Author: Ryan Hartman (page 2 of 4)

Retechulous...

December 8, 2009

I don’t really do anything with my Facebook fan page other than to have my blog content automatically streamed to it, but a little Brady-esque follow up every time a new “friend” touches my “Fan Box Badge” is proving to have quite a nice effect on my sales effort, so I figured I’d share.

The protocol:

You create your fan page.
You embed your box on your website.
When people land on your website and see smiling faces, you look cool, perhaps even trusted.
Your visitor is already addicted to facebook, so he/she can’t resist the temptation to “become a fan.” [After all, it’s only 1 click.]

Then the fun starts…

You visit your own site and see a new face in your sidebar. It’s go time! Send your new fan a personal fb message, or even better, google them up for a phone number and do a little follow up. Maybe something like:

“Hi. Just noticed your face on my website in my Facebook page widget. Thanks for becoming a fan. Just curious, how’d you find me? …. ”

I originally tried to embed the actual Fan page box here, but didn’t seem to want to take the script… so, the sneaky image link… 🙂

December 3, 2009

2010 Big Broker Market Domination Action Plan

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Here below is my take on a possible action plan for any mid to large sized real estate brokerage that would like to increase local market share by drastically enhancing its brand visibility and recruiting more agents to its team.

At the core of this plan is the creation of a company standard “Agent Lead Generation Package.”

The thinking here is that as the brokerage works to serve (and mandate) the lead generation efforts of its agents, it’ll concurrently establish it’s standing as the most omnipresent, technically progressive, office in its market area.

Broker Market Domination Action Plan

Establish a wide multi-author, wordpress based blogsite designed to serve as the cornerstone of your overall lead generation system. This site will double as a regional web based “newspaper” of sorts and will likely have eventual value as such. Key components of this site should include a video gallery page, idx integration, an evolvoing google map and individual agent pages that stream agent created content and feature unique lead capture offers for each agent.
Establish Company Social Media Profiles – A Facebook page, Twitter account, and Youtube account. Set them each to automatically interact with the main site, with new content being syndicated and shared between all components. Any content posted to the main site will land on Facebook and Twitter, with links calling eyeballs there back to the main site. Any videos uploaded to Youtube will land on the video gallery page and if properly titled and tagged in Youtube they should provide a stream of traffic for years to come.
Establish a Content Creation Schedule for Each Member of the Team. Make it a company mandate that everyone must contribute to the site on a regular basis. This includes ownership, management, administrative staff, and all agent partners. Assign each team member a themed piece of content that they are responsible for on a weekly basis. Figure out a way to punish those who don’t comply, and to reward those who do. Example – You could charge each agent who doesn’t contribute content a $50 penalty that will be used to hire Read more

November 9, 2009

Youtube Embed “Dump”

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Ok… so I try to stay away from being too blatant about the self promotion here at BHB. But screw it. Here we go…

🙂

Easy Reference Youtube Embed Codes and Tweaks For Your Website

Using Youtube’s standard embeds you end up with something like this:

Notice the White “Brainstorming Domain Names” in the header? Ugly, right?

Well strip them out by adding “&showinfo=0” to the url. And you’ll end up with something like this:

Or maybe you want to make the vid bigger? Just change the dimensions in the embed code and you’ll end up with something like this:

Or, maybe you’d like to start the video at a certain point? Use “&start=(insert seconds here)”.

Or, maybe you want to “loop” the video so it keeps replaying? Just use “&loop=1” in the embed code. Trust me, this, coupled with “&autoplay=1” can come in very handy, especially if you’re trying to have some fun with a friend. I’ll spare you the demo on this one, because the Bloodhoundblog home page would end up streaming my “toilet humor” over and over again until this post gets buried in the archives by newer posts.

Or…maybe not? Which leads me to my favorite trick. Coupling all of the above with a minimized 1 x 1 pixel vid featuring some unsavory audio. (If you pull out a magnifiying glass maybe you can see the video below this line?

[Note- Little pixelated fart was just removed. I felt bad because people were starting to blame the dog. Sorry Odysseus… rh, a few days later]

Excuse Me!

Practical applications for real estate? Well, stripping the white title line could make your site look a lot cleaner and more professional? Or maybe you want to take a real long video of a home tour, then link directly to different rooms by using the “&start” thing. Or maybe you’re confident a little “silent but deadly” offer could help your conversion ratio. Example: You could embed a tiny 1×1 and say something like “pssst… give me a call, I have an opening this Saturday morning at 10.”

Freak em out a little, they’ll either love you Read more

October 20, 2009

Real Estate Sales Transactions In Phoenix

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

I don’t know if the local board in Phoenix allows agents to display recent sales transactions via idx feed, but it seems to me from talking to others around the land that most boards don’t.

Doesn’t it kinda sting that Trulia can display this info, but Realtor folk can’t?

Or can they?

How To Display Real Estate Transactions On Your WordPress Site Via Trulia’s Pretty Up To Date RSS Feed

1. Install and activate the “EXEC PHP” plugin
2. Do A General Property Search For Any Area On Trulia.
3. Click the “Recently Sold” Tab
4. Once the results are up, click on the link for more details on the first property.
5. When the info shows up, click “back.” – [This is key! 🙂 ]
6. Now there will be an RSS feed link at the very top right of the page.
7. Click On It, Then Grap The RSS Link That Pops Up Slightly Lower To The Left
7. Insert the RSS feed into the code below within a blog post, where indicated by “PUT YOUR JUICY SALES TRANSACTION FEED URL HERE”

< ?php // Get RSS Feed(s) include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php'); $rss = fetch_rss('PUTYOURJUICYSALESTRANSACTIONFEEDURLHERE'); $maxitems = 30; $items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);
?>

< ?php foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>

< ?php echo $item['title']; ?>

< ?php endforeach; ?>

Phoenix Real Estate Sales Transactions

What you’re seeing below is actually a screen capture of the transactions on my own site… didn’t want to mess with plugins/php over here at bhb (or cause other trouble for ma and pop.)

Which leads to the point of all this. Can you see adding pages upon pages of dynamic content to your site using this little trick? Or is this content theft? Does Trulia own the data? Does your local board?

October 17, 2009

When the Saints…

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

I’m an East Coast Liberal-tarian type who’s ok-down with all the political talk around here… in theory.

But in general I follow the no politics or religion in public rule… just because it’s easier, and I guess I wussily think there’s really only negative stuff that can come from political or religious chatter, especially done in a professional bloggy context…

Sports on the other hand, nobody’s offended by sports talk right?

Go Giants!

(Image, created by Eric Hartman)

October 12, 2009

“Leading” With Listings, Systematically Getting (A Few Clicks) From Twitter, And Using Some Lazy Math To Justify The Effort…

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

So, it looks like the Twitter.Com/229RockGlen account is generating 3-7 clicks/day back to the web page linked from the profile. I think I can see how an agent with 10 or more listings might start to see some results employing the 1 Twitter account per property approach.

I mean, why not multiply the 3-7 clicks daily by 10 and call it a potential extra 50 visitors a day, right? Or maybe 20 such accounts could yield 100 extra visitors a day.

And lets say 3% of these visitors opt in to some sort of lead capture on your site. Maybe they consent to receive your latest videos… Ok, so if you’ve got 20 listings, each with it’s own twitter account, then you could potentially generate 3 * 30 = 90… I’ve been rough with the numbers here, so let’s just call the 90, 100. 🙂

And let’s say most agents with an inventory that large could convert 1 in 100 opts to a commission sometime in the next year….Average Sales Price $200,000 …. GCI 5000?

Time spent setting up the twitter accounts – 20*15 minutes each = 5 hours….

I don’t know…

A System For Using Twitter With Measurable ROI?

I guess what I’m saying is maybe I’ve figured out a process for configuring twitter to increase sales in an almost measurable way. That is, assuming you’re confident a set percentage of visitors to your site will opt in to something…

Steps:

1. Create a Twitter Account for Each Property Listing.

2. Make sure your website in the twitter profile links back to the property or page on your site.

3. Drop a few tweets about the property. Beds, baths, square footage, “I am way overpriced..” just a few things to give the twitter account some content.

4. Use this juicy affiliate link, to fire up a Tweetspinner Account.

5. Configure Tweetspinner to automatically follow other tweeters who might be interested in your property/area specific twitter account. (For example, anyone who tweets the words “south street” might be interested in your Philly real estate listing.)

6. Wait for eventual clicks from the twitter account to your blog/lead capture Read more

October 7, 2009

The Day Realtors Figured Out A Practical Use For Twitter

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

So…

If you have a minute, please go follow Twitter.com/229RockGlen.

Over the next few weeks, this clever little property is going to automatically follow a whole bunch twitterers in the Philly area, systematically inviting lots of local folk to take a little tour inside.

Go ahead… follow the house to see what I mean….

October 6, 2009

“The 10 (Real Estate Website) Must-Haves” – Top Producer’s List Isn’t Bad, But…

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Just got this in me inbox from Top Producer…It’s interesting, and makes a lot of sense that they’ve branched out from being just a crm over the past few years.

picture-39

I don’t think it’s a bad list, but at a glance I think it’s missing 2 things? :

1. Your Lead Capture proposition should be to offer something of value that’s both pretty darn interesting while being something visitors can’t find on your competitor’s sites. Software can’t do this, of course, so I guess it makes sense that it’s not on TP’s list.
2. And hey! No mention of social media integration?

Is anyone out there developing a CRM / Lead Management system that includes these last two? Is it even possible?

Number 1:Actually seems like a software company could possibly deliver this if said company hired an in house USP thinker-upper-executer? Sorta blend the software with initial/ongoing guidance as a way to attract/retain customers?

Number: Will Twitter/Facebook apps/api’s allow for contacts to be imported and assigned to activity series/follow up plans automatically? Just seems our Twitter/Facebook connections should be part of our pipeline, and should be incubated as such, even if they’re way further down that pipeline than actual folks we’ve met or talked to on the phone…

Thoughts? Is TP missing anything else?

September 29, 2009

Dave, Gary, Jim – Ready to Conquer Video and Double Global Market Share?

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Over at Agent Genius, Amy Chorew has a post up entitled “How One Company Conquered Video”. The post was obviously a nice plug for one of the principles of Coldwell Banker premier in Berlin Connecticut and a local video company, but it somehow set me off a bit.

Here was my comment on the post:

Conquered Video?

The local CB’s approach, while more progressive than most was likely a wasted effort. Fred’s right, these are lame. And Bob’s right. How is anyone gonna see these things?

What Coldwell Banker should do is this:

1. Work out a deal with Flip or Vado so that their agents can buy cameras at a discount.

2. Help each of their agents set up a Youtube account and understand how to upload videos from their cameras and do some very basic editing using Youtube’s built in features.

3. Assign each agent a theme to video around. Examples: Neighborhood Driving Videos, Interviews With Home Sellers, Interviews With Home Buyers, Featured Businesses, etc.

4. Give each company agent a Video Blog page (on a larger company Video Site) featuring a youtube gallery similar to the approach on display over at PropertunityKnocks.Com.

5. Make sure effective lead capture elements are built into these video blog pages.

6. Promote the overall video blog site to the public via a massive Facebook ads campaign.

The result?

Coldwell Banker does something that would accomplish a lot more for their agents (and the company as a whole) then working out some sleazy affiliate relationship with a vendor and taking a little something more from their agents.

Sorry for being skeptical here. But doesn’t it seem more like CB conquered their agents wallets here a little more effectively than they did video?

(I feel a little bad about that last part because I wrote it before my first cup of coffee. While it’s possible the local broker had an affiliate relationship with the local broker, it’s not fair to assume they did. Instead I wish I’d congradulated that broker for at least trying instead of being so grumpy. But oh well…)

The point is this. It’s now more possible for large Brokers to “conquer video” than Read more

September 16, 2009

Give Mike Ferry’s Social Media Guy A Raise!

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Give agents who are too lazy to adapt an excuse not to?

I think it’s brilliant… Because the number of agents that this vid will resonate with is much larger than the number of those who will shake their heads and call Mr. Ferry a dinosaur.

Is going to be fun to watch this one go ironically viral?

September 14, 2009

Client Lunchbox – BloodhoundBlog.TV CRM Channel Premier

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Ok, here’s the first episode for the CRM Channel. It’s a quick peek under the hood at ClientLunchbox.Com that I made tonight using the cool twitter integrated, web based screen capture tool, Screenr.Com.

[Just a quick disclosure, because I’m scared poopless of ever plugging stuff here: Dane Maxwell, the guy who created ClientLunchbox asked me if I would write a blog post about his product months ago. I told him I would, so here it is. At the time, I was thinking HouseYourMom.Com but sorta forgot, so I’m overcompensating by talking about Lunchbox on the big stage. For the record, Dane builds stuff for Realtors, but he didn’t even know what BloodhoundBlog was. Blasphemy, I know. I only mention because of the vendor sensitivity around here…. and… I guess I’d like to add — I’m hoping it’ll be cool to do a lot more (honest, nonpaid) vendor reviews in the coming months because at the risk of appearing to be hawking something, I think this kinda stuff is interesting to a lot of folks? ]

Anyway…here’s the video. It’s been set up with the “secret tag” for the CRM channel in Youtube and should flow onto the CRM page within a few hours…

And for a more in – depth view use my affiliate link, or if you prefer, this clean link to some more info about Client Lunchbox.

[So what’d you think? Anyone else want to do a similar screencast review for BloodhoundBlog.Tv? ]

September 14, 2009

BoodhoundBlog.TV – Channeling a Video Model For Large Brokers

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Using the Tubepress plugin’s shortcode paremeters it’s easy to create a bunch of different video galleries within one wordpress install. I’ve been calling these different pages “galleries” because it sounds fancy, but maybe for BloodhoundBlog.TV we can call them Channels?

In order to have any of your videos show up on a channel, all you’ll need to do is use a “secret tag” when you upload the video to youtube.

I’ve tweaked up a special sidebar so that all channels will flow into the sidebar as links when created using some wordpress list_pages fun. I’ll spare everyone the nitty gritty technical details here and maybe save some of the code snippets for a later post, but I want to mention that this is all being set up within one wordpress install for a reason — Because I think following a similar configuration could be useful to any broker who’d like to create a TV station within his/her blog.

For example, a Mega Monster Multi Contributor Broker Blog could included the following channels, all with videos created and emailed from phones by agents.

Weekly Market Updates
New Listings
Neighborhood Driving Tours
Area Restaurants
Area Parks
Agent Interviews
Scenes From Settlement

You get the idea? Consider how sticky your broker site be if all visitors were confronted with a series of 2-5 minute videos created by your team of agents. How likely would these visitors be to “subscribe to receive all new videos? Combine this with open registration on a solid idx integration, and I think any broker with the stones to encourage (pay for) agent generated video content could quickly increase market share in any market.

But oops… sorry for the digress into how this stuff might actually be applied to make some coin. 🙂

Back To BloodhoundBlog.Tv

Obviously even though the technology behind the thing is the same, we’re going to need a different set of channels for BloodhoundBlog.TV.

So, I’ve gone ahead and created a “CRM” channel which I’m hoping will soon include various under the hood peeks at CRM systems geared toward Realtors. CRM’s a dirty little geeky Read more

September 6, 2009

BloodhoundBlog.TV (12 Trailers…)

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Set Your RSS DVR. BloodhoundBlog.TV is almost ready to roll. We’ll be announcing the initial channel lineup in the coming days, but for now we dare you to resist the urge to spend the next 30 minutes or so with eyes glued to the 12 “trailers” below…

Click to view each vid in a popup…

[tubepress mode=’playlist’, playlistValue=’C40E2D660311A60F’, resultsPerPage=’40’, description=’false’, thumbHeight=”90′, thumbWidth=’120′, tubepress orderBy=’published’]

August 23, 2009

Via Video – Smoking Mr. Potato Head

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

No doubt. Real Estate agents (and arguably all biz people) should be creating content and publishing it to self hosted blogs that syndicate anywhere and everywhere on a regular basis. At the very least, the act itself makes us all better, (more thoughtful) practitioners at whatever it is we do. At the very best, google blesses us with huge amounts of juicy, free, profitable, organic traffic.

From a practical point of view, I understand that most folks can’t spew out 500 words of relevant original stuff over a cup of coffee like the folks around BHB can, but I’ll argue that thanks to video it takes almost no real effort or talent to generate interesting online content that yields a high Return on (Time & Money) Invested!

For The “Record” : Writing = Crappy Relative ROI

I’ve got proofs empirical from managing and watching the analytics on a nice handful of blogs: Visitors spend much more time on and are more likely to interact with sites that offer a gallery of videos. How much more time? How much more interaction? Try double… YEAH DOUBLE! No poop. Not kidding. You can double the amount of real live interaction you generate from your social media efforts if you finally embrace this video stuff.

Video’s been the next big thing for years, I know…

So why aren’t more real estate agents leveraging video to generate lots more biz for themselves?

1. They don’t know what to record.
2. They perceive a technical barrier to getting ready for consumption video onto a web page.
3. Broker Owners still just don’t get it. Put simply, this stuff should be encouraged, enabled, and rewarded by ownership… but it’s not. (yet…)

Over the next few days, I’ll try to show how easy and profitable leveraging video can be by providing what should be an easy to follow technical roadmap for any agent who chooses to drink the kool aid.

In the meantime… in order to get some more eyeballs on this venture, here below is “Smoking Mr. Potato Head.” It took 5 minutes to record and get him live on this page. Read more

August 9, 2009

Dear NAR… (If you really wanna help?)

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Maybe run this as an ad on prime time Tv. I’d say every night, for 30 seconds, from now till Nov 30?

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

Broker Market Domination Action Plan

by Ryan Hartman

Easy Reference Youtube Embed Codes and Tweaks For Your Website

by Ryan Hartman

How To Display Real Estate Transactions On Your WordPress Site Via Trulia’s Pretty Up To Date RSS Feed

Phoenix Real Estate Sales Transactions

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

A System For Using Twitter With Measurable ROI?

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

Back To BloodhoundBlog.Tv

by Ryan Hartman

by Ryan Hartman

For The “Record” : Writing = Crappy Relative ROI

Video’s been the next big thing for years, I know…

by Ryan Hartman

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