Blogging has become an absolute marketing must-do to drive traffic, improve your SEO and credibility and, ultimately, increase your leads. In fact, we’ve found that Agent BizzUp clients who blog bring in more leads than those who don’t. For many years, our members have used third-party blogging platforms for their blog and simply hyperlink their Agent BizzUp website to their blog. But this created a scenario that didn't help much with SEO and made it difficult to manage their blog in a completely different system.

That’s why we're very happy to announce that blogging for your Agent BizzUp website just got super easy thanks to our new built-in blog. It’s streamlined and easy to use while giving you all the tools to create and publish great content and boost your traffic and sales. And because our new built-in blogging platform utilizes Wordpress, many of our members will already be familiar with parts of the interface.

Seamless integration

Since your blog is built directly into your website, the layout and style fits perfectly with the rest of your website design and content. And you don’t have to deal with managing multiple domain names and login details for your website and blog, as all management is accessible in our Account Control Panel.

We're excited about this new feature as it help us take another step further in accomplishing our goal - to provide real estate professionals with an inexpensive, fun and easy to use platform to manage their entire web presence (not just their website). 

When you are writing a blog, it's important to understand the reasons why people are visiting your blog in the first place. When you are a Realtor, clients are going to your blog to learn more about real estate trends, options for mortgages in their area, and they are looking to see more about the type of person that you are. With the competitiveness of the real estate market, it's important to shape your blog so that you stand out among the rest.

Showcase Your Expertise

The best place to talk about what you know is on your blog. If you have expertise in a certain area, say you are very familiar with short sales, you should be creating posts that discuss this topic. You should be showing your passion for the field, and while you want to keep your posts light, they should also contain plenty of information for your potential clients to think about.

Talk About Real Estate Trends in Your Area

People want to know about the real estate trends in areas they are looking to buy or sell. Do your research, and come up with blog posts that discuss current trends for your real estate market. While you can compare the trends nationwide vs. those in your area, try to keep your information as local as possible. People want to know that you understand the local market, and they are more likely to hire you as a Realtor if they have confidence that you have direct knowledge about the local area.

Write a Few Posts About Your Personal Interests

Writing about your personal life can be a sticky situation for some people. Blog posts that discuss your personal interests don't have to include the most intimate details of your life. If you want to talk about your children, fine, but you don't have to put up their names, pictures, or ages on your blog. You can talk about your personal interests without going too deep into the discussion. Let potential clients know that you are a real person, what you enjoy in your spare time, and what you love about the area.

As you work on building up your brand through your blog, remember that customers want to read content that is either informative or entertaining. You can keep posts light by keeping out specific details, but make sure you are always showcasing your strengths as a Realtor.

A generation that has long since been unfairly labeled as immature and dependent by their elders, Millennials are certainly not portrayed as the most family-oriented demographic. Indeed, as a generation that is putting off things such as starting a family or even moving out of the home, Millennials are considered the proverbial late bloomers in the adult world at large. Nevertheless, although it may not seem like a priority, most Millennials are seeking to provide the same stable upbringing for their children in terms of school districts and neighborhoods as their parents did for them. However, given that this generation seems to be waiting much longer to have children, they are also seeking the very best in terms of housing and school district when it comes to raising their future offspring. This will obviously affect the real estate market in a number of ways. 

The Exodus 

In short, most Millennials do plan to have a family at some point. Although city living is all the rage among this age group, this is only because they are enjoying their lives before they have children. Most Millennials plan to have families and plan to raise them in a suburban setting. In fact, according to a Census study conducted in 2015, 529,000 Americans aged 25-29 moved from the cities out to the suburbs in 2014 with only 426,000 moving in the other direction. Moreover, these trends were even more surprising for younger Millennials. 721,000 moved out of the city, compared to a mere 554,000 who moved in. These numbers are said to have remained the same with a trend towards growth in 2015. In fact, one survey asserted that 6 out of 10 plan to live in the suburbs just 5 years from now. 

What does this Mean? 

In a nutshell, it seems that there will soon be a lot more real estate available for people to rent or purchase in cities as Millennials will be making their way towards the suburbs. Such a move would likely create a high demand for suburban real estate and raise property values. This could also mean that older generations may begin to venture inward in an effort to find some escape from the Millennial hoopla, or maybe, older and younger generations will finally learn to live in harmony. Only time will tell for sure. 

As more home buyers and sellers take to online listings and social media, a successful online marketing campaign is more important for real estate professionals now than it ever has been.

Agent BizzUp specializes in creating comprehensive online campaigns that build your brand and generate new leads every day. Read on for the top five online real estate marketing strategies that can generate more business for you.

Social Media

Working with a professional marketing service like Agent BizzUp to build your web presence while simultaneously engaging social media is the key to reaching a wider audience. Metrics on social media platforms such as Facebook give you unique insight into your target audience, from demographic information to their online habits.

By engaging with potential clients on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, you can improve your brand recognition and focus on advertising to those who are already active in the housing market.

Digital Listings

Digital listings are a great way to turn visitors to your website into clients. Home buyers and apartment hunters are increasingly drawn to online property listings. From video walkthroughs to a gallery of high-quality photos, digital listings help potential buyers envision themselves in the properties you list and increase the likelihood that they will want to visit in person.

Web Design

Your website should be a portal to all of the services you offer. Research shows that consumers decide whether to engage with a brand within seconds of landing on the homepage, so make every second count with a streamlined website that sells.

Agent BizzUp will work with you to create a website that showcases your properties, makes key information immediately accessible, and encourages visitors to take that next step to engage with you through compelling calls to action.

Outreach

Once you have generated new leads through your active social media profiles and streamlined website, you should follow up with leads through email and other outreach strategies. Online seminars are a great way to reach out to potential buyers in your area who have already expressed interest in a new home.

Contact Management

Getting new leads is only part of the equation for a successful online marketing strategy. Agent BizzUp's Contact Manager service helps you keep track of all of your contacts, new and old. This helps you grow existing relationships while forming new ones, and makes you even more accessible to potential clients.

Each of these online marketing strategies is designed to promote your brand in a more efficient way. Contact Agent BizzUp today for professional guidance and services that reduce the amount of effort you have to put into promoting your real estate business while maximizing your conversion rates.

Too many visitors using your website to "window-shop"?

Now you can require your website visitors to sign up after viewing a specified number of listings. You have complete control over the number of "teaser" listings visitors can view before they are required to signup or login. This also serves as a helper for visitors who intend to signup but may forget to do so. Since members on your website receive many benefits after signing up, qualified visitors to your website will have many reason to appreciate this requirement.

Some of the benefits your website visitors receive after signing up include:

• Your assistance in helping them locate the perfect property.
• Option to save properties, that they are interested in, directly in their account.
• Option to save and receive alerts for their search results.

How to activate this feature

To activate this feature on your website:

1. Login to your account and navigate to the "Listings >> Listings Preferences" page.
2. On the Listings Defaults And Preferences page, enter a number for "teaser" listings in the Lead Capture field.
3. Click the "Save" button at the bottom to save your listings defaults and preferences.

More Listings Defaults And Preferences options

In addition to this new feature, we've also added many new options for Listings Defaults And Preferences. You can now choose default Layout, Map, Sort and more. Also, a new option has been added to display larger thumbnail photos on listings List Pages. We took many feedback and suggestions from our members to roll out these new features that gives you even more control of your web presence.

In an era of seemingly unlimited digital distractions and quickly shrinking attention spans, how can real estate agents write listings that capture prospects’ imagination? Photos are critical for making one ad stand out from the next, but the right words can persuade prospective buyers to notice an ad in the first place and then to take the next step — driving by a property or, better yet, reaching out to an agent.

How can real estate agents ensure that the words in their listings pack the right amount of punch?

1. Know what to highlight

Listings should focus on the property’s most important features, including square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, lot size, quality of the neighborhood and, most importantly, schools. In addition, buyers will want to know about a garage, distinguishing features like scenic views, recent renovations and extras like fireplaces and decks.

2. Use effective words (and avoid the clunkers)

Some words can compel prospective buyers to take action, while others may have the opposite effect. The problem, often, is knowing which is which. One study of real estate listings revealed some words that work, including: curb appeal, gourmet, granite, maple and fixer upper. Especially effective was “beautiful,” which appeared to help homes sell more quickly.

At the other end of the spectrum, words that did not help with selling a home included: motivated, value, must sell, clean and vacant.

3. Tell a story

Ads that imagine how buyers might use a home’s unique features can help to make a sale. For example, rather than simply stating that a home has a gourmet kitchen, an effective ad might set the scene of entertaining friends around the granite-topped bar in a spacious home with plenty of natural light.

4. Get the headline right

An attention-seizing headline can mean the difference between a buyer clicking on a specific ad or surfing right past it. In many cases, the headline is the first and only chance of persuading a buyer to take a closer look, and every word should count. While exaggeration or flat-out dishonesty won’t work, humor and highly descriptive words can help listings stand out from the crowd.

The value of a compelling listing

While real estate agents can’t control a home’s location, size or core features, they can write the most compelling listing possible. By highlighting the right features, choosing words carefully, creating a relatable story and crafting an alluring headline, agents can significantly increase the chances that buyers will take a closer look.

Is property visuals the next trend in real estate marketing? The answer to that question is both yes and no. While the technologies behind drone photography and drone videography are trending, the media application for showcasing property may not always be appropriate for drone-induced optics. In this beginning-of-the-year blog for 2016 real estate trends, we explore the use of drones for showcasing real estate.

Large Properties and Properties with Panoramic Views

For large properties, say over an acre, a video produced by a drone would be beneficial. For specialized properties, say those with multiple pools, an aerial view that showcases those features would be beneficial. For the average home on the block, not so much. What drone photography and videography do is highlight features that cannot be captured easily using a traditional camera. That usually equates to higher altitude shots, such as showing a better shot of the view of a coast property. The downside to drone photography and videography is that now drones must be registered with the FCC. In terms of finding quality companies to shoot media for your properties, compliance usually translates into higher costs. The real question is do those higher costs equate to faster sales? 

The Traditional Home

For regular, city lot sized properties, drone produced media do not add much value. If you want an aerial shot of a neighborhood, Google Maps or Google Earth has one that is accessible from your desktop PC or smart device and that you can also embed into a property's web page. The benefit of traditional photography is that it presents media - photographs or video - from the eye level perspective of a potential buyer, especially from the inside of a home. That fact allows potential buyers to see the property as though they were walking through the place. The view from a drone is adjustable, but the applications of when and how to apply those to a standard property become moot because traditional photography already does a good job. 

Mixed Media

There are properties that benefit from both traditional and drone-based media. A good example would be a split-level property on a terraced lot. These kind of units offer stronger possibilities to showcase the unique features of unique properties. A drone could highlight the view into the property from the same altitude as a second-story deck or show off the view from that same deck, but at the thousand foot mark. The same property could also benefit from traditional photography and videography to highlight special features inside the home or from around the yard. 

Overall, real estate can benefit from drone technology. However, as an application to replace traditional photography or videography as the "next-big-thing" drone technology falls flat. It has a place in specialized location and for use with unique properties, but offers very little gain with the "traditional" property. 

The technologies for manipulating both photographs and video also help to produce amazingly high-caliber media also help turn novice-grade media into works of art.

For many years, we've seen some of our members completely neglect their websites. While our Managed Service clients have always enjoyed the assurance of having our entire team involved in the maintenance of their websites, we wanted to also provide a way to help our Web Presence Suite members to maintain a better quality website. So it brings us great pleasure to introduce our new Website Quality Assurance feature and Auditing service. This is the kind of service that only large-scale, web-based companies, have used for many years. But we're now making it possible for real estate professionals with smaller budgets to maintain a higher quality website.

Unlike other auditing service which is done entirely by machine for outrageous fees, our audit service is included at no additional cost and is performed by highly qualified members of our development and marketing team. The results and feedback are far more valuable than any machine audit can produce. You may be wondering, how is it possible that we can offer such a custom, time consuming service, that is perform by real, human professionals, at no additional cost? We utilize a new proprietary interface that allows our team to quickly identify issues and areas of concerns while viewing your website. We also provide you the option to define your own Quality Assurance guidelines. Audit frequency is based on your chosen Web Presence Suite plan.

We're confident that with this new feature and service, the quality of our members' websites will significantly improve as a whole. This new feature and service will also serve as an open, ongoing, dialog with our members about their website quality. Click here to learn more about our new Website Quality Assurance feature and Auditing service. This new service brings us even closer to our goal of been an extension to your business, not just a provider.

Navigating social media as a real estate marketing tool is more than just opening up a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account and making a few posts about properties intended to create buzz and excitement.

Understanding a few rules about how to not only grow, but maintain social media relevance, will go a long way in making it a success.

Listen to the Target Audience

Putting down a listing for a two-bedroom townhouse on Facebook with a few pictures on Instagram and a tweet or two is not enough. A real estate agent should figure out who their target audience is and read their posts and content. That townhouse, for example, might be the perfect fit for a newlywed couple looking for their first purchase. Therefore, the agent should join Facebook groups related to local wedding boutiques, wedding photographers and travel agencies that deal in honeymoons, and find out what newlyweds are looking for. Then the agent can tailor that listing to what the newlyweds want to know.

Quality Trumps Quantity

A lot of people freak out when their accounts have only a few followers. This is not necessarily a sign of poor brand awareness. Having 10,000 followers might sound great, but if none of them posts about the content, few sales or leads get generated. Instead, a real estate agent should focus on creating a quality, smaller community that is engaged with their brand. One hundred people discussing various listings will create a bigger impact than 1000 ignoring every post an agent makes. This kind of activity is every marketer's dream. 

Engagement

The most important thing of all is engagement. Too many times a person will take a few pictures and slap them on social media, then completely disappear. It is unreasonable to expect people to become engaged with a product unless they are getting direct feedback. Interaction with potential customers is not only a basic tenet of social media marketing, it is Sales 101. A real estate agent should be available to answer as many questions as possible about any listing and be ready to accept feedback, both positive and negative, with a friendly reply or response. 

Social media should be treated as another tool in an agent's arsenal to create leads and eventually sales.

Part 1 of 3 part series: Agent Reviews

Agent Reviews Are Here

Online reviews have grown into one of the most trusted sources of research for consumers. More than 40 percent of female Internet users in the US consider online product reviews or blogs as the most credible source for product information, according to a SheSpeaks survey cited by eMarketer.

In the early days of the web, reviews were confined to product websites like Amazon and Ebay. Since then, reviews have made their way into virtually every kind of product and service, thanks in part to well-visited review sites like Angie's List and Yelp.

So it should be no surprise that reviews have made their way into the real estate industry. Reviews help consumers use the power of their peers in choosing a real estate professional. In turn, reviews reward real estate agents who are reputable and offer superb service.
 

Agent Reviews Aren't Going Anywhere

Today, virtually all of the top real estate portals offer consumers the option to search for a real estate agent based on reviews. And consumers are relying on these reviews. A recent report by T3 Experts shows that as many as 87 percent of top-producing agents consider agent reviews an important part of their online strategy.

Subsequently, agent reviews are becoming more and more robust. Websites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com are tying in richer data like past sales history and current listings to an agent's reviews. The more detail and decision-focused these reviews become, the more consumers will depend on them to make informed decisions.
 

The Changing Face of Agent Reviews

Real estate professionals are seeing the impact reviews have on their business. This has led many to take charge of how clients publicly perceive them. Some agents take proactive measures such as requesting feedback from past clients. Others use communications to gauge a client’s satisfaction so that they can alleviate problems before they show up online as a bad review.

Agent reviews can take many forms.

• Some agents use third-party tools to manage their online reviews.
• Reviews can be in the form of video testimonials, social network endorsements, or even a detailed report or case study that measures every aspect of a relationship from a past client.
• If your website is powered by Agent BizzUp's Web Presence suite, you can attach links and widgets to your favorite reviews sites using our new Social Network and Reviews feature.
   

Your Reputation Is at Stake

You shouldn't depend solely on been a "good" agent to build your online reputation. Instead, take the lead in monitoring your online reputation and take control of how reviews affect your business. In the next part of this series, we will examine some best practices to help you stay on top of your online reviews.

We would like to hear from you. What are some of the biggest challenges you face in maintaining positive reviews, and how have reviews affected your business?