Google Real Estate vs realestate.com.au

Image via Wikipedia

I've been reading a lot lately about the recent addition of real estate to Google maps in Australia and a lot of discussion has been generated over its value to the real estate industry, not to mention the general public who use the internet to search for property listings and rentals.


So far, to my knowledge, of the main portals only myhome and homehound have uploaded listings to Google, although I’m sure that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au internally have been in discussions about the merits of uploading all their listings to Google.


Google will have a full time job controlling the quality of listings available, and making sure that old, outdated or sold stock is removed, just look at the issues that myhome.com.au faced when it first launched in the market with trying to maintain quality with its listings. Keeping the listings current and fresh will only be part of the problem for Google, removing sold properties and watching out for the lead generators, that is 3rd party players who will list a property and then sell the lead on to the agent.


During a presentation to one of the major franchises on Tuesday night I was asked my opinion on this very subject and in follow up discussions with a number of people in the industry, this is it seems, more about the potential changing of the guard than anything else.


There is a feeling in the real estate community that Google may just break the monopoly of realestate.com.au.


Well, I thought I’d provide you with a link to an article that Simon Baker, ex CEO of realestate.com.au has written on his blog about this very subject, will it work for Google and what, if any impact will it have on realestate.com.au in the future.


To read the article click here

.Mobile Phones Beat PC’s for Young Women

Back in December of last year I wrote a post on the future of the Internet in 2020, and in that post one of the predictions was that mobile devices would be the primary connection tool to the Internet and social media for most people. Well I thought I’d revisit the progress of that statement and look at if the mobile device is in fact having any impact on searching trends.
Some new research from a company in the US SRG, has found the mobile phone is displacing the PC among US women in terms of usage – especially in the 12-24 age group, the survey has found that young women spend twice as much time with their cell phones as women over age 40.

The survey also revealed that more than 80% of US women now use a wireless device and 17% use a smartphone, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or models from HTC, Samsung, LG or similar. Among those in the 12-24 and 25-39 age groups, smartphone ownership is now 23%. In contrast 11% of women ages 40+ own a smartphone.
When asked about the top benefits of owning a smartphone, the top answers among women were convenience, the ability to send texts and email, and access to social media online.
When asked what technology had the most impact on their life in the past two years, women overall picked the internet, followed by the PC/computer, and cell/wireless in a distant third spot. This changed amongst young women, where a wireless device took the #1 spot:

So how does that impact on how they use social media?

The study found that more mobile usage and smartphone ownership is enabling women to bypass the traditional PC to upload their pictures to social media sites:
Nearly 74% of 12-24 year-olds say they have taken a photo with their cell phone in the past month.

Young women are twice as likely have used the internet browser on their cell phone in the past month.

22% of 12-24 year-olds used their mobile device to access Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in the past month, making them four times as likely as older women to have accessed social media such as a Facebook profile or MySpace page on their mobile phone.
From that research and the upward trend of smart phone usage, particularly amongst women, who are the bigger users of social media, you don’t need to be Einstein to work out that the smart phone will be the primary connection tool for the Internet and social media online well before 2020.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave me a comment on this post.

What Can I Share? Not ‘What Can I Get’ Selling

As many of you will know, I’ve done a some work in the past with Grant Thorpe, business coach, professional speaker and mentor, and he is always an inspiration when talking or working with him, so I thought that I would share with you some of his words of wisdom.

As I would like to expand this blog by including articles from other authors, I’ve decided to kick this series off with an article from Grant, so I hope you enjoy this and that you get some ideas and motivation from this.

So please read on and enjoy!

“One of the most effective ways to grow your business is to have your existing clients refer new business to you. After all, they are already using your services and continue to do so because they are satisfied in all respects.

People do not have a natural mind set to look for opportunities to refer our ’service providers’ to colleagues, friends or family. The focus is often on what am I getting not what I can share.
By referring a service provider to someone within your sphere of influence you are achieving three key things.

• You are giving your friend or colleague a chance to use a service or product they may not have been aware of if you had not brought it to their attention - a gift to them!

• You are supporting someone who is currently doing business with you (your service provider) and feeding them additional business.

• And you are fostering a reciprocal arrangement which will start to lead to mutual referrals between two parties that already understand each others businesses. A chance for you to get some business back!

Referrals work in such a simple way but it requires that you first train everyone around you to refer, remember it is not a natural state for them to think this way. This can be done in a couple ways, by referring to them first and by association they will start to see the rewards from this practice. Give and you shall receive!

And secondly by constantly asking all those around you if they know anyone who is thinking of ‘needing your service’ in the near future? A key point here is you are not hounding the person you know to do business with you, you are asking them to refer you to anyone they know who is thinking of needing you in the near future.

Once you get a referral it is very powerful, the new client comes to you with ‘advocacy’ the blessing of your mutual contact, and in many instances will not even bother to get your competition in the door for a comparison. The business is yours!
We have a natural filter in place that stops us seeing this ‘potential business’ which is right in front of us every day.So we need to first train ourselves, then all around us, to open up this filter and to start looking for potential clients through the people we already know and are already doing business with.

To ensure that you start thinking this way, the first step is to make it a new personal minimum standard to simply ask every person you are in contact with if they know anyone who could use your service in the near future. That’s everyone, even the person at the grocery store checkout, or your lawyer, or your mother! Leave no one out of the equation. Everyday we walk over ‘Fields of Diamonds’ and don’t see these opportunities because we are so busy working to create business, when if we just asked…….?

Read more about the results Grant Thorpe can achieve for you on his website at http://www.grantthorpe.com/

On Line Reputation Management

On Line Reputation Management, four words that you as a business owner should be very very aware of, why? because these four words can ruin your reputation and can directly influence whether a consumer does business with you or your company.

I’ll share a story with you about a friend of mine who has recently decided to upgrade their current home by building their own, and over the weekend ,visited a number of display homes of several well known national building companies. The sales people were very polite and helpful, the display homes beautifully displayed and as a result of this first experience, they were very excited about the prospect of building their own home.

When they got home, just to check out the credentials of both of these very well known builders, they typed into Google, “complaints about (I’ve removed the names for privacy reasons) company” and what was displayed was pages and pages of consumer complaints about the companies services, or should I say lack of service, once the contracts had been signed.

My friends have now decided not to use either of these companies because of the range of complaints against them.

One thing that stood out to me, was that neither of these builders had attempted to try and rectify or even respond to these complaints, yet this simple search has just lost them approx $500,000 in business, that was the cost of building the home.

Word of mouth has changed due to the influence of social media and where once a consumer who’d had a negative experience with a company, could only influence their circle of friends at a Sunday get together, today are able to publish their comments to hundreds of thousands of consumers via forum sites and blogs. So word of mouth brand building has changed forever, if you’re not aware of the impact of this then now’s the time to learn and quickly!

There are numerous forum sites active on the Internet, not just Google, that carry complaints from consumers about all sorts of businesses, in fact any company that has a transactional business, deals face to face with the public or advertises on the web is vulnerable.

When planning my last holiday, tripadvisor.com became my best friend, and I changed my airline or hotel choice after reading what other consumers had to say about complaints or comments about their experience with the companies.

It’s estimated that over 40% of consumers who see a negative search engine result, will not use that company, and I cannot imagine how much business has been lost to companies that feature on these forum sites, and more importantly, these businesses are probably not even aware they’re losing business on the web.

So it’s time for you to set up an On Line Reputation Management strategy for your business today, you need to Monitor, Manage and Repair.

Setting up Google alerts is a great start, include keywords that you want to monitor, and once a day Google will send you an email giving you all the information if your name or business is mentioned on the web. Sites such as trackur.com,serph.com etc will all help you monitor your on line reputation.

My advice to you is start monitoring your brand on line today, you just never know who might be searching you or your business right now.
If you would like more information on how to protect your brand on line, please let me know via this blog and I’ll be happy to assist you in setting up an effective strategy to monitor your on line reputation.

Twitters Got Worms!!

Back in January I wrote about hackers striking at Twitter and adding a few nasty little comments to Britney Spears and Barack Obama’s Twitter pages, well the hackers have done it again, with 2 worms being let loose over Easter.

The first spam worm from a web site called Stalkdaily, infected Twitter profiles and forced Twitter accounts to send updates towards the StalkDaily web site, this was then followed up by a second worm called mikeyy. This worm, posts unwanted messages on your update page and appears to be more of nuisance than a threat.

If by some chance you are a victim of this worm, you can visit this link to get it removed.

The best way to avoid these worms is to use the following 3rd party applications,Tweetdeck and Seesmic .

Good luck and watch out for mikeyy!!

The Growth Of Social Media Sites Continues

It seems there is no holding back the growth that social media sites are achieving with on line consumers month after month, and with new research published over the last few days, any company that does not seriously consider integrating a social media strategy into their marketing and communications plan really needs to rethink and refocus.

Just looking at Twitter, the latest Nielsen Online figures indicate a massive growth of 1,382% year over year in February 2009 with more than 7 million US unique browsers for the month, compare that to January when it achieved 4.5 million US unique browsers, a growth factor of 50%, in one month.

Overall, US visits to social networking sites increased 4% in February vs the same month last year, with Myspace and Facebook still competing for a share of the market. Myspace winning the overall battle according to Hitwise, with Facebook the big winner with a growth of 149% over February 2008. Facebook also achieved good solid growth from the 35+ market, which grew 23% in February, whilst Myspace's grip on the older demographics is starting to slip.

The social media revolution is also affecting the way the average internet consumer uses the medium, with the use of the internet for on line entertainment decreasing by 29%, being replaced by on line communication sites.

So if all of this wasn't enough to get you thinking about taking social media seriously, couple it with the on line consumers attitude to business and social media.

In a March 2009 Netpop Research study, 93% of social media users say companies should have a social media presence,whilst 85% believe companies should not only be present, but should actively interact with consumers via social media sites. 56% of social media users feel a stronger connection and better served by those companies when they interact in social media environment. So, there you have it.

In my travels within the real estate industry, I still have business owners tell me they have banned staff from using Facebook and Myspace in company time, well my argument against this policy, is to employ your staff to work on your company profile as a trade off, so if they spend 4 hours a day on Facebook, get them to spend 50% of the time on building your business profile and updating the site, after all the fastest growing demographic using Facebook is 35+, right in the middle of the real estate buying public.

As a start to creating your social media strategy, you can read my earlier posts here and here, these posts will help you enter the world of social media and show you how you can start to build a strategy for your business that will help you engage your customers more effectively and create the social media handshake.
Good luck and let me know of I can assist you in any way, to make this an easier journey for you.

Here is a copy of the latest Hitwise results for your information:

Social Media - Defining Your Social Media Strategy

Hi everyone, I thought you might enjoy my podcast: Mike Andrews Real Estate Technology Podcast

- - Mike