I was forwarded the following question from our customer service department today:

I love this new flier feature. The only question I have ( don’t laugh) is when I publish it to whatever place…where does it actually go and who sees it??

We’re definitely not laughing.

Why? Because it’s a more common question than you might first imagine. Those of us who spend the bulk of our time online tend to think everyone is familiar with these new Web 2.0 distribution portals, but that’s just not true. The vast majority of real estate agents I meet in my travels have never heard of Edgeio, Vast, Propsmart or Oodle. More have heard of Trulia, but not many more and even though everyone has heard of Google, Google Base is not a known commodity. So here’s the short answer.

Each of these sites is a search engine.

Some are strictly real estate, but others cover the classified gamut. Consumers go to these sites to search for homes. And you want to be where the consumer is searching. That only make sense. So, we’ve simply made it easier for you to do so. Once you’ve created a flyer, you can choose which of the sites you want your information sent to and we send them a “feed” of the new information.

It usually takes 24 to 72 hours, depending on the site and the timing of the feed. Unfortunatly, none of that is under our control, but your listing will eventually show up on these other search engines. And the more places the consumer can find you, the better.

Take some time to search around on these sites so you can see what consumers are seeing. You may be surprised by what you find.

Less than an hour after we “soft launched” our new features, I got an email from one of our long time clients, Doug Scott. Doug is an avid supporter of RealEstateShows.com, but his email was less than flattering. He was unhappy. Specifically, he was unhappy with the social bookmarking links that now came up at the end of his Shows and was concerned about people leaving his site.

Doug was only one of two people that first day that had this reaction. Of those who took the time to comment, most were excited to see these options for social sharing presented in this way. Doug didn’t say the following, but what we heard in Doug’s comments was this…. “Don’t force things on me. You shouldn’t decide for me what new technologies I should buy into. That’s for me to decide.”

Of course, I made an effort to “educate” Doug on the potential value of these links. But ultimately, Doug knows his clients and his market better than I’m ever going to know them. And he should be the one to decide how he wants to work with them. Not us.

It doesn’t take a thousand voices to deliver the truth. One will do.

So, we went back to the drawing board and rethought how this should work. What we came up with has already been implemented. Here’s how it works now: The “Get Link” and “Get HTML” icons, as well as the Social Bookmarking Icons will be OFF by default. They are now turned on at the Show level. This is done in the “Edit Buttons” area.

Here is a short video to show you how.

Doug, thank you for helping us make our product better for everyone.

What is an RSS Feed and why should I care if RealEstateShows.com now has them?

Since we announced that your public Shows would be available via RSS Feed, as a full list or by category, this has become a common question to our customer service department. Several clients called in wondering what they were and others wondered how they could be used. This is an attempt to answer that question, though I’m sure it may raise more questions in the process.

What is an RSS Feed?

Back in May I wrote a post called, Ever Wonder How Oprah Would Describe An RSS Feed. There I pointed to Stephanie Quilao, who I think explained RSS in the simplest way possible in her post, How To Explain RSS The Oprah Way. For a great understanding of how RSS Feeds work, go give her post a read. (Click Here) It will give you a good grasp of the technology and how to use it..

How would I use RSS Feeds on RealEstateShows.com?

In short, an RSS Feed allows you to push information out to the Internet in a way that others can get to it easily. It “syndicates” content so it can be shared easily. Your goal is to get information into the hands of the most people, in the simplest way possible. That’s what RSS will do.

The most common way to access RSS Feeds is via a Feed Reader. I like Google Reader, personally. Attach the link to your Shows feed to your email signature, so your clients can subscribe and be notified each time you make a Show public. Put a link to your Shows feed on your website and anyone interested will be updated as well.

We see the feeds as a way for you to get more bang out of your RealEstateShows.com subscription. Many of you are now using blogs to market to your area. We decided to distribute via RSS, rather than a closed widget system, so you could use any RSS widget you wish. Widgetbox is a great source. Pulling your Active Listing Shows or your Neighborhood Shows into the sidebar of your blog will give them more exposure. Plugins also exist to automatically write blog posts based on an RSS feed - like Wp-O-Matic. This is a plugin for self-hosted Wordpress blogs. So, that means each time you made a Show public, your blog could be updated and a post automatically written based on the content in your Show. Does this apply to all of our clients? Certainly not, but those who can use this will have a big advantage.

“Syndicate Your Real Estate Listings With RealEstateShows.com” - I Still Don’t Get It.

That’s understandable. Even though RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, it’s not all that simple to understand! Luckily, the RSS Feeds are also being used by our new Flyer distribution system coming on August 21. So you’ll still get the benefit of distributing your listings if you simply use that new feature for your listings. All you’ll really need to know how to do is click a few buttons and we’ll take care of the rest.

When we release the feature, we’ll be writing more specifically about how to use it and give you specific ideas and examples to learn from. There will also be how-to videos. Right now, we are feverishly working on making sure it does exactly what it is supposed to do. And we’re excited about the possibilities.

Costs associated with Realtor.com are set by Realtor.com. We simply manage the process for you. If you are a Showcase Listing Ehancement customer with Realtor.com, there is no charge to link to Realtor.com. If you are not, Realtor.com charges us to facilitate the link and we pass that cost on to you. This is true for ALL PicturePath™ Partners.
When you click the link to send to Realtor.com we send information from your property details to Realtor.com’s database. If they find a match and show that the real estate agent who owns the listing is a Showcase Listing Enhancement customer, then you get the submission screen with no fee.

If Realtor.com sends back a negative response you will get the screen to pay $25.

This can happen for 3 different reasons.

1. Realtor.com does not have your listing as a Showcase listing.
2. The MLS# is incorrect or has not posted on Realtor.com yet ( it is too new)
3. Either your street address, city, state and/or Zip code do not match exactly to what Realtor.com has.

Please use the MLS Number in a search on Realtor.com before you submit. Verify that your listing is active on Realtor.com, that it is a Showcase Listing (with the yellow border around it) and the that address is exactly how you have it in your Property details on your Real Estate Show. Two computers are talking to each other and they are NOT intuitive. They are looking at characters only and all the characters have to match. Extra characters will generate a negative response as well, like an extra space in a city name.

If you continue to have trouble please send us the Show #’s you are trying to link to Realtor.com and we will try to help you sort it out. All customer service emails should be sent to info@realestateshows.com.

In an effort to maintain our high level of service, this notification is to inform you of an upcoming maintenance window in the Data Center at RealEstateShows.com.

The window for this maintenance will be from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Pacific daylight time on Saturday, April 21, 2007.

No public Shows will be impacted. So any Show created before this time will be viewable at all times wherever they may be linked.

We will be performing upgrades and maintenance on the Core routing infrastructure in the data center. Due to this maintenance, there may be several brief interruptions of service while traffic switches over from one device to another. So, to prevent any possible mishaps, you will be unable to log into your account and you will be unable to create Shows during this time frame.

Again, no public Shows will be impacted. You clients will not be impacted by this maintenance.