This question came in from Karen Alterson a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Surf in Rockville Centre, NY. As it is a pretty common question, I thought I'd answer it on my blog, so multiple people can benefit from the answer.
Dear Zillow,
How do I get my name on the list of Realtors? And how do you get to the top???
Karen,
First of all, to get on the list, you simply have to create a free profile. All profiles are included in the Directory. To make sure you come up appropriately, make sure you completely fill out the fields like areas you specialize in and your marketing text. In the upper right hand corner, you'll see the Register button.
With regards to sort, helpfulness and contributions to the site are big factors in determining the order.
Each listing and photo you add to the site are considered contributions. Also, in case you don't have listings, answering questions in our advice section are contributions. Also, once you contribute enough advice, you can be considered a Local Expert or All Star. You can sign up to receive emails whenever there is a question in your area to answer.
This question came in from Karen Alterson a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Surf in Rockville Centre, NY. As it is a pretty common question, I thought I'd answer it on my blog, so multiple people can benefit from the answer.
Dear Zillow,
How do I get my name on the list of Realtors? And how do you get to the top???
Karen,
First of all, to get on the list, you simply have to create a free profile. All profiles are included in the Directory. To make sure you come up appropriately, make sure you completely fill out the fields like areas you specialize in and your marketing text. In the upper right hand corner, you'll see the Register button.
With regards to sort, helpfulness and contributions to the site are big factors in determining the order.
Each listing and photo you add to the site are considered contributions. Also, in case you don't have listings, answering questions in our advice section are contributions. Also, once you contribute enough advice, you can be considered a Local Expert or All Star. You can sign up to receive emails whenever there is a question in your area to answer.
In case you missed Spencer's presentation at NAR, he posted all of his materials and video here. If you get a chance, I highly recommend spending some time watching it. There are some great statistics on how people are using the internet.
Here is my presentation from the NAR Convention in San Diego, "Understanding the Internet Buyer". If you ever want me or someone from Zillow to present to agents in your office (in person or via webinar), please let me know.
Here's the video. It seems to crash the Firefox browser when I embed the video, so you'll have to watch it over on ustream.
I am so excited to announce that today the Video Training Centerlaunched on Zillow! There are a core group of questions we frequently get, and now we have a resource that answers them in the form of short videos.
Along with FAQs, there are videos that walk through some of the most used marketing tools and resources on the site.
Understanding Zillow Data Data is the backbone of the Zillow Web site, with property records for 90 million homes. Discover how to interpret the numbers, edit online information, or use the data to view local real estate statistics and trends.
Real Estate Advertising Make sure your listings and brand are receiving maximum exposure on Zillow by using innovative and ZIP-code targeted real estate advertising that can help your listings receive up to five times more traffic.
Zillow Marketing Opportunities Promote your listings, yourself, and your expertise on Zillow to the millions of people that visit the site each month. Watch these videos to learn how to effectively do this.
Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Zillow Mortgage Marketplace allows borrowers to shop anonymously for customized mortgage quotes. Confirmed lenders interact with mortgage-shoppers in one of the most innovative and vibrant mortgage centers on the Internet. Learn how you can benefit:
Here are Zillow's local traffic numbers for the month of October. The numbers are down a little this month from our highs in July and August, but this is to be expected as we near the end of the year.
You can also find more traffic information directly on Zillow. If you go to any property on the site, click on Home Info in the left hand column, and scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see that we publish a running traffic count for the home, zip, county, and state for the month.
Also, if you've created a free account on Zillow, we now send periodic traffic updates via email for your specific listings.
I went thru the list of people I follow on Twitter and compared that to people I enjoy reading on Active Rain. I then came up with this list of people who are active in the Active Rain community, who I recommend following on Twitter. Click on the link below and you can follow them all (or select a chosen few) in one click.
There are so many great Twitterers and Active Rain blog authors, I am sure I left off some people that should be included on this. If you have a favorite person you follow on Twitter (and who is active on Active Rain), please put their Twitter handle in the comments of this post and maybe I'll add them to the list!
If you are just getting started with Twitter, these people are great to follow and see the many ways Twitter can be used effectively.
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We changed the user interface on Zillow for looking at photos on the Map & List page the other day, and it's pretty slick. The new site design makes it more important than ever to include all of your listing's photos -- we allow up to 50 photos.
I often get emails asking this question, and usually the answer is one of these three reasons:
1) When creating an account on Zillow,it is essential that the agent register as a professional, not a standard user. When we get a listing feed, we match the email address on the listing with the email address on the profile. The reason we wouldn't post this listing online is that a standard user can't represent home that has a listing agent. So if listings aren't online, first make sure it is a professional account that has been created, and not a standard one. This is easily changed on the profile, or click the gray "flag" button and our customer service can assist with the switch.
2) Often when I get this question, the listings actually are online, but they aren't in the My Listings section of the agent's profile. As mentioned in #1, we match the email address of the listing to the email address on the profile. It is important to create the agent profile using the same email address as what the feed provider has on record. For example, say a profile is created using the address sarab@yahoo.com, but then the franchise is giving us listings using sarab@era.com. The listings would be on the site, but the listings and profile would not be tied together. Again, this is easily corrected be updating the email address on the profile.
3) Agents often assume that we are getting direct feeds from their MLSs, therefore the listings should be online. The truth is, only a handful of MLSs give us direct feeds. However, a large majority use syndication services on their members' behalf, like ListHub or Point2. Often with these services there is some type of opt-in required by either the agent or broker before the syndication can begin, so make sure the appropriate controls have been set up if you MLS is contracting with such syndication services.
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Zillow recently launched a Local Info tab which delivers a wealth of information at the national, state, city or even neighborhood and zip code level. For example, you can see percentage of homes that have experienced a price drop or value per square foot. There is also data available such as demographics of the neighborhood and school info.
Now the really cool part. We've added an "embed" button so with a click of a button you can take the a local information chart you custom created, and automatically insert it into your blog. The Local Info tab has enough information that your can customize to have local and interesting blog posts for weeks!
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This morning, I received an email from the head of marketing at a very large real estate company who is a listing partner of Zillow's. He asked me if I had a canned response to agents asking about Zestimate accuracy. Here's the email that I sent him:
Hi XX,
We have two videos on this topic which we send to a lot of people.
But here are the main points so you also have them in text.
Zestimates are calculated three times per week by computer models that try to approximate what the market value is for almost every home in the country. We crunch numbers on 70 million homes and publish those Zestimates to the website every few days.
We're very transparent about our Zestimate accuracy and we report on it quarterly on the site here. We encourage agents to show the accuracy table (which can be found by clicking on “Zestimate Values & Accuracy” on the bottom of every page of the website). The accuracy table helps agents explain to clients the limitations of the Zestimate, and helps reinforce the importance that a real estate agent has in helping the client think through the value of their home.
Zestimate accuracy varies depending upon the quality of the information we have on the specific home. Also, Zestimates are more accurate on homes that are more similar to other homes that have recently sold; on the other hand, Zestimates are less accurate on more unique homes.
Keep in mind that when a home is listed for sale on Zillow, several things happen with respect to the Zestimate:
1. The Zestimate comes off the map page and is replaced with the For Sale price
2. The property attributes (e.g., # beds, # baths, sqft, etc) which were previously provided by the county are replaced by the listing information
3. Zillow recalculates the Zestimate within a few days based on the new property attributes. The For Sale price of the home is not a direct input into the Zestimate though.
4. On the listing page (aka “the home details page”), the Zestimate is removed from the top of the page and replaced with the For Sale price. The Zestimate still appears on the page, but at the very bottom. In some cases, the Zestimate doesn’t appear on the listing page due to an inability to match the address from the listings feed with an existing address in our database.
We tirelessly explain to consumers and agents that Zestimates are just a starting point and they're not the end-all-be-all in figuring out the value of a home. They're just another datapoint which needs to be considered and discussed between real estate agent and client. Best regards, Spencer
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We’ve all heard there’s “no such thing as a national weather forecast” when trying to explain that real estate is local. Most real estate websites only post their national traffic numbers. While there is some value to seeing this number, it is also important to know how much of that traffic is happening in your area so you can spend your time and resources accordingly.
From a top line perspective, Zillow had its second highest traffic month ever in August, attracting over 8.8 million unique users to the site (64% YOY increase). These people looked at 129,616,597 pages of information!
But what does this huge traffic number mean to you? Here are statistics for the top metro areas in the country:
Now that we've established there are a lot of people coming to the site, the next question is how to leverage this audience and make sure they are seeing your name and your listings. Here are the most basic things you need to make sure you are doing on Zillow.
If you aren't into social media, you'll find this particularly funny.
Ironically, social media is one of the reasons that this skit has become so popular. Yes, Conan has a significant reach. But it has become compounded as people share this viral video through YouTube, blogging, twittering, etc. Viral video can be powerful, can you think of one for your business?
This blog post was featured today on Active Rain. I wanted to reBlog it because I think this is very important information for Realtors understand. You should be spending your time and efforts on sites that do all follows.
Zillow is one of the only top trafficked real estate sites that has a dofollow policy in place (besides Active Rain of course!). What this means to you: you should make sure your Profile is blinged out with lots of links in the About Me section. This can help you with Google.
Please install the Firefox application that Lisa describes and visit other real estate sites. I think you'll be shocked to what is, and more important isn't, followed.
I recently read a post by Lina Robertson on linking from comments, and I wanted to divulge into the topic a little more. I have been researching this topic quite a bit lately, and I think I can add to her conversation.
What is a NoFollow Link?
A nofollow links main purpose is to tell Google not to follow a link. That means Google does not pass PageRank, or the anchor text for those links. Which means, Google does not count nofollow links, does not follow them, and no-following a link let's you tell Google that you don't trust a certain site.
The difference is pretty obvious, and it's really easy to add the nofollow attribute to any link you want.
Google's Suggestions For NoFollow Links
Untrusted Content - It's good practice to put the no-follow attribute on links you don't trust. ActiveRain adds the no-follow attribute to your comments section, because you never know who is going to comment on your blog, you can't really trust people you don't know, and that makes comments a good place to use no-follow.
Paid Links - It is widely known that Google frowns upon paid links, such as when a webmaster pays another webmaster for a link to increase their PageRank, this is Black Hat SEO, and could get you banned form search engines. However, links that are purchased for advertising should are ok, but you should add the no-follow attribute so Google doesn't think you are buying links for PageRank.
There are two ways to tell if a link is nofollow that I know of.
#1. If you don't use Firefox you will need to look at the code of a webpage. This is the hard way, and I wouldn't recommend it, but I will still show you how.
Fiirst you need to go to your toolbar on your browser, click "view," scroll down to "page source" or "Source" and look at the coding on the page.
Then you can search for the links anchor text by hitting "Ctrl F" on your keyboard, and search for nofollow or the anchor text of the link.
If that seems diffucult for you, your right, it is. There is an easier way, and here's how:
#2. First, you have to use Firefox, if you don't use Firefox, you can download it here: Download Firefox
Now that you have firefox, you need to get a plug in that will highlight nofollow links, you can download it here: SearchStatus Downlaod
Now that you have downloaded your plug in, you should see something like this on your browser toolbar. (Sometimes it shows up at the bottom of your browser, or the top.)
Now just right click the little @ button next to the left arrow, and you should get a drop down menu, click the "Highlight NoFollow Links" and voila! All nofollow links are then highlighted on your web pages.
And this is what a nofollow link looks like:
What's the big deal of all this?
The main benefit of knowing whether links are nofollow or not is for SEO purposes. If you know anything about SEO, you know that links are the #1 determining factor for search engine rankings. But it does no good to go after links for your search engine rankings, for Google anyways, if they are nofollow. Nofollow links are still good links to drive traffic to your websites, like if people click on them to go to your site, but from a Google stand point, they aren't going to pass any weight for your search engine rankings.
MUST KNOW!
NoFollow is for Google only, Yahoo! and Bing do not use nofollow linking techniques. This is important to know because even though a link is nofollow, it still may be a good link in Yahoo! or Bing, and I would recommend that you don't only go after nofollow links for your SEO strategy.
Here's Why NoFollow Links Are Good
If Google notices that you only have dofollow links pointing to your website, it's going to throw up read flags. Google knows that having nofollow and dofollow links is natural, and if all of your links are dofollow, that doesn't look natural to Google. If you don't look natural, your site could get penalized.
Yahoo and Bing do not care about a nofollow link or a dofollow link, they count all links. Because they count all links, the more high quality links you have, even if they are nofollow, the higher you are going to rank in those search engines.
If you have any questions, let me know and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. It would also be nice to hear some of the experts around Active Rain on their input of the nofollow link.
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There are 13,000 of you who have an Active Rain blog AND active profiles on Zillow. As of today, and thru collaboration with the good folks at AR, you now have a link from your Zillow profile to your Active Rain blog! Just one more way people can find the great content so many of you produce.
If you have an active, PROFESSIONAL (not a regular user) account on Zillow, a link to your blog will automatically appear. But we didn't stop there, you can now also add your Twitter handle, a link to your Facebook profile and a link to your LinkedIn information.
I am really excited about this change because it is so important to tie everything you are doing socially, together on the web, to help build your online reputation.
2) Log on to the site and go to your Profile. Click the Edit button.
3) Next, simply add your information in the respective fields.
4) And you are all done!
Big thanks to Active Rain for making this happen! Also, don't forget that you can include even more (followed) links within the marketing text of your profile. For example, link to some of your favorite or more helpful posts to drive even more traffic to them.
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Day 2 of the conference was more about developing strategies around the numbers that we learned on the first day of the conference. And then I give my final thoughts on the general vibe I have been seeing at all the real estate shows I have attended this year.
The RIS Media Leadership Conference is going on today and tomorrow in NYC. Today's opening session had some many interesting figures in it, that I didn't think I could do it justice by typing it all up, so I did a video recap. The videos are stat heavy.
**Warning - the numbers aren't good, in fact they were pretty downright depressing. However, the interesting thing is that the vibe here isn't depressing. I think people are beyond that. The attitude is now more of - ok, we know the numbers suck, but give them to us straight, let's realistically process them and let's build a plan around them.
With that here are my recaps. Part 1 is Alex Perriello's opening State of the Industry address. And Part 2 is a recap of the first panel where industry leader gave their national perspectives on market opportunities in 2010 and a lot of information around credit/lending/foreclosures.
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We spend a lot of time here on Active Rain, and in social media seminars, talking about how to use Facebook as professionals to be found by new clients. This week, the shoe was on the other foot for me!
On Monday I hired a Realtor to sell one of my investment properties in Waukee, IA. My husbandand I reached out to this particular Realtor (I can't remember if it was thru voice mail or email), and the first time I spoke to him, he said "yeah, I saw on Facebook it looks like your husband and I have a mutual friend and what do you do at Zillow".
Here is what the Realtor knew about me before even placing the first call:
I am an actual person.
I have a job and knew where I worked.
I am married and he knows where my husband works.
We are out of town sellers.
We are into the Internet and use Facebook a lot, based on our Friend count.
What I look like, so he can guess my approximate age.
He knows a little about my interests because you can see which Fan pages I follow.
He knew who, if any, mutual friends we had. How good of conversation starter is that?
As you can imagine, the first call we had together was no cold call. We were instantly able to have a more personal conversation and he was hired minutes later. I really appreciated the fact that he took a few minutes to do a little research about me before picking up the phone and it made for a much warmer first conversation.
So yes, Facebook is a great prospecting tool and can potentially get your deals. But it is also a great tool to help work with the leads you get through other sources!
(Oh, and I bet you all are wondering where I found him? He was the only Realtor in Waukee, IA to have a completely filled out profile here on Active Rain and Zillow. Did I really have a choice who to use? Haha!)
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Have an open house coming up? You can enter the event information on Zillow, it is free and easy to do.
When you enter the information, your listing will receive special treatment on the site to alert people to the open house. The information will show up the week prior to the open house, and will automatically come down when it is over. Watch this short video to see exactly how to enter this information:
If you would like to bring even more attention to your open house, you can buy zip code targeted ads on Zillow. When someone searches a particular zip code, your ad announcing the open house will appear. And once the open house is over, you can immediately change the creative to advertise you next real estate event, whether that is a new listings, a price reduction, or just a hot property.
If you would like to find out more, I encourage you to watch this video about targeted advertising on Zillow, or simply call 1-866-324-4005 and speak with one of our marketing consultants.
I think this is a fantastic marketing strategy for a developer in Chicago trying to close out the last of the townhomes in University Village.
The general plan:
- On Sept 26th he is holding a 1 day only, last chance sale.
- Units open for show at 9am and they'll start taking contracts at noon. Appts can be made to view the homes prior to this date.
- At noon, it is then a first come, first serve.
1st buyer gets 30% off
2nd buyer gets 27% off
3rd buyer gets 24% off
4th buyer gets 21% off
5th buyer gets 19% off
6th buyer gets 17% off
7th buyer gets 15% off
- In order to qualify, you must be pre-approved for a mortgage and prove that you have certified funds for the down payment.
Why I like this idea:
1) It creates urgency and makes it appear as if there is a large market for these last units. It makes it look like you have to act fast with this language in the ad "people in line will receive numbers..." Can you imagine having to give out numbers in today's market to see your listing? This development has been on the market for over a year, and now all of sudden there is going to be a huge rush? They sure do a great job of making it appear so!
2) Who wouldn't want to get a 15-30% discount! Sounds awesome! The reality is, you can get this discount on just about any house right now. I like to think about Car Max for this point. I know that if I go to just about any car dealership in Chicago right now, I can probably get them to come down off the price. But if I were going to buy a car, I'd probably go to Car Max- no haggling prices. You pay what is on the sticker, some people really like this idea. They never have to wonder if they would have gone lower or have to bother with the haggling.
3) By requiring pre-approval, they should be increasing the quality of the buyer to better assure an easy closing.
I looked these units up in the MLS to try to get an idea of the list to sold price to see if this was actually a good deal. There were over 250 sales, so I couldn't go thru them all. And because they are new construction, it is so hard to get a grasp on this ratio because one doesn't know what all was negotiated into the contract. I saw some that were sold right at list price, and I saw some that were actually more than 30% off. So apparently this deal has existed all along, but the advertising campaign does a great job making you think otherwise.
University Village has a good thing going here. They just need to make sure they do a good job exposing the promotion to a wide enough audience to truly create a market. (for starters, they should put it on their website....)
We all know that people want to see lots of photos on online listings (Zillow lets you upload up to 50 per listing). There was a small update made to Zillow this week that makes the number of photos on a listing more obvious.
Take your Realtor hat off for a minute and put your consumer hat on. Say you did a search for listings and this is what you got back. Knowing that people usually have a finite amount of time they spend online and won't look at every house on a page, which of these do you think will get more looks?
(Scroll down for a quick video on how to edit photos)
of the townhomes in 