On December 15^th, The Active Enterprise Network will be hosting the first Network-wide Holiday Blog Swap. Stemming from a recent discussion at The Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference, 17 of the most influential brokerages across the United States are coming together to discuss the future of real estate by answering the question: what will real estate look like in the year 2030?

Trading blogs for a day, the Holiday Blog Swap will provide consumers and real estate professionals a full spectrum of “Real Estate in 2030” and how new technologies are changing the industry. As the year comes to an end, this national discussion is an excellent way to gain perspective and learn from some of the brightest minds in real estate.

This inaugural event launches on Thursday morning, December 15^th. Readers are encouraged to join the conversation by leaving comments or using Twitter with the hashtags #ENBlogSwap and/or #RE2030.

Get to know the participating brokerages for the Holiday Blog Swap

Charles Reinhart Company Realtors

Danberry Realtors

The Group, Inc. Real Estate

Hasson Company Realtors

Helen Adams Realty

Kentwood Real Estate

LandVest, Inc.

McEnearney Associates Inc, Realtors

McGuire Real Estate

Milestone Realty Consultants

Murney Associates, Realtors

N.T. Callaway Real Estate Broker, LLC

Residential Properties Ltd.

Skogman Realty

Smith & Associates Real Estate

Windermere Tri-Cities Real Estate

Wright Kingdom Real Estate

Be sure to check back with us tomorrow as we kick off the series with our take on the future of real estate!

Related Posts:

How Will You Sell Real Estate in the Year 2030?

By Katelyn Wheaton

Creating a culture centered on technology can be difficult due to the varying degrees of skill levels when it comes to your agents and staff. One of Ze’s main points, however, focused on getting agents back to the basics of communication when it comes to social technology. Agents have built a career based on communication and relationships, but they need to do a better job taking their offline communication skills and making the transition online through blogging, Twitter, Facebook and so on. Having a network of followers and providing content is not enough, you need to have your audience actively engaged with your content as well.

Getting your audience engaged in your content can be an intimidating task. Ze Frank noted that the fear of doing this often stems from the lack of face-to-face communication and losing behavioral contexts online. For these reasons, it can be hard to find your voice online when using social media.

To be successful today, agents need to re-position how they feel about these social platforms and focus on the social aspect rather than the technology. With the multitude of social technology available, our objectives have not changed, rather the channels we use to communicate them has. By going back to the basics of communication, agents will succeed online.  One way to do this is to start by saying hello and asking questions, just as you would in person.

Ze followed this by demonstrating ways to increase engagement online and shared many stories of how he was able to do this with his audiences. Below is a list of projects he mentioned throughout his presentation:

• Chillout Song
• Young Me / Now Me
• Scared Song
• Whip Ass Song
• Earth Sandwich

Ze’s discussion left the audience thinking of different ways to engage with customers following the event.  What were your ideas to spark engagement in your networks? And how do you think we can relay this messaging to agents who are still fearful of technology?

Related Posts:

• Active Enterprise Network Hosts Annual Conference
• Opening Keynote Speaker Announced for 2011 Enterprise Network Annual Conference

Today, we want to begin our discussion on usability. This is a hot topic for the Active Enterprise Network as we continue to evolve in order to meet the demands of our customers. We need to remember that usability is crucial to the success of our websites and we must have a plan of action. Understanding how users are interpreting our sites will help us adapt to their needs.

Just like our websites, we need to keep our customers in mind when it comes to our blogs. A few weeks ago, we did a video presentation on How to Write an Effective Blog for our Active Community Series that covered guidelines for writing a post that will most appeal to your readers. Today, we want to take that a step further and discuss the importance of your overall blog site.

Gaining the attention of your readers through your post is essential, but following certain usability rules for your site is important as well. When creating your blog, keep in mind the following questions:

1.    Are past posts easily accessible?
2.    Is your text readable?
3.    Is it clear where your links are leading your readers?
4.    Are your headlines relevant to the post?
5.    Is it easy for users to follow your blog?
6.    Are users able to share your blog on other social media sites?
7.    Does your blog encourage interaction through comment fields?
8.    Is the most critical information above the fold?
9.    Do you have an area where readers can contact you?
10.  Are you publishing posts consistently?

By asking yourself these questions and adjusting accordingly, your customers will better understand the site and your company. If your blog is easy to navigate through, you’ll give readers a reason to return. Nothing is more frustrating to a user than not being able to find relevant information on your website – including your blog!

Related Posts:

How to Write an Effective Blog

Blogging is Like a First Date

By Amanda Stephan

blog.activewebsite.com

Presentation highlights include:

Content is King

1. What message do you want to communicate?
2. Define your area of expertise
3. What geographical area do you want to influence?
4. Develop value through unique content
5. Make your content shareable

Understanding Duplicate Content

1. Becoming the authoritative source
2. Duplicate content in regards to property listings
3. Develop unique content that is different than shared content in IDX feed
4. Include content centered around IPWs with links to property details page
5. Understanding Page Rank

Understanding the Search Demand Curve

1. Identify where you rank on your Fat Head, Chunky Middle and Long tail terms and develop a strategy for each
2. Capture more traffic from the tail
3. Understand what terms are converting into sales
4. Use SEO performances in your marketing efforts
5. Use search results to develop more unique content

Building Your Local Brand

1. What is the message we are trying to communicate about our brand?
2. How to use all the tools and resources we have at our disposal to build our local brand
   • -Website, offline networks, social sites, blog, etc.
3. Need to establish a plan for bringing our offline networks online
4. Use syndication outlets not only for your property listings,  but for other content as well- i.e. news, press releases, blogs, etc.
5. It’s important that you’re reaching the right people with your message

How to Write an Effective Blog

1. Choose a topic
2. Create an effective title
3. Think about the layout
4. Include unique content, keywords and links
5. Decide if multiple posts are necessary

By John Sable

blog.activewebsite.com

Luckily for you, there is. This week, Active Community wants to take a closer look at how to write a more effective blog. There are many reasons why people decide to begin blogging. For companies, blogging is a great tool for driving traffic to your site and increasing your search engine rankings. Blogging also gives you a unique opportunity to express yourself while engaging and interacting with your readers in a way that was previously unavailable.

However, if you don’t have a strategic plan of execution in place, then you run the risk of having used all your time and energy for nothing. The goal of any blog is not only to get the information out there on the web, but to get the information out on the web that people will want to read.

With millions of people already blogging, it’s important that you don’t get lost in the masses. By following some simple guidelines, you’ll have a better foundation for your blog that will hopefully help you attract more readers. In order to do this, we’ll be dissecting the blog how Blogging is Like a First Date that will be posted after this presentation. Watch our video to find out more!

Related Posts:

Blogging is Like a First Date

Active Community: Building Your Local Brand

Active Community: Understanding the Search Demand Curve

Active Community: Understanding Duplicate Content

By John Sable

blog.activewebsite.com

Just like dating, there are rules we must follow when blogging in order to establish the foundation for a solid relationship. At Active Website, we work with Active Enterprise Network Members to ensure they’re getting the most out of their blogging experience. Most people go on a first date with certain expectations – the same is true for blog readers. By focusing on a few simple rules, Network Members can reach their followers in a way that will fill the needs of both parties – hopefully creating a lasting union. This post focuses on guidelines to follow when blogging as they relate to dating. For more information on how to write an effective blog, check out this week’s Active Community video presentation as well.

1. Only date one person at a time.

While there are definitely two schools of thought here, there is no denying that playing the field can lead to complications and get you in trouble. We need to remember this for our blogs as well. Your blog article should be narrowed and focused on one idea. People have short attention spans and won’t take the time to read a multi-page blog. If you focus on one topic, you’ll be able to go into more detail without losing their interest. For example, instead of focusing on the broad term real estate technology, go into detail on one specific aspect of it. It should be more about quality, not quantity. Read tip No. 5 for other ways to approach this.

2. First impressions are important.

When going on a date, people typically want to put their best foot forward. The same should be true for your blog. Research states that you only have 30 seconds to make a good impression. After that, people have already generated an opinion of you. So how do we create a good first impression? You reel them in with an intriguing title. The title is the first thing readers see, so you need to grab their attention right away. If you don’t, you’ll get stuck with the bill when your date sneaks out the back door before dinner was even served.

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3. Dress Appropriately.

Adding to tip No. 2, remember that your look says a lot about you. Your blog’s image has a lot of impact when it comes to engaging your reader. People don’t spend a lot of time reading through blogs, so you don’t want to muddy it up with a lot of text. Instead, find ways to break it up. Include section headers, graphs, images and pulled quotes to guide your readers through the blog. People are very visually oriented, so if you don’t have something to keep their attention, their minds will start to wander. And if they’re not engaged, they won’t bother reading your blog from start to finish.

4. Good Communication is Important.

Not only does your look say a lot about you, but what you say does too (shocking, I know). You want to find ways to communicate effectively, otherwise there is no point in blogging in the first place. You need to understand that this is a great avenue for establishing a voice. By creating unique content, including links and utilizing your top keywords, you’re going to become more desirable to search engines – setting the stage for a second date.

5. Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself.

As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to focus on only one topic per blog post. Just as you wouldn’t spill your entire life story on a first date, the same holds true for your blog. Instead, take your time and tell your story over a series of blog posts. This gives readers a reason to come back for more, which leads us into our last and final tip.

6. Be Patient and Don’t Rush the Relationship.

Asking someone to marry you on the first date or picking baby names over dinner is a sure fire way to end the night alone. You need to be patient and nurture the relationship before you jump into things. For your blog, don’t expect to gain a huge following right way. It’s more important that you have quality followers than quantity. Instead, use the time to find ways to market yourself to the people who are most likely to benefit from what you have to say. You’ll have much more of an impact if you take your time. Not to mention, research says that the more time you take to build a quality relationship, the more likely your chances of staying together.

Related Posts:

Active Community: How to Write an Effective Blog

The Importance of Telling a Story

By Amanda Stephan

blog.activewebsite.com

First, we’ll talk about the indexation cap and the technical factors that influence this number and then move on to the practices you can apply that will get you past these complications.

Factors to Consider

Importance of Domain-Level PR: Domain PageRank (PR) value is likely to be a major factor in the indexation cap, but not necessarily in the ranking for a particular keyword (low PR domains will often outrank higher PR domains).

PR can be thought of as a “trustworthiness” or authority factor and the value passed from links is weighed against this “trust index.” The following is an example of this effect where the f(x) notation simply indicates that the amount of PR being passed is a function of Page A’s PR, x. The value passed to B and C (assuming these are the only two links on the page) is divided evenly between the two. If ten links exist on A, the value is divided by ten, ect.

Backlink Profile of the Domain: Backlink profiles include the count of unique domains linking to your site and why each link exists (evaluating relevance and applying it to the value of a link). The more domains linking back to you, the better.

Rate of Link Growth: Don’t build links too quickly. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz recommends you “be a snail at the beginning of an SEO campaign” and we completely agree. Spikes in external link building and unnatural link growth patterns can kill ranking and create a campaign much more challenging than it should be (in other words, it’s counterproductive).

Links will build naturally as new articles and content are added. Actively finding twenty new links per day for a week then dropping this completely will raise flags in the engine.

Depth & Frequency of Linking to Pages on the Domain: Not all links should go to the homepage. Finding a location for the deep links that are relevant to the linking articles and the anchor text is an important factor. If the search engines see that there are only a handful of pages that receive links from external sources and the bulk of the deeper pages are not (or seldomly) linked to, this can indicate that users only find a small fraction of the site useful and will result in a lower number of pages added to the index. The moral of the story is to keep links coming in to all the deeper pages that normally get ignored; this will indicate there is some value to the user and the page should remain in the index.

Content Uniqueness: We’re starting to sound like a broken record, but the importance of this factor in all areas of optimization cannot be ignored. If content is not unique, there is little value to the engines and it will likely be dropped and attributed to the original owner (or what the engine perceives as the original owner).

Later in this article, we’ll cover how you can test for uniqueness in your content.

Visitor, CTR and Usage Data Metrics: Being brokers of information, engines will use the data they gather on user behavior to gain a competitive edge regarding what users believe to be most interesting/important/relevant. Careful examination of Google Analytics data by Google can reveal situations where users find a result for their query that seems relevant and visit the site, then immediately (or within ten seconds) hit the back button and find another site. This user behavior, if proven to be a trend, will be used by an engine to flag a page for lack of relevance to the given query. Too many instances of this happening on a site can be used as a factor to drop the number of indexed pages. There is a lot of controversy regarding the topic of engines using analytics data to make decisions on engine placement and indexed page count, but it’s safe to say that any data that belongs to them will be used by them to improve their system.

Search Quality Rater Analysis + Manual Spam Reports: There is a team at every search engine company that will manually evaluate sites for relevance. The role of this team is to find spam sites and those using black-hat search engine optimization tactics and remove them from the index. If a member of this team believes your site to be manipulating search results unfairly, this generally results in not only a drop in indexed pages, but a complete ban from the engine. A copy of the handbook for this team at Google is available at SearchEngineLand.com for anyone interested in seeing how this is done.

IDX and Duplicate Content: A vast majority of the information about a property present in an Enterprise Network site (and any real estate site) comes from an IDX feed. The information is shared with hundreds of other sites, including the competition. The nature of sharing information in this manner automatically puts all parties involved into a duplicate content violation sinkhole. Content ownership can only apply to one site and one page.

As with The Highlander, “There can be only one!”

The Goal of the Engine: To understand the duplicate content violation, we have to understand the primary mission of the search engine: provide the most relevant and most complete understanding of the requested phrase. To have a search result page full of the same snippet of information ten times over would go against this purpose, so the duplicate content violation system has been put in place. This doesn’t mean a search engine is going to punish you for having the same content in multiple locations (or copying someone else’s information), but it does mean the value of the unique signature for that particular article will be attributed to one site which may not be yours. As a result, that unique article will be indexed as belonging to someone else and your site simply won’t be listed for that content nor receive any of the benefits of having that content associated with your site.

How to Test for Uniqueness: There are several advanced operators available in Google for filtering very specific information. The most common is the use of quotes (“) around a phrase to indicate that we are looking for the exact match of the provided phrase, not the non-sequential occurrence of each of those words within a document. To find if a document is unique or not, we’ll want to pull three sets of around seven words and run them through Google with quotes. The reason we want to test multiple parts of a document in this manner is because a small phrase may very well be indexed in multiple pages (it wouldn’t be fair to only list one page that references and displays segments of the Declaration of Independence, as there may be several perspectives). By testing three sets, we’re able to find if the document has the capacity to hold a unique signature within the search engines.

For this example, we’ll be using this document which has not yet been released, so there should be no occurrence of it anywhere in Google (and there isn’t):

The Solution

Unique Content: Unique content is the single most important thing you can do to promote your site on the engines under any strategy. Make your content relevant to your targeted keywords (and include the keywords a couple times) but keep it user-friendly, readable and even enjoyable. Copying someone else’s content (even with mild rewording) can land you in a lot of trouble. If you can’t write the content yourself, find someone who can. There is no substitute for unique content and the engines work very hard to maintain this.

As it applies to the long tail terms we’re focusing on for this guide, be sure the content being listed in the property description (either on the main site or the IPW) is unique to your site (and don’t give this revised, unique content to the MLS board, it’s just for your site). While everyone else fights for a decent position using the IDX content, you’ll have something unique and relevant to the property. If nothing else, this will help the property details page be recognized as unique in the search engines.

Blogging: Beyond the content on your site, write about the properties on a blog and link that back to the property details page (use the property address as the link text; this is the long tail term we’re after). We want this content to be unique as well. Copying from the main site or IDX feed will do more harm than good.

Doing this will not only pass authority and trust to the main site on a deep page, but it will guarantee this property details page is visible to the search spiders (not all properties will be seen and indexed, GoogleBot is too busy to scan the entire site every day and it will “lose interest” after so many pages).

Establishing Links: As with links from your blog, creating links externally will pass trust and authority. Additionally, more domains linking back will pass more authority and will offer more paths for a search spider to enter the site. Consider adding relevant comments to other blogs with your link in the comment or join a few forums and add your IPWs, rebrand or the brokerage site to your posts and your signature line.

In short, any place you can place that link and it’s a related page or site, go for it.

Your chances of receiving organic search engine traffic increases based on the quality of your copy. If your keywords are not related to the content it doesn’t help, so make sure you are not only writing good content, but relevant copy as well. Doing this will also help with your standing on search engines.

Ori Staub, Enterprise Technology Director at Active Website, spoke at our conference about generating relevant traffic to our sites. One example he gave for this was using your blog to your advantage. Blogs are great SEO tools because the content is continually changing and gives your customers a reason to keep coming back to your site. However, your blog will only benefit you if you use it the right way. Again, stick to the three basic principles of quality, relevance, and uniqueness to keep growing the popularity of your site on search engines.

To showcase how this works, Ori presented a couple charts to show the difference between a good blog and a bad one. As Ori stated during his presentation, SEO through blogging is more sensitive to quality than quantity. One quality post per month beats 20 irrelevant and duplicated content posts. Below is a chart that showcases an inefficient blog. This company posted 20-30 blog posts a month, but the content is not original and had 40-120 referrals into the blog.

Now here is an example of good blogging. This company wrote keyword rich unique content with only 5-10 quality posts a month. But because the content was original and relevant, they received 150-250 referrals into their blog.

Search engines make up a large percentage of incoming referrals. So remember, by including keywords and links into your quality content, your can help promote your company’s SEO as well.  It’s the difference between showing up on page one of Google, or getting lost in the abyss with the thousands of other businesses trying to entice users to their sites.

Again, here is an example of a blog that is using keywords and linkage to their advantage. Enterprise Member The Kentwood Companies out of Denver is including multiple tags for “Denver Real Estate” to help increase SEO.

“Like most major metropolitan areas around the country, the Denver real estate market has had its share of highs and lows over the years.  During the past several months, record foreclosures have been in the headlines, and the luxury home market is not immune to this distressing situation.  On the other hand, this recession-fueled scenario has created some very exciting homebuying opportunities for move-up buyers and those relocating to the metro Denver area.”

Ar the time I wrote this blog, if you type “Denver Real Estate” into Google, Kentwood has a spot on page one. Not only is Kentwood bringing traffic to their site by tagging Denver Real Estate into their blog, they are also doing a great job of using linkage to bring readers back to their homepage. To finish reading this blog, visit The Kentwood Companies at www.realestatedenverblog.com.

By providing sticky material to our websites, we are able to enrich the user experience as well as improve our company’s SEO. Today, we’d like to showcase Residential Properties and a few of the ways they’re reaching customers through various platforms and reinforcing the importance of content.

Earlier this week we posted a blog discussing the need for telling a story in regards to our property listings. We showed a great example of how good writing can increase SEO and create an emotional connection with consumers. At Residential, they’re taking this a step further. Below is a video posted on YouTube that provides a great description of not only the property listing, but the community as well.

Yet another way Residential is providing content to consumers is by hosting a radio talk show called, Real Estate Insight. Every Sunday morning at 10am Eastern Standard Time Sally Lapides and her team discuss today’s hottest real estate topics. By going to their website, you can listen to the live show or catch a past airing in the archives section on Podcast. This not only allows users to hear more about the world of real estate, but is another way Residential can keep people on their site. You can also find a more in-depth discussion on the show’s blog, www.realestateinsight.com.

Finally, we’d like to mention what Residential is doing to get the entire company involved in the process. Every Season, they hold an internal photo contest and everyone in the company is encouraged to submit a photo they have taken of the community. The winning photos are then displayed on their homepage slide show as well as the blog. Your blog is a great publishing platform and is a vital way to engage your consumer. Click here to see this year’s spring winners.

So take these examples as advice for advancing your company’s website. Social networking, blogging, and contests allow for dialogue with the consumers and are just a few of the ways you can reach them. The longer you keep a user’s attention, the better your odds that they’ll remember you!

As I think about the importance of relevant content, it makes me think of the house I grew up in as a kid. The family dinners, Christmas morning, and all the other memories over the years give me a sense of home. Yet when I go online to read about a potential home purchase, I get a dry description that doesn’t give me any emotional connection. Here is one example of a million dollar home for sale in Denver with a description that doesn’t even begin to tell a story.

“ABSOLUTELY AMAZING HOME. EVERY AMENITY YOU COULD EVER HOPE FOR. MASTER BDRM IS A DREAM. 500K DOLLAR ADDITION TO THE HOUSE WITH POOL ENCLOSED RV STORAGE ON THE PROPERTY. UNBELIEVABLE MOUNTAIN VIEW FROM THE UPPER LEVEL PATIO DECK. A MUST SEE!”

What about the neighborhood? What makes having this indoor pool so amazing?  There are so many different directions this company could have gone to tell a compelling story, but it requires more than just a couple vague sentences.

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Rounders, when Teddy so elegantly describes what it’s like to play poker with Mike McDermott. “Just like a young man, coming in for a quickie. I feel so unsatisfied…”  This is how I feel after reading some of the dry property descriptions.

After thinking about this for some time, I found a link for a blog that did an incredible job telling a story about a home and the story behind a zero energy home.  Check out the blog article here.

Notice when you read this post that there are over 33 comments at the time I posted this blog.  That’s over thirty people engaging in a discussion over this property listing. I am sure any seller would love to see this kind of activity. As I dug further, it wasn’t just one post but a series of posts that left me with a feeling that, as marketers, we need to work with our agents and sellers to capture more of the essence of the homes we represent.

I think it’s time that, as an industry, we think more about the conversation we can build around the property. With a good story we can engage our potential customers and get them talking which is so important in online marketing.
So let’s all get creative and think how we can create good content that people are much more likely to read, link to, and share with friends and family. If we do this, we can create a true viral effect which is where the real search engine magic is found.

Here are a couple blog links I follow. Each of these blog’s focus is different, but you’ll notice the content is alive and engaging.

www.apartmenttherapy.com
www.littlediggs.com