Claim your Trulia

Who knew?  When we input a listing in our MLS, it is automatically fed to Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow.  So our listings are there and we don’t need to do anything else, right?  Wrong!  I found out some interesting tidbits the other day that I thought I would share with you.  Another one of those things that maybe everyone else knows but me, but maybe not.  Since it’s free and valuable to you, you may want to listen up.

First and foremost, go to Trulia and create a profile for yourself.  (Do the same thing for Zillow, Realtor.com, and Google if you haven’t already done so.  If it’s not self-explanatory, just ask me and I’ll be glad to walk you thru it, but I digress.) 

If your listing is on Trulia and you don’t physically go to the site and claim it, then someone who ‘owns’ the zip code that your listing is in will get the leads and THEIR picture will be on the side of YOUR listing.  It’s SO easy to do, so follow these simple steps . . .

Go to Trulia.  If you have a profile, go to LISTINGS in the upper right corner and HOVER over it.  (If you don’t have a profile, do that first.)  In the drop-down menu when you hover, click on MY LISTINGS.  On either side of the page it will say FIND OR SUBMIT LISTINGS.  Click on that.

It will ask for an address, but often your listings that have been automatically fed won’t show up because they don’t have it exactly like you input it (7^th Street instead of Seventh Street, St. Vrain instead of Saint Vrain, St. instead of St, East instead of E, you get the picture), so I have found that it is easier to input the MLS number, and you will always get a match if it’s there.  There may be more than one with that number, so you just have to pick YOURS.

When yours pops up, it will ask you to CLAIM it by checking the box to the left of the address.  Then it will ask you to verify that you are not lying when you claim it, so you check that box, too.  (Unless, of course, it’s not your listing.  Then you have other issues that I can’t help you with.)  If, per chance, your listing is NOT there, then it gives you the ability to input it, but if your MLS feeds to Trulia, it will be there with 24 hours or so of input to your MLS.

BUT WAIT.  You’re not done (but you can come back and do this tomorrow).  Trulia will upload the 16 photos from your MLS (or however many your particular MLS allows you).  You are allowed 32 photos on Trulia, and what no one will tell you is, the more photos you have on your listing, the higher you will rank on Trulia's list.  So if you have 32 photos, it will be seen a lot sooner by consumers than if you only have 16 photos ~ so make sure that you add as many as you can.  Just do it . . .

Add as much as you can for your description, and include as many of the amenities as you can think of.  THEN, to get the free exposure and share it on Facebook, on your Business Page, on Twitter, etc., set it up in your Hootsuite (or similar dashboard) and say something like “Check out our new photos on this cool new listing” and set it to post in the future on your Social Media sites.  Do this so that it will post every other day for the next few weeks on each of your sites (if you don’t know how to do this, ask me). 

You can also check the box that will send you the reports each week of how many people have seen your listing on Trulia (or Realtor.com or Zillow).  THAT’s impressive.  Lots more to come.  But if you enjoyed this article, or you got something of value from it, why not SUBSCRIBE as you scroll down to make a comment?  Best to you in this ever-changing market!