Pinterest.com, a relatively new social website, is gaining a lot of virtual ground, quickly becoming a major contender for the time and attention of many internet users.

The chart to the right illustrates that in the last 6 months alone, Pinterest (blue) has surpassed LinkedIn (red) and is already roughly half that of Twitter (yellow) in terms of search volume index according to Google Trends.

Pinterest users can create and share virtual cork boards containing images and videos they’ve discovered on the Internet. Each pinned item, in turn, provides a backlink to the webpage on which the item was discovered. To really sweeten the deal, these backlinks do not include the dreaded ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ attribute, which means search engines will take them into consideration when determining the value of the destination page. This can yield big SEO benefits and traffic gains for real estate websites that provide share-worthy property photos and video tours. As Pinterest users pin photos and videos to their “Awesome Luxury Properties” and “Cool Places Around Town” boards, your website gets free marketing to a highly targeted market AND a free, followed backlink to boost your website’s SEO and general web credibility.

Like many social media sites, Pinterest also provides handy plugins and buttons would that fit neatly into home details pages, blog posts, and more. Curious if something on your website has already been pinned? Use this handy tool (just replace “YourWebsite.com” with your website’s domain):

http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite.com

Here are a few examples:

http://pinterest.com/source/cbhunter.com/
http://pinterest.com/source/century21.ca/
http://pinterest.com/source/results.net/

Why not create a board to showcase each of your listings? Or take visitors on a tour of your neighborhood? Setting up your own boards to promote yourself or your brand is simple. Follow other users who’ve created similar boards, repin photos, and share photos on Facebook and Twitter.

Lastly, once you’ve set up your account, don’t forget to heed Ed’s great advice and take your social media efforts to the streets. If you find someone who’s pinned your content, shoot them a quick E-mail just to say thanks! Or if you stumble upon someone with a board filled with DIY projects, send them a link to your “handyman’s dream home”.

1. Take local bloggers out for coffee or beer. Look for bloggers who are active in their community. Personally, as someone who blogs about my own community, I receive a lot of inquiries from my personal blog’s readers asking for real estate agent recommendations. Seek out bloggers in your own market who would be worth knowing.

2. Go to social media meetups. Online conversations are so much richer once you’ve had a chance to put a real-world name and voice with a username. Look for Tweetups in your community (or organize one) or check out Tumblr meetups near you.

3. Use email. If you find someone particularly interesting, funny, or insightful on a social media service that you use, considering dropping them an email to let them know. Positivity goes a long way toward building real-world relationships that last.

4. Spend less time talking to real estate agents. It’s amazing how much time some real estate agents spend talking to other real estate agents on social networking sites. Yes, this can be an effective networking strategy for earning referrals, but keep it a proper perspective.

In a nutshell, get out of the house and try interacting with something other than a glowing screen from time to time.

Legal Advice

It shouldn’t have to be said, but it’s quite common to see real estate professionals giving legal advice via blogs and forums. While it can be fun to help people, and your intentions are likely good, it’s best to avoid doing this due to liability issues.

Complaining About Clients

Talking trash about your clients is a good way to avoid earning new clients. While we all have horror stories from dealing with particularly problematic clients, sharing those horror stories on your blog can be a good way to scare off prospects who aren’t interested in being your next horror story. That said, it is possible to create high quality advice posts based on experiences you’ve had with previous clients. Just be sure that you’re providing value beyond blowing off some personal steam.

Hyping the Market

Now is a great time to buy. Or is it? Ask people in real estate and the answer will nearly always be “Yes!” The biggest problem with this type of post is not the statement itself but the lack of substantiating content. Let’s face it: hearing “now is a great time to buy” doesn’t carry a lot of weight when it comes from someone who profits from buyers. But, if you take time to provide evidence that supports the argument, such as low interest rates, short days on market in your area, or rent vs. buy ratios tipping in favor of buying, you’ll provide valuable data that shows that you’re aware of what’s happening in your local market.

Case-Shiller Index

The Case-Shiller Index is a highly publicized statistic that makes the news every time they have an update. However, if all you’re doing is regurgitating Case-Shiller’s stats without providing any local context, you’re providing little value since the people reading your post have probably already heard the latest on the Case-Shiller Index from the mainstream media. To take this from no to go, add a local perspective on whether the Case-Shiller Index applies to the markets you serve. And, since the Case-Shiller Index is a trailing index, perhaps you can give some insight into what’s happening today rather than in the past?

Plagiarism

Again, it shouldn’t have to be said, but it wouldn’t be on this list if it didn’t continue to be a problem. There are a few reasons to avoid doing this:

1. It could get you sued by a copyright holder.
2. It doesn’t demonstrate your expertise.
3. SEO Issues: If Google finds multiple versions of the exact same content online, they attempt to display the original version high in the search results while burying the duplicate versions. Why? Because it’s a bad user experience for searchers to see 10 identical results on the first search results page.

As I mentioned last week, the key to successful blogging is to create content people will:

• Seek out
• Find valuable
• Use to determine whether you are a local expert, and
• Share with friends or family

Doing so will generate high quality traffic to your website that converts into warm leads.

Here are some of the issues we hear regarding why agents don’t take more photos of houses, along with an argument against that point.

1. It’s an ugly house. Clearly, not every house is well maintained and well staged. However, if you ask the listing agent who they think will end up buying a home with an ugly bathroom or dated kitchen, they almost always come up with the same answer: a person who’s interested in remodeling. A carpenter. A plumber. A house flipper. Basically, someone who’s specifically looking for a property that comes with projects. So, if that’s the case, it pays to show them what the projects are so they can look at them with a home improver’s eye.

2. It’s a small house. While there is no arguing with the fact that it takes fewer pictures to document a property that has fewer rooms, the problem we see is that many homes aren’t truly photographically documented regardless of size. Have you taken enough photos of a house for people to get a feel for the layout of every room, and how those rooms tie together into a home? Have you shot the basement? Garage? Front and back of home? Do you have any pictures of the neighborhood that can help tell the story of the property?

3. I don’t have time. Here is the strange thing about business: The busiest agents tend to be the ones who do the best job with photos. They either take the photos themselves, have an assistant take them, or outsource the work to a local photographer. The point being that the busy agents are busy for a reason: They do a consistently great job with every single one of their listings, which leads to more offers, faster offers, at a higher percentage of the asking price, which leads to more referrals. Merchandising listings well on the web is a high priority for them.

Busy agents are not interested in driving around tire kicking home buyers to show them what they could show them with photos. When they answer the phone or check leads via email, they want the leads to be highly qualified. Clearly, a lead coming in on listing where a prospect has first viewed dozens of photos online is more qualified than someone who’s only seen an external shot and a handful of rooms. Long-term, the investment in taking lots of quality photos leads to less time invested in showing buyers what you could have shown them online.

Additionally, high quality listing agents understand that they get paid when the property sells, so it benefits them to make it easy for any agent to sell their listing. An agent to takes lots of high quality photos saves not only their time but their fellow agents’ time. It’s a professional courtesy not only to your clients but your colleagues.

Frankly, if you don’t have time to take photos of your prospective client’s property, perhaps you shouldn’t take the listing.

4. I don’t want to show them everything because I want them to call. While this is a rational argument in favor of restricting a listing’s photo count, the data we see doesn’t support this. The listings with the most photos get the most views and the most leads. We see home buyers searching first for where they would like to live, then filtering by price, then specs. Once they’ve done that, they sort by photo count. Why? Given a limited amount of time to view listings before their boss walks by again, they choose to look at the listings with the most pictures. Higher photo counts will get your listings in front of more home buyers looking for homes in the area where your listing is, at the price range they can afford.

On the other hand, an investor looking for a good deal on a home that’s been on the market for a long time, received no offers, and is surely going to have a price reduction coming could flip this strategy. They may seek out the low to no photo count listings, knowing that there will be less competition and likely an opportunity for a lower closing price. What’s good for that buyer is not good for your seller.

In the end, taking lots of high quality photos of each and every listing is good for your business.

If you need one more reason, try this: If you consistently do a great job with the photos of your listings, you can show prospective sellers what your current inventory looks like during listing presentations. Tell them, “I do the best job marketing homes online with photos in this market. This will help get your home sold.”

To save space many MLS boards take your original photo and reduce it in size and quality before sending it to us.  This makes the consumer experience not as good as it can be.  Since great photos can reduce the time the home is on the market and help increase the consumer experience, agents who upload the maximum number of high resolution photos to the OnlineOffice will benefit from a free Property Showcase (or Showcase21) on the listing.

To qualify for the Property Showcase (or Showcase21) all of your photos must be at least 1024×768 or higher resolution.  Since most MLS boards send us low resolution photos this can create an issue.  Here’s how to bypass the MLS and make sure that all of your photos look stunning for your potential buyers:

1. Open the property you wish to update in the OnlineOffice
2. On the ‘General’ tab make sure that the MLS Data Update is set to ‘Complete Update without Photos’
3. Click on ‘Property Showcase’ or ‘Showcase21′
4. If you see a photo with a red border around it that indicates that the image is not high enough resolution to qualify.  Delete all photos with red borders
5. Click on the ‘Multi Photo Upload’ button and select the rest of your photos.
6. Once the rest of your photos have been uploaded, click ‘Save & Close’

Allow the system a couple of hours to process your updated listing information and you should see a new ‘Property Showcase’ or ‘Showcase 21′ button in your listing.  Your listing will have an amazing consumer experience second to none!

1. Enter the first part of the username before the @ symbol, for example ben.higginbotham or office1234
2. Hit ‘Tab’ on your keyboard

You’ll note that the @domainname.com automatically fills in and now all you need to do is enter in your password!  Simple but elegant.