Facebook has more than 400 million users, so it's important for any realtor to have a great, professional presence on this hot social media site.

Computerworld has a listing of four of its top application picks to make your Facebook page a great tool to connect as a seasoned real estate agent:

1. Extended Information. Maybe you don't want to list your favorite music or hobbies, but maybe you'd like to list your accreditations. By using extended information, you can list a lot of customized information on your page.
2. My LinkedIn. Using this application, you can display your LinkedIn profile information.
3. NetworkedBlogs. Add ActiveRain, TypePad, or any RSS blog feed to your page. Add any of your own blogs, or you can also add the blogs of your Facebook friends.
4. TwitterTab. Add your Twitter account in three different ways: a running list of your tweets, filtered retweets and your followers.

By adding these kinds of applications, you can raise your visibility as well as your level of customer engagement, more effectively providing customer service and generating leads through this powerful social networking tool.

Read more from Computerworld.

photo credit: ansik

Posted in Internet Marketing, Blogging, Lead Generation, RSS, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing

Real estate search and marketing company Trulia is meeting the requests of consumers and real estate professionals alike with the launch of Trulia Rentals.

The rental search includes millions of listings and built-in features like hyperlocal functionality that allows anyone to rank neighborhoods based on 12 different characteristics, such as restaurants, walkability, safety, shopping, traffic and more. By offering such robust search parameters and advanced features, Trulia hopes to topple popular sites like Craigslist for consumer searches for rental properties. The Trulia Rentals search can also be personalized and is available on mobile devices.

Submitting rental listings, like for sale listings, is a free service, and it can be done manually or through your own RSS feed.

In this video, CEO Pete Flint talks about Trulia Rentals with Techcrunch:

Read more in the Trulia Blog and at Inman News.

Posted in Internet Marketing, MLS, Real Estate Industry, Lead Generation, RSS, Home Selling Services, Web 2.0 Marketing

With the public beta launch of dlvr.it, you can now syndicate all your content from your website or blog's RSS feed to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

It even offers metrics, meaning you can finally measure some return on investment for your social media efforts.

The link to Facebook is applicable to either/or a personal profile or page. Plus, it's simple so even the least tech-savvy people can easily use it.

Read more at Agent Genius and sign up for dlvr.it here.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Blogging, RSS, Technology And YOU, Web 2.0 Marketing

Interviewer: Today were talking with Ed Hardey from Integrity Real Estate Group. He's the Vice Chair for the Metrolist Board and Chair for Metrolist Rules and Regulations. Ed, welcome to the show.

Ed Hardey: Thanks for having me.

Interviewer: We wanna talk a little bit about support services and online marketing. Every agent pretty much these days is involved in online marketing and, of course, they probably need a little help from Metrolist, is that right?

Ed Hardey: Yeah thats right. Thats obviously a big issue in one of the services we provide. So a broker can have their listings go out to places like in IDX feeds, RE Colorado, realtor.com, as well as things through ListHub, which is over 35 sites, okay, you can have your homes go to.

Interviewer: So I dont have a personal website or a realtor has a personal website and they can call Metrolist and say, Id like to have my listings displayed on my website and you sign it, what they call, an IDX agreement, correct?

Ed Hardey: Correct.

Interviewer: Charge for that is?

Ed Hardey: As of March 1st itll be zero; that will be included in the fees for Metrolist.

Interviewer: Flat fee for Metrolist? Okay, and of course, you got to have some type of third party display those listings on your website, whoever that may be, whoever you choose to do that, but theyll work in conjunction with Metrolist to get the data, is that correct?

Ed Hardey: Correct. You get to choose your own vendor, but we provide the data and we update that daily and so thats one of the big pluses for Broker.

Interviewer: Now here is something interesting that I found out, which was, I went back to my third party provider, and I wanted to start displaying new contracts and solds, and they are not equipped yet to do that. When I asked them why, they said because the majority of Metrolist boards, or majority of MLSs across the country, dont provide the feed.

Ed Hardey: You know one of the things...its true, one of the things that we do is we give brokers a choice, including your membership fee, is the professional product that includes active listings. Some people wanted more, under contracts and solds, so we provide that, that is the fee, but a lot of brokers dont take advantage of that and it depends on the broker's individual marketing, what they want to do.

Interviewer: Thats kudos to you and the board, because clearly from talking to the third party provider who works with MLSs all across the country, youre way ahead of the curve because they dont have enough participating MLSs to launch their product.

Ed Hardey: Yeah, in talking about that and making that decision quite a while ago, we saw the data was available regardless whether we provided or someone else, so lets get it right, now let's give our members that option.

Interviewer: Right, now you mentioned some other listings, syndications and distributions. Tell me more about these.

Ed Hardey: Well, probably the biggest one is ListHub, and that allows any broker to, at no charge, distribute the properties to 35 different websites, no additional effort. They can even choose which ones they want, if they only want some of those. One of those websites thats brand new is our exclusive agreement with DenverPost.com. Were pretty excited about; were the only ones that can do that.

Interviewer: Yeah, and now people can go to the classified sections online at Denver Post and search for homes and get the, a lot of the same information.

Ed Hardey: Yeah, theyll get that information, but theyll get it right and the broker gets the credit for their home sale.

Interviewer: And theres two websites that are also really important, that I know a lot of people that are included in, that is...

Ed Hardey: One of them is realtor.com, largest in the country for that. The other ones RE Colorado, which is Metrolists consumer site, and thats the largest in Colorado.

Interviewer: Yeah, its good stuff, you guys are doing a great job, thanks Ed.

Ed Hardey: Thank you, Dan.

Interviewer: Appreciate you being here.

Ed Hardey: Thanks for having us.

Posted in Headlines, Internet Marketing, MLS, Real Estate Industry, Lead Generation, RSS, Technology And YOU, Home Selling Services

Jim Turner of One By One Media is no stranger to social media, he has been an avid blogger since 2004.  Jim has been able to become a consultant with social media by helping others become more knowledgeable in the trade.  He'll help change our view on marketing, advertising and public relations.

Posted in Blogging, Real Estate Industry Trends, RSS, Gen X-Y, Web 2.0 Marketing, Real Estate Industry Events