There is so much concern and “Buzz” about Google shutting down Picnik.com, I decided to provide you with some alternative tools for editing and customizing your graphics, photos, and images.   While Picnik.com will be shutting down in April 2012, here are some other options you have available immediately.

FotoFlexer – Create some dazzling photo and image effects in your browser for FREE.  Use Animations, resizing, coloring, contrast and more.  Take a look at These 5 Demo’s for a quick tour of what FotoFlexer has to offer, you’ll love some of these cool features.  Smart Scissor is a favorite feature.

Pixlr – and for Picnik users, try Pixlr Express.  You’ll love the Editor, the Pixlr-o-matic, the Pixlr Grabber for Firefox and Chrome browsers, and the Pixlr Imm.io hosting, all of which are very robust and user friendly cool features.

LunaPic – This site will rock your world!  Lunapic offers more choices and options for photo editing and custom effects than some of the paid software applications I’ve purchased and used in the past.  Use vignettes, color bars, animated imaging, picture frames, retro color, collages, custom text, reflection animations, slide shows, and a ton more.  One of the most feature rich FREE online editors available.  You’re gonna love this site.

FreeOnlinePhotoEditor – A really simple and easy to use photo and image editor for those “quick fix and gotta go” graphics.  Very basic but simple and fast.  Some of the other online photo and image tools include:  OnlinePhotoTool.com: Online photo editor,  Automatically resize your images when sending it by email,  Create an Image from your RSS feed,  Create Image from your Tweet and Twitter account, and Create, save and email screenshots.

BeFunky -  Be Funky lets you do some pretty amazing things with your photos and graphics.  Most of the features and tools are focused on creating cool, fun, and funky effects and artwork.  The site’s name says it.  Some of the effects available would take hours to create in Photoshop or other high end and costly photo/image editors.

Definitely worthy of a visit and tour.

Photoshop.com – That’s right, you can use Photoshop online and for FREE.  You’ll need to register, but I promise it will be worth it.  The Photoshop tools are powerful and very easy to use.  Be prepared to spend a little time here, you’ll be amazed at what they have to offer and allow you to do online for free.  I’m not going to lie, this is one of my favorites and my personal replacement for Picnik.com closing down.

GIMP – GIMP is very similar to Adobe Photoshop except that GIMP is FREE.  It does require you to download the software but one huge benefit to that is it will never be bought and shut down on you.  It is a very powerful and feature intense program so unless you’re really experienced with editing and graphic design, or you have more time than it takes to close a short sale, you may want to stick with one of the others.

I personally like to use GIMP for graphic design more than image or photo editing.

Combine all these together and you’ll have more FREE editing tools and features than you’ll ever need or use and absolutely FREE.  Take a few moments to review each site, bookmark them, then give each one a try to see which one(s) best meet your photo and image editing needs.  Enjoy! 

 

 

          

 

Tutorials | Training | Mobile | Widgets

"May this blog be just one more planted seed of wisdom that helps you or your business blossom today!"

It’s a new year, so what better time to take on a controversial topic: listings syndication. There is a lot of discussion about this in our industry, and I thought it was time to give Zillow's thoughts on this important topic. My comments below will also be the basis of my speech at this week's Inman Connect in New York. 

First, let me emphasize that Zillow has a lot of usage. In December 2011, more than 23 million unique visitors used our websites and mobile applications. The primary reason they use Zillow is because of Zestimates, and the other unique content we have on our website. It is because of this traffic that nearly every major real estate brokerage in the nation puts their listings onto Zillow, for free.

Because the number of real estate websites has dramatically proliferated, real estate brokers and MLSs are now giving a more careful review of what sites they send listings to. I applaud this, as I think it is important to carefully evaluate which sites make the most sense. This trend towards "strategic distribution" is different from the more shotgun-like approach that characterized listings syndication for the last few years.

Strategic distribution is all about making the right decision on where to put listings based on criteria that makes sense for your business. Brokers own their listings, and can put them on whichever sites they choose. But in my opinion, brokers should carefully consider several important criteria when making these decisions:

1. Which sites are most likely to provide my listings with exposure to the most buyers. After all, that's what the listing agents and their brokers have been hired to do by their home sellers: get the house sold quickly, at the best possible price.

2. Which sites have business rules which are most acceptable to my brokerage. 

Listings on Zillow receive exposure across Zillow.com, Zillow Mobile - the most popular suite of real estate apps across all major mobile platforms - and the Yahoo!-Zillow Real Real Estate Network the largest real estate network on the Web (according to comScore Media Metrix, 1), so clearly we have many millions of buyers visiting our website and using our mobile apps. Sellers benefit from their listing receiving as much exposure as possible. 

Some in our industry have commented that although Zillow has more than 23 million unique monthly visitors to our websites and mobile apps, perhaps Zillow and other national media sites "don't have very much traffic in my area". That's incorrect. Zillow reviewed November 2011 data from comScore Media Metrix, the leading third-party source of website traffic information. Note that this data does not include traffic on mobile applications, where Zillow and other national brands have overwhelmingly more usage than others. Just looking at website statistics though, the Yahoo!-Zillow Real Estate Network is the #1 or #2 real estate entity in all 20 of the top 20 local markets in the United States (2). The data simply does not support the argument that "those sites aren't big in my area." [If you'd like to learn more about Zillow's traffic in your area, please email me; we will happily share Zillow's internal traffic statistics for your region.]

To emphasize the mobile point further, let me stress that not putting listings on Zillow, REALTOR.com and Trulia is tantamount to abandoning any hope of finding a buyer who is using a mobile device. In December 2011, Zillow had more than 36 homes viewed every second of every day on a mobile device. Zillow has leading real estate apps on iPhone, iPad, Android phones, Android tablets, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, and Kindle Fire. Mobile usage accounts for about a quarter of all of Zillow's usage -- it's too important a channel for a seller or their listing agent/broker to ignore. 

Brokers and MLSs should not only consider a website's traffic when making syndication decisions. But they should also consider how each website gets its traffic. At Zillow, most of our traffic comes directly to Zillow.com or Zillow's mobile apps, rather than coming to us through SEO. Our tens of millions of users are attracted to Zillow's unique content, including over 100 million Zestimates and 100,000 consumer reviews of real estate agents. We bring this traffic to the table in these syndication discussions; it's not like we showed up at the potluck with just a fork. 

Putting listings onto top real estate sites is what sellers want, because it helps sell their homes. But don't take my word for it -- let's look at the data. Zillow data shows that homes which receive the top 10% of page views sell more than a month faster than their counterparts in the bottom 10% of views.  Similarly, these highly viewed listings achieve sale prices closer to their asking price than those with less exposure. The difference is especially pronounced among homes priced less than $250,000. It's obvious, but if you give your listing exposure to lots of buyers, it will sell faster and at a higher price. The data proves it.

The Objections

I've already addressed one objection to sending listings to leading media sites: the local traffic stats.

The second objection I sometimes hear is that "the media site is selling my leads". Most major media sites (including Zillow) have free models which pass buyer contacts to the listing agent -- all they have to do to be presented as the first choice for buyers on their own listings is set up a free account and free profile on the site (which ensures that the buyer contact will get through to them).

In addition, some listings syndication services such as ListHub, owned by Move, Inc. (operator of REALTOR.com), have recently introduced dashboards to help brokers and MLSs understand different media sites' business rules, and decide which sites to send listings to. This allows the MLS to facilitate the efficient distribution of listings under the direction of the broker who owns the listings.

Diverse Solutions

No discussion of listings syndication would be complete without mentioning Zillow's acquisition of Diverse Solutions, the leading tech provider of IDX for websites. Many of you have told us what a great company, staff and products they have. But there are some conspiracy theorists who have speculated that Zillow will simply flip a switch and take all of the IDX listings through Diverse and put them up on Zillow.com.

It won’t happen and can’t ---due to contractual and legal reasons. 

However, from the day the acquisition was announced, we started hearing from brokers that asked why they needed to continue to send Zillow a direct feed, when it was already coming to Diverse through their MLS. Therefore, if a broker wants us to use their listings from IDX, and their MLS agrees, then we will do this. We are in the midst of conversations with many brokerages and many MLSs about this, since it significantly reduces the complexity for the brokerage and it improves accuracy of listings on Zillow, which benefits brokers, agents and their MLS.

Speaking of listings accuracy ... Zillow invests massive resources in making our listings as accurate as possible, and it all starts with what’s provided to us by our partners. Complaining about accuracy while providing us with a less than stellar feed or no feed at all does none of us or our industry any favors. Those who decide to pull listings from sites like ours due to their own business reasons have the right to do so. But to take that step and then say a key reason was listing accuracy feels disingenuous when they have removed the very direct feed that is the most accurate, often leaving their agents to rely on less reliable options.

Conclusion

Strategic Distribution is an important part of a broker's marketing strategy. It is very important for brokers to put their listings where buyers will find them -- this is critical for agent recruitment and retention, and to help sell clients' houses. 

It is for these reasons that nearly every major brokerage in the country has chosen to put their listings onto Zillow. We are very proud of our partnerships with companies like RE/MAX International, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Windermere, Halstead, Prudential Fox & Roach and hundreds more.

I look forward to further discussion of this important issue, and I hope to see you at Inman Connect later this week.  

 

Data Sources:

(1) comScore Media Metrix Real Estate Category Ranking by Unique Visitors, November 2011, US Data.

(2) comScore Local Market Key Measures, November 2011, Real Estate Category by Unique Visitors

 

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Real Estate Marketing Plans

 

Do you have your real estate marketing plans for 2012 ready?

 

 

With SO MANY alternatives for real estate marketing plans, are you confused on what to do in 2012?

So as you develop your 2012 real estate marketing plans, here is some great food for thought:

ActiveRain, the largest blogging platform and professional social network in real estate, conducted a survey of 1,910 real estate professionals asking the simple question of "what is the most effective real estate marketing or advertising that you do?" 

The results:

1. Referrals (including word of mouth and sphere of influence) were overwhelming the most preferred marketing with 26% of responses.
2. Blogging was #2 with 13% of responses.  (Keep in mind that the survey was conducted on ActiveRain, so these results may naturally be skewed to blogging).
3. Direct Mail continues to be incredibly popular.  Direct Mail includes post cards, mailers, and newsletters.  Direct Mail also received 13% of responses.
4. Internet Marketing as a general category received 12% of responses.  Our assumption is that Internet marketing is generally speaking pay per click marketing on Google, Yahoo or Bing or lead generation from a number of different sources.
5. Networking Networking includes partner referrals and face-to-face meetings. Face-to-face networking received 8% of the responses.
   
   

 

 (Share these stats - link to this article: http://activerain.com/blogsview/2641172/real-estate-marketing-plans-most-effective-marketing-of-2011)

 As you can see based on 2011 real estate marketing plans, real estate professionals continue to favor more traditional offline, "tried & true" hand to hand real estate marketing techniques.  Though the general bucket of Internet marketing & blogging are equivalent to direct mail, the top marketing techniques tend to be more offline - referrals, direct mail, networking, working with past clients, open houses, door knocking and cold calling.   Hard to know if ActiveRain is the same as blogging and if Zillow or Google are the same as Internet marketing, but interesting to see that from a response perspective, that Open Houses are more popular than any one web site AND Door Knocking is more preferred than CraigsList and FaceBook.

 

 

When real estate professionals were asked, "What is the most effective real estate marketing or advertising that you do?" only a small number of real estate web sites were mentioned in reasonable frequency: ActiveRain, CraigsList, FaceBook, Zillow and Google.  Of course, blogging and Internet marketing are large categories with a lot of different companies.  But there were very few mentions of Wordpress or other ways to market online.  Noticeably absent were Trulia and Realtor.com   Though we believe ActiveRain is a very powerful blogging platform, fans of ActiveRain are likely over-represented in the survey.  Kudos to Zillow to have name recognition equivalent to Google in the real estate industry.

 

For 2012, here are the key questions to ask:

1. How important is developing your REFERRAL BASE?  How are you going to do it?
2. Are Blogging and SEO part of your 2012?  If so, what to do - ActiveRain, Wordpress, Blogger, or other?
3. Direct Mail continues to be an important part of the real estate professional's marketing mix.  It is amazing, but true.  Direct Mail allow neighborhood targeting unlike online marketing.  What kinds of direct mail campaigns will you be using?
4. Internet Marketing needs to be part of your 2012 marketing mix, but there are a lot of options from pay-per-click advertising to lead generation to Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com 

ActiveRain is great place to start the learning process to figure out the best Internet marketing strategies to achieve your personal and financial goals in 2012! 

Share this blog post!  Either blog about it or share on your social networks.  Link to and reference this blog if you use this content: http://activerain.com/blogsview/2641172/real-estate-marketing-plans-most-effective-marketing-of-2011

It's been a while since I've posted about Real Estate technology for the mortgage side of the business, so this one is for all you lenders, mortgage brokers, and bankers out there.  Actually, it will also be very useful if you are a borrower, an agent, or even a renter looking to buy and own a home of your own one day.

There's a new app in town and it's already making quite an impression in the lending community, with consumers, and at the Apple iTunes store.  We launched a new Zillow Mortgage Marketplace app for the iPhone last week and it ROCKS!  I've had the chance to run a few of the mobile features, and already I can see why it's being called one of the best FREE mortgage, finance, and calculator apps.

"The Zillow Mortgage Marketplace App combines personalized loans, live rates and advanced calculators and tools to give home buyers an instant financial reality check while out touring homes."

What's so cool about a mortgage calculator app?

The new app offers some really easy to use features and calculators.  The payment calculator is pretty common on most of these types of apps but the user-interface is what makes it easy and unique. 

The affordability calculator is a unique one-of-a-kind tool that I was drawn to instantly for obvious reasons, and I think this will be a popular and commonly used tool in this app.

The refinance calculator and current rates features are perfect for someone on the go like me who is always looking for data and information that can help me lower my payments, get a more suitable loan, possibly refinance, and do it all from the local coffee shop while checking my email and between text messaging my clients and kids.

Some features and benefits for lenders:

Allows you to get in front of a whole new set of users you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

Lenders are now able to connect with highly qualified borrowers who are likely ready to transact, since they’ve already compared quotes, profiles, and lender ratings and have decided to proactively reach out to a selected lender.  

Some features and benefits for agents:

Great tool for agents because it makes them more efficient in two specific ways: 1- It allows agents to show homes their clients can actually afford; 2 - It helps move their clients through the purchase process and secure financing.

Allows agents and professionals to track mortgage rates in real time.  Knowing what's happening with mortgage rates is an important way to enhance their credibility as real estate advisers and to make informed recommendations to their clients when rates drop and when it might be a better time to buy.

Streamlines the process of getting your customers pre-approved and have their offers taken seriously by borrowers as contacting a lender is just a click away.

Since we know that "Mobile is Global" and those "on the go" always need tools and info at their fingertips, the new Mortgage Marketplace App will be perfect for anyone and everyone who needs instant access to information, data, and calculators that will be beneficial to their financial freedom and peace of mind. 

Keeping up with all the technology, tools, and apps out there is a full time job for guys like me. You can be rest assured that I'll be sharing whatever I find, like, use, and think will benefit you or your clients!

Related Articles:
Zillow Unveils Mortgage Marketplace App - DSNews
Tech tools that make home buying easier - Mercury News
Zillow® Launches Zillow Mortgage Marketplace iPhone® App - Financial News
Review: Zillow releases mortgage app for iPhone - San Diego News
Zillow rolls out mobile mortgage app - The Seattle Times

 

     

Training | Mobile | Content | Widgets | Agents

"May this blog be just one more planted seed of wisdom that helps you or your business blossom today!"

Powerful Facebook Tabs Now Available for Your Business Pages

You already know how important and powerful social media engagement and participation is, especially on a site like Facebook.  We now have some awesome additional tools available that will provide more great content helping you connect, capture, and convert more contacts to clients.

Today, I get the privilege of making the announcement that we've launched Facebook tabs for Business pages.  I also get to debut my first article and announcement on the Corporate Zillow Blog in the NEW real estate professionals section.  I hope you'll stop by, check it out, and give it a LIKE.

As part of our FREE Webtools and services, I think you're going to really like the new Facebook tabs. They look great, they're easy to setup and install, and best of all, they'll compliment your existing Facebook Business and community pages. They show and sell the information and content so you won't have to.

 

There are currently four Facebook tabs available:

• The Listings Facebook Tab

• The Local Information Tab

• The Ratings and Reviews Tab

• The Contact Information Tab

The new Facebook tabs will only work on Business pages, they will not work on your personal profile pages. You can install one or all and it's easy. No programming, no designing, no headaches, and in no time at all.  Just go to our site and click on the Webtools link, select Facebook Apps, then follow the easy instructions to add the tab(s) you want to your Facebook business page.

Need a Facebook Business page?  Get one here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Here's a sample of my local Business page with Facebook tabs: http://facebook.com/SanFranciscoBay

How Can We Help Drive Traffic to Your Facebook Business Pages?

Let me know when you install any of these tabs on your business pages, if you tweet about it, I'll get the @Zillow team to retweet it which will help drive even more traffic and exposure to your pages and tabs. Just include @Zillow in your tweet. Leave me a comment here with a link to your tab(s) and I'll be tweeting them over the next few days to show-off your tabs and pages as well.

Any tools that can help increase your potential business on sites like Facebook are definitely worth looking into. I think you'll like these new tabs and I think your Facebbok friends and fans will like them too.

     

Training | Mobile | Content | Widgets | Agents

"May this blog be just one more planted seed of wisdom that helps you or your business blossom today!"

Integrating Facebook Into Your Site - It's Time To "Plug-in"

Today I'm sharing one of the more powerful ways I know of to drive traffic, increase growth, and encourage engagement on your site. Using Facebook's new social and personalized feature plug-ins can without a doubt be an asset to your social outreach and marketing efforts. 

When you see company's like The Wall Street Journal, Yelp, ABC, TIME, CNN, The Huffington Post, and the New York Times using this method, your motivation to adopt something like this will most likely increase. 

Why? Because it works!

Facebook offers some great plug-ins that can make your site more socially engaging and help you grow your existing traffic, returning visitors, and in no time at all, build more relationships and business. Look how some of these sites are using Facebook Plug-ins to not only grow and socially connect their sites and businesses, some of the creative ways in which they're being used are setting some new social trends.

I believe many companies are doing this in order to stay in business and to continue building, managing, and improving their client and potential client relationships. They can't rely on their previous marketing tactics any longer.

The Huffington Post uses - A "Facebook Plug-in" Instant Pop-up

Wall Street Journal  CNN

 

The New York Times    

 

Even Yelp is now personalizing their site using Facebook Plug-in options.

Let me show you a few of these plug-ins and how to add them to your site, but first you should take a moment to understand how they work so you'll be motivated enough to take the next steps to "plug-in."

1. When you land on any website and see that many of your social friends and connections have already been there before you and liked or participated on that site, there's a tendency for you to want to be a part of it too. 

2. Many will like and return to your site simply because others they are influenced by have been there. 

It's hard to resist investigating a site that has 46,021 likes and most the faces you see are friends you know.

3. Making your site more socially engaging to others without having to leave to interact is powerful. 

4. Knowing content and activity gets shared on others' Facebook walls will definitely create a viral advertising affect and opportunity that is almost guaranteed to drive more traffic and interest to your site. 

5. This theory and idea alone should make Facebook plug-ins pretty hard to resist. 

There are some great examples of this out there, here's a couple samples of what this looks like.

Inter-active Facebook Comment Box

Live Streaming Inter-active Facebook Plug-in

Activities will appear on Facebook walls

Facebook plug-ins are not widgets, they are "Social plug-ins letting you see what your friends have liked, commented on or shared on sites across the web."  One of the greatest recommendations I can give you is to follow what's happening on the Facebook developers Blog, these are the folks behind the scenes of the largest social network sharing information, tips, and tools for those interested. They've actually been blogging there since August of 2006.

How to Integrate Facebook Plug-ins?
I'll walk you through the steps:

1. Register your domain name and site with the Facebook:
   http://developers.facebook.com/setup/
2. Select the Social Plug-in you'd like to add to your site:
   http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
3. Customize your plug-in width, height, fonts, and colors.
4. Copy and paste the custom code to your website.
5. If you get stuck or need a step-by-step tutorial, use the Facebook Guide:
   http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/

 

More Facebook Plug-ins:

Activity - "Displays most recent Interesting Activity on your site"

Comments - "Enables users to leave comments on your site"

Facepile - "Only Displays Friends Faces"

Like Box - "Attracts and gains "Likes" to your Facebook Pages"

Like Button
 

Live Stream - "Share activity and comments in real-time"

Login Button - "Users Login to your site with FB credentials"

Recommendations - "Personalized recommendations to users"

 

Since Facebook is the largest and most powerful Social Network on the planet right now (and doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon), how can YOU harness some of that power?  Making your site's experience a little more socially engaging could increase growth and connectivity. Going to Facebook.com to engage with others is great and I recommend it.  However, if Facebook developers are now providing Plug-in tools like this, why not take advantage of this opportunity to put your site on the forefront using their social media power?

Facebook has ALL the faces for sure, and now they're offering YOU a way to get "plugged-in!"

     

Training | Mobile | Content | Widgets | Agents

"May this blog be just one more planted seed of wisdom that helps you or your business blossom today!"