Podcasting is on your real estate website gives you greater ability to sell your Realtor services beyond the scope of the website. Podcasting, a name created by blending “iPod” and “broadcasting”, is simply a way of creating and posting audio files that can be played on an iPod, any computer or MP3 player. Audio files are stored in the MP3 format, a universally accepted portable file format that compresses the audio file for a smaller memory footprint without degradation of the sound.

By using an entry on your blog or a web page on your real estate website, you can make your podcast available for your web visitors to listen to or download. Without any attendant video, podcasts allow your visitor to play your pre-recorded message while reading other areas of your web page. Note: podcasting is only used for audio recordings – video recordings have been named “vodcasts” and take longer to download due to their larger file size.

Podcasting has the added component, similar to real estate blog entries, of building RSS subscriptions. Your real estate clients can receive your podcast file as soon as you post it. Besides the RSS subscription, software, such as Apple’s iTunes, can automatically retrieve and store podcasts.

With the MP3 file format, you can allow your website visitors to download the podcast to their computers for loading on their MP3 players or burning a CD. By making the recording portable, your clients can play your podcasts in the car when visiting the neighborhood or property you talk about. Your listener is not tied to being on their computer to play the podcast. This portability factor allows your podcasts to move your Internet marketing beyond the confines of the computer to a greater level of accessibility for your real estate market.

Podcasting is similar to having your own radio show with the additional benefits of no need to obtain government licenses, adhere to strict federal regulations, constantly find show sponsors or be limited by broadcasting signal strength. With your real estate websites up and operational, you are already your own sponsor and the world is your broadcast area. Any “commercial break” you take will be to extol your real estate services and to reinforce your businesses brand.

Though podcasting may be a new technology for many real estate agents, the simplicity of recording a talk, its portability, and growing popularity, may quickly drive podcasting to become a more heavily used Internet marketing venue. IMCD Web Design has found that online marketing with real estate websites follows traditional marketing trends. The wider you cast your marketing net online with a content management system, blog, targeted Realtor marketing web pages, feature listing tools and IDX web solutions, the more web visitors and sales leads you gather. Podcasting joins this list of online real estate marketing tools. Next, marketing secrets for creating an effective real estate podcast.

Part 1 of 3 – To be Continued…

As south Florida’s condominium and vacation properties take a big hit in the real estate down cycle, Florida real estate websites with high search engine rankings are situated to capture the growing interest of European investors and second home buyers. Real estate agents in south Florida have found that the bottoming prices in condominiums have found their selling point with European buyers looking for warm havens for body, soul and cash.

The Florida and New York real estate markets have an advantage over the sunny vacation properties in California and Arizona in their relative proximity to the European market. Continental travelers have one less travel day each way in reaching their destination and the time difference is three hours better. Florida Realtors are reporting that European investors are not only looking for individual condos, but are looking for entire buildings in which to invest.

With Google’s international dominance for search engine real estate browsing, a Florida real estate website is a must for reaching the European market as well as the perennial retiring baby boomer markets of the Northeast and Midwestern states. IMCD Web Design’ real estate web designs for Florida real estate agents has helped opened their Internet marketing doors to generating sales leads from property buyers far beyond Florida’s borders. IMC websites have successfully positioned real estate agents and brokers to capture sales leads for both the residential and investor markets.

Instead of taking a shotgun marketing approach, IMC real estate web designs use ongoing web content management systems, such as real estate blogs and property listing tools, as well as effective search engine optimization and award-winning graphic design to propel our clients’ websites to high natural placement in the search engine ranking. Our time tested market-specific web designs draw web traffic on both the main and long tail keywords, giving clients a wide spectrum of potential leads.

Contact our Internet marketing specialist to find which real estate web design best fits your needs for capturing a greater slice of your areas real estate market, be it in Florida, New York, Arizona or California. Our pre-market research will help you position your website for consistent leads and return on your Internet marketing investment.

“If the FBI interviewed you today, how could you prove that you’re in real estate?” Questions like these make you sit up and take stock of how well you present your real estate services. Applied specifically to your Internet marketing, “How are people finding my real estate website?” Given the marketing sea change from newspapers to Internet homes for sale searches, checking the visibility of your real estate website is a must for future sales growth and, in some markets, survival.

Choosing your real estate web design company is paramount to creating the best foundation. All IMCD Web Design professional web designs incorporate the necessary search engine optimization, graphic design, web content and a content management system framework for continually adding articles, news and pictures. The search engine optimization is a basic building block to getting first page placement on the search engine results so your website is found by your market when they look for you with keywords.

Building on the web design foundation is your online business blog. A business blog allows owners to continually add keyword-rich informative articles on their area of products or services. The blog’s ability to notify the search engines every time a blog entry is posted also helps increase natural search engine visibility. Using the blog alone without an attached informative website usually results in wide swings of when your website is on page one and when it is buried beyond finding.

After the organic search engine placement, visibility can be purchased with banner ads and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing or search engine marketing (SEM). PPC marketing is paying the search engines to place your real estate website’s hyperlink and description on their first page of results. PPC advertising is priced in an auction setting, with the competitors for keyword placement setting its price. The best use of banner ads is placement on websites that complement yours for target audience, such as chamber or commerce and visitor bureau websites. For getting your business website visible in hot keyword markets, PPC and banner ads Internet marketing are a very effective though possibly expensive way to improve visibility.

Use your traditional marketing to steer clients to your online marketing. The latest poll from the National Association of Realtors found that 14% of buyers first searched for new home in the newspapers and over 80% went first to the Internet. As the age of the buyer decreased, the percentage of the demographic searching online for a home or real estate agent increased. Make sure all your traditional real estate advertising contains your company’s web address. Position your real estate services today for the route the housing market is taking.

Check all your electronic marketing material, from emails to blog entries, to make sure your business website’s address is in the signature or mentioned and linked somewhere. Take stock of what real estate community websites on which you are leaving comments and links back to your website. Are there more places to go?

Take inventory of how your potential real estate clients find your real estate company on the Internet. If your website is not visible on the search engine results, contact IMCD Web Design’ real estate web design sales team and make the move to generating greater sales leads. IMC, with its effective graphic design services can also produce that banner ad your real estate company needs to reinforce your brand and attract home buyers, home sellers, and property investors to your website.

California has seen an increase in Realtors’ dependence on their California real estate websites to keep them active in a state whose real estate market is continuing to feel the full weight of the market turnaround,. In September, major cities in California experienced further price declines, even as the nation experienced higher sales.

How intense is the California market? At one extreme, one Realtor® admitted that if it wasn’t for their ability to sell foreclosure properties, they would be looking for a new line of business. On the other hand, many Realtors are turning to the Internet to preserve and expand their real estate companies.

According to the third quarter report of the California Association of Realtors® (CAR), the top business uses Realtors find for the Internet is to access the MLS and check online listings (9 out of 10 Realtors) and accessing their real estate broker website. Almost every real estate agent sent email, although 7% still are relying primarily on the phone to communicate with their clients.

As technology advances, the cutting edge real estate agents move with it. Over twenty percent were using wireless mobile devices like Blackberrys in order to respond to their clients as quickly as possible. Thirty-two percent of the responding Realtors answered their emails either right when they received them, and most answered within an hour. Still most real estate agents found that keeping up with their emails to be the biggest challenge they face.

A benefit to California real estate agents using one of IMCD Web Design real estate web designs is that as soon as a potential client signs in to their website, an email is sent to them with the contacts information. Interestingly, only 42% of real estate agents responding to CAR’s survey use guest books or contact pages to collect visitor information.

Recognizing that California home buyers and sellers are following the national trend using the Internet to initiate their homes or Realtor® searches, real estate agents use their own personal websites to provide an IDX feed to present home listings, virtual home tours and as a ready contact point. Interestingly, only 7% are using blogs or online real estate forums to boost their visibility.

CAR President William E. Brown reported “Realtors® are doing more [business] than ever on the Internet…As a result, they are generating more business from the Internet than ever before.” Real estate agents and brokers throughout California are shifting to meet the market where ever it moves. As prices bottom out, many areas are experiencing investors moving back into the market to capture property deals.

If you need to improve your Internet marketing position in the California real estate market, contact IMCD about a high impact, high conversion real estate web design that can capture sales leads for your real estate company from the growing investor market as well as the traditional home buyer and home seller markets.

The Web Marketing Association (WMA) assesses real estate web designs as one of the many business web design categories in their annual competition. The WMA’s seven judging criteria parallel the foundational elements IMCD Web Design uses in creating custom real estate websites as well as integrated into their affordable semi-custom real estate web designs. However, IMC adds an eighth criteria to the list: efficacy in generating sales leads and bringing real estate agents and brokers a return on their online marketing investment.

When creating a real estate web design for real estate companies’ sales window on the Internet marketing world, IMC uses the following seven WMA criteria to fashion a website’s marketing appeal:

1. Design;
2. Innovation;
3. Content;
4. Technology;
5. Interactivity;
6. Copywriting; and
7. Ease of use.

Design covers the graphic design, the ability of a website to please the eye and draw the visitor in. Good design creates web pages that “have a sense of balance that blends type, graphics, and rich media with the site’s architecture to create an enjoyable user experience.” The average real estate website entered into the WMA contest scored a 7.4 out of a possible 10 points. Once a real estate websites successfully gains high visibility on the search engines, the design is the next big hurdle in moving visitors to contacts.

As a major item used by visitors to judge your website, poor design lowers credibility and drives potential business away from a website. Interestingly, home builder websites averaged 8 out of 10 scores, higher than real estate agent websites, most likely because the graphic images of their homes and developments are central to the effectiveness of their website’s ability to convert curious web visitors to interested home buyers.

Innovation is adding a “wow” factor to the design, content or use of technology. Industries that ranked lower in innovation were business websites that derived greater return on investment from conservatively meeting customers expectations.

Content and Copywriting are closely allied. Content is the information provided and copywriting is way the information is crafted. The best copywriting contains elements of search engine optimization, originality, readability as well as the basic spelling and grammar. IMC knows how busy real estate agents are in their businesses and has found that offering our agent and broker clients the benefit of professional copywriting services often boosts the effectiveness of their websites content management.

Use of Technology and Interactivity are also closely allied in that as technology advances, real estate websites get more interactive. Basic interactivity would be the mortgage and financial calculators that are standard issue on Realtor websites now. Use of Technology, like graphic design, is a question of balance. As Paul K Kennedy used to say, “Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you necessarily should do it.” Technology that helps web visitors is helpful, but technology that bewilders and confuses tends to drive hard won visitors away.

Ease of use follows on the coattails of graphic design since navigation is a key element of design and moving web visitors quickly to find both the information they are searching for and to the call to action. Graphic design and navigation are two deal makers or deal breaker elements to real estate web design. Done well, visitors stay. Done poorly, visitors go away. In this category also, home builders websites have slightly better ease of use than real estate websites.

When it comes to attracting web visitors, gaining visibility in search engine results, and generating sales leads, IMC has a long track record of positioning real estate agents and brokers for getting a return on their online investment. To improve your Internet marketing campaign, contact IMC’s real estate web design pros. We know how to attract more potential clients to your real estate company.

Are Arizona real estate websites positioned for investors? In the current real estate market, many home values, driven by historic foreclosure rates, are falling below their 2004-2005 valuations. Investors familiar with the Arizona property investors know that at these levels, the post-housing bubble home valuations are below what the value should be just adding the traditional 3 – 6% annual increase for inflation.

How can real estate agents position their Realtor websites for current marketing opportunities? Taking a look at what Realtors are doing with their California real estate websites in a foreclosure swamped market, a good move is making sure the website has content directed beyond the traditional home buyer and home seller markets. Investors have buying criteria different than the traditional residential home buyer and looks for different real estate services from their Realtors.

IMCD Web Design has a several real estate Internet marketing tools that help our clients connect with their area’s investor market. Key to responding to any real estate markets’ changes is having the ability to add content giving web visitors and clients up to date information. A content management system that is easy and intuitive to use is a must.

IMC has two major content management system tools: a real estate blog and an article manager. Both use online software to post new web content, so all an agent or broker needs to add or edit content is a web browser, such as IE Explorer, Mac’s Safari or the open source Firefox browser. Both tools allow users to upload pictures to show properties or simply help catch attention.

The second area IMC assists Realtors website efforts is providing web pages that contain information and keywords that target the investor market. Each page can be customized promote each Realtors’ services and past accomplishments. With home valuations in an area that appeals to investors, using these investor and foreclosed or distressed sale web pages assists real estate agents by providing a means of generating sales leads from their online marketing efforts.

If you need to better position your real estate company to adapt to market changes, such as in the Arizona real estate market, contact IMC to see what investment will put your company in the competition for gathering sales leads of the active property investors in your market. Our track record of effective search engine optimization and attractive graphic design has helped many of our clients with growing and consistent sales leads from the active real estate online market.

Your real estate web design has the same potential sales effect as staging a home for sale. By putting your best foot forward with engaging graphic design, informative and captivating content and ease of use, real estate agents convey their professional Realtor services.

Graphic design is the by far the most impressionable aspect web site visitors use to judge the credibility of the business or agent. Consumer Web Watch found almost 50% of web visitors judge a website’s credibility from the design look. Closer to 25% used the information design to come to their conclusions. As on web designer commented “a poorly designed website does little but make you look like an amateur, even if you aren’t.”

IMCD Web Design has over a decade of experience creating real estate websites whose graphic design has won awards in the web design community. More beneficial to real estate agents is our history of our clients’ websites effectiveness at capturing leads and increasing business. Our graphic design incorporates the best search engine optimization techniques as well as marketing techniques.

Captivating graphic design with effective search optimization and well-written content is the best way small companies can leverage the power of Internet marketing. These three elements – SEO, graphic design and copywriting – are the core foundation to getting a website onto the first page of the search engine results. The size of the company, the size of the marketing firm nor the greatness of the product or services are effective in getting your website to the high placement in the search engine rankings.

Contact IMC’s real estate web design team to see how we can help you “stage” your professional real estate services and put your best foot forward. IMC creates the professional real estate web design optimized for your specific talents and real estate market. There is a custom or semi-custom web design waiting to boost your visibility on the search engines – contact us today and connect to your online sales leads.