You've seen her and probably debated or interacted with her..Zillow..Zestimates always makes for an interesting conversation but Sarah Bonert seems to do it with class, style and fun.  I am lucky I met her..so this makes for an interesting conversation..especially since we aint talking Activerain points but strictly Sarah and Zillow!

This is a great opportunity to get to know her and what Zillow is all about..

CENTURY 21 recently partnered and I cannot deny I had some concerns but if you familiarize yourself with the site you might feel differently..Am I convinced? 

My recommendation..read what she has to say and you decide!  Share with us your Zillow experience.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up at zillow?  I started my professional life at Citysearch.com selling websites to anyone who had a pulse (I can’t even imagine how stupid I sounded talking to agents at 22 with no idea about the re process).  Eventually we figured out that different business categories have different needs on-line and I randomly got assigned to building out the Real Estate on-line product, what a lucky break that was for me! 

I absolutely fell in love with the industry and have been in it ever since.  From there I worked at Network Communication, publisher of The Real Estate Book magazine, helping agents (and publishers) begin to understand how to merge a print campaign with on-line marketing.  After about five years of doing this, I really wanted to get back to a pure dot com environment, something that was innovative.  Also, the social phenomena (or Web 2.0) is absolutely fascinating to me.   And that’s when the recruiter from Zillow called… 

Are you the Bob Stewart of Zillow?  Ha! Not even close!!  We actually have someone at Zillow who is a master of working within the blogosphere to make sure everyone has correct information about Zillow, David Gibbons.  If you have ever read a post about Zillow, I am sure that you have come across his name.  I have learned so much from him.  While he does an excellent job in the RE net, one area where I felt the Zillow voice wasn’t being heard as loud was on AR.  So about a year ago I started a blog, partly because I wanted to make sure that up-to-date information was getting into your hands, but just as equally, I have a sincere interest in writing and reading about real estate topics. 

I think this is one of the reasons that I have had so much success on AR because I balance my blog with articles about Zillow, but also have  articles about things I care about that help give my blog a personality.  This also helps build creditability.  If you apply this idea to an agent blog- people don’t want to read a big sales pitch about how great you are or your listings.  In fact, they can leave down right nasty comments when this is all you do!  Definitely sprinkle your sales points here and  there, but do it in a way where information that your audience is seeking, along with your personality, in built in.  

Do you ever get frustrated dealing with so many real estate pro's?  When it comes to adding to a conversation or correcting some misinformation an agent may have, not at all.  I even find it very interesting to converse about conflicting points of view when someone delivers an organized argument.  I do get frustrated when someone says they don’t like Zillow because of what they think we are going to do.  For example, it is free to post your listings on-line.  There have been many posts about how once we get to a certain size we are going to open a physical Zillow office or then we will turn around and start selling these leads.  We have said over and over that this will not happen and we make our money selling advertising.  It is challenging to defend against something that is simply not true.

In all the jobs I have had, I have always found entrepreneurs and small business owners to be the most fascinating group of people to work with because they are SO passionate about what they do.  When you have your own skin in the game and are so personally vested, you want to participate more in shaping your industry, and that is something I’ll always appreciate about a real estate professional.  It takes a lot of guts to do what you do! 

Can you give us a few SEO tips? I first want to say that I am NOT an SEO expert, in fact, I know very little about it.  Here is what I do know.  When I started at Zillow my job was to go out and get to know the industry.  I thought, how in the world am I going to do this?  If you Yahoo'd my name (I am required to use this site, as my husband works here), nothing came up.  I started by making a point to comment on about 10 sites a day.  Then I started my own blog.  Then I registered on all the major social networks and actively participate as much as I can.  Anywhere that had a directory, I submitted my name (because you just never know where your next lead is going to come from).  Anywhere that I could submit an opinion, I did.  A year later (and I do not have a website) A year later (and I do not have a website) if you search my name, I come up on about the first seven pages of search results.  I believe the power ofSEO can be harnessed through social media.  In fact, I have gone as far to say that I don’t even think it is absolutely necessary to have a website to generate leads if you are fully utilizing social media.  Let your broker or franchiser take care of worrying about this game, where it can cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to achieve what can be achieved in weeks through Web 2.0. 

Do you feel that zillow is misunderstood, if so why?  Good question.  It is hard to give a blanket yes or no because there are so many different opinions about the site.  At the end of the day, Zillow is a place where people can start a conversation or start thinking about something they have so much passion for, their home!  Ultimately we would love for them to end with a real estate professional. 

I have concerns since we are connected to Zillow, is there anything we as real estate industry professionals can do to make the zestimates a little more accurate?  On a per listing basis, yes, you can alter the public record information and create a ‘my estimate’.  Up until a few months ago, the Zestimate didn’t reflect any manually entered updates or new information from the home owner or the agent, now it does.

On an aggregate level, as more and more large brokers begin to send us feeds, the system gets smarter and smarter.  Instead of depending on public record data to generate a Zestimate, we can now take into account more accurate information provided in the feed.   Also, getting more accurate and timely SOLD information helps with accuracy, which helps with comps, which helps the system as a whole. 

One of the major changes we did make a few months ago was recognizing that your list price was probably a better number than our Zestimate, so on FOR SALE postings, we demoted our number below the fold of the page and replaced it with your number at the top.  The list price is the first and more prominent number one sees.

What is the biggest benefit for industry professionals?  Our audience.  You want to put your message where you future customers are, and they are on Zillow. 

Do you have a favorite inspirational quote?  Shop til you drop! and Retail is for suckers! (I am a bargain shopper!)

What suggestions do you have to get better acquainted with zillow?  Just spend some on the site.  Take off your agent hat for a moment and look at it from the eyes of a buyer or seller.   If you ever have questions, I respond to every email I get, so feel free to send me a note. 

Anything else you would like to add?  I really feel Zillow is one of the best marketing platforms for agents today.  One of the reasons that I came to the company was that I liked the fact that Zillow wasn’t just collecting listings and then building a business model off the backbone of this information that agents had worked so hard to get.  In fact, were in business for over a year and had more than 4 million unique monthly users before we had the first listing online. 

Listings are becoming ubiquitous and not a differentiating reason to visit a site anymore.  We constantly think about what unique content can we have on the site and what unique ways can we get the user to interact with the site, to make Zillow a must-stop place in the home search.  These are things that as agents, you need to be thinking about too as you build a web strategy.  Why would someone go to your site verses your competitors’?  It is all about the information and tools that you are providing online.

So if you see the sign of the Z, don't assume it means Zorro..who knows maybe it won't be long before Zillow refers to real estate as Zeal Estate or Z Buyer and Z Seller????????