Video is the New Photo – WellcomeMat Video App

I’ve been a fan of WellcomeMat for a while now for it’s effortless ease of use, attractive interface and the fact it’s a dedicated real estate platform for video. The latest offering from them is an iPhone app that allows you to post  geo-coded real estate videos to WellcomeMat, Twitter, Facebook, Posterous and YouTube for FREE.

The news was rolled out by their founder here and you can learn more about what WellcomeMat does here and even see a few of our in house offerings on our Union Street Media channel.

We would be interested to hear from anyone that has used this application and their thoughts on its effectiveness, however  the app is currently usable only on the iPhone 3G.

Real Estate Apps on the iPhone

Apple is running TV commercials focusing on the applications available on the new iPhone.  They recently released one that highlights a real estate application geared towards students looking for apartment rentals close to campus.  You can see the advertisement here.

Although college students perceived as market leaders when it comes to technology adaptation (just behind middle schoolers), they’re not the only ones using their mobile devices to look up real estate.  As iPhone sales skyrocket even in this down economy, users are expecting that your site will load on their mobile device.  The trend is catching on amongst real estate data sites too.  Some newspapers like the Gainsville Sun and sites like Trulia & Zillow are making their sites easier to search using a mobile phone.

You should check with your web developer to make sure your site is mobile friendly.  Some real estate web site developers (like Union Street Media), can create a new mobile template for your site that strips away non-core images & content, which increases the speed that the site loads on the mobile phone.  Check out the two variations of Brian Boardman’s web site to see what it looks like on a web browser and on a mobile phone.

We generally see three types of REALTORS requesting mobile-friendly sites:

• REALTORS who are technology savvy and browse the web on their mobile phones
• REALTORS who’s clients are technology savvy and use mobile phones for real estate searches
• REALTORS in a second home markets

Check out www.adamdow.com if you’d like to see one person that fits all three categories (and was one of the first clients to get a mobile-friendly site from USM).

There are a lot of other cool examples of mobile-friendly real estate web sites out there.  Please share any that you have come across in the comments section below.  Thanks!

Mobile Internet Advertising with Google Adwords on G1 and iPhone

If your web marketing strategy incorporates search engine advertising and you want to reach consumers wherever they are: good news. Google is now setting up mobile-specific segmenting options that reach the G1 and iPhone operating systems only.

So, for example, if you have mobile real estate web templates enabled on your site, you can set up an ad campaign targetted at a mobile audience. And only pay for those who click through.

If you’re in ecommerce or retail, Google notes that “last Christmas, the iPhone drove more traffic to Google.com worldwide than any other mobile platform.”

One of the advantages of mobile search marketing is that you’re reaching a customer exactly when they are looking for something. Not when they’re at work or at home or tethered to a laptop. Right when they want to find something. Combine this with geo-targetting and things can get pretty interesting.

More details at allthingsd.com.

See also: Joel Burslem’s Future of Real Estate Marketing blog where he gives this practical tip to real estate marketers: “…create unique campaigns with mobile-ready landing pages as well as mobile-specific calls to action (e.g. “Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX for help with your home search”).”

Related articles:

• Target Google AdWords to Android and iPhone

Using Google’s Observations to Improve Your Internet Marketing

Google collects and analyzes a massive amount of information about what interests us, how we use information and where we use information. Teasing insights from that data can have a strong impact on your internet marketing direction, strategies and tactics. Take mobile services, for example.

David Wood writes on his blog about a Google presentation about use of mobile services. The presentation, by Sumit Agarwal who is the product manager for Mobile at Google, includes a lot of insight into Google’s approach to developing applications and is very much worth a read (especially if you’re into developing software).

But from a straight-ahead data standpoint here are some interesting revelations about the way people are using mobile devices and Google’s mobile products:

Read more

4 Ways to Use Google Earth for the iPhone for Real Estate Internet Marketing

By now you’ve already heard about Google Earth coming to the iPhone. And yes, it’s awesome and fun and cool. But you’re a marketer at the end of the day so you’re looking to find a way promote your real estate or other business online using this newly enhanced tool. Before coming up with some internet marketing tactics that might be appropriate for the Google Earth-enabled iPhone, let’s look at a few concepts related to this combination of mapping and mobile technologies. Video after the jump.

Read more

Mobile phone? Sure. For texting.

Neilsen is reporting that “Americans each sent or received 357 text messages a month then, compared with 204 phone calls.” Moreover, this is the third quarter in a row that text messages beat out phone calls.

After the break, the chart that gives a breakdown of usage by age. Some of which might surprise you. Read more

Now that Vermont might get the iPhone, VREIN pros get ready

Joel Burslem gives an awesome quick-take on five applications you can use on an iPhone to enhance your real estate business.

Mobile Social Networking

eMarketer recently released a report on marketing to social networks that have a mobile component (like that little m.myspace.com or what-have-you). This appears to be in line with other reports on mobile usage and where the audience goes there go the marketers. Here’s a pullquote from Debra Aho Williamson, one of the report’s authors:

It goes beyond simply linking people with digital content by adding the immediacy of sharing with friends—a very powerful marketing proposition.

So here we have the mashup of two pretty exciting opportunites: social network marketing and mobile technology. Since people like to be “social” spontaneously, combining a pervasive technology like mobile phones/internet devices is like combining peanut butter and chocolate, or whatever you like to combine.

Action? John du Pre Gauntt, another of the report’s authors has this to say:

Marketers are trying to determine which digital marketing techniques and ad units are relevant for the mobile social networking environment.

What tools and techniques are you using or researching?

Mobile usage from Pew

A lot of useful demographic info on the use of mobile phones by Americans. Including insight along ethnicity, age and socio-economic factors.

Here’s the chart on what sort of data services people are using:

One of the insightful bits of sleuthing our friends at the Pew Research Center did was to examine “internet usage away from home or work.” They asked both two questions: the first was a “how often do you” style question and then the remaining was a more specific “in the past 12 months, have you” style question. Combining these results they discovered “that nearly two-thirds (64%) of internet users have gone online away from home or work, which could include wired access at libraries or in hotel rooms.”

They also asked about specific technologies used away from home: PDAs, wireless laptops, cell phones to tease out how many used wireless technology (as opposed to logging into a public terminal at a library, for example). Here’s what they come up with (emphasis mine): “41% of all Americans who have logged on wirelessly away from home” have done so with a PDA, wireless laptop or cell phone.

What sort of actions could you take to improve your business based on this information?

Twitter for Real Estate Roundup

I’ve got a busy week here so no big whopper posts. I’ll be taking the tried and true path of bloggers in a time crunch: The Roundup.

There’s been a lot of chatter lately about Twitter for Real Estate. Just in case you’ve not been paying attention I’ll give some links and quick summations. Also, don’t worry if you don’t know what Twitter is, most of these articles include a brief description.

Daniel Rothamel gives you all the basics in Welcome to Social Media for Real Estate 101: Twitter.

As you’re getting started and wondering who to follow, Jeff Turner’s Active Rain post about TwitterLocal is a great tutorial.

What’s TwitterLocal you ask? Look no further than PR 2.0 post “Twitter Local Connects You to Local Voices.”

How to write kickass Twitter posts gives you a great list of guidelines to give the most with your tweeting and prevents you from being dull.

Using Twitter to Stay in Touch at Connect gives a nice little rundown plus one use for the technology: keeping in touch during conferences.

Transparent Real Estate has more Twitter for Conferences information.

Joel Burslem breaks out a great use for Twitter: Business Intelligence. His post entitled Using Twitter to Listen to your Customers reviews the excellent BI/Reputation Management tool TweetScan. Includes examples.

Jessica Swesey is using Twitter to listen to general chatter about the real estate market.

If/when you get a group of people following your Twitter feed, perhaps Information Week’s suggestion for using it as a broadcast medium will be useful.

A laundry list of uses and examples can be found at Examples of Twitter Providing Business Benefits.

Even more business benefits and basic usage suggestions are at Twitter: Where’s it @ for Business.

Example of reputation management from 37Signals at the Twitter blog.

If, like me, you don’t much care for Twitter’s interface, check out the list of Twitter clients (I’m partial to Twitterific for my iPod).

A list of various tools to help you get more out of Twitter can be found at Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy blog.

Did I miss anything?

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