We have a mid-week update released for the RealBird Publisher listing marketing platform. From the very beginning, we designed the service with flexibility in mind, so that you can mashup your single property website produced with RealBird with other services. We do not limit videos to YouTube, but rather, you can embed videos from any sources as long as they support embedding via some widgeting platform. Of course you are not limited to one video per property either.
With the current release we have extended the flexibility to other media besides videos and audio. Alex Keyser requested a couple of week ago the ability to attach real estate documents to the listing website created with RealBird. He also asked for an option to rename the Video tab on the user interface per listing depending on what kind of information is attached.
It has now been implemented as part of this update. See a couple of recommendations of services below, which you can use with the RealBird Publisher tool for document sharing and embedding:
Scribd.com
I first heard about Scribd.com on Techcrunch Scribd.com is for documents what YouTube is for videos. An easy-to-use and powerful online media sharing service focusing on documents. You can upload documents and Scribd.com will convert them to Flash, PDF, Word and even machine-read audio MP3 files. You can then take the generated widget code and add it to your website, blog and your listing website created with RealBird Publisher. While Scribd is a general purpose, consumer application, it is perfectly suitable for real estate application. Kevin Boer has a blog post about this also. Please remember that
this is not a platform to share confidential documents, but suitable for floor plans, disclosures and documents which are intended to be shared with the public.
To use Scribd with your RealBird Publisher service, do the following:
- Create an account on Scribd.com and upload your documents
- Login to RealBird and create a new listing post or edit an existing one
- On the Embedded media tab of the listing editor, paste the Scribd widget code (the one which starts with the <object> tag) into the box and rename the Video tab to e.g. Documents
Box.net
Techcrunch also reported today a new release of Box.net’s online file sharing application. You can now upload and share your file folders via widgets. You have the option to make the online file folder private, enable or disable others to add files to it via your widget. This is another great service and just like with Scribd.com you can add this widget to your listing website created with RealBird. Box.net can be also used to create photo slide-show widgets (one folder per property) which you can add to your blog and to your RealBird listings as well . The procedure is simple as well.
- Create an account on Box.net and upload your documents
- Login to RealBird and create a new listing post or edit an existing one
- On the Embedded media tab of the listing editor, paste the Box.net widget code (the one which starts with the <object>
tag) into the box and rename the Video tab to e.g. Documents
These are truly amazing applications and definitely should and I think will be adapted by the real estate community fast. This
write up also shows the powerful flexibility of the RealBird service when it comes to creating an online listing presentation website.
Jaxtr.com
Jaxtr is a new VOIP clickt-to-call service. RealBird now
supports the addition of your Jaxtr account to your profile, so that visitors
on your property website can connect with you via their regular phone by
clicking the “Call now” link. Jaxtr will collect their phone number and connect
your registered phone with theirs and setup a regular communication channel instantly.
This is an additional option which your visitors can use to contact you. Of
course this is an optional feature, but we believe that it’s worth trying out.
The lower the barrier for your visitors to contact you, the better it is. As always, make sure that you agree with the Terms of use of the service you are signing up to.
To setup Jaxtr with your RealBird account, do the following:
- Create a Jaxtr account
- Login to RealBird
- Go the profile update page (Profile tab)
- At the bottom of the form, enter your Jaxtr
username and save the updates.
The “Call now” link will appear on all existing listing fliers and on the newly created one.
More search engine optimization
We have replaced the cross-marketing tools on the listing websites. Instead of the Flash based blocks of “Our recent listings” and “Our recent blog posts” which is not indexable by search engines, we have now an inline, server-side rendering module. The links to your other listings and the outgoing links to your blog posts can be indexed by search engines from now on and can improve your rankings. Both inter-site (from listing to listing) and outgoing links (to your blog) are valued by search engines due to their relevancy.
Private labeled driving directions update
We released a couple of updates on the newly introduced private labeled driving directions service. We provide a unique solution to our members utilizing the Microsoft Virtual Earth technology. Private labeled driving directions are another great way to build your brand. All printouts generated by your visitors have your contact information and photo in the header, further enhancing your branding and name recognition. With the current updates we solved a couple of usability issues: When clicking through to the driving directions link, the map now automatically zooms in to your property location.
The Url syntax is also compatible with Google’s syntax so you can replace your links on your website pointing to Google with your own private labeled maps. You can use this tool as a general purpose, private labeled mapping service on your website. With its driving directions, local point of interest and extremely high resolution bird’s eye view pictures (growing number of metro areas), this is truly an eye catcher for your visitors.
To learn more about RealBird visit our main site at RealBird.com
For existing members: the above features are released and available for you immediately. Just follow the instructions above and you are ready to go. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
The mashup capability of RealBird Publisher is quite flexible. We put a lot of emphasize on creating a system which can be used with different kind of 3rd party widgets. We hope you like the new updates. Enjoy!
— Zoltan Szendro
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