Thread: Need advice on internet presence

Before I set up my website, I first scoured social networking sites for connections. It is
difficult to attract people to real estate websites nowadays because there are so many of us out there. Connect with people in facebook, twitter or other networking sites who live
in your target area and once you have made a good rapport with them, then recommend your website via a link. It did took a while for it to take off, but eventually, I got some inquiries.

Couple important aspects.
If you can afford it the IDX hookup for $60 a month with a website is not a bad option. Key is that you have to drive and keep traffic to your site or at least that they sign up to get those daily listings.

Facebook and Twitter are still new and not everyone benefits from using these formats. Personalized Real Estate (meaning get out there) is still your best option since this old school format is still and will always be in.

There are customized sites you can get done by people like MarlonBrandercom who can create fun interactive sites. However, you'll have to be able to create the content.

Best,
John Perkins

For Internet presence one can try as many options and by creating customized sites with all the real estate features one can be sure of getting much exposure.

You want to make sure your website is optimized for on-page SEO, as well as off-page SEO work is being directed back to it. Also, utilize social network sites and email marketing to increase traffic to it.

Open Realty is an 'open source' real estate solution that's been around for a while. Open source means free, but you will need someone to install it. It's fairly easy to manage, I have not tried the IDX manager. You will need hosting, don't pay more than 10 bucks a month, you will need Apache/Linux hosting for this application. They have a hosted version for $15 a month (just noticed), so you won't need an installation!

Good luck!

Real Estate Sites, or any other self-building CMS, is always a pain to manage and never quite do what you want them to do.

I used to use Obeo sometimes for the higher end homes, which was fairly effective, but am currently using Agent Street mainly because I used to work at a brokerage that used their software, and it was doing many things right. Once I learned that they released a public facing system, I got in.

There are a lot of do it yourself options too. Hosting is fairly inexpensivre. You could download free wordpress themes, and there are tons of tutorials on how to assemble a wordpress site. In conjunction with a social media presence, you could set yourself up well. and yes, I am familiar with the various real estate platforms out there. My only problem with that is they all seem alike.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'm actually looking to provide more info about my listings as a way to add to my offline promotions. I tried the do-it-yourself route but it takes too much time (creating content, SEO, social network pages, etc). I want to be able to direct clients to my site where they can find info on a particular property, share it on facebook, inquire about the property, that kind of stuff.


The truth is that Realtor.com sucks at this. Here is an example of a random URL they give each listing: http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...6_M42728-69204


Here is an example of a random Realtor.com agent profile URL: http://www.realtor.com/realestateage...entListingsTab


How in the world am I supposed to use that, especially for something like a flier? Those guys are too far behind the times, which explains why so many other options keep popping up.

I would be curious to see an example (website) of what you like.