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Hyper Local 1000 pt Contest and Hyper Local Content For Your 1000 pt Post

Right now ActiveRain has a great contest going on where you can get 1000 points just by writing hyper local content. So that then begs the question, "Great, but what should I write about? I sure want those darn points!"

Coincidentally, Zillow just launched our Local Pages which has all kinds of local data that can be chopped up and served in many different ways - perfect to use in your local blog posts and score some bonus points!

First, click on the new Local Info tab.

Just going into the Overview tab of the local pages, you can see a wealth of info. For example, in my Chicago neighborhood of Near North, I can see:

- Zillow Home Value Index (remember this is an index of all homes, not just the one that are for sale or are currently on the market) is $344,000, representing a 1-Year Change of a positive 7.5%.

- 98.3% of the type of homes in Near North are condos, verses only 1% are single family homes.

- 43.4% are single verses 40.8% are married. (important to know if you are moving to a new neighborhood in search of a future spouse)

And from there I can see photos of the area that people have posted (this could be another blog post in itself on how to use your community photos for marketing purposes) and any questions people may have asked in the Zillow Advice in the Near North neighborhood.

If you want more information about home values and prices, click into the appropriate area from the side bar. Here is where you can really sort and chop up the data into interesting talking points.

You can select up to four neighborhoods to compare side by side, and you can alter the data to appear for one, five or ten years.

By clicking on these various filters, you should be able to come up with a number of great local posts.

Good luck to all with the contest. What a great way to pick up some extra points, get some great information about your neighborhood out to the public, and score some SEO juice.

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Posted by Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} on 07/28/2009 02:04 PM

Comments (50)

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50 Comments on Hyper Local 1000 pt Contest and Hyper Local Content For Your 1000 pt Post

JUL

Hey Sara ~ I was just over on Zillow this morning and I noticed the new tab "Local Info". Thank you for the additional information on it and the explanation of how it works.

Sara - This is great information to have and I will definitely check it out.

SARA: Grat information about Zillow, I like and use Zilllow but I find I prefer Trulia. a matter of preference. They both provide neighborhood data in detail.

I'll have to see about this, as I've been looking for something that has neighborhood specific info in my area that I can use for my neighborhood posts. Thanks!

I just wrote hyper local content before the contest began. This will help me in thinking about what to write. Thank you!

Thanks for the good information!

Great idea, thanks for sharing. As I've started on this challenge I've found the content takes some work to generate. Hopefully this speeds things up.

I love Zillow's local info stuff:) Great stuff!

Great information, but what can we do if our local area isn't listed in the choices?

Sara, thanks for the info on Zillow. After I'm done with tomorrow's last hyper local blog post, I'll have to get to work on updating Zillow with some local pics, more homework but worth it.

Thanks Sarah - Bookmarked for learning more later!

Thanks all for the comments, and I am glad you are finding it helpful. I know you have a lot of great data within your MLS about homes that are currently on the market and trends in sold data. Because we have a database of all homes, this should give you just another interesting way to look at market data.

Kate- Sorry, there are definitely some areas of the country where we didn't feel like we had enough data to accurate report on. We'll get there! For the time being, unfortunately you would have to use data from near by larger metro- which I understand may or may not be reflective of your particular market.

Hi Sara - Congrats on the launch of Local Pages. This looks like a great resource for both consumers and agents, and one that I'm looking forward to exploring.

Boy, Sara, I don't know whether to thank you for a great marketing strategy or curse you for extra hyper-local work! Glad I can bookmark and return...

Sara, great information. I'm waiting for the bonus points on the best of Wordless Wednesdays myself.

Sara - Interesting stuff. I have bookmarked and will return

Sara - Can't believe I haven't seen that contest post until today! Ugggg! Oh well, now I know what I'll be blogging about tonight. Great info and something I'lll look into for my hyper-locals!

Thank you Sara for the heads up on the new feature. As a Zillow All Star, I am happy to see you folks working so hard to continually improve your site experience!

I thank you for sharing. I will have to check it out. Always can use a little more info.

I just read about the 1,000 point contest, but the link you have for this is not accepting new comments to post the tile of a local post to get the 1,000 points. Do you have any idea if this contest is still going on or if we can post our local posts anywhere to get the 1,000 points?

Maureen- Here is an even more recent post Bob Stewart wrote about the contest today -

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1170241/local-business-challenge-1000-points-every-two-days-for-14-days

Thank you. This looks very interesting. I had no idea this was available.

I think the key is hyper local. Trulia and Zillow don't help me much as the stats. don't come up beyond the small mountain town. I have to know my area myself and not rely on mega sources.

Very good and I am glad to see the link regarding the original contest.

Thanks Sara. I am going to check this out as soon as I can.

Need little tool and I too am glad to see the link for the contest- I was confussed about what was going on.

Sara - Sites look Zillow that have this kind of innovation will do well. Which is why we recently signed up to expand our services on Zillow for our listings. Will look into this more as well ! Thanks : )

Sara- Interesting information, my only question is you said there are photos that people or agents have contributed to Zillow. Are these then the property of Zillow and then Zillow's TOS states that they are free to use for biz purposes or do these photos remain the property of the author of the photo and thus are copyrighted? Katerina

I went to Zillow.ca (a Canadian domain) and it redirects to Zillow.com. Unfortunately, Zillow does not seem to have any Canadian data so I won't be able to use the excellent advice in your posting.

What a great resource. I am going to hop over to zillow to take a look now. thanks for the heads up!

Somehow I am not seeing the connection on how contributing to Zillow is really going to benefit me. Seems like I am an adjunct to Zillow, whereas on AR, agents are the center of this platform.

Sara, I just used Zillow's new tab tonight when doing some research for the hyper local content contest. Thanks!

Looking forward to your answering Katerina's question. Great tutorial, Sara.

I appreciate Zillow's efforts to provide data for us to use! It's getting better and better

Sara.. this is great information.. I didn't know about this new product from Zillow.. Thanks for sharing.

I guess I'll have to go over and play on that jungle gym a little, too...

Thanks,

But how does active rain know it is hyperlocal and award 1,000 points instead of the normal 200?

JUL

Is there any other type of content than hyperlocal?

Thanks for sharing this info. I will check it out.

Interesting post, I need to expand my listings exposure on Zillow.

I will head on to Zillow,and see what you have for my area.

Sabrina- We indeed do have info about Woodland Park, CO. Here is a link- http://www.zillow.com/local-info/CO-Woodland-Park/r_8000/

Katerina - Let me get back to you. Want to check with legal to make sure I answer you correctly. What I can say is that anytime we use any information from a partner, we give them attribution. This is the reason that people like to upload photos, because underneath the photo we put their name with a link back to their profile page. (you could also always watermark the photo in a non-intrusive way). More to come here...

Marc- Sorry, not in Canada yet!

Chris- The difference is audience. While AR does a great job with SEO to attract consumers, you are right that it is place where real estate professional hang out (except for localism). On Zillow, our audience is mostly home buyers, sellers, owners. About 25% of our audience is in the professional sector. It is important to be where your clients, or future clients are hanging out online. Actually, I think it is important to be in both places!

Back to Katerina's question - The photos stay property of the copyright holder (owner or agent, whoever took the photo), but Zillow gets a license to use the photos. So say the photo came in for a particular listing. With this license we can then reuse the photo in other features of the site, like Dueling Digs or include them on our Local Pages. Again, we still always give attribution to the source that gave them to us, via a by line that includes a link back to the agent's profile.

Wow - a positive change in home values would be something to shout about - going to check it out now!

Cool! I am always looking for more local data...I have several sources, but I am liking this idea! Thanks for the tip!

I'm going to head over to Zillow and check it out.

Sara~ Thanks for passing the information on about Zillow. I am going to check it out now.

JUL

Lots of good info here. I need to get back to my Zillow account and get to work. Thanks.

AUG

*Update* - Not only do we have all of this info on the site, we've now turned it into a widget so that you can easily have this local info automatically feed onto your website or blog- for free.

More info at - http://www.zillow.com/webtools/widgets/RegionalHomeValues.htm