Adjusting to the NEW Craigslists

As many of you may have noticed, Craigslist has been making some BIG changes over the last few weeks. First it was that a zip code was required. Inconvenient, yet not earth shattering. Then, it was HTML photos not allowed. Followed by anchor text. None of this was a big deal, and was easily remedied. Now however, we are taking a big hit on ads not allowing any type of link in them. Even the long and dirty ones.

Craiglsist ads change. Real estate must change with it

This ad in todays CL world no longer will exist. The photo will disappear, the anchor text (hyperlinked) words will not be linked, and the long URL will not be clickable.

So the big question is, what do we do?

FIRST. STOP FREAKING OUT. Myself, as well as many of the other tech folks out there have been overloaded by emails, texts, FB messages and more with people all worked up over a simple thing. We understand that Craigslist has been a big part of your business. We also have been teaching for years to focus on other pillars of business in case CL ever did something like this. That day is here, I hope you’ve prepared.

SECOND. FIND A WORK AROUND. Now, there have been some work arounds suggested. Myself as well as some others are working on the problem as well. I can tell you, that we will not find a solution that will result in as much traffic as before! EXPECT your CL traffic to drop, significantly. We’re currently testing some solutions to see what type of traffic results they get.

THIRD. HANG TIGHT. If you find yourself breathing into a paper bag to stop the hyperventilating, just calm down and hang tight for a little bit. Craigslist has continued to make these changes over the last two weeks. We need to wait for the storm to pass to make sure we aren’t coming up with a solution that will be outdated in 4 days.

FOUR. PICK UP THE PHONE AND PROSPECT. Take this as a great time to pick up the phone and call all of the other leads that you have, and your sphere of influence.

Long story short, don’t let this stop business for you. Focus on your other pillars of lead generation and when the dust settles in a week or so we will give you the best solution we’ve found along with some solid results analysis from it. Til then, I love you all. BUT PLEASE STOP PANICKING AND FILLING UP MY INBOX 🙂

Video For The Real Estate Star!

Video marketing and communicating has been around for a very long time. So why is it now that this great way to convey a message is readily available to the average business owner (ie. you and me, the local real estate agents) it is not being used? I presume it is a number of factors such as comfort level, knowledge and assumption that the consumer doesn’t want your information.

Whatever the reasons are I would recommend rethinking adding a video strategy if you don’t already have one. It’s a great way to get in front of your consumer and have a conversation about exactly what you want to… without actually having to be in front of them! The video below will outline what I mean and give you some great tips!! Enjoy!

Do a little rant…make a little noise…Facebook tabs go bu-bye

OK OK! Let me be the first to say…yes, this may be a rant. A purposeful rant though. I have been hearing lots of complaining in the virtual world the last few that Facebook is taking down application tabs on personal profiles (11/3/10 to be exact). I have one thing to say about that. GOOD!! Yes, I know. All of my real estate friends love their “market snapshot” tab from Top Producer. Or how about the Realtor.com tab to “see my listings”.

GUESS WHAT?! Your Facebook profile is not an advertising platform and Facebook is taking the proper steps to keep it that way. As we have discussed in the past, social media is about building relationships… not being a billboard. This is simply a step in the process of getting rid of those people who have profiles as business’. You know the ones. Instead of it being a person… it’s a business. This is first off a violation of Facebooks terms of service, but secondly its just poor practice. THAT IS WHAT FAN PAGES ARE FOR! I know the argument, “It’s hard to get fans on my page. It’s much easier if I can just friend them”. I know. I have heard it a hundred times. Here is the bottom line, fan pages are for your business, profiles are for your life.

If you provide valid content and are consistent, you will get fans. Now, go build your business pages properly people!

 

PPC – I do, do you?

At this point you may be wondering what a PPC is. A PPC is short for Pay Per Click, those adds that you see on the sides of web search results. You know, the ones on the side of Google.

Gary Vaynerchuck posted on his fan page today that he is thinking about hiring someone to run his online ad campaigns. For one, I am surprised he doesn’t have this already. Two, I was surprised at some of the negative comments about how expensive it can be, and that its hard. Well, there is a little validity to these statements; but not much in my opinion. With a few trial and error tests combined with reading a few blogs you should be up and running!

The big player in the PPC game (and yes, it is a game requiring constant adjustments) is and always has been Google. For obvious reasons, when you think of searching for something on the internet you think Google. Lately, Facebook has been making great strides in the PPC game though. I was originally hesitant to move into the FB world of PPC’s thinking “who on earth is going to click on a real estate ad while they are chatting with their friends”. Ladies and gentlemen, stop the press and read my next words carefully because you won’t see them very often; I WAS WRONG.

My Facebook add campaigns have blown my Google campaigns out of the water. Here is why in a very small nutshell.

• Google Ads – Text only – Allows you to target by area.  Your ad’s title and description must be captivating enough to secure a click.
• Facebook Ads – Text and Photo – Allows you to target by location, distance from location, sex, relationship status, age, education level, place of employment, interests, fan page subscriptions and more. You are now relying on text, a title and a picture to gain initial interest. Not to mention you are targeting EXACTLY who you want.

Have you ever wondered why it seemed like the ad’s on Facebook were speaking directly to you? It’s because they were. Facebook targets ads based on the info in your profile. It is no surprise that I receive ads geared towards real estate agents who like technology, or shoes.

I want to know what your experience has been with PPC ads. Whether it be a success or a failure, you probably  learned something by playing this game of driving online traffic. So tell us how your experience was, with Google and Facebook if you’ve tried it.

Postlets – Im “not a fan”

As real estate agents we are always trying to find ways to outpace the next guy or gal. In the last 5 years with websites becoming such a huge part of our business model, we now need to outpace everyone there too. So the question came up this afternoon in my technology mastermind session, “How do we drive online traffic to our websites; cheaply?”

Being an internet based person I could go on for hours on this. But, I thought back, far far back to when I first got started in real estate and had NO budget. What did I do? Well, one of the first things I did was advertise on craigslist, like crazy! Still do to this day actually, with much success.

This leads into why I am not a fan of Postlets, simply because Postlets overwhelms craigslist these days. It is where they first gained momentum as a company. Although they are very pretty, and easy to set up; I find them to be quite dysfunctional when it comes to supporting an overall web strategy. Lets think about it. If a buyer is on the web which are they more likely to do; pick up a phone and call you, or click the add to see more information on your website? The obvious and correct answer is the latter of the two. They want more information without actually having to reach out to you. Ask for the order you are most likely to receive. So your wondering why postlets doesn’t help this. After all, they offer a great description, multiple photos, and a small link to your email and main web page. The reason this doesn’t help is just like the flier attached to a sign that tells the buyer EVERYTHING about the house. It allows them to disqualify it, and move on to the next add.

Lets look at a different perspective. You make a very simple HTML add (which can be done in MSWord), stating the general size, location and a highlight or two of the home and a link back to your website. Here’s what happens. Buyers click on the link because the brief description intrigues them and they want more information or pictures. This then leads them into your website where they can get “caught in your web”….and registration points. Tada!!! Traffic has not only been driven to your website, but you are also likely to capture regististration.
Now don’t get me wrong. Postlets is not a bad product, and the “Postlets Pro” version is significantly better (although it is $10 an add)… but there are far better methods to get registrations, web traffic and advertise your properties; for far cheaper. Sometimes the simple easy way out isn’t very effective. So, if anyone uses postlets and gets good clickback traffic or leads I would be curious to know.