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.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I am a soon to be RES user and am wondering which camera to buy to use for my RES’s. I saw a post from Jeff regarding the Kodak V705 but I am wondering if I should get the V1253 which shoots 12 megapixel photos in HD but looses the ability to do wide angle. Will the higher megapixels and HD help make the tours look better in the full screen format and is it worth sacraficing the wide angle feature of the V705. I am still a rookie and am sorry fo posting this here. Not sure how all this blogging stuff works. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Alan,
Phoenix, AZ
Oops, here is the link for the camera details
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=11618&pq-locale=en_US
Please let me know which forum I should use for questions like this as I know this has nothing to do with the flyers. I am new at this.
Thanks,
Alan
Phoenix, AZ
Alan, the short answer is no. We make the size of the photos 800×600 pixels upon upload to decrease upload time and to control the download time for the viewer, so the higher resolution will have no impact at all. I would not sacrifice the wide angle. For real estate photography, I’ve never been more confident of a point and shoot camera recommendation.
I once had a site that submitted my listings to Trulia and other places. It seemed like Trulia did not always post my listings. Is this common, a fluke, a policy, or what?
Tell me what you know about this.
Kermit… we’re still learning about why this might occur, though we’ve not seen it yet. I can tell you that if it happens, we’re certainly going to find out why.
Jeff, I like the graphic you used in this blog. May I use it to encourage use of RES?
Sue… of course!
The fact that he is shocked that these students have a different culture and upbringing from his has never struck his mind. ,