I ran across this infographic about banner ads.  Many of us use banner ads on other sites to promote our websites to prospective buyers and sellers… and making banner ads that accomplish the goal of increasing the right kind of traffic is key to success.  If we toss up bad ads, we are just throwing money away, and complaining about how low conversion rates are.

So, what do you think?

by Column Five Media via

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Do you hound over your site statistics?  Do you look at them to see where your traffic is coming from and which sources are the most fruitful?  If you aren’t, you should be. 

If you are using your website to attract business, you HAVE to track your traffic.  Just at with a traditional store, you track ads to see which ones are effective, with internet traffic you have to see which outposts and stratigies bring the traffic to your site.  you also need to track the quality of different traffic sources…  When people come from site “X”, are they sticking around your site or bouncing?  Does your search engine traffic bounce?  If you are selling a product or service, which sources provide sales or leads?

There are some great tools out there to accomplish these goals and know more about what is actually working for you.  Google Analytics is free and VERY powerful.  Personally, I use Clicky Analytics.  I find it easier to navigate and understand.  They have a free and premium level.  I have included an affiliate link.  Either of these tools will let you drill down to see what the traffic on your site is doing.  With Clicky’s premium service, you can literally follow an individual user around your site to see exactly what they are doing.

Just like with a traditional store, knowing what your customers want helps you to provide it.  Analytics provide the data about what your site visitors want…  And you can’t optimize for search engines without knowing what searches people are using to get to your sites.

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But what about social networking?

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A few days ago I posted that (in my humble opinion) real estate blogs should be about real estate… not movie reviews, restaurant reviews, not recipes…  Real estate.  That is what the audience is tuning in for, give them what they want.  I gave a few examples of what I see from my traffic patterns, and generally tried to support my opinion.

But, real estate agents that are marketing online (should) have a LOT more channels aside from their real estate blog.  And I DO believe that there is a place in some of those other channels for items with less focus.  First, let’s run down a few options:

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• YouTube
• Posterous
• Twitter
• FaceBook (Business) Page
• Delicious (Link sharing)
• Flickr (Photo Sharing)
• FourSquare (Location Sharing)
• Community Websites
• More…

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With the exception of the community websites, EVERY one of those items listed is FREE.  Community websites might be free, might cost a few bucks a year, or might cost as much as $100 (if you have to have someone set it up).  But there is something that they ALL have in common, too.  They can all be support systems for your real estate website.  And they can all send links to your real estate website… they are all outposts, providing information and hopefully send a few people trotting off to visit your cyber-office. A community website is the absolute toughest to get going… and has the most reward if you get it right.

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Video is hot.  You should have video of testimonials, communities, local events, YOU and likely a plethora of other things.  Host them on YouTube, embed them on your site (the ones that belong) and let them pull in a little traffic.  Flickr is much the same… but with pictures instead of video.

Posterous is COOL.  It is a great way to get some of the content to the other sites… and also share news and tidbits about things that are happening in the community.  Grab an RSS feed from your Posterous site and let it run on the sidebar of your blog.  Pull in calendar entries from local events, interviews with local politicians or business-people, news items, reviews or local places, etc.  Don’t make it the focus of your website… let it stand on its own, while contributing a little to your website.  Better yet, make it community specific, and find people in the community that want to load THEIR content onto it.  Be the publisher…

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A great source of news is Twitter.  I have come to see Twitter as “broadcast media” rather than as person to person social networking.  Some will disagree, but I look at Twitter the same way as I look at the “newswire services”.  Filter it down to what is important, and then share that in a news feed on your site.  It isn’t terribly difficult in a geographic specialty… but a bit tougher with a lifestyle specialty.

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Delicious is a link sharing site.  Instead of having a giant blogroll of all of the people you might know, share the links through Delicious… they can be tagged and categorized to make finding resources easier for your reader.  Again, publish a feed to your sidebar.

On FourSquare, do those reviews (in the “Tips” section of the location).  Have a great profile and point it back to your website.  If there is someone out there that will buy a house from you based on your incredible writing about an ice cream cone… they can still find you.

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FaceBook could be 20 posts all by itself.  But, the basic idea is to make a Page about a community and then get the community to give it life.  You should be there to nurture it, cull out the junk (and competitors) and keep it moving along.  Talk about the parks, restaurants, movies, local parades and a zillion other things.  Let it be a virtual Town Square where people can gather at 4am in their underwear without being laughed at (nobody has to know).

The bottom line is that there IS a place for all of that other content we want to use to show everyone how connected we are to the community.  It just might not be the main real estate website.

What do YOU think?

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I have been blogging about real estate since 2008… so over three years.  I can say proudly that I have a few thousand posts.  Of those, there are a lot that were NOT about real estate, but that appeared on my real estate blog.  Some were about cars (I just started a car blog JUST for those posts).  Others were about local news.  Still others were about local businesses, entertainment venues, parks and recreational opportunities.

As long as I have been blogging, the mantra has been to “Be the source of information about EVERYTHING in the community”.

But after years of blogging, and looking over my blog posts and traffic patterns… I’m not so convinced any more.  I see where my traffic is coming from, and I see which posts are the popular entry (and exit) posts.  BUT, I also talk to the people that call, email or contact me in other ways… and I ask them what made them make the call.

Let me make a few points…

• Almost without exception, my most read posts are NOT real estate related in any way.
• My most read posts are NOT about local issues, businesses, personalities or events.
• The post types that causes the most direct contact from consumers are market reports.
• I’ve NEVER had someone say they wanted to work with me because of a review of a local business.
• Most of my local name recognition has come from local event and local issue posts… but I can’t say one has ever brought me business.

Keep in mind, this is specifically about real estate blogging…

Here are the take-aways that I see from the above points.

• A real estate blog needs to be focused on real estate.  There is plenty of room for reviews, lists of area attractions and other local interest items, but they should not be the focus of the blog.
• Hyper-local news DOES belong on a good real estate website.  It shouldn’t be the focus, and even a “curatorial” style might be enough (rolling links to a variety of hyper-local news stories, for example… like a Twitter based local news feed).
• Market Reports are one of THE most important things to have on a real estate website.  Consumers want to understand the real estate market, whether they are buying or selling.
• Market Stats are nice… but people want interpretation of the stats.  They want to know your professional opinion is about the direction of the market… up or down.
• Community profiles are VERY in demand.  Buyers want to know about the communities and the schools that they are considering.  They might like to know about the history, school performance and local culture… but they REALLY want to know about prices, styles and economic outlook.  All of those items belong in the community profile, but some might be links to specialty sites, like GreatSchools.net or sections of a city’s website.
• Daily updates are overkill… but a good real estate blog needs to have depth.  After you have 40 or 50 solid posts, posting up 2-3 times a week might work… assuming that will cover the areas you need to cover.
• Helping real estate “Do-It-Yourselfers” is good business.  Give them your best tips for promoting their property, warn them of the most common pitfalls they may face (Fair Housing laws, for example) and give them the steps for a smooth transaction.  But don’t talk down to them.

Is this a sure-fire path to success?  No.  But it might help.  Don’t forget, though… it’s just my opinion.  Look for a related post coming up about Social Networking.

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Then you should be signed up for rebarcamp Atlanta.  Tickets are only $17.50… and that is for a FULL day of learning, sharing and networking with the most tech savvy agents and real estate professionals in the Atlanta area, and from around the Southeast.  AND, there are tickets available right now for just $10, with the “Almost Early Bird” special.

Many real estate “technology events” are really commercials for their sponsors.  After paying $50 or $100, you get to sit in a room as the sponsoring vendors parade across the stage telling you about their newest, coolest techno-must-have… that you can sign up for at the table in the back for a mere $499/year.

rebarcamp is VERY different.  At an average rebarcamp event, participants share what is working for THEM in their markets.  Sure, there are sponsors, and they are talking about their products, many of the sponsors are not involved in selling directly to agents…

But the big thing that differentiates an average tech event and rebarcamp is that rebarcamp is more tuned to participation.  Attendees decide what sessions should be featured.  They lead most of the sessions.  It is built upon attendees sharing… sharing challenges and solutions… rather than being built on presentations.

So, if you are a real estate professional, and you can make it to Atlanta on October 28th, rebarcamp Atlanta is the place you need to be.

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I have a thing about ‘To Do Lists’…  I don’t know why.  But, I do.  At least on my computer.

I use WP Editorial Calendar to schedule posts, and ToodleDo to keep track of what posts should be upcoming, along with other tasks.  Without these tools I would be completely lost.  Even with as bad as I am at updating this blog on time, I still produce around 20 blog posts a week.  It needs to be closer to 25.

At any given time, I have 15 or 20 tabs open in my FireFox browser.  The tabs have a variety of things, ranging from website where I am tracking things on a daily basis to articles or posts that I want to blog about.  I also have source articles for things I am researching for blog posts.

And I have a new one that I am really liking…  SpringPad.

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I picked up a Tablet computer a few weeks ago (Toshiba Thrive).  This is in addition to my laptop and my smartphone (T-Mobile G2).  I work on all of them.  And one of the things I was missing was a way to keep information (not just files) synchronized between all of my devices.  There are tools like DropBox, which I love, but it required that I have a way to edit the same filetype on all of my devices… or the devices of others I might share an item with.

SpringPad is a bit different.  There is a website (SpringPadIt.com) as well as device apps for my Tablet and SmartPhone (both are Android).  They also have a suite of apps available through the iTunes Store for Apple devices.

One of the nice things with SpringPad is that it has a built in editor to write notes, build out To Do Lists and even surf.  There is a plug-in for FireFox so that I can clip items while surfing and send them to notes in SpringPad.  I can email items (forwards, especially) to a notebook.  I can also add resources to a note like links, videos or photos.

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Like DropBox, users can share their content with other users… unlike DropBox, notebooks can be sent via email to others that are NOT users of SpringPad.  And while DropBox is better for some file types, especially those that involve a lot of editing (manuscripts, images, etc.), I find that SpringPad is a little better geared towards sharing information.  In fact, I can even share things on FaceBook, Twitter and through RSS via SpringPad.  Content can be organized and tagged, as well. Sync’d content is also available when you are not online (except for the website… but if you don’t have a data connection on your phone or tablet, you can still access and edit notebooks for syncing later).

Right Now…

At this moment I am working on a Winter Pack Trip for our Cub Scout Pack.  In order to do this, I have to keep the input of all of the Pack Leaders in mind… and keep them abreast of what is happening.  I also need to keep track of which resources belong with which venue.  I’m tracking costs, things to do, amenities and timelines.  And I can share as much or as little as I want with as many or as few people as needed.  And there is a Social component to the SpringPad network.  You can share items with your SpringPad friends and use it for collaboration.

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