REBar Camp Report

First of all, I have to say WOW what a great conference to be at! The fact that the entire thing was free was awesome in the first place, plus you didn't have a bunch of sales pitches about products. But the best part of the whole thing was the attendance of so many agents who are all eager to increase their online presence. Unfortunately I was only able to attend the last few sessions of the camp, but the information disseminated was excellent. I also feel like I missed a HUGE marketing opportunity for EZ Posting! There were so many agents there that could have used my service and I had such an opportunity to make more contacts, I am honestly a little disappointed. But, we learn from our mistakes and move on to the next thing.

I did have the chance to meet a few new agents as well as match some faces to the names that I read about in the Phoenix real estate blogosphere; so that alone constitutes a success for me.

I appreciated the classes and learned a bit about the Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the rest of those Web 2.0 things. But, I have to say that I still disagree that these venues are productive BUSINESS applications. I have no doubt that they are wonderful ways to update people on you life and perhaps even meet some mutual acquaintances via the web. These are all things that are good. But I can't imagine myself sitting down and tweeting to find new clients or making friends on Myspace to significantly improve my online presence. If you listened close enough to the speakers at the conference who spoke about these social networking sites, you could pick up on the fact that these sites are a way of life for them. They expressed it in no uncertain terms; "we love twittering and facebook because they are fun and useful sites, not because we try to draw a lot of business from them". Which is great! I don't think that you should really try to use those sites to spam people and make a million useless friends. Use those sites to update people about your life and what you are up to, not to make some huge marketing campaign.

So my advice to real estate agents (and any professional in general) is as follows: Use social media as something that YOU like to do. Don't waste your time trying to figure out how to make the greatest tweet or make the best Facebook page to get a dozen new clients; just make sure that you are being the best realtor that you can be and people will come to you.

Attending the REBar Camp!

I am excited to be attending the REBar camp coming up this Thursday at Scottsdale Stadium. It will be the first true real estate networking and marketing conference I have ever attended and I am quite excited to be a part of it. Unfortunately, due to my schedule I will only be able to make the second half of the sessions, but I am looking forward to the event tremendously. I hope that the sharing of information will be excellent and that I can glean a lot of good techniques from other real estate professionals.

What is REBar camp? Well, this great post from Jonathan Dalton is where I actually learned about the event (thank you Jonathan!) and he describes the camp as a conference that will be discussing the various sides of social media marketing and how it plays into real estate marketing. The thing that I am most impressed by is the fact that the entire conference is FREE! I checked the sign up sheet a day ago and there were about 350 people attending the conference, so I am looking forward to meeting a lot of new people and hopefully making some good contacts!

I will update my blog after attending to give my assesment and report back some of the information that I learn.

Is Craigslist a good place to search for homes?

This is a great blog article from Jay Thompson on the different sites on the internet that you can search for homes locally. It talks about the differences between Zillow, Realtor, Trulia, MLS, etc. and which ones are the best and for what reasons. Jay neglects to mention Craigslist in his list of search engines and that is understandable because Craigslist is such a large database and is not designed specifically for home searching. I sent the author an email to see why he chose not to include such a popular site in his list. His response was that Craigslist is poorly designed for searching for homes and the total number of homes on the site is a small percentage of what is truly available on the market. However, he also said that he does post to such sites in order to get the highest amount of views out there for his clients, which is a good thing. While his analysis has some valid points, I think there are a few points that he might not have taken into consideration:

1. Craigslist is a starting point for buyers: Craigslist is very close to achieving standardization for classifieds search sites. If you want to understand standardiztion just think Google; do you use any of the other ten million search engines out there, or just Google? Google has become the industry standard. Why is the standardization of Craigslist important to real estate agents? Because its where buyers START THE PROCESS. So many home buyers begin their search on the site they know best, and that's Craigslist. They go to check out whats in their area, see an ad they like, call the agent, and boom, you've got a lead.
   
2. Craigslist is built for browsing: People sit and look for crap on Craigslist all day long. That's why there are 1000 ads a day posted to the Phoenix Real Estate site. There are a ton of hooks in the ocean, but there is also a lot of fish swimming around. I will give you this, there are way too many Residential-real-estate-for-sale ads on CL; so much that it is rare to get a single solid lead after a few weeks of TOP Posting. However, there is NO BETTER PLACE for marketing rental properites or Lease-Purchase Options on the Web. If you post a house or apartment for rent or especially an LPO on Craigslist, you will get calls.
   
3. Craigslist gets your name out there: If you search for a certain property type long enough, you start to see the same people posting the same types of properties. For example, one of our clients Jim uses EZ Posting to list properties in the commercial real estate section. Because his name is out there more and more, people who are searching for commercial real estate see Jim's name pop up a lot. Even if he doesn't have the exact property they want, people know that Jim handles a lot of Scottsdale commercial leasing and they are more apt to call him because they see his inventory on the Web.
   

So is Craigslist the answer to your marketing woes? Nope. But it can go a long ways in improving your online presence. Its true that CL isn't the greatest site for searching for homes, but its a place where a LOT of buyers begin the process. They see a property they like, give the agent a call, and all the sudden you have a solid lead, which we all know is a great thing to have.

Does posting ads on other Craigslist cities work?

I'm sure you have seen something like it before on Craigslist; You're browsing your Phoenix Craigslist site and you see "Beautiful 3 Bedroom in foreclosure!" You click on the ad, only to find that the house is in Prescott and you don't even know where Prescott is. So was that a big waste of your time? Probably, if you aren't looking for a house in Prescott. But what if you were? and what if you had the money, and you like what you saw, and you wanted to get more info? You call the agent, go see the house, love it, and buy it. I guess posting that ad in another city worked out for that agent huh? The fact is that posting ads in multiple cities CAN work for you, depending on what you are trying to sell.
First off, let's be clear. Craigslist does NOT like you posting ads in multiple cities. It's against their suggested guidelines and maybe the TOU (Terms of Use) and if they find you doing it, they can shut down your account. What's more, some users don't like it and they will flag you for doing it. So what? you think to yourself. I can get flagged as much as I want and nothing happens right? i just have to post it again. Wrong... If you get flagged more than 8 times (approx) , your get your account placed on hold. Is that a big deal? Not really because you just get another gmail account, register a new Craigslist account, and go from there. Is it a pain in the neck? Absolutely. Additionally, there are some rumors floating around the web that if you get too many accounts placed on hold, Craigslist will block your IP address, which means that you don't get to use CL again, at least not from that computer.
But back to the original question, does it work? By work, if you mean driving more people to your website, then yeah, it does. It works especially well if you are trying to promote little items like jewelry and get people to click on your website. Does posting real estate in non-local areas (i mean posting in a different state for non-local) work and drive people to your site? Maybe, but let's be realistic. Do you really want users in Portland clicking on your site when they are never going to move to Arizona? Probably not. Keep focused on your local markets and you will be much better off!

A Turn in Phoenix Real Estate?

In the Phoenix real estate market, we have seen a bit of a turn. Or have we? This great blog post from Steve Belt details the story of how a buying frenzy in the last month or so has been located primarily in properties priced below $200,000. If you want more quantifiable data on current market conditions, I highly recommend Mr. Belt's blog. And no, Mr. Belt and I don't know each other personally so I'm not trying to promo his site; I just think that good info should be shared.

So what does this have to do with EZ Posting? Well, by our guesstimations, about 50% of all the Residential Real Estate ads on the Phoenix Craigslist site are priced at or below the $200,000 mark. That means that a TON of potential buyers for this kind of real estate are looking on Craigslist for their next home. If you have any properties around this price level, you MUST be advertising them on Craigslist! If you aren't, buyers are virtually passing over your potential sales in the blink of an eye. And with nearly 1000 ads being posted to the Phoenix Craigslist site alone, you MUST stay on top of those listings! Naturally, that's where we at EZ Posting come in to help you! We'll keep your listings up near the top, and give you a great looking ad while doing it!

Commercial Ads Increasing!

At EZ Posting we try to keep our eye out for trends in numbers and types of postings that appear on Craigslist. We have noticed that the number of commercial real estate postings on Craigslist has been going up significantly in the past few months. While we do not quantitatively measure or track the exact number of postings consistently, it is our estimation that the number of ads posted in the Phoenix Craigslist section per day has increased from 175 +/- to nearly 225 +/-in the last month and a half. Although the media has not given as much air time to the increasing number of vacancies in commercial real estate compared to residential foreclosures, we can be fairly certain that this industry will begin to garner more attention as commercial offices, retail spaces, and warehouses continue to see a drop in demand over the next several months. The increased number of vacancies is resulting in an increased number of postings on craigslist by commercial brokers looking for new tenants.
If you browse the ads in commercial listings, you will probably notice that they are fairly bland and often uninformative. Commercial agents apparently do not yet appreciate the importance of a well designed and informative posting. However, if you are using EZ Posting for your property listings, you have a distinct ad as well as more pictures and information than is usually found in a typical Craigslist posting. Good Job!

Out-sourcing the little things: Worth it?

Should you really be paying somebody to blog for you? How about posting your ads to local classifieds websites? If you have read any of the previous blog posts, I'm sure that you realize this is basically what we at EZ Posting offer to you as real estate agents. Now, let me make the case for why you should out source little things like posting and blogging.
We all know that finances are tight, particularly for folks that work in the real estate industry, and especially those who are in the Arizona real estate market. But this market is a weeding-out time; when the smoke clears we will be left with only the very best agents, title companies, mortgage brokers, wholesalers, and investors. Essentially this recession will cause the cream to rise to the top.
How will you differentiate yourself? Will you cut back on marketing and shrink your online presence? The best won't. The best will grab bigger market shares, close more deals, and generally out-work the rest of the competition. Will some of it depend on luck? Sure. But like Gary Player once put it: "The harder you work, the luckier you get".
So you know that you want to keep improving your online marketability through a blog or more ads on sites like Craigslist, but you know that doing that will take some time. The question is: How much do you pay yourself? Let's look at an example to see what I mean.
Suppose you want to start blogging. You'll make one original blog post a week about anything related to Arizona real estate. You have to figure out how much time it takes you to completethat post. This means you have to decide on a topic, probably related to something you read recently online or in a paper. So you have maybe 5-10 minutes invested in your post before you ever type anything up. Then you have to write down your thoughts on that topic. Depending on how much you like to write (and how fast you type), that ends up being between 20-30 minutes for the writing. Then you need to log onto your blog, post it, and make sure everything looks pretty; maybe 5 minutes? So your total invested time for that blog post is is anywhere from a half hour to 45 minutes. Not too bad right?
Well what if you could have used that time for your "more important" work instead? At EZ Posting we offer blog packages as low as $5.50 per blog. So now it becomes a simple cost equation. Would you pay yourself $8-$10 dollars an hour? If you would, then keep on using your time to write blogs and post ads for yourself because its worth it to you. If you want to free up your time while improving your online presence, think about contacting us!

Summarizing the "Making a Great Craigslist Ad" Series

Let's go for a recap of our mini-series; a "Sparknotes" version, if you will, of what we've been going over for the last few posts.

1. Frequent Posting: make sure that you are posting and reposting your ads frequently every few days to ensure that your posts will be near the top of searches. Something EZ Posting can do for you!
   
2. Relevant Information: Be sure to make your ad specific. Include price, number of bedrooms, and locatoin so viewers can find your house when they want a specific set of attributes in a property.
   
3. Subtlety of Keywords: be sure to include keywords in your posts, but don't do it in big list all at once! Incorporate the words into parts of your post; it makes you look more professional and gets you results.
   
4. Use Good Pictures: Make sure that you use quality pictures. We talked about how to put those nice large photos into your ads, be sure to do it!
   
5. No Picture Spamming: To go along with using those nice pictures, be sure to give your viewers a reason to contact you. If you barrage people with photos and information, they'll never give you a call and you lose your chance to communicate with potential clients.
   

We at EZ Posting try to improve the ways that you get noticed on Craigslist and Backpage all the time so if you have any thoughts or questions, please contact us at ezposting@gmail.com or visit our website at http://www.ezposting.net/

Making a Great Craigslist Ad (Part 3)

Now that we have covered some of the keys to good content, lets discuss more about making a great looking Craigslist ad. There are several ways to make your ad much more enticing to your viewers while not being over the top in your ad. Real Estate agents in particular are always looking for ways to improve their ad and get better pictures into their post. At EZ Posting we have a few rules that we like to follow to improve our ads and get better results. Rule #1: Good pictures = happier viewers.
First off, a lot of people wonder how some Craigslist ads have HUGE high definition photos that take up the whole screen while their own posts are limited to those low quality, four corner pics seen in most craigslist ad. It took me a long time to figure it out, but now that I know, it's really quite simple.

1. Create a Photobucket account and upload the photos that you want to post in Craigslist
   
2. After you have made your account and uploaded pics, copy the HTML code of one of your images
   
3. Paste that HTML code into the BODY OF YOUR CRAIGSLIST AD. Don't try and paste it into the image section, it won't do anything.
   
4. Repeat the HTML copy/paste process for the rest of your images.
   

You should write the description of whatever you are trying to sell first, then paste the HTML code below that. By pasting this text into the body of your post, Craigslist will "read" the text and convert it into the nice large image that you uploaded to Photobucket. Now you know!
The second rule for a good Craigslist image applies to the amount of pictures that you put in your ad. So, rule #2: Don't "Picture-Spam" your viewers. We want to give our viewers a reason to actually come see the property right? You want to put enough pictures in your ad to make it relevant and informative to your viewer, but you also don't want to overload them with information or visual images. Give them a reason to call you!

At EZ Posting we use a great looking template that shows up as a nice advertisment on Craigslist and a gives you a high-quality professional look. To get more info on our service go to http://www.ezposting.net/!

Making a Great Craigslist Ad (Part 2)

Now that we have discussed some of the keys to making your ads more visible on Craigslist (frequency of posting and relevancy of information) we should talk a little bit more about what kind of keywords you should be using in your postsd. These are the kind of rules that we at EZ Posting follow when creating and posting ads.

First of all, what is the purpose of keywords? Generally we like to add keywords into Craigslist posts because of the way Craigslist's search engine works. If you want more info on how it performs searches, please refer back to Part 1 of this series. What are good types of keywords to use in an ad? Things that identify your property, like location features. Make sure you have any nearby freeways, highways, major streets or landmarks listed somewhere in your ad. Also, to get your ad to show up on different searches, you can include some words that may or may not be applicable to your property. Using these keywords will broaden the ways that your post may be seen. However, it is important to recognize that there is a good way and a bad way to put these kind of keywords in your ad.

A tasteless way of doing it is to place a list of keywords at the end of your property description. Don't do it. For example, if you are advertising a 3/2 house with a large backyard in Gilbert, don't put a list of words at the end of your property description like (pool, sport court, tempe, mesa, apache junction...etc.) It looks unprofessional, as if you're getting paid by the number of times someone clicks on your post. This type of "keyword overload" is extremely popular with spammers, and you DON"T want your ads being associated with spammers.

There is a way to get that same list of words worked into your ad in a clean and professional way. Take the example of the 3/2 in Gilbert. Instead of a plain list, you can work the keywords into your ad in appealing way. "Large backyard gives opportunity for adding a sport court or pool. House is near Tempe border and is close to US 60 for easy access to both Apache Junction and Mesa". See how that gives your reader a better feel for the property and gives you the same keywords in your post? Subtlety of kewords is the newest addition to our list of keys in the "Good Craigslist Ad" series. In the next blog we will be talking more about the image that your ad projects and how to improve it!

Making a Great Craigslist Ad (part 1)

I would like to explain what I think makes a great ad on Criagslist so you have a better idea of how to improve your use of Craigslist and Backpage.

A great ad is going to be one that gets viewed for the right reasons and frequently. To understand what I mean by right reasons you need to know a little bit about how Craigslist works as a search engine.

There are two main ways to find an ad on Craigslist. The first is by clicking on a link in the main screen like "Real Estate for sale". Clicking on this will bring up all of the listings Craigslist has in its Real Estate section, in chronological order. That means you will see every post, regardless of geographic area or property type, from most recently posted to last posted. People who search this way are most likely browsing the titles that pop up, just looking to see if anything interesting is out there. Notice that because it is in chronological order, the ads most recently posted will show up the highest on searches. This is why you need to keep deleting and reposting you ad on Craigslist; you want it as high on these searches as possible to get the most visibility. So one important aspect of a great Craigslist ad is frequency of posting. The more frequently you post an ad, the more chance you have of getting viewed. http://www.ezposting.net/ is the service that offers to do this for you.

The second way of searching on Craigslist is by refining a search and using keywords. For example, after you click on "real estate for sale", you can type keywords into the "search for" bar at the top of the screen to refine the search more. You can also select the price (min/max) and # of Bedrooms to refine further. So instead of plodding through 100s of ads, you could type in "Tempe house" with a max price of 200,000 and 3 bedrooms. This refines a search significantly and is used by more serious viewers who are looking for specific properties to fit their budget and needs.

So the second key to a great ad is relevancy of information. Be sure to include a price with your post, as well as specific information about the property you are listing. Next time I will elaborate on some techniques that can improve the number of views you can get on Craigslista and Backpage.

Why use Craigslist?

A lot of agents question whether or not they should be posting their properties to websites like Craigslist or backpage. It seems like a lot of work to do for such a small ad. But the truth of the matter is that Craigslist is searched MILLIONS of times every day. The latest stats indicate that Craigslist gets about 20 BILLION pageviews per month. Now, that number is the sum of all hits in 500+ local Craigslist sites, but still, that's a lot of hits!

So it isn't so much a question of whether or not you need to be posting on Craigslist; it's how much time can you dedicate to making it a strong marketing tool. For example, if you post a property ad to Craigslist and let it sit, guess what? Your ad is practically invisible to most of the Cragslist viewers. Why? Well, on an average day, the Phoenix portion of Craigslist receives about 800 posts to residential real estate for sale. That means that after you post an ad, it's off the first page of listings within a matter of hours.

That's why I created my service for agents. You want to be reposting your ads as much as possible to have the best chance that someone will view your listing. That means that every 2 days, you need to be reposting your ads to get back to the top of the list. EZ Posting does this for you at a low fee, giving you the most possible exposure with a minimal amount of work.
In my next post, I will be explaining how to get the most out of a post to Craigslist through keywords, HTML text ads, and timing.

The First Blog Post

Hello! My name is Kyle. I am a college student at WP Carey School of Business and Barrett, the Honors College at ASU. I have started this blog as a result of a service that I am offering to real estate agents. My goal is to get to know agents while I am in school so that by the time I graduate I will have some contacts in the industry. If you want to see details about my service, please visit http://www.ezposting.net/ for info!
Basically my service involves Internet marketing for agents in a couple of different forms. One way that I help agents is by listing their properties on Craigslist and Backpage for them, just like a personal assistant would. The difference is that I create a professional ad for them and post it to theses sites for less than 39 cents a day. If you don't understand why this is important or a good deal, visit my website to find out!
I also write up blog posts for agents. Most agents would like to increase their internet exposure through blogging, but they often don't have the time to do it. I take care of this for them by writing quality blog posts about anything Real Estate related and letting them put it on their blogs! This gives them an edge over competitor's websites by increasing the number of keywords they use in their site and providing relavent information for their clients on a regular basis.
So I just wanted to take the chance to introduce myself and my service. I'm continually learning about different marketing techniques online and I am excited to start getting to know some people out there!

I'm also going to use this as a test page for the websites http://alphainventions.com as well as condron.us or www.condron.com