New Active Rain member Cheryl Ritchie asked me not too long ago what are the Real Estate marketing tools that I could not live without and I answered unequivocally "Our Blog and RealBird".  If I did nothing else, and had no other tools in the world to market our business and our listings, I  could still do an amazingly good job at marketing our firm and our listings with these two alone.  I would drop my designer website, I would drop Realtor.com featured listing status, I would drop open houses and just about everything other than our MLS dues in order to keep these two real estate marketing tools.  "Wow" I can hear you say, "how can one tool be all that?"  I am not going to go into why a blog is important, if you are on Active Rain, you know that, but I am going to tell you why RealBird is the Swiss Army Knife to Bear Grylls the Realtor.

We use RealBird for four CORE activities for our business

• to win us listings
• to promote those listings in a way that makes us look like we have a professional design and advertising firm for each of them
• to find us buyers
• to brand and promote our business

This is NOT a tutorial, but will give you an overview of what Realbird can do for you, your business and your listing clients if you aren't already using them.

Almost Every Link Below is a Real Life example of how I have used Realbird, they are worth clicking on to see the applications

Sellers want one thing, they want their house sold.  They understand that for their house to be sold, it has to be marketed well.  They know this means extensive Internet coverage but they are also proud of them homes and want them to look great in that marketing.  Before we even go to a listing presentation, we purchase the the domain for their street address.  At the listing presentation, we show them a few single websites we have for our other listings, and reassure them we already have the domain name for their address (also keeping any other agent from getting it, sneaky right?).  We show them on Google how when you google the address of one of our listings, how our single property websites on Realbird come up at the TOP of Page One on Google (with a PIC!).  No matter what they know about SEO, they know this is important.  Normally, that alone, seals the deal, they want a site for their home like our other listings and they want it number one on Google.  (yes, I know this is very lonnnnggggg tail, the address, but it is impressive to them, which wins the listing, Goal 1 accomplished).  If we REALLY wanted a listing, I might go to the extra effort to go by and take a few outside shots of the home, if accessible, and create a RealBird single listing site in DRAFT form and tell them all it is waiting for is the inside pictures (which I can take right then with my camera) and have it up and published by the end of the day if they want (closing the deal).

Promoting your listings on Realbird is extremely easy.  They have a listing promotion tool which is my FAVORITE tool in My Listing Swiss Army Knife.  This is what helps me create these beautiful single property websites.  Everything a potential buyer could want to know about a listing is accessible to them.  You have your basics, of course, such as pictures and descriptions, but you can also add custom media, chat, market stats, neighborhood info, video, Google maps with Street views where available and basically any other thing you can dream up to promote your listing. The expandability and function is limited only by your imagination.

Once the single property website is created, it's time to promote it and Realbird has made that easy as well.  They have codes to embed it in Active Rain and Localism, codes to drop it into Craigslist, Backpage and Kijiji, plus over 150 social bookmarking options via Add This and Ping.fm. such as Twitter, Deli.cio.us, Facebook, etc.  Oh yeah, they syndicate for you to all the biggies including Zillow and Trulia automatically so you don't have to worry about that!  They also provide you widget and slideshow codes which you can use to promote your listings on various blogs and websites.  They have also made additional promotion option through iPromote as easy as a click of a mouse.  Oh, need a non-branded Virtual tour for your MLS?  They've thought of that to.  As an add-on, you can get this for whicheverlistings you need.  Man are they good!

Realbird helps us find buyers in several ways, but the main three are through the amazing SEO of the single property websites, the Custom Search Engine and the aggregate listing map.  Consumers surfing the web come across our listings quickly and easily and not just by googling the address as mentioned above (because after all, how likely is that?) but the keywords used to describe our properties. Here I googled "Davie Horse Property For Sale" and our Realbird listing is in the top three.  Once on our single property listing site, they can easily view all of our other listings as Realbird puts a link to them right on each properly site (as well as to our most recent blog posts).  The SEO for these sites is, hands down, the best for both regular and longtail key words.

The second HUGE buyer tool they offer is the Property Seach Engine which pulls all the listings from Google Base.  The search engine can be loaded with certain search criteria (say location and price) and you can promote these links all over (blogs, Craigslist, Facebook, twitter, Market Reports etc.) and buyers searching the Internet will find you search engine results (and you).  These can be either links or embedeed. They will also see your own featured listings as a separate tab and can register if they choose.  If they find a listing they would like more info, they will contact YOU to see the property. I also use this when answering consumer questions on Zillow, Trulia, etc.  Another way to engage the consumer.

The third and very useful tool they offer is the Facebook Profile and Page search engine tools.  You can add the Search Engine mentioned above to either your Profile or you Page and the buyers don't even have to leave your Facebook page to search lisitngs.  Your own listings are featured in their own tab.

Realbird makes it very easy to cross market any traffic you get to your search engine, blog or single property site.  Your own featured listings are shown in the Cool Iris Photo Wall of the Facebook page and profile search add-ons.  They are highlighted as featured listings on the search engine site.  Your most recent listings and blog posts are shown as links on each single property website.  One of their sneaky and great features is if you look at the "Nearby Homes for Sale" button on the Google map on your Single Property Website, it takes them to the Search Engine, Genius! One of my favorite tools is the listing map.  Here we are able to show all of our listings on a single map which we promote everywhere.

Realbird has literally thought of everything a Real Estate agent needs to promote themselves and their listings and made it extremely efficient, powerful and impressive.  The service is completely expandable for your needs and budget.  You can sign up for free and use many of the services and tools for FREE, yes FREE!  Then, you can upgrade to Pro Account to have full use of the rest of the tools.  Some of the services (such as domain names and non-branded tours) are add-ons which you can add (or not) on a listing specific basis as needed.

If you have Facebook, My Blog Log and Twitter accounts, they also publish those links on each property site or search engine to push traffic to those social media sites.


I write this at my own peril, thinking I may sound like a Jim Jones, so don't just take my word for it.... other great Real Estate marketing professionals such as Katerina Gasset, Ashton Coleman, Donna Bigda and many many others are also avid fans as well (their links are Realbird love)

Single Property Listing Site with full professional Desinger look and high functionality

Search Engine site with unlimited promotion options

Facebook Searchtab

Listing Map