3 Tools Realtors Can Use to Increase Sales on the Web

Greg Meyer is the customer experience manager and listening post for Gist. Reach Greg online at @GregAtGist on Twitter, or at greg@gist.com.

Realtors are passionate people, especially about their relationship with customers. One of the ways that they connect with these customers today is through the use of social media, and the methods for doing so are, themselves, becoming much more varied and sophisticated.

Realtors are also dealing with much more savvy customers. Today, customers want to buy a house or refer a real estate agent to a friend on TwitterTwitter, FacebookFacebook and other platforms, and agents know they need to be there to provide an open door to customers and provide an authentic, unique experience along the way.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely already familiar with social media 101. So, what are some of the ways you can increase home sales with the latest tools? And, how can you reinvent the home buying experience in clever, innovative ways? Here are three recommendations and accompanying tools that will not only increase sales, but will enhance the overall customer experience and set you apart from the competition.

It’s easy to upload static, one-room images of homes without giving your customer any real knowledge of what the home actually looks like. Instead share true-to-life panoramic images of your properties.

360 Panorama, an iPhoneiPhone app from Occipital, allows you to do just that –- share rich, full images of properties that are stitched together in real-time without any photo-editing work on your part. You can easily share these images over social networks like Twitter and Facebook to give your customers a deeper glimpse into their next potential home.

The broader trend: Be a salesperson, but sell something real — don’t just sell an idea. Easy-to-do panoramic images not only highlight the actual nature of the home, but give your customers a realistic expectation.

Many people look online for an agent who knows the most about a given area or city. For realtors, it has become more about adding credibility while still making it easy for customers to get to and understand the information they need to make an informed, home buying decision.

There are plenty of chart making tools out there, but the one that I’ve found to be most useful is FusionCharts.

Combine this with data pulled from Zillow and Trulia APIs (or if you prefer, their widgets) and you have a deep, intelligent way to inform your customers on everything they need to know before making a purchase. Anything from the latest mortgage rates in their state to historical home prices by zip code or neighborhood.

The broader trend: Differentiate from the crowd by being known as the realtor who provides deep insights into what is, at times, a data-deluged market. By providing credibility-building information and sharing it via social networks, you’re providing a transparent view of your unique understanding and also educating your customers on everything they need to know.

You’re busy, and so is the marketplace. There are plenty of agents in your neighborhood today and all of them want to sell your customers a house. The problem is that none of “your” prospective customers can find out what they need to know without you. So, how can you make finding a house as easy as possible?

Create a comprehensive and easy-to-use property listings site with AgencyLogic’s PowerSites tool. PowerSites is a single property website generator that has robust property listing layouts. The trick that makes this tool stand out from the rest though is its integrated social marketing approach.

First, you create the PowerSites listing, which comes loaded with high quality photo options and a selection of professional, real estate-specific layouts. Then, your PowerSites listing is automatically added to your Facebook profile or page, depending on your preference. There are also options for video, blog and podcast integration for those of you who want to beef up the listing even more.

Here’s an example of a complete listing.

Hopefully, knowing about these customized and task-specific real estate tools will take your customer interactions to the next level on social networks and elsewhere online.

It’s about making the home buying experience that much easier by delivering realistic images, deep data visuals and an integrated marketing presence to customers through robust tools, while still supporting your customer in one of the most emotional and important purchases they will ever make: Buying their next home.

Disclosure: Gist is a MashableMashable sponsor.

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Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto, MarsBars

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Kindle gets praise. State of e-ink color, Book sales vs Ebook sales. Publishers vs library remote-lending. Amazon e-book furor

MORE NEWS BITS
The image at the left comes from a Wikipedia entry in Poland on the Kindle(s).

I also came across a Sept. blog entry by Andrew Bolster referencing this blog's article on software update v3.0.2 (which is still the current version, as v3.0.3 is still in 'early preview' state), and that update has also solved quite a few initial problems for some who have tried the early preview.

  " In short, I have never had such an aptly timed update; Its as if Amazon have psychically heard me over the Whispernet and fixed more or less everything.

  " Oh, did I mention? The e-ink screen renders advanced latex-style math perfectly! This frankly amazed me. But the best thing I can say about the screen is the oft-proclaimed readability is, if anything, understated. "   He adds:

'   The iPad is a jack of all trades; ebooks, games, browsing, social media, media viewing and generation, and more stuff that I could never think of.  The Kindle is an ebook reader, literally born and bred, with a infant browser incubating along side.  When I’m reading something in an e-paper or an e-book that I have no idea about, I can pop over, spend 5 minutes familiarising myself with the wikipedia article, and go back.

  I can comfortably read google reader (save for the videos) at a bus stop or on the train.  If I come across a truely inspiring piece of prose, I can share it with my social network in situ. '

He's describing almost-anywhere 3G wireless when he mentions what he can do at a bus stop or on the train.  Not a day goes by when I'm not asked about the WiFi-only vs 3G/WiFi Kindle.  He describes pretty well what is possible with the latter -- and on a global basis.  I've emphasized the feature, since 2008 when I got my first Kindle, but until the last month, most reviews or comparison articles have not mentioned a feature (now international) that normally costs so much (web-data access on demand) but which is actually available on the Kindle  (UK: K3) for free now in large areas of the world.

CNET: "Why the Kindle is the Greatest Gadget of the 21st Century"
Yes, that sounds like advertising hype, but it's written by the often tough CNet folks, in this case Jason Jenkins in the UK, and this kind of headline or story is not that unusual anymore.

' In the past decade, we've seen gadgets that subsume others, products that are devilishly shiny and widgets that are superbly simple to use.  But there's only one that feels like the work of magic -- the Amazon Kindle. '

Wait, there's that word again.  And there's also credit given (below) for something not often mentioned in the comparison reviews:

' Initially only available in the US, when the time came to launch it to the rest of the world, Amazon could have done what every other electronics company would have done and taken years to painstakingly negotiate a data deal with a different phone network in every country, releasing it in each territory as they went.

But that would have taken too long, so Amazon said "Screw it" and launched an international Kindle that worked everywhere and piggy-backed AT&T's American network.  The risk of incurring ruinous data roaming costs must have been huge, but that one bold step catapulted the Kindle into book-reading hearts across the globe. '

The CNet website is holding a 'tournament' in which people are asked to 'vote' for their favorite gadgets of the century, and this is just one of the gadgets being matched against other ones.

That Color E-Ink Reader Demo'd in Japan
While there was a commercial photo released the other day that looked fairly nice but ultra subdued in color (and those trying it said it was quite slow and the color layer over the E-Ink caused a loss in contrast and was not as sharp or clear as an LCD image), I saw some pics today, at Nate's TheDigitalReader blog, from the FBD 2010 trade show in Japan this week.  The Hanvon Reader from China is the first reader to use the new "Triton" e-ink technology.

  At best, one of them looked like the old hand-painted color postcards we used to see at the beach.  Most of them did not show clearly that there was color.  Also see more at netbooknews.com.  No surprise then that Jeff Bezos had considered e-paper type color not ready, judging by these and even by the considerably more 'colorful' picture at the right from RegHardware.

  While E Ink demo staff mentioned the "thousands of colors," we are used to seeing millions on our computer monitors and in the best tablets.  The resolution on the Hanvon's 9.7" screen is only 800x
RegHardware's Tony Smith adds, "Even so, E Ink marketing chief Lawrence Schwartz said that the company didn't believe Triton was an e-book reader component so much as a technology that will enable e-newspapers.  Of course, there aren't going to be separate e-newspaper, e-magazine and e-book devices - they'll all become one, 5, 7 or 10in tablet.  Since newspaper color photos are notoriously substandard, that could be a match.  At any rate, few have mentioned that the technology won't be ready for an ereader in China until March 2011.

BOOK SALES DECREASE IN SEPT, ALTHOUGH E-BOOK SALES INCREASE
The Association of American Publishers reported yesterday that their tracking for September showed decreases over September of last year and that "book sales decreased by 12.1 percent on the prior year to $1.1 billion and were up by 3.8 percent for the year to date."

    While Hardcover Children's/YA sales were down 17% in September and the YTD down by 15%, the paperback sales decrease was not as large.  The Adult Hardcover category was down 40%! in September and YTD sales of these down by 8%.  While Adult Paperback sales was down 15.8% for september, YTD rose 1.5% so far.

  "E-book sales continue to grow, with a 158.1 percent increase over September 2009 ($39.9 million); year-to-date E-book sales are up 188.4 percent."

  There's a lot more detail at the website release.

PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION IN THE UK SETS OUT RESTRICTIONS ON LIBRARY LENDING
The Publishers Association has "set out an agreed position on e-book lending in libraries that will see library users blocked from downloading e-books outside of the library premises. Faber c.e.o. Stephen Page announced the new guidelines this morning (21 October) at the CILIP Public Library Authorities conference in Leeds."

  Apparently the Overdrive library e-book lending system was seen as being too lax.   So this is what the Publishers Association there wants:

' Under the new scheme, library users would have to come onto the library's physical premises to download an e-book at a computer terminal onto a mobile device, rather than downloading the book remotely.
The scheme would also see the fee paid by a library to buy a book covering the right to loan one copy to one individual at any given time, and would require "robust and secure geographical-based membership" in place at the library service doing the lending.

"Unfortunately recent activities by some library authorities have only confirmed how potentially damaging e-book lending can be if allowed to operate without controls," he said.

"Some services were lending for remote downloads, without geographical restrictions. This was in breach of contracts between the library and aggregator, and between the aggregator and publisher, and was advertised to the general public as 'free e-books, wherever you are, whenever you want'. Under this model, who would ever buy an e-book ever again?" '

More detail at the link, of course.

AMAZON FACES FUROR OVER A SELF-PUBLISHED PEDOPHILE'S 'GUIDE' ... CODE OF CONDUCT
There is little more reprehensible in this world than any adult sick enough to take advantage of children, so the fact that this book is sold at all is stirring up extreme revulsion and a threat to boycott Amazon if it doesn't pull the book.

The majority of quotes I saw insist that Amazon not sell this book (which Amazon at first saw as censorship they prefer not to involve themselves in but they already don't allow pornography in the self-published books, so they do already exercise censorship).  Also, they don't want to censor based on a book's content being objectionable but another problem is that it is advocating activity that is illegal.  I doubt they'd sell a book that guides you on how to murder or rape with care.  Technorati's Curtis Silver implores Amazon to take the book down and cites a similar situation in 2002.   Others ask that Amazon not cave to pressure to censor but let the customers decide not to buy the book, and Paula Bernstein of Stroller Derby points out also:

' The real irony is that until this morning — when word about the book spread through the Internet — it had only sold one copy.  It’s now #158,221 in the Kindle Store.  All of this moral outrage has only served to create publicity for this sickening book. '

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

View the original article here

Amazon Kindle 3 out of stock outside the U.S. and UK / Black Friday sales

2-3 MONTHS DELAY TO SHIP OUTSIDE USA AND UK
per Kindle 3 product pages

This situation came without warning, except that about 2 weeks ago, one could order up to five Kindle 3's (UK: K3's) at a time, and then it became only three at a time "due to strong customer demand."

  While Kindle 3's are still available for immediate shipment in the U.S. and UK for now, a look at the product page for deliveries outside those two areas shows the following estimated ship date: "Expected to ship in 2 to 3 months."

Even Canada and Australia, two areas very much represented in Amazon Kindle Community Forum discussions, have this shipment delay shown.

At the Kindle forum thread about this today, a posting by Rod Govers reports:

' This is Amazon's reply to a query regarding the 2-3 months delivery on K3s to **international** addresses:

"Due to strong customer demand, Kindle (Latest Generation) is temporarily sold out.  Order now to reserve your place in line.  Orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis.  We will ship your Kindle to you as quickly as possible and will keep you informed by e-mail as we get more precise delivery dates." '

WAIT MAY BE CONSIDERABLY LESS THAN STATED 2-3 MONTHS THOUGH
From some experience with past temporary stock shortages (some longer than others), the DEFAULT time period is given as 2-3 months, but more often than not, in the past year, the factories seem to catch up much sooner than later and the wait is not as long as mentioned in the alert.

  However, that long a period covers Amazon in case, I imagine, they don't get more in stock soon enough.  But I remember this happening with the Kindle 3's when new, also, and the estimated shipping dates with temporary shortages were way off.

 Amazon is now sold (in dribbles and as fast as the stores stock the VERY LIMITED supplies for some reason) at Target, Staples and Best Buy, but in the U.S., the Kindle 3's are still available online.  I tend to prefer to buy these at Amazon online due to their very fast, flexible handling of returns if you don't want the Kindle after all (within 30 days) and of replacements if needed, usually within a day or two.

Interestingly, the far more expensive, less portable Kindle DX Graphite ('KDXG'), better for PDFs, textbooks, and sheet music) is not seeing similar shortages that affect international shipment.  An entire Kindle 3 fits in the screen of the KDXG and it's 1.2 lbs, so is quite a bit heavier.  These are due to be in the stores for holiday shopping, and some of us wonder if there'll be any changes that have kept them from going to stores sooner.  Remember that Amazon has a 30-day full-refund return policy on Kindles for any reason, such as just not wanting it after all.

  They seem very secure with this unique policy on e-readers.  Amazon also has 30-day price protection, returning the difference if a product's pricing is reduced within 30 days of purchase.  That's along with the 30-day full-refund return policy for any Kindle that is just not wanted.

At any rate, I expect that the Kindle 3 shortages will not be the stated 2-3 months.  That would indicate poor planning or far-higher-than-expected demand, and there are a lot of competing products these days even if Consumer Report gives the Kindle highest marks again this week.

BLACK FRIDAY Specials - U.S. and U.K.
While we're on the topic of the online store, both Amazon U.S. and Amazon UK have started their Black Friday week alerts, with some pre-Black Friday specials also..

Bookmark these for significant sales from approximately the 22 through the day after Thanksgiving and probably beyond to some extent:

U.S. Black Friday specials page: Shortcut: http://bit.ly/blackfriday-2010

U.K. Black Friday specials page: Shortcut: http://bit.ly/blackfriday-uk

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

View the original article here