Use RSS Feeds To Sell More Listings
Technology and buzzwords go hand in hand. One such term is RSS (Really Simply Syndication). RSS is a standard in which a reader may subscribe to website content. A news site, for example, may list their latest headlines or entire articles in their RSS feed every time a new article is published. Anyone who has subscribed to this news feed will have the newly added headline or article automatically pushed to them without having to go the the news website to see if there are any updates.
There are at least 3 good reasons that a realtor MUST set up an RSS feed.
- Never rely on email again
Email sent out on mass to your clients and colleagues often gets treated like spam. An RSS feed has a 100% delivery rate. With little effort, you are able to reach your intended audience.
- Extremely cost effective
The costs involved in creating and managing an RSS feed are insignificant when compared to the print advertising Realtors spend on each week. Imagine the amount spent each week to promote various properties in weekly newspapers and circulars, compared to the costs associated with updating and managing an RSS feed.
- Push new listings to your audience quickly
When you add a new listing to your feed, it will be sent to anyone that has subscribed automatically. People searching for properties as well as colleagues will not have to go to your website to see if there is a new listing.
Setting Up RSS
1) Create your Feed
Decide how you want to organize your feed. You can create an RSS feed of homes for sale in a specific town or based on the home cost. Another example is to create a feed of scheduled Open Houses in a specific region.
A step by step guide is available at http://www.make-rss-feeds.com or software specifically for RSS feed creation can be used.The realtor publishing the RSS feed controls what information is syndicated in the RSS feed, so ultimately it is the realtor's decision as to whether to include teaser copy or full articles. Generally most Realtors use copy similar to those in print ads to attract the home-buyers attention.
Once you have constructed an RSS feed, you will need to transfer the feed to your server. This can be done using a standard FTP client (if it is not built into the feed creation software). The feed is usually placed in the domain's root directory like this: http://www.mydomain.com/nameoffeed.xml or a subdirectory like this http://www.mydomain.com/rss/nameoffeed.xml.
2) Promote your Feed
Once you have created your RSS feed you will need to promote the feed on the realty company website, submit the feed to the numerous RSS feed directories such as Feedburner and tell customers about the availability of the RSS feeds.
You should also add the following html inside the <head> area of your webpage to assist RSS readers in auto-detecting the location of the RSS feed.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml"> Replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with the URL to the RSS feed.
In order to increase exposure of a realty RSS feed, you should submit your feeds to RSS search engines and directories. This can be done manually. Just as you would submit the URL of a website or web page to a search engine, or you can use software to automate the process. There is a large list of RSS directories at http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm.
3) Update the Feed.
Update the RSS feed(s) as often as possible by adding a new feed item, as new properties are made available. Repost feed items for any properties that have experienced any changes such as price.
Posted by Matt Wilson on Dec. 4, 2006 |