RealBird adds Home Stager Category for us!

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RealBird adds Home Stager Category for us!

Thanks to a really superb blog by David Childress "I Put my listings on Real Bird last night: so should you" - http://activerain.com/blogsview/179796/I-Put-My-Listings - I went looking for Realbird.

http://www.realbird.com/

It's a tremendous resource. It's capabilities seem infinite.

You post a listing (or a staging) on Realbird and they submit it to Craigslist, Trulia, Vast, Edgio, Google, Oodle <sidebar: don't these names sound like Pokemon cards/characters?> and wherever else you specify. Since we are always saying we "partner up" with our realtors, this is a great resource to share with them. Plus, I'm sure it does more, I'm not a tech-whizz.

A quick email to Realbird's Zoltan Szendro <yeah, I know, romance novel hero, drop-dead handsome, smart, brusque, brawny and .... I better have another cup of coffee!> and we have a home stager category.

I need the more technical among us to explain how to maximize this thing - Sue Argue, MM-East, <Melissa Marro>, Maureen, Craig, Cindy .... please?

Realbird is new and seem both responsive and willing to work with us. What else do we want them to make available? It's their mapping and visual capabilities that looks exciting to me.

Juliet Johnson does her best home staging the luxury real estate market of NJ's Essex, Union and Morris County.

I'd like to invite you to connect with me on these other places:

Juliet on Twitter

Juliet Johnson serves Jacksonville, FL realtors, home sellers and small business with social media strategy, online visibility and product creation services, that include training if you want to do it yourself.

"If your social media activity isn't a revenue generator for you, you're doing it wrong."

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Posted by Juliet Johnson - Web Based Marketing Specialist on 08/24/2007 07:33 AM

Comments (51)

realbird, home staging nj, luxury real estate

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51 Comments on RealBird adds Home Stager Category for us!

AUG

2007

Book marked and a very high five. Thanks for this information...Seriously.

"bacuri" What southern people used to do to bacon to preserve it. ( before I get any letters from anyone claiming that I disparage Southerners let me set the record straight I AM a Southerner..)

HI Juliet, It looks like a great site, I signed on under "other" since no one ever has Feng Shui. I'm willing to bet that will change in a few more years :) But thank you for the information and for sharing! Wishing you a wonderful day.

Cheers, Mate. It just seems like with one shot, or in this case upload, Realbird will do everything else for you. And David's post(s) on this stuff are just top hole.

Guamo - someone who served in Guam.

Lamo - a sense of humor first thing in the morning, synonym: uncaffeinated

Carole - ASK THEM! They'll add it for you. Hey, it means you get to email Zoltan.....

Excellent work Juliet! I am going to check it out this morning.

Way to go Juliet!! Yes, I too am interested in maximizing the capabilities of RealBird....and like you, am a few years behind on the technical-internet know-how...my eyes start to glaze over after trying to decode techno-jargon.....thanks!! Regards-Kathleen

Thanks Juliet! That list of sites sounds very similar to those that Postlets.com submits to. It's another great site to check out. We use it for our Craigslist ads.

Juliet,

Thank you for the post about us. And of course thanks for David Childress for the original write-up. We'll add Feng Shui by Monday. Thanks Carole for the hint.

I'll post it as a comment here Juliet, if you don't mind, when it is done.

Thank you again for the coverage of RealBird. This is magical: I noticed a steady stream of incoming traffic on Clicky (www.getclicky.com) this morning and I traced it back here. The power of ActiveRain.

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird Inc.

You can also use the Real Estate Shows new Flyer feature to submit to these sites. It is free with your HSS subscription.

Juliet, does that mean I can post my staging business, or just a staging job? I'm certainly interested. Thanks for the info.

From RealBird:

Terry ( and all other home stagers reading this post),

We are really glad to see the level of interest Juliet's post generated.

Up till now, we were providing services for real estate agents and brokerages and some of our features are tailored to their needs, but we definitely want to make our system suitable for stagers too.

While we work out the details, here is our contribution to the process:

All home stagers gets not only the free Listing Presentation tool but a free upgrade to the Real Estate Yellow Pages service as well, i.e. your business (and blog) is listed on our consumer portal at SearchOnMaps.com for free (the regular service fee of $89/year is waived) Just make sure, that you register using the Home Stager category at RealBird.com

In the meantime, please save your listings as draft (do not publish just yet as we have to work out the details also with the distribution partners to make sure that we are posting your staged homes correctly and according to their expectation)

Please feel free to comment or email us with ideas, feature requests etc. Let's build a great technology for home stagers together.

Thanks

-- Zoltan

RealBird Inc.

This a great post Detective Juliet! I'm in! Thanks for sharing.

From RealBird (again):

To add to my previous comment: please make sure, that you sign up at http://www.realbird.com/member/Register.aspx?p=register.spo (not on the Yellow Pages subscription page) and we will manually update your record to the Yellow Pages service level free of charge until we finalize our service and technology for stagers. Also, make sure, that you save your listings as draft

Thanks

-- Zoltan
RealBird Inc.

Cool! I'm there!

Thank you! I just signed up as well. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to a) assist our homeowners with getting further visibility and b) to assist our agents as well. Thank you REAL BIRD!

Kathy

I think that's right. The more publicity we can generate for our clients (realtors and sellers) the better value-added service we're providing.

As to our own needs: - A stager's marketing is a combination of masses of photos (Before and Afters) and then stats, services offered, and geographical area covered. Being put on the map with slides and photos will make us nimble and look progressive. That in and of itself would be helpful.

KUDOS TO YOU JULEIT....Thanks for the post.

Stacy

So far 17 stagers joined RealBird. Amazing. Thanks !

Please give us a little time to spec. out a product for you.

In the meantime, while waiting, make sure you check out Animoto, a new amazing slideshow building service (great guys running the show over there). You may very well find it useful for creating stunning movie trailer kind of slideshow presentations for your staged homes. You can create 30-second free videos from your pictures and music for free.

Check it out here (Video of Random RealBird members)

Create your own Animoto videos here

And of course, you can embed your Animoto movies into your RealBird Listing sites, just like any other type of videos.

Thanks Juliet for all your time spent on this great blog post. We'll be in touch again next week.

-- Zoltan

RealBird Inc.

Juliet, my Brit beauty, thank you so much for the mention. I am so flattered and I want you to know how appreciative I am! I am, also, so happy that the mighty Zoltan stepped up to the plate so fast and made your vital profession a big part of RealBird.

It's funny looking back to the night I posted about RealBird on AR. I almost didn't and only for the reason that I did not want to appear that I had an agenda for promoting a product, no matter how worthy. Luckily that day, I received the ground breaking email from Zoltan, that most services would be free to us agents. I thought WOW and signed up immediately. But, for some of you, RealBird is not new, just better every day, I had been a member for years. So I knew how good they were, especially the mapping. I am so happy that so many on AR agree. I did not receive one negative remark. Thank you Zoltan for being the consummate professional.

Regards and Fly high all my friends on AR.

David

PS.

I just ran a spell check. Maybe soon, Zoltan and RealBird will be on the "correct" list! hehe

Whoa, Cindy, thank you for the compliment. But, Juliet took this horse and saddled up. ( I will love to hear how she say's that)

I am so very happy that she saw the value for her fellow stagers, posted and then Zoltan took such immediate action for her and you ......she's the staging seer!

David

Thanks for the info on RealBird. Am definately going to check it out!

Was I dreaming? Ciny Lin posted and now she is gone....AR voodoo or what. Honest, I read it....

(Juliet, top hole? I have watched a lot of British movies, but, I never heard that one. I like it though!)

Hello all,

What about we Canadians---- love to join , too!

Marilynn from the north west coast BC.

wwww.staging for top dollar.ca

AUG

2007

Hello all,

Here is a quick wrap-up of the day:

Thanks for everybody for all the enthusiasm
DONE: "Home Stager - Feng Shui" category has been added to the supported category list, is this the proper category name? We can change it anytime to match your preference
Juliet's comment on the initial feature spec. is noted and we'll work on making a product spec around it
All stagers are upgrade to the RealBird Yellow Pages member level free of charge
Please do not yet use the Publish feature of listing editor, some of the destinations (e.g Trulia) we distribute only accept for sale properties posted by real estate agents. Use the Save as Draft feature. We'll work with our distribution partners to optimize the promotion process for stagers.
By mid-next week, we'll have all the widgets (map, georss, just listed etc.) available for draft listings so you can post your RealBird listing widgets on your website and blog
Make sure you try the custom background feature. You can upload a large size image for your listing site, it can create great and distinct visual effect. You can change it anytime so feel free to play with the feature. I'll be more than happy to feature great examples of such on the RealBird Blog
Canada support: it's coming, not sure about the deadline yet, hopefully within weeks. We already have a Canadian subscribers. He signed up with a US address, then repositioned his location in the member area using the map provided (dragging the icon to the location) and then changed his address, by entering Canadian values for address. This is a non-official "hack", but doable and official Canadian support is coming soon. Marilynn try it yourself or contact us directly so we can help.

Have a great weekend.

-- Zoltan

I signed up this a.m. I just have one question - is there any way to post the listing agent's info on our listing? I think this would be a very nice addition, as I don't want people thinking I'm the listing agent (even though it's listed in the home staging category). Make sense? Let me know. I've book marked your blog so I'll be sure to continue reading. Thanks, Juliet for sharing with you. You rock! - Calie

Calie,

You raise an interesting point. Let me ask you - when you post a new listing, you just advertise the house, right? there are no befores. but on your website, and here you post BEFORES, yes?

I just had an experience where the sellers have asked me not to share the befores until the home closes. It is coming on at a high price, and they have only been in possession of the place for 1 month. The staging is to help them recoup closing costs... and changing life needs that happened unexpectedly. In this instance, I'm sure they would love me to post a beautiful, animated slide show of the speducious home. However, every potential customer I talk to wants to see befores, so when I am strictly doing marketing of JJS I send out slide shows of the B&As with somewhat wry comments. (As you would expect from me!)

So, what do we want to come up on the map - a current listing and a sold B&A? In a way, this gives us the opportunity to set a standard for what's right and not nice in our industry in general. Need your leadership here. What do think?

"chincopin" - what's wrong with "cat"?

If we continue with this pace, this will be the most commented post on ActiveRain and maybe, the first time that ActiveRain is used to spec out a new product. Pretty cool, isn't it.

Here is my take so far: a categorized list of the product's value proposition:

Promotional features for stagers

Promote the homes stager's business and services
Promote projects

Active projects - helps marketing the property (also helping agents and sellers)
Past projects - portfolio kind of application (helps promoting stagers capabilities), similar to portfolio projects of other creative artists, such as graphic designers

Presentation features for stagers

Portfolio visualization
Before and after photos
Multimedia (videos, slideshows,
Statistics
ROI and value-proposition for clients
Testimonials
Descriptions of projects
Geographic coverage
Widgets (map, slideshow etc.) to post on blogs and websites to help promote the portfolio and therefore the stager indirectly

Please feel free to extend, change this classification. We could then add particular features under these categories. Once we come to a conclusion on what product has a demand for, it will be a pleasure to implement it. You can already start promoting your stager business with RealBird on the SearchOnMaps.com portal and you can create listing sites with unlimited everything (photos, slideshows, videos, text, embedable 3rd party multimedia etc.). Save listings on RealBird as draft for the time being until we finalize the promotional features tailored to your business.

Calie, currently the only way to add the listing agent/broker's contact info is via the description entry. Not perfect, but better then confusing the home buyers out there.

Thanks,

-- Zoltan Szendro
RealBird Inc.

Could you say that one more time in American English?

They don't want you to show befores until their house is really really sold, then you can do as you please?

Is this covered in your contract?

You could be nice and just wait - then post them everywhere.

Did I miss the point?

Oufda, Kathleen, I writing gott enleesh. Gosh, in American? Yeah, fer sherr, you got it.

No seriously, in my contract it says I can do what I want with the photos. They have asked me in this particular case to hold onto the befores until their house is closed. And I'm simply asking, maybe that's the ethical way we should all promote our work? Just post the Afters and then when each thing is closed, we put together a bigger "show" with the Befores added.

PS - Zoltan, this is a fantastic list of a dream product for stagers! It blows my mind that this could actually be done!!! You will need to have really good tutorials, with simple wording, for those of us who are not particularly good at understanding tech stuff (widgets, tags, html, etc.)....

and clearly each tutorial has got to be in 3 languages - English, American and Canadian!!

Naturally, I want to narrate all the English ones. I'll send you my agent's number! (c/o www.britvoice.com)

Ah so Juliet - I understand now - yah , goot idea - hold on to befores, then say go (sold- translation factor , here ) and push publish.

aaaye (is that how it is spelled in Canadian?)

Hi Juiet,

Thanks for a really great post, I will sign up today! This is going to be such a great tool for stagers!

My only concern is, I don't have an "office" and I don't have clients come to me. Why is my address "required" information that gets listed on a public site? You force me to "fib" if I want to register.

AUG

2007

Hi Teresa, You could get a PO Box, if you don't have one already, for your business and "checks"!

DavidC

I could do that..yes. However, I have so many things to do now, my mail person leaves notes for me to empty my mailbox and it's directly across the street from my front door. .it takes at least 30 minutes to sort everything. I still get mail for all the kids (who have since left the nest a "while" ago) and a couple of "new" tenants living here, not to mention all the spam snail mail. I feel like a postal worker every time I get my mail. I can't do EVERYTHING! (heavy sigh, while donning my super-bag cape yet again today)
Anybody seen my ruby slippers?

ha ha ha! I'm awful, no? I should have thought of that all by myself. DUH!

Good suggestion though. I should at least check it out. Thanks David

Teresa, You sound like a weekend away would do you good. The junk mail is a pain, but I gotta confess, I love getting the mail. Part of it is left over from boarding school where we were always desperate for news from The Outside World, and the other is the checks that arrive now! It's n-i-c-e to get checks in the mail. <LOL> My problem is that my mailman can tell me if I have any that day - he looks! I'm sure that's not right.

Hey David, you really are a wise man - good idea on the P.O. box. Thanks for being so supportive with this blog. You, sir, are a gentleman.

Penny - I'm with you - Real Bird offers excellent potential. They're being incredibly responsive. It will be fun to have the bells and whistles realtors have, only designed specifically for us. I guess we have to make sure we work in tandem with our realty partners, not in spite of or over and above them.

AUG

2007

Goodness...I go out of town for a weekend, and look at how much got done! Juliet, thanks so much for making all this happen...and Zoltan, thanks for being so helpful!

I'm out of town again next weekend...can't wait to see what you accomplish then! ;)

Susan

"rambeh" - a story about a boxer with a strange accent.

AUG

2007

Hello again,

We have several updates released (one of them is big) which gets the service closer to the feature set which is suitable for stagers:

"Home stager" category added
"Home stager - Feng Shui" category added
We automatically update you to the Yellow Pages service level to advertise your business besides your projects
"Staged home" listing status added. With this option you can now freely publish your listings without worrying that it will end up on classified sites (e.g. Trulia) which only list active, for sale properties presented by agents and brokers. You can select the proper listing type for your project (e.g. Single Family or Condo) and set the Listing Status to "Staged home"
You can now use all listing widgets for presenting your projects. While the service still does not support BEFORE & AFTER photo designations, with the unlimited photo options and the built in HTML editor you can provide a full description of your project.

Embed for example the Listing Map widget into your site or blog to show your featured projects.
Or you can get a "Recent Projects" sidebar widget for your blog
And here is the big one: You can now embed Clicky, Google Analytics and MyBlogLog tracking into your property sites and you have the most comprehensive website analytics available for real-time tracking, detailed reports and via MyBlogLog, user and community centric community around your projects.

Let me know if you have questions on how to use the service and when somebody puts together a home stager portfolio with RealBird and embeds e.g. the property map widget. I would love to see the end result.

Thanks

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

That sounds amazing, Zoltan, thank you. I'll head over tomorrow and see what I can create vis-a-vis a Staged Home listing. I think it will be great fun to see what happens when it's the same house. I've done that 3 times in 5 years now!

AUG

2007

Juliet and other stagers out there !

I just learned about this service. It may be something very useful for you and is definitely impressive as a product !

http://www.designmyroom.com

Enjoy!

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Juliet, I signed up but don't quit understand what it does for me. Can you enlighten me please?

paterno- he used to coach Notre Dame football

AUG

2007

Hi Terry, It puts you on the map. LIterally. It's another way of "puking your identity all over the internet" -- remember http://activerain.com/blogsview/149903/The-Art-of-Puking

Plus, they have the ability to incorporate very fancy slide shows, with Top 20 songs and music choices. And there are some other neat things coming.

Cindy has a new post on it that you might want to check out.

Oh cool. Puking? Hmmmmm, thats not a word we would use here to describe what you meant :-) Ha ha, I love British slang!

Juliet,

Thanks for the info! Going back to posting your 'befores' before the property has closed, I would definitely hold off showing them. I can just see a buyer, who gets cold feet, using the before pics to try to get out of the deal.

Now Terry, you haven't read the post (linked above) if you think "puking" is my choice of word. I would like to sanctimoniously point out that the word and title is Justin Smith, the moderator of the CHRISTIAN REAL ESTATE group. So there!

I agree with you completely, Susan. You know it's very interesting. I never thought about the issue of B&As until particular sellers of mine earlier this month specifically asked me not to. So I brought that topic to AR, asked around, via comments etc. and now I'm reading it as a generally accepted moral and ethical practice. I think that's right. However, I find it amusing how fast we all can adopt something if we believe in it.

SEP

2007

Juliet, Susan,

Am I correct that you present, promote your staging projects for 2 distinct reasons?

Aiding the sales of an active, for sale property - Marketing a listing
Presenting a past project (e.g. an already sold property) - Marketing your skills and services to gain new business

If it is so, in which context posting B&A pictures a problem for sellers. I would assume in case 1, when you are promoting an active property. I don't see a reason why it would be a problem with past sellers on past projects? Please advise on this, so that we can design a system which fits the real-world scenario of your business processes. If the above two are both valid value-propositions for stagers, which one is more important for you. Promoting and presenting current, active, not-yet closed projects or past projects (portfolio) ?

RealBird can be readily used for marketing an active listing, scenario 1, if B&A photos are not a requirement for those. We do not yet support marking photos as Before and After, so for scenario 2, where you do want to promote the skills which led from "before" to "after" we will need to add more features.

I think by reading all these posts and assuming that the above two scenario are where the benefits for you are, the following should be the most important next features we need to add:

Interface to be able to mark B&A photos for past projects
Ability to add listing agent/broker to flyers so that distribution to 3rd party sites do not interfere with their terms of use.

Please let me know your opinion.

Thanks

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

SEP

2007

Zoltan,

I'm a Realtor who only stages my own listings and I would never post before pictures until the property is closed and the buyers have taken possession. Typically I use my 'before' pictures on my own website and my brochure. I just started posting them on AR and my most recent 'before' is about 6 months old.

I'm not quit sure if this answers your question, but feel free to contact me for any clarification you may need.

SEP

2007

Zoltan,

You SEE the impact of a stager's work when looking at the B&As, but none of that matters if the home doesn't sell quickly and at its best possible price.

Some of us provide property marketing add-ons, but only to widen the buyer pool. Posting the listings really isn't our job; it's the realtor's. We can't even show the property let alone get involved in offers.

So the primary benefit to us is the B&A capability fitted into a MAP. This way we can visually illustrate our experience by region. Different towns have different personalities. This diagram will show that we are conversant with those subtleties.

We then want to be able to post that information anywhere a realtor might be looking for it. Our marketing is to Realtors, first and sellers, second.

A much lower priority is our ability to support a realtors' marketing efforts. In my own market, for example, I would be thought to be interfering is I posted my staging shots where the listing agents should be. However, that is NOT the same across the country.

Not sure this helps at all, Zoltan. Maybe we organize a conference call for later in the week?

SEP

2007

Juliet,

As always, thanks for the explanation. It is absolutely necessary to understand your business process to be able to develop a product which delivers benefits to you. The upcoming week is very busy for us, as we are ready to launch our MRIS coverage for our Map-based IDX search service (oops, did I just leaked that info :-) but I will check back to schedule a conference call as soon as possible.

Thanks again for this great post and conversation.

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Juliet,

Thank you (which I'm sure you are receiving a lot of that) for this great addition for home stagers. It says a lot when colleges in the industry share information and resources that help broaden the power of our profession. Thanks again, I'm checking it out as soon as I'm done with this.

Heather Klein - Emmy & Me Interiors, Naperville, IL.

SEP

2007

Hello,

I thought I drop a comment to let you all know - who participated in Juliet's discussion above - that we are giving away an Apple iPod Touch, Apple's newest stunning gizmo. We have released a new version of the free RealBird Listing Publisher. It is now optimized for iPhone and iPod (renders differently than on regular browsers) To celebrate this release, we started a sweepstakes with iPod Touch being the prize. No purchase necessary. Home stagers can participate of course. Read more here.

Thanks

-- Zoltan Szendro

RealBird.com

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Juliet Johnson - Web Based Marketing Specialist

St Johns, FL

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Address: St Johns, FL, 32259

Office Phone: (843) 608-8443

Cell Phone: (973) 477-7000

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Once a Manhattan realtor, I have bought and sold 12 homes in 19 years in 4 countries. That, and 7 years of staging homes for sale in New Jersey adds up to a lot of experience.

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