Come down to Ceili’s Irish Pub to “Learn what Thomas Hobbs, Nine Inch Nails, Red Bull and Provident Security all have in common…. As well as what you can do to stand out from your competition and get noticed, without hiring ‘professionals’.”
I saw an interesting Facebook status update this morning. An Ubertor client, Jim Duncan, from the Central Virginia area is at a Realtor ethics course today and updated his Twitter and Facebook profile to say:
Jim is twittering: Some realtors believe in showing the “potential” of a property in pictures – removing powerlines, trees, fences, changing color of house,.6:36am
My question is – do many Realtors photoshop their photos? what is ok? what is over the line? what do you do?
Seth Godin recorded a podcast with a few big name authors the other day. Definitely worth the time to listen. Along with Seth is Chris Anderson the author of The Long Tail, Tim Ferris the author of the Four Hour Work Week and John Jantsch.
(click on the play button to listen – no software needed to hear podcast) boomp3.com
A friend of mine that has been looking for a home to purchase has been asking me some questions about where to look, what to ask, etc. He found a home that he was interested in and asked the agent as few questions. Here is the email that he sent to the agent:
HI There,
I’m interested in looking at your listing @ [address]… Can we set up a time to see it tomorrow or Tuesday?
Can you give me a little more information in the meantime?
What are your favorite things about this house, what are your least favorite?
Thank you
Some pretty basic questions. All my friend had seen were some pictures on the internet and read a little description abut the home. Here is the response that he got from the agent:
sorry [address] sold for $920,000
The real estate agent
- did not address my friend by name
- did not use correct punctuation
- did not ask any questions about what he was looking for
- did not even answer his basic questions about the home
- did not offer comparable listings to view
- did not setup a time to talk on the phone
- did not setup a time to meet in person
My friend is not working with an agent, yet, but I would think that an inbound email like this could not be a better lead.
Here is a potential response that comes to mind:
Hi [first name],
Thanks for your email about my listing.
It actually sold the other day for $920,000. It had a really great coach house in the back and a little suite in the basement that will be a bit of a mortgage helper for the new owner.
Is that the kind of home that your looking for?
I would be pleased to meet up with you to understand more about your requirements and go through other similar homes. Did you have some time to meet?
Thanks for your interest and I look forward to speaking with you.
Sincerely,
Steve
The power of video is awesome. TechCrunch.com, the hugely popular tech blog wrote a post the other day asking for 60 second (video) elevator pitches without using product demos or screenshots. The post was taken off of TechCrunch quite quickly but I emailed in the quick video that I made anyways.
Duncan Riley, the author of the post and the one who suggested people send in videos decided to write a different post about startups using video to promote themselves, and I’m assuming because I got my video into him so quickly he included me. (actually, no idea how he picked, but I’m quite happy that mine was included)
TechCrunch.com has 6 to 8 million visitors per month to their website so this exposure is outstanding. Thanks to Duncan for including me.
Here is the video I submitted:
The beauty about it being video is that it is my message. Not a reworded version or a polished version, it is my words, my version which can’t be adjusted. The really great thing about the use of video to promote your product or service, especially in the Web 2.0 world, is that it is very viral. That post on TechCrunch.com has triggered other bloggers, especially the ones in the real estate community to post on their blogs about Ubertor being written about on TechCrunch, which in turn exposes us to their readers.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Uber-Real Estate Blogger Dustin Luther kindly mentioned and embedded the video in his blog
- TechVibes, Canada’s version of TechCrunch also mentioned and embedded the video in their blog
This video took me a couple of takes and then was loaded onto YouTube. Maybe all in all it took me 1 hour. The exposure is massive and the costs is minimal.
Is there something like this that you could do to promote your real estate business?
(Testing Google Ads Below)
Video Transcription: Hi. My name is Steve Jagger and I’m the co-founder of Ubertor. Ubertor is a website software program that allows realtors to build and maintain their websites. You can go to ubertor.com and set up a website yourself that takes about 90 seconds for the process to happen. And from there, you can manage, manipulate your own website. It’s really easy to punch your own domain name, add pages to lead pages, change the page names, add listings, add photos, virtual tours, the system automatically creates the slideshow of your photos for your listing. Couple of neat features the system has built to follow google’s webmaster guidelines so that the website’s complying with the big search engines in the world is looking for from a website. Plus, one of the neat features is that it’s built in CSS but we’ve unlocked the CSS so that any CSS designer or programmer can get in there and manipulate any of our websites. So it’s a templated system for agents who just wanna get a website up and running but the one’s who wanna go for a completely customed look can do that as well but you know having any web designer that has CSS skills, go ahead and manipulate the system themselves. So, that’s what we do. We power sites from all over North America. We’ve been doing it for a few years and thanks for watching this video.
I saw a blog post over at Realty Support that was discussing some customizations that a CSS programmer did to an Ubertor clients website. Looks like Tracey Lebedovich, the designer, created a custom look for James B and then had GetCConsulting do the CSS work to bring the design to life within the Ubertor software.
Take a moment to check out JamesB.ca and you can see what “the man who tamed Ubertor” did. They have done some pretty unique things on his website and it looks really great.
Here is what Tracey said about GetCConsulting:
“And on that note… You’ve done an absolutely wonderful job on this site John. You should now be officially recognized as the man who tamed Ubertor and created a one-of-a-kind, custom-looking design within the constraints of a template! You should be congratulated for pushing the design and function limits to the max. Thanks for your patience and attention to detail – it shows.”
Here is what John emailed me:
“This is a major makeover using a high-quality custom design from Tracey Lebedovich at gloriousday.com and certainly the most ambitious Ubertor project that I’ve ever coded.
jamesb.ca clearly demonstrates the quality of website that a good designers and CSS programmers can accomplish with Ubertor.”
Congrats to Tracey and John for pushing the customization abilities of Ubertor.
Julie Miller from West Vancouver talks about her Ubertor websites
Dara Sklar from RealtySupport.ca talks about her thoughts on Ubertor
You can signup for an Ubertor website anytime at http://order.ubertor.com. You will get your first 30 days free so that you can play with the features available. If you have any questions just click on the live help button and our client service team will be pleased to assist you.
