Realtors – Agent Reputation

Realtors need to quit trying to manipulate Yelp

Referencing a blog post I wrote on Active Rain earlier this year, I continually see Realtors trying to manipulate their Yelp reviews. Enough real estate agents know about me and my company, Agent Reputation, that I am continually getting questions about how to get Yelp reviews to stick. Or maybe they think there is some kind of conspiracy that requires buying advertising from Yelp in order to get non-recommended reviews published or bad reviews removed.

No conspiracy. There were some overzealous Yelp sales reps back in the day that may have inferred a relationship between reviews and ads but that was firmly dealt with. Anybody that claims different is misinformed.
Yelp does not want you asking for reviews. They want “active” Yelpers to be motivated by the service you provide to leave organic reviews. As a real estate agent, you can have a Yelp presence on your website or reputation marketing program and the Yelpers who feel motivated will know what to do.
DO NOT send out an e mail blast asking everyone you know to leave you a Yelp review. Yelp has an algorithm that tracks the review. If you send out a blast, Yelp will see red flags because too many reviews came in at once which is an indicator you sent out a blast asking for reviews. Secondly they track new Yelp users. They know when somebody signs up just to leave a review and depending on their future Yelp activity, this review will wind up under the line as a non-recommended review. This can also protect you because it will also push some of your bad reviews under the line. So basically if you went to the effort to ask a bunch of non-Yelpers to leave you a review, you just wasted their time when they could have been leaving you a review on Google, Facebook or Zillow.
What is a Yelper? A Yelper signs up to participate in the online review community. They are interested in the reviews of other Yelpers and are motivated to leave their own reviews. Yelpers have a profile photo. They have downloaded the Yelp App to their phone. They check in from businesses they are visiting via the app. They write reviews from these businesses they have checked in from. They have Yelp friends and at the end of the day if these active Yelpers leave you a review, it will be above the line and credible.

Yelp should be embraced. I have real estate agent clients that have over 50 positive reviews with very few under the line. And in fact once these clients get their reviews up they are buying Yelp ads and are killing it.

CJ Hays – Follow me on Twitter

#CJ4marketing

The difference between “Breaking” and “Trending” news in blogging

Of the 4 computer monitors on my desk, one is monitoring breaking news via RSS feeds. I like to stay current on the news of the day and I am looking for opportunities to get Google’s attention via “breaking news” blogging or what has been referred to as “Real Time Blogging”.

Real time blogging is the act of sharing content as it happens.

I am a “what if” kind of guy as I am always thinking of ways my agents can compete online with original content that is going to get the attention of the search engines and their local consumers.

A number of years ago I said to myself, “What if I blogged about breaking news? Would Google notice my post?”

A press release came out from Mayor Bloomburg in New York stating, he was going to regulate the size of soft drink cups sold in NYC convenience stores. At the time, I was blogging for a nutritional company I was consulting for. Within 5 minutes of the story hitting the AP wire, I wrote a simple post that basically stated, “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot drink” and “If you drink that much soda per day you are harming your body”. For the next 5 months my post shared page one of Google with the Huffington Post, USA Today and the New York Times. I was the only non-news source in the search results. For the first 30 days this post was averaging around 7,000 hits per day.

I blogged about a celebrity being arrested in Las Vegas, only as an experiment. I not only wrote about it as the arrest was going down, but I beat TMZ to the punch on the mug shot. 20,000 hits per day for the first 2 weeks on average and the mugshot was in the top-ten image searches for over a year.

Within my research in various experimental blogs I was managing, I was writing about news as it was happening(Breaking) AND popular news(Trending). When I wrote about trending yet popular news, though my posts were indexed, they were really nowhere to be found. At the time my posts came out they were lost in a sea of other posts and news sites.

Blogging about breaking news ranks higher in the search engines then trending news.

So you ask, “CJ, how does writing about breaking, non-real estate related news help me sell real estate or generate leads?” I am glad you asked.

It’s is more of an indirect credibility tool for you and your blog. The search engines notice publication dates and clickthrough activity. If you get their attention enough times, they recognize your blog as a credible news source. Sometimes your blog is located on your website, hopefully in a sub directory(the the right of the .com) and not in a sub-domain(to the left of your domain name). This of course helps your overall SEO and when you write about hyper-local event or properties in your market, you will shoot straight to the top.

My research has also shown me our posts on Active Rain are getting indexed quickly with great positioning. This is because Active Rain is probably recognized by the Google algorithms as a very active and credible repository of original content. If you hyper-local blog about breaking news in your area, there is a very good chance your Activerain.com post will get hit by consumers in your area who can see your contact information.

Writing about breaking news on Active Rain will index quickly with great placement

CJ Hays – Follow me on Twitter

#CJ4marketing

Behind the scenes of a high quality luxury home video

Inman News just featured a luxury real estate video produced by our client, The Daftarian Group. I wanted to pull the curtain back a bit with regard to the production.

Paul and Lili Daftarian of the Daftarian Group, listing brokers of this property, had a vision to communicate luxury, elegance and lifestyle within a short video that would keep the viewer to the end- 2:45 minutes later.

Lili, as the Director of this shoot, enlisted Ray Shak of Shak Cinema as her Director of Photography. He sat down with Lili to storyboard her vision as a real life concept. Ray’s job was to capture this concept from the air and the ground with his crew of 4 videographers. Their ultimate goal was to sell the house and not the car or other objects that help tell this story. Ray stated, “The focus should always be the house. The story kept the video progressing and therefore did not lose the viewer’s attention.”

The still frame prior to the start of the video communicates there will be a story within this video, increasing the probability that the viewer will hit “play”. Most luxury videos I have seen are nothing more than shots of the home from cameras mounted on drones, UAV’s, steadycams, dollies and jibs with no human lifestyle interaction. I feel storylines sell houses.

Within the first few seconds, we see the professional actors Lili hired, Jerry and Veronica, leaving a luxury mall located in the area. This was prior to the store opening in order to shoot in a controlled environment. The car belongs to Paul, so it was always available at any hour.

The next part is really what got my attention when I first saw the video. The UAV shots following the car blew me away. I had never seen that in a luxury real estate video before. Lili stated that it was important to communicate the proximity of the house to the Pelican Hill Resort. The house is a half mile away and is located within the Pelican Hill community. The challenge was that Pelican Hill does not allow filming of the resort. Through the shots of the car driving to and up Pelican Hill along with the wide UAV shot above the house, it clearly communicated this.

Once they get home, and to minimize the time it takes to show off the house, the couple separates, featuring the master bedroom, kitchen, and the amazing game room where they rejoin to share a refreshment outside.

There was one shot that was not planned in the original storyboard. There is a scene that starts at 1:24. As the camera moves through, the couple are standing in the doorway where the UAV leaves west and turns around, looking back to see the couple standing in the doorway from afar. Ray and his crew originally shot that as an experiment. In reviewing the shot, it looked so amazing, they reshot that part of the scene intentionally.

The sellers are still living in the house and Lili did not want to disturb their surroundings, so she provided all of the props that were used in the shoot.

Cameras Used: Red Epic, Red Dragon, Sony A 7s

Interior Shot platforms: Steadycam , Ronin and sliders.

Single Property Website www.sixsunsetharbor.com
Daftarian Group www.daftariangroup.com
Ray Shak www.ShakCinema.com

Thoughts on Inman News Article re Online Agent Ratings

On August 6th, Inman News published an article called, “Online agent ratings may be inflated, but they’re still valuable”, written by Teke Wiggin, Technology Writer for Inman. The article seems to be focused on Zillow reviews. I will go point by point.

“Realtors have become restaurants” is the name of my seminar, so when I saw the opening paragraph of the article stating that consumers were using third party review systems for restaurants, hotels, and product purchases, I was pleased to anticipate the body of the article.

YES, consumers are using third party review systems like Yelp, Trip Advisor and the like to look at the credibility of vendors or products. However, while a foodie may use the Yelp app via their phone to look for a quality restaurant, the majority of consumers are first using the search engines to look for (Google) the name of the business, business professional or product. Consumers are Googling Realtors.

What do they see on page one of the search? Do they see gold stars? Do they see only Zillow? Do they see a Realtor’s Yelp account? Does the Realtor have a Google business page? Do they have Google ratings? Seriously, when a consumer Googles a real estate agent, they had better see multiple review systems in place. Having reviews across multiple platforms increases the credibility of the business professional.

A statement is made in the article that online agent ratings may be inflated. What does this mean? The article seems to tie this statement to the fact that Realtors are only asking the really happy consumers to leave reviews, thus skewing the online rating of the agent. Yes, if you as an agent are guiding ONLY your happy consumers to leave you positive reviews on Zillow or elsewhere, then a consumer may not be seeing an accurate representation of your integrity and professionalism. With that said, most consumers won’t realize this.

Another statement reads, “The reason why negative reviews are few and far between may be because many people who aren’t thrilled with an agent’s performance don’t feel the need to broadcast their disappointment”. I totally disagree. You have heard variations of actions consumers will take depending on their satisfaction with a product or service. They might tell a few people if they’re happy, but they will tell the whole world online if they are really upset!

The question is whether or not the agent is tech savvy enough to have third-party review technologies in place, other than Zillow or an internal survey based system. Yelp can be a little intimidating for agents that don’t know how to use it correctly. You can embrace Yelp to your advantage. I have clients getting 10 solid leads a week from Yelp, but that is for another day.

Google Business is also a huge factor. It is safe to assume that if the largest search engine in the world has a review system, you should probably pay attention to it.

When I had first read the headline that “agent ratings may be inflated”, I thought the article had to do with the fact Zillow reviews can be gamed. And in fact, there are methods to game almost every review system with the exception of Yelp. As a former Fraud Examiner and having worked many online fraud cases, a number of odd agent reviews were brought to my attention which I investigated. I saw review numbers that did not add up.

I know, for instance, when we load a client’s customer list into our CRM, which sends out an email asking them to click on a link to leave an online review, we will get a 25% return. That 25% does not come easy. There is an entire trickle system in place to get the customers to leave their online reviews. I then compare the percentages I am aware of to numbers that seem excessive. When I see rating numbers that are equal to or even exceeding the known transactions of an agent, the red lights go off. I know how it is done.

If you are a Zillow client and you focus on Zillow for your lead generation, then by all means focus on your Zillow reviews, as you will stand out within their marketing system. Same goes for Trulia and Realtor.com. But please open or claim your Google and Yelp pages. I may not click on your website or Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com page to see your reviews.

The Google 7-Pack is now a 3-Pack

About a year and a half ago, the 7-pack for residential Realtors in the US was removed from Google. It still existed for commercial Realtors and for some reason, residential Realtors in Canada. The 7-pack was a tool provided by Google when searching for businesses. You search for a business type and a map would show up in the upper right side of the screen, tied to 7 businesses marked from A through G. You would have to have a Google Business page, formerly known as Google Places, combined with some SEO, a website and hopefully some Google reviews. I personally think the 7-pack was removed to harm SEO for residential Realtors in the US. Six weeks ago the 7-Pack for residential Realtors came back. This was awesome as many of our clients who, via our process were located at the top of the seven-pack.

Yesterday I was demoing our reputation marketing services to a luxury agent in California when I noticed there were only three businesses located on page one of Google where there should have been seven. I had incorrectly assumed because the community was so small, I was only seeing three.

Today this article comes up online called, “Google Local Shakeup: 3-Pack Only, 7-Pack Removed; Addresses & Phone Numbers Gone“, by Jennifer Slegg. Wow, as I was basking in the fact the 7-pack came back, it is now the 3 business “Snack Pack”. You can read the article for the details.

An organic marketing target seven spaces wide would be better but three, but this is enough for us. These business listings are organic in nature and we have a plan that works. Call Us.

Internal vs External Online Reviews for Realtors

“Realtors have become restaurants”. This means consumers are Googling realtors like they would a restaurant, looking for their online ratings and reputation. People want to go to major directories that they trust and rely on everyday for reviews about products or services before they buy. What your prospect sees in the first 5 to 10 seconds in the search engines is EVERYTHING.

Things have changed for realtors online. Back in the day (not long ago), realtors, teams and brokerages dominated the organic search results. Most of the consumer property searches were taking place on realtor or team websites. Now they are using Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin and Trulia for their searches. Even longer ago, the consumer was spending more time on your website reading your content. Today they are looking for houses. They want to see that you have testimonials, but the majority are not actually reading them in detail. In fact, when I was in the real estate website business, we would always have a testimonial page that had a two sentence snippet with a button that said “read more”. Nobody ever clicked on the read more link because they just want to know you have testimonials.

We know realtor reviews are important. We knew this over a year ago when Sean McCrory launched Agent Reputation. Many clients later, the subject is coming up more and more at real estate technology events and national franchise meetings. Reviews were discussed at the T3 Summit and T3 experts released a report on realtor reviews. Placester published an infographic from survey results. I agree with most of the results, and I get the fact that when you are paying Zillow for marketing, it is wise to have as many Zillow reviews as you can get.

I have also heard, “Regain control from 3rd-party review sites”. It has been suggested to use an internal survey system to create internal ratings and reviews that people can see when they go to a realtor’s website. I love surveys to help the agents learn how to better serve their clients. We have surveys, but that is not the focus of this post. Some of the “teachers” out there are promoting INTERNAL reviews because everyone is scared of BAD reviews. They are scared that somebody might go sideways on Google or Yelp. That is OK, providing you have enough GOOD reviews. Having no reviews can be just as bad as negative reviews. People want to see reviews on a major directory that they trust, before making a buying decision. Surveys have shown that if you do not have at least 6-10 positive reviews, many potential clients will not trust your service.

A very high percentage of your prospects, especially listing prospects, are Googling you. What they see in the first 5 to 10 seconds, on page 1 of the search results, is everything. There should be 5 gold stars everywhere and not just the review systems provided by the likes of Zillow and other real estate vendors. It is pretty safe to assume if the largest search engine in the world has a review system, you should be paying attention to it. All realtors should have verified Google business pages so that you have an opportunity to get on the Google 7 Pack (that just came back for residential realtors).

Most agents know they need to focus on agent online reviews. However, as an agent, you need a method to facilitate getting the third-party reviews. We do that.

Let’s get back to the subject matter. If I just want to Google you, how am I seeing your internal reviews? Do I have to assume they are on your website and then go to your website and then click on a link to see them? What if you don’t have a website or are using the free site your franchise or broker is providing you? What the search engines see is more important than your INTERNAL system.

If you have one, how really satisfied are you with your reputation vendor? Are they facilitating your reviews out to the third party sites like Google Reviews and Yelp? Are you in the Google 7 Pack? Call us for a free testimonial commercial.