® is very valuable for our sales associates; it saves time and simplifies the buyer-feedback process. We are confident Showing Suite’s tools will help our agents enhance their service to their clients.”

The system will allow every agent complete automation of sending feedback to showing agents after a property showing, allowing them to keep their clients better informed on what potential buyers think about their property.

For press inquiries and/or to speak with a Showing Suite, Inc. representative please contact Justin Mayerick at (858) 270-1055.

About Prudential California Realty

Prudential California Realty is the largest company in the Prudential Real Estate Network and one of the top five brokerages in the nation, with over $10 billion in annual sales. Based in Southern California, Prudential serves clients from over 58 offices from San Diego to Santa Maria. For more information, visit www.prudentialcal.com

About Showing Suite, Inc.

Showing Suite, Inc. develops and implements market-leading tools that allow real estate professionals to sell homes smarter and faster. Since 2001, the company has brought a suite of web-based software solutions for the real estate sector to market, including its flagship product, HomeFeedback®, as well as HomeFollowup®, Showing Sync®, Showing Calendar®, and ForeclosureFeedback®. Since its inception, the company has helped more than 800,000 real estate professionals in markets across the U.S. and Canada obtain valuable feedback from potential buyers and increase home sales.

Developing a list of keywords you wish to target on your real estate broker website (or REALTOR® blog) is a critical step that should be done before writing any content on your website.

Although the task may seem daunting, a little brainstorming can quickly result in a good sized list of ideal keywords for your real estate broker website.

The key question to ask yourself when building a keyword list for your real estate broker website is, “What words or phrases would my clients use in order to find or describe my services or products?”

Jot down keywords that are relevant to your products and services that you believe clients would search for and that you would like your real estate broker website to rank for as a result. Use a keyword tool if you need some help and be sure to check the keywords of your competitors for additional ideas.

When building your keyword list, it’s important that you don’t forget your long-tailed keywords. Long-tailed keywords can be a big help, especially if you’re starting a new real estate broker website or looking to generate more traffic on an existing one.

What are Long-Tailed Keywords?

Long-tailed keywords are multi-phrase search terms that have at least 3-5 words in the keyword phrase. Long-tailed keywords are much more targeted than general or “broad” search terms, have less competition and therefore present an easier ranking opportunity for your real estate broker website. Better yet, long-tailed keywords are based off general terms and can easily be created!

Example: For a broad term like ‘real estate‘, depending on your area or niche, you can come up with more long-tailed keyword phrases like:

• San Diego real estate
• San Diego foreclosed real estate
• San Diego short sale real estate

..and the list goes on!

By focusing on long-tailed keywords, you can present visitors with whatever specific information they’re seeking whenever they use these search terms. Since the visitor was searching for a long-tailed keyword, they’re likely to result in a conversion since they found exactly what they’re looking for.

Combine that with the fact that long-tailed keywords have less competition and are easier to rank for, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be optimizing your real estate broker website to target long-tailed keywords!

Managing showings for multiple listings can be quite the challenge. If you’re one of many listing agents that dedicate a good chunk of time to book and confirm showings, you may be itching for a better way to book showings and update all parties of any appointment changes (cancels, reschedule, etc) the moment they happen.

Consider soothing that itch by using Showing Calendar® to help you drastically improve your showing management efforts. Showing Calendar® will not only make it incredibly easy for prospects to actually book showings, but also make it easy for you and your clients to monitor showing activity.

Infact, here are 7 reasons why you will quickly come to love using Showing Calendar® to manage and book showings on your listings

1. Showing Agents & Prospects Can Easily Book Showings
   Now showing agents and interested buyers can easily click the “Schedule a Showing” link on your website or MLS details and fill out a short form to book showings. No more phone tag, repeated voicemails, or missed showing opportunities.
2. Showing Appointments Can Be Approved or Denied in a Single Click

   Instead of having to make multiple calls to confirm a showing appointment, you and your clients can simply click “Approve” or “Deny” in the notification email when a prospect books a showing. Follow-up emails will be sent whether you confirm or deny the showing request.

3. Everyone is On the Same Page – At All Times!
   Say you go back later and edit the showing appointment date or cancel the appointment altogether… Showing Calendar® automatically emails all other parties involved to let them know exactly what you’ve changed. No more frantic phone calls to notify anyone.
4. The Property is Only Available When It Truly is Available
   Sick of scheduling conflicts? Both you and your sellers can preset the dates and times that the listing is available to show and block out additional dates/times as needed. The listing’s calendar will instantly be updated and prospects will only be able to book showings on the available dates & times.
5. You Can Enable Reminders to Avoid “No-Shows”
   We all tend to forget things thanks to our busy schedules. Cut back on no-shows by setting up automated reminders that will go out to all parties (listing agent, seller, and/or showing agent) anywhere from 1 hour to 2 days before the showing is scheduled to take place.
6. Sellers Can Easily See All Showing Activity
   Showing Calendar® provides 24 hr online access to your sellers so they can see exactly how much traffic is coming through their home. Clients can login to their private console and view all of the upcoming and past showing appointments for their property. Imagine being able to offer that feature to prospective sellers during your listing presentation!
7. It Integrates with the Best Real Estate Agent Software to Gather Feedback
   Nothing’s better than booking showings and a feedback request at the same time. Use Showing Calendar to book online showings and have the revolutionary HomeFeedback system follow-up with a feedback request 1 hour after the showing was scheduled to take place.

As you can see, Showing Calendar® is the perfect real estate agent software to use if you want to easily manage and book showings for your listings.  Right now you can try out Showing Calendar® and HomeFeedback® on your listings absolutely free for 60 days with the Ultimate Showing Suite. Visit www.showingsuite.com and get your free trial now!

Backlinks are a piece of the SEO puzzle

What are the goals of your real estate blog or website?

Attracting a variety of visitors, keeping visitors engaged enough to result in repeated visitors, generating new real estate sales leads, and becoming insanely popular across the internet… all of that pretty much sums up the focus of your broker website – or real estate blog – right?

If you’ve jumped on the real estate internet marketing bandwagon, I hope you’ve also invested time and efforts to make sure your real estate blog and broker website is SEO friendly and work up a game plan on your off-site SEO strategy.

That’s right, along with the typical SEO tactics, you better be indulging in some crucial off-site SEO strategies, like backlink building.

What Are Backlinks and Why Do I Need Them?

Backlinks are incoming links from other relevant websites that benefit your broker website or real estate blog by driving traffic and helping your website’s ranking all at the same time. Whenever someone posts a link to your real estate blog or broker website, they’re essentially casting a vote for the popularity and value of your website to the search engines. So you always want quality backlinks on other real estate related websites to help your website achieve a higher search engine ranking.

How Can I Build Backlinks on My Real Estate Blog or Broker Website?

If you have a real estate blog, then you’re already a step ahead in getting backlinks as long as you generate good content. With all of the social media websites floating around, people are apt to share a good blog post with their friends.

Another popular way to earn backlinks is by commenting on other real estate blogs and including a link to your site. If you take this route, be sure to read the post and write more than “great post!” – actually drop a little proof you read the comment and want more than just a backlink (say, an actual visitor or two?) by leaving a compelling thought.

If you participate in any real estate forums or communities (brokeragentsocial.com, realtown.com, etc.), then be sure to link to your real estate blog or broker website in your signature.

Building backlinks for your real estate blog or broker website is an ongoing project that every real estate agent should include in their real estate internet marketing efforts. Just be sure to gain backlinks properly (no link farms or paying someone to submit your broker website to bogus link directories) to get the best search engine result rankings.

Sample E-Blast Email (Click to Enlarge)

Say that you have a listing on the market and your seller agrees that a listing price reduction is in order. Or perhaps the seller has just completed an upgrade on the home and you want to stir up some new interest.

Do you know how to quickly get the news out to every showing agent and prospective buyer has toured that home? Are you going to allow the opportunity to generate buyer interest with a real estate price reduction slip through your fingers?

If you’re a user of the HomeFeedback® system, you’ll be pleased to know that the software is not only built to quickly retrieve and relay agent feedback to your sellers, but also help you quickly notify your real estate contacts of any listing changes.

The e-Blast feature included in HomeFeedback® allows you to pick who you want to receive notification and fire off an email about the listing price reduction – or any other important listing announcements – in just a few clicks.  Better yet, all of the listing information (photos, address, virtual tour links) you have stored in the system are automatically included.

With something as significant as a real estate price reduction, home upgrade, repairs, or any other incentives that you know could potentially result in new buyers, a second showing, or maybe even an offer, you will want an easy and fast way to get the word out.

How do you notify showing agents of changes to your listings?

When you indulge yourself in a real estate email marketing, you hope every real estate email marketing campaign you send reaches the recipient’s inbox with little trouble.

With a world full of spam filters and forgetful minds leading to fingers itching to press the “spam” or “delete” buttons, it can be a tricky task to have your real estate email marketing campaign successfully reach the recipient every time.

I’ve mentioned before how the HTML code in your emails, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 compliance, and avoiding words that trigger spam-filters can help delivery rates for your real estate email marketing efforts, but making sure your mailing lists are permission based is crucial to your real estate email marketing success.

Permission Based Email Marketing Campaign vs. Non Permission Based

A permission based email marketing campaign is a real estate email marketing campaign that is sent to people that have specifically requested to receive it. A permission based email marketing campaign is legal and portrays a professional image while giving you the opportunity to allow you to participate in real estate email marketing without appearing as “spam” to recipients.

Building Your Permission Based Email Marketing List

There are two different ways for people to “opt-in” to your real estate email marketing campaign lists:

1. Single Opt-In
   A person signs up for your real estate email marketing campaign using a web-form on your website and are automatically added to the real estate email marketing mailing list associated with that specific web-form.
2. Double Opt-In (aka “confirmed opt-in”)
   A person signs up for your real estate email marketing campaign using a web-form and is added to your mailing list like the single opt-in, however, they are sent an automated email message containing a link (or other instructions) in order to confirm their subscription to your real estate email marketing list.
   

Remind People Why They’re Getting Your Permission Based Email Marketing Campaign

With the amount of emails we get on a daily basis, its no wonder we tend to forget what we requested and what we didn’t. Make it a little easier for people who signed up for your real estate email marketing campaign to remember they requested the information you send them by putting it at the bottom of the email. Something like: “You received this email because you signed up for [name of the newsletter or real estate email marketing campaign]” should suffice.

By using permission based email marketing campaigns in your real estate email marketing practices, you will ensure that you’re only reaching out to those who are actually interested in your products and services. It doesn’t make much sense to email those who aren’t interested in your products; that will only waste your time and efforts and put you at greater risk to be marked as a spammer. Remember, your reputation takes a hit every time someone presses that “spam” button on their email client!

Keep your professional image and give yourself the best chance for high inbox delivery rates and ROI by mailing permission based email marketing campaigns only.

Photo Credit: Intersection Consulting

Unless you’ve been hiding under the rock for the past few years, you’ve heard about the mini-blogging platform, Twitter, which now boasts over 106 million users generating roughly 55 million tweets per day.

Countless companies have noticed the potential to connect with clients on both a social and personal level to strengthen the relationship with existing clients and potentially attract new ones.

Adding Twitter to your very own real estate agent marketing plan can be quite useful since it will give you an opportunity to easily pass along information to the world.  Best of all, both Bing and Google index tweets (terminology for your postings on Twitter) and Twitter profiles.

How can you pass up another opportunity to pop up in search results?

If you’re wondering what you’d possibly say once you’ve decided to add Twitter to your real estate agent marketing plans, here are a few ideas:

The Latest Real Estate News

Naturally as a real estate agent you keep your ear to the ground to learn about what’s going on in the real estate industry. Why not share important real estate news with your followers? It will help build your reputation of being a good resource for real estate information & keep readers interested in your tweets.

House Hunting and House Selling Tips

We all love a little advice, and the idea of tweeting a quick home buying or home selling tips here and there to your followers is a great idea that they will surely appreciate. If they see you’ve got good advice, they may just contact you to help them purchase their home or even list their home on the market!

Your New Blog Posts

If you maintain a real estate blog, Twitter is definitely a great way to promote your new posts. I recommend posting the title of the entry with a link to the new entry (just make sure you use a url shortener like bit.ly, tinyurl, or ow.ly) If a blog isn’t part of your real estate agent marketing strategy, you’ll probably want to set one up soon!

Info on Your New Listings

Why wouldn’t you advertise your new listing on twitter? There are millions of people browsing the site at any given time, which makes it a great REALTOR® marketing opportunity for your listings. Post the address, price, and a link to the property on your company website! (Again, don’t forget the URL shortener).

Invitations to Upcoming Open Houses

You setup ballooned signs, send out flyers, put an ad in the paper and possibly send out an open house e-card to everyone you know, so why not tweet about the open house you’re hosting this weekend? You can even post your location, to make it that much easier for interested parties to find you.

The great thing about Twitter is that you don’t have to be at a computer to post a new tweet – there are plenty of apps for phones or you can even post an update via text message.

With the ease of use, huge amount of users and search engines picking up the tweets, it’s no wonder why Twitter makes a great addition to your real estate agent marketing tactics.

Do you have a Twitter account? Comment and share your experience (or even your username)! We have a company twitter account, simply follow ShowingSuite!