Q: What elements do NOT come through in a typical real estate listing page, even one with photos and a 'virtual tour'?

A:  The nuances and flow of the property, and your marketing expertise.

If you’re a real estate broker or builder sales manager, you know how to talk to people.  And you can reach many more people using video to market your properties and yourself.  Video is not that difficult – and it builds business for you and attention for your properties.

If you’re not familiar with the term ‘inbound marketing’, it is best described as getting your message in the place where your customers who are looking for your services will find you. With respect to online marketing, it’s having your content searchable in the keyword categories where people who are looking for the service you offer are searching.

Inbound marketing is the opposite of ‘outbound marketing’, also known as ‘interruptive marketing’ where you push your message out to the masses and vie for people’s attention, whether they are looking for you and your services or not.

Serious social media marketers are ever aware of the inbound effect of their efforts, which dictate where and how they interact online.

If you’re looking to make your social media marketing efforts pay off, you want to get your message where people are looking for it.  When they find you, you want to be giving them the message they’re looking for – how you can help them with your product or your expertise.  Think relevance to your business.

It’s no secret that the best method of augmenting your content arsenal are blogs and video, then using popular social platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for distributing your message.

This survey by the inbound marketing specialists at Hubspot illustrates how businesses are ranking the importance of various social media channels to their inbound marketing strategies and how they’ve changed from 2009 to 2010.

There’s quite a bit of discussion among SEO specialists as to the value of paid search.

Paid search results are typically pay-for-click placement which will surface on designated keyword searches.  Organic search results, on the other hand, are gathered by the search engines’ Web crawlers and surface according to their relevance to the search term.  Many factors influence the order in which these results appear, among them how closely they match the user’s search terms and the number of sites linking to the result.

It is generally agreed, though, that there is considerably more value to being listed high in the organic results, than to be in the paid results.

• Organic results keep on giving.  Paid search goes away as soon as you stop paying
• There is no recurring dollar cost – not to say that there isn’t a cost to the effort of producing organic results
• More people click the organic results (studies vary, but organic typically scores in the 75% range)

It’s easy to understand why organic results get more attention.  In a search for “Oak Park condos under $200000” (yes, this is how people search), the paid results appear to completely ignore what is perhaps the most important component – “under $200000”.  The ordinary user who doesn’t analyze paid vs. non-paid, looks only to the most useful results.

As searchers take advantage of the ability of the search engines to seek out ever more specific criteria, the paid search will fail to measure up.

Paid search should not be dismissed.  It is a viable lead generator.  But even if you use paid search, now would be a good time to start allocating marketing resources to building up your organic content.  Generate organic results by using video and blog content to promote your business and communicate your competitive edge to people searching for expertise in your market area.  It will serve you better and it will last longer.

“I don’t get this social media stuff”, says the older real estate marketer (define ‘old’ how you want to).  “My customer base is older, like me”. 

If you think that you or your clients are immune to the effects of social media, think again.

The 55+ age group is the fastest growing demographic on Facebook, and nearly 40% of Facebook users now over age 35.  Our New Home Notebook / YoChicago YouTube channel, consisting of over 1,500 real estate-related video and nearly 1,000,000 views, reports 75% of our audience is over 35 and 50% is over 45!

The next time someone tells you they don’t use social media, ask them these questions:

Have you done a Google search today?  The contents of your search results are heavily based in social media content.

Have you watched a video online?  Video is a prolific form of social media that draws incredible viewership in an easy-to-digest format – that’s why it’s so popular.

Have you written or looked at an online review of a product or service? Social media at its core – consumer participation to provide non-promotional information that aids decision-making for other consumers.

The truth is you and your clients, whoever they are and in whatever age group, have felt the effect and probably been influenced by social media of some sort.  If that information is being provided by your competition, you are missing an opportunity.

Valentines Day, the Super Bowl, the latest snowstorm. Unless they have an effect on open house traffic or some other relevant aspect of real estate, they don’t belong in your real estate posts.

Your readers increasingly get their information from their social networks.  A reader’s network can be defined as the people and businesses that he or she opts to allow into his or her circle.  If you’re representing yourself as a real estate business trying to penetrate that circle, you won’t get in unless you can deliver content that matters. And you won’t stay in if you don’t consistently deliver relevant content.

Those readers are not interested in your opinion on politics or your musings on the weather - they want to know about real estate marketing conditions in their neighborhood. They want you to enlighten them on the state of the market. They want your expertise. That’s why they’ve let you into their circle.

You don’t want to be dry or without a personality, you just need to remember why you’re there. 

Which remodeling projects bring you the best returns? I can almost recite them by heart.

Tips for the first-time buyer? Not much new here.

And have you heard about the homebuyer tax credit?  Please.

These tired topics do very little to promote you as a real estate practitioner because they do nothing to distinguish you from your competition.  As a blogger attempting to secure the interest of potential clients through organic search you need to do two things.

First, you need to talk about topics that bring your market knowledge to bear.  And that knowledge is local. You want your content to speak to your own activity and marketing abilities.

Try talking about market stats in your neighborhood, the state of activity, an interesting listing or segments of your marketplace that are seeing the most activity.  Try talking about un-named clients that have learned tough lessons through experience and don’t be afraid to cite your own lessons learned. You don’t need to do major research – you know these things. They’re easy to write about and your readers will be interested.

Second, you need to challenge keyword groups where you can win.  If you’re blogging, you’re looking to take advantage of organic search. You’re not going to surface on a search for ‘homebuyer tax credit’ (4.6M results), so don’t waste your time.  You’re much more likely to surface on a search for ‘Tony Grunsfeld Architect Winnetka’ or ‘Tower Road Beach Winnetka'.  And it's in these local topics that your expertise lies and where your clients are focused.

Consumers are increasingly turning a blind eye to canned pitches and rehearsed presentations. Real conversation with real people is what prospects are paying attention to these days.

If you’re in a business where it’s difficult for a consumer to differentiate your services from your competitors’ (real estate agent / broker) or your product closely resembles several others (new homes & condos), social media opportunities like blog writing, commenting and video give you the ability to enhance your product or service with a human touch.

People buy homes and services from people they like, people they identify with, people they feel they can talk to.  For a consumer, it’s always an emotional decision at some level.  Social media is the channel through which you can convey your personality, sincerity and commitment to your offering.

As a realtor or a real estate company, social media affords you the opportunity to bring your market knowledge to the forefront, to demonstrate your knowledge of the market on a given day, of your ability to show property in person on a video, of your ability to speak to current issues with authority and honesty in a way that resonates with your prospects.

As a builder/developer, you can demonstrate those same qualities as they affect your product offering. You can reach a wide audience of prospects in the same way you communicate with your face-to-face buyers.  Don’t worry about giving them your contact information or fitting in the pitch.  If your readers like what you have to say, they’ll find you through links on your blog or on the surrounding Web page.

If nothing else, social media has perpetuated an undeniable trend – in an environment where so much information is available on any subject, product or service, consumers are tuning out the sales pitch and looking for subjective commentary and conversations.

What’s the best way to spread the word these days?  Online, of course, through specialized sites that promote your industry on a daily basis.

We see a lot of buzz lately about PR firms breaking out of the past and becoming efficient at spreading the word online through social networks and local writers.  Some have, some have not. Has yours?

The whole foundation of the public relations business was based on networking with media big shots so that they could get stories placed occasionally in the big important publications.  But alas, the long tail theory applies to journalists as well.  With access to thousands of specialized online writers and publications, consumers can find what they want in their own niche when they want it.  

In my Google reader, my local niche writers get the same real estate (pun intended) as the Tribune or the Wall Street Journal.  Genuine local stories are more apt to show up with better information in Google alerts on keywords that interest me.

Organizations that need to publicize a price reduction, an auction, a special incentive or are interested in ongoing visibility in a tight market would do well to consider the local specialized sites in their field to get visibility and bring clarity to their message.

As we talk to new home developers, management firms and realestate brokers about social media’s benefits, we’re often asked “How do we avoid negative comments?”

The short answer is that we ‘deal with negative comments’, it’s not really possible to avoid them. Social media encourages participation and opinions, some of which can be less than flattering.  Yet these comments provide an opportunity to correct and/or clarify any negative perceptions if they exist, as well as to portray the subject company as one that will step up and address an issue.  And when you do so in a positive manner, you are able to reach a wide audience with your response.

Ignoring legitimate negative comments is not a good option.  You’re potentially allowing a bad opinion to spread virally with no response. That lack of response is translated as apathy or guilt. Blocking comments on your social sites will also send a bad message to your potential followers. That message is ‘I don’t care what you have to say’.

The good news is that typically comments are overwhelmingly positive or neutral.  After years of handling comments on YoChicago and New Home Notebook, we’ve seen our share of negative comments, but only a handful of those comments required client conferencing and strategic handling.  The good news is that often the community itself will address and rebut issues that they don’t agree with or see as misguided – and that is the true beauty of social media.

Lastly, but importantly, use the negative feedback to evaluate the perception of your company and address those concerns internally.

Click the image below to see the developer response to this comment.

84.8 percent of total US internet audience viewed online video in November.  According to Comscore’s November numbers, 170 million US internet users watched more than 31 billion web videos.  YouTube serves up 40% of those.  In case you hadn’t noticed, video is the dominant media these days.

You watched 12.2 hours of video in November.  Yes, that’s the average, which equates to 181 videos per viewer. If you’re wondering “who are all these people watching video?”, it’s time for a little self-reflection.  If you’re online reading your news or searching for information, you almost always have embedded video available to enhance a subject.  And if you stop to reflect – you’re watching a lot of them – even if you’ve never visited a video site like YouTube.

Youtube search ranks second among all search engines.  Videos give more information in an entertaining format – it’s as simple as that.  Internet users are going direct to YouTube to get their information in a format they enjoy.

It seems the evolution of this medium has been slow to take hold in the real estate arena, but that's likely to change in 2010.  See how real estate video enhances not only the property, but the developer or broker as well.

If you thought you might be missing the social media boat, take heart – you can get advice from one of the 15,740 social media experts on Twitter – that’s up from 4,487 in May of this year. The article from Mashable cites the blog Broadstuff, which opines that at that growth rate, Twitter will be nearly entirely composed of social media experts by 2013.

The Mashable article notes that the humorous observation raises a legitimate point – that such stats provide fodder for those who would say that social media is simply ‘hot air’.

It's a hotly debated topic, as evidenced by this LinkedIn discussion under the eMarketing Association group labeled “Social Media for business is CRAP”, which has over 1,000 comments. My favorite comment (admittedly I did not read all 1,000+) is to the effect that “People know as much about the results of social media as they do the results of marketing outside social media”.

Cartoon courtesy of Hubspot

What better way to promote your knowledge and ability to a potential seller than through a video of you and your abilities in action – showing a home on video?  And what better way to draw potential buyers into the finer points of a listing than through a video tour?

Online video is a part of our daily lives now.  It will probably become a seller expectation as part of a real estate marketing plan in the very near future.

Right now, though, agents have an opportunity to get an edge in the market by using video to promote themselves and their listings. A recent NAR survey noted that even though 73 percent of sellers would list with an agent using video to market their property, only 1% of agents use video.

Listen to this prominent Chicago real estate agent, Francesca Rose of Prudential Rubloff tell how video works for her.