Today, a call triggered an idea, triggered a quick project, triggered this post. And where did this trigger all start from — well from one of the great REALTORS I met at this years REALTOR Land Institute Conference. Todd (sorry didn’t get your last name) called me this morning and asked for some recommendations on a quick way to follow up with other REALTORS after a showing.
I’m sure there are some gadgets and sites that are out there, but the first thing that came to mind was linking a web form to a Google spreadsheet. What this would allow, would be a very easy way to create a web form that you can email to the agent, that would then update a spreadsheet for further data slicing and dicing.
This of course is one of those things that probably makes a little more sense through a demo, than explaining over the phone and/or sending some links. So Todd - here is a quick and dirty proff of concept ‘Showing Feedback Form’. It links directly to a Google Apps spreadsheet, which can be downloaded into Excel for pure data fun.
Posting your listings online should be a standard procedure. And from a marketing point of view, the more places a listing appears, the better. The downside is that if you want your listings on half a dozen sites, you have to enter listings manually to each site or invest money in developing an automated system. And if the price changes, you need to update each site individually. So even if you want your listings everywhere online, the amount of time you have to invest in posting and updating often makes widespread listing aggregation more trouble than it’s worth.
Fortunately, some powerhouses in the listing aggregation realm recognized this problem, too. In January 2008, Google, Yahoo, Zillow, and Trulia began working together to create a single, standardized feed that would facilitate the marketing and advertising of properties on multiple Web sites. And with help from the National Association of REALTORS(R) and the newly formed Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO), they’ve achieved their goal in record time.
Continue reading ‘Getting your listings out there’
