A responsive theme with a local focus

In keeping with our mission to provide a variety of high-quality, mobile-ready real estate website designs, we’re pleased to announce our newest responsive theme: Franklin.

Like Plymouth, our first responsive design, Franklin automatically adjusts its layout and elements to fit your screen, offering users the best viewing and browsing experience no matter what device they’re using. Unlike non-responsive mobile designs, Franklin doesn’t sacrifice functionality, giving smartphone and tablet users the same client login and rich search experience they get on a desktop site.

Franklin is also neighborhood-oriented, allowing agents to emphasize their local expertise by organizing their listings and content according to the areas they serve. With the customizable map on the homepage, you can use polygons to draw and highlight specific neighborhoods. Customers can also search and browse your listings by neighborhood and learn more about each area on specific neighborhood landing pages.

In addition to its local focus, Franklin is geared toward driving visitor engagement, with frequent and fully customizable calls-to-action. Franklin also gives you the option to offer your valuable downloadable content in exchange for a visitor’s contact information.

Finally, Franklin’s muted color palette and clean layout allow you to highlight what matters most to visitors: your content. Whether it’s unique listings, beautiful photos, or informative, neighborhood-focused blog posts, Franklin’s understated elegance ensures your site content will take the spotlight.

Like Placester’s other real estate website themes, Franklin integrates with your MLS data and has IDX search built in, giving visitors easy access to all of your listings.

Visit our theme library to learn more about Franklin’s features and how you can get this theme set up on your real estate site.

Want to see the Franklin real estate website theme in action? Check out our demo site.

With the release of Franklin, our new responsive theme, the Placester team has also unveiled a major update to our Custom Drawn Areas feature.

Our Custom Drawn Areas tool set lets you outline and label areas and neighborhoods on a detailed, interactive map. This functionality is great for highlighting areas that aren’t well-mapped, as well as for highlighting smaller areas (like Boston’s “Beacon Hill” neighborhood) that aren’t listed in MLSs.

To create a Custom Drawn Area, open your WordPress admin dashboard, hover over the Placester tab on the left, then click on “Custom Drawn Areas.” From here, you’ll be able to zoom in on a map of the United States so you can target the area you want to highlight. (You can also type in an address to focus the map.) Once you have the map focused on the area you want to highlight, simply click “Create New Custom Drawn Area” on the right and then click on the map to drop the first marker of your outline.

Once you’ve dropped your first marker, you can continue clicking and dropping markers to create your outline. When you’re finished, click the first marker you dropped to finalize the outline and then give your custom area a name. By setting the “Area Type” (state, zip, city, or neighborhood), you can control which pages are created for this area. You can also control the color, border, and opacity of the outline so it looks just the way you want.

We’d love to hear what you think about our new Custom Drawn Areas feature update. Feel free send us an email at support@placester.com or give us a call 1-800-728-8391.

The Placester team is excited to announce that we will soon be launching a brand new responsive website theme: Franklin.

With Franklin, we wanted to create a theme that puts a strong emphasis on neighborhoods. That’s why we’ve included a customizable map right on the homepage that lets you highlight the exact areas you serve. When visitors arrive on a Franklin-powered site, they’ll get a strong sense of who you are and what you have to offer.

Our new Franklin theme is also optimized for driving visitor engagement. We’ve put several prominent calls-to-action on the homepage and there are many more calls-to-actions and contact forms spread throughout the theme’s pages. After all, while getting folks to visit your site is great, getting them to engage with your site and reach out to you is even better.

Finally, Franklin features a clean, muted palette with plenty of white space. This is ideal for letting your listings, blog posts, and other content take center stage.

Our new Franklin theme will be available on Tuesday, May 21st. If you’re interested in using the theme, send us an email or give us a call at 1-800-728-8391.

Placester’s themes just got more mobile friendly

The team at Placester has been hard at work creating new themes to meet the needs of real estate professionals trying to reach their customers wherever they are. Today, we’re proud to introduce Plymouth, our first fully responsive real estate website design.

As a responsive design, Plymouth automatically adjusts its layout and elements to fit your screen, providing mobile users with the best viewing and browsing experience possible. Unlike other mobile-optimized designs, Plymouth doesn’t sacrifice functionality, offering smartphone and tablet users the same client login and rich search experience they get on a desktop site.

Like Placester’s other real estate website themes, Plymouth integrates with your MLS data and has IDX search built in, giving your visitors easy access to all of your listings. Plymouth also creates landing pages for each of your properties, helping you get found more often on search engines.

Click here to learn more about Plymouth’s features and how you can get this theme set up on your real estate site.

Want to see the Plymouth real estate website theme in action? Check out our demo site.

When it comes to creating websites, small details make all the difference in delighting or frustrating a visitor. They’ve come to your website for a specific reason and want to know in an instant that you are trust worthy and have the ability to solve their particular need.

Few people understand this challenge better than Frederick Townes, Placester’s co-founder and CTO and also the Senior Technical Advisor to Mashable.com. Frederick has helped launch tens of thousands of websites, created one of the most popular WordPress plugins in the world and has mastered the dynamic of developing forward thinking technology that helps businesses engage and captivate consumers on the web.

In this resource, we break down the Anatomy of a Real Estate Homepage. Helping to clarify 18 critical attributes that every real estate marketer should consider when creating a website.

The eBook also includes practical website marketing tips, along with a guide to getting started.

Download the iPad version from iTunes:

http://plcstr.com/VRk2Ks

Inman News’s Real Estate Connect, the biggest real estate conference of the year, kicks off tomorrow at in New York City. With over 30 exhibitors and nearly 100 speakers packed into three days of events, Connect is poised to set the tone for real estate technology in 2013. Here’s our take on the biggest trends to look for.

Turnkey Real Estate Websites

Naturally, this is our favorite trend for 2013. Building a website has traditionally been a messy, drawn-out, and all too often, disappointing process for real estate professionals. At the same time, as the field becomes more crowded, consumers are demanding more search features, more integration, and better design from the real estate websites they visit. That’s why we’re doing our part at Placester to build sites that look great and perform well, all while making the process faster, easier, and cheaper for agents.

We’ll be showcasing our vision for better real estate websites at Connect with the Website Factory Launch Contest, where visitors can set up a brand new site on the spot, from start to finish, complete with a new headshot and logo (plus two free months of ProTools!)

Content Creation for Real Estate

We’ve harped on the importance of creating great web content to improve your search engine visibility. Of course, it’s easier said than done. Luckily, several folks at Connect are set to offer valuable insight and tools for content marketing.

For starters, a clutch of prominent editors, including Sarah Polsky of Curbed NY and Vivian Fay of The New York Times (one of Connect’s biggest sponsors), are set to discuss “how the best editors choose what, who and how to write about the real estate beat.” Then, of course, there are new media proponents like Jimmy Mackin, whose forthcoming Curaytor.com promises to be “real estate’s first crowd-sourced-and-vetted group-buying and tech support community.”

Finally, video promises to play an increasingly vital role in any real estate marketer’s strategy, and vendors like OnVedeo (a video platform for real estate) and Videolicious (a video-editing app) will be on hand to highlight their solutions.

Real Estate-Centric Mobile Apps

While mobile apps geared specifically toward real estate professionals have been around for a couple years, few have been able to offer the crisp UIs and deep integration with other tools and services that smartphone and tablet users have come to expect from consumer-facing apps.

Nevertheless, the conference lineup includes several players determined to reverse this trend. From inspection apps Happy Inspector and Inspection Manager, to industry-facing search tool Appraiser5, to innovative floor plan creator Sensopia, you can expect mobile app developers to make a splash at Connect and beyond.

Paperless Transactions and Cloud Management

2012 was the year of the cloud, and the trend will only continue to expand this year, starting at Connect. While hardware vendor Fujitsu shows off their beloved ScanSnap scanner line, several software developers will be demoing a variety of cloud-based tools. A crowded field of transaction management platforms hope to compete with leaders like DotLoop and Cartavi, while Xcira and NuOffer aim to digitize auctions and negotiations.

Meanwhile, other companies are focusing on the backend, with FileSprout offering easy cloud management of your listing media.

Social Media for Business

Until recently, the question most of us were asking about social was: how can we use mainstream social media to grow our business? But as brands continue to see lackluster results from their efforts on Facebook and Twitter, new platforms are emerging that are built from the ground up with the real estate business in mind.

Some tools like Hearsay Social are helping businesses leverage their existing mainstream social media presence, while others like HomeLight are tailoring existing ideas (i.e. review sites like Yelp) to the real estate business.

There are also even more innovative ideas on display. Nest4Less, for instance, helps agents build their referral network by partnering with local vendors (lenders, service providers, contractors, etc.) to offer promotions to clients and their friends.

If you’re heading to Connect, be sure to stop by our table in Startup Alley and check out our products the Website Factory Launch Contest. If not, you can still get two free months of Placester–just sign up before the conference ends on Friday!

image: NASA via Getty Images

The Northeast is still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Record flooding and high winds have left millions stranded or without power, and resulted in at least 62 deaths in the U.S. alone.

While Hurricane Sandy has demonstrated the incredible value of technology in emergency situations, it has also shown that we have a lot to learn about dealing natural disasters and other major events. That goes not just for government agencies and first responders, but also for people who must continue to do business. Here are a few tips for how your company can weather a storm like Sandy and come out strong on the other side.

Have a disaster backup plan.

In addition to physical devastation, Sandy has created major interruptions not just for consumers trying to access the web, but also for companies trying to conduct business on the web.

Whether you’re without Internet or without a website, you need a backup plan, not just for the next “frankenstorm,” but also for the unexpected. After all, most of the major service interruptions in the last year were due not to a hurricane, but to issues at web hosts like GoDaddy and Amazon. That means having a backlog of blog content in the hopper and using a CMS with a smartphone app (e.g. WordPress) you can use to post it. It also means having a custom 503 “site down” page to greet anyone who tries to access your site while it’s down.

Exercise caution with “newsjacking” content.

Events like Hurricane Sandy present an opportunity for marketers to reach a wider audience by latching onto a big, national news story. This practice is called “newsjacking,” and it’s not always looked upon kindly.

Some of the biggest PR disasters in the last few years have been the result of a brand capitalizing on major news in a way that paints them as opportunistic and unsympathetic. American Apparel has come under fire for their “Hurricane Sandy sale,” while Kenneth Cole faced a backlash on Twitter last year when he tried to newsjack the Egyptian revolution to market his spring collection.

If you’re considering engaging a developing news story, use good judgment. Some events are just off limits, either because of their gravity or because of your industry or niche. (Imagine, for instance, if Glock had decided to use the Aurora shooting to market their new line of handguns.) If you decide your content is appropriate, be sure you have your facts straight, and that you’re approaching the subject with sensitivity to how it is affecting people. This goes double if you’re watching events unfold from a distance.

…But don’t be afraid to change your messaging to suit the context.

Of course, if the news is as serious as Hurricane Sandy, your marketing probably shouldn’t be business as usual, either. At best, your efforts will be overlooked; at worst, people could interpret you ignoring the events and providing your usual content as a sign that you don’t care.

Instead, be sure to acknowledge what’s happening and offer your sympathies. More than that, though, offer real support by giving away your valuable expertise. Provide content that either helps the people affected deal with the challenges they’re facing, or provides real strategies for avoiding or mitigating those challenges in the future. Real estate agents, for instance, might consider blogging about what steps homeowners should take to minimize and repair flood damage in a way that will help them preserve the value of their home.

So the next time the country is caught up in a major event or news story, ask yourself: are you prepared?

Content Marketing for Pros

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we discussed how you can avoid repetition and boost the appeal of your blog and marketing content by taking advantage of the unique features of Facebook and Twitter. Today, we’ll change gears as we consider how to present blog posts, videos, and other materials on LinkedIn.

Provide value, not entertainment.

Facebook and Twitter have plenty of important differences when it comes to overall structure, etiquette, and user habits. In general, though, the underlying principle is the same: to pass the time in a casual, enjoyable way.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a professional social network, and its members are there not to kill time, but to invest it. LinkedIn users are seeking new contacts, business opportunities, and strategies for growth, not puppy videos and witty observations. If Twitter is the place to be provocative, LinkedIn is the place to be informative, and the content you post here, as well as the caption promoting it, should emphasize that quality.

Since they come with concrete goals in mind, LinkedIn users tend to be less active on the site. While Facebook and Twitter users spend an average of 405 and 89 minutes per month respectively on their newsfeeds, LinkedIn users log only 21 minutes a month.

This may seem paltry, but don’t forget that less time means less content, and less content means less competition and more exposure for you. It also means you can get the same boost in exposure on LinkedIn posting once a week that you’d get posting twice a day on Twitter.

Join the club.

LinkedIn Groups are a valuable but often overlooked resource for content marketers. Joining a LinkedIn group allows you to make direct contact with people who would otherwise be out of your network. It also puts your content in front of people you know are interested in what you have to say.

One of the challenges of using groups is finding one that suits your needs. Some groups don’t allow you to include links to your content at all; others seem to be devoted exclusively to self-promoting posts at the expense of any real sharing. The key is to find a highly active group with lots of members you can actually sell to. If you’re a real estate broker in Florida, posting your content in Southern California Realtor Network won’t do you much good.

Once you’ve found your ideal audience, you’ll have to earn their clicks by participating meaningfully in discussions. As for the links themselves, don’t post them without comment. Instead, relate them to an existing discussion or pair them with a question likely to get a response. You can even use the conversations you have in your groups to generate topics for future content pieces.

Find questions, offer answers.

Like groups, LinkedIn Answers also affords you the opportunity to directly engage people who are interested in your content. Try browsing questions people have posted to see if you’ve answered any already on your blog. You can refine your search according to category and industry. You can also limit your results to questions that haven’t been answered yet.

As with your participation in groups, you’ll need to earn the right to link. That means more than simply posting one your articles that’s somewhat relevant to the question. Instead, provide a highly informative answer that shows off your expertise. Then, offer up your content as a resource for additional information on the subject.

As a bonus, your answers will show up in your profile and on your connections’ feeds, generating authority for your company and making people more likely to check out your content.

That’s it for LinkedIn, but stay tuned for more in this series as we examine how you can replace canned social media posts with tailored content and captions that will boost your marketing efforts.

image credit: rollingstone.com

Yesterday, Apple Shocked the world with their announcement of the iPad Mini.

Wait. No they didn’t. Rumors of a smaller iPad have been swirling for months. Let’s try that again.

Yesterday, Apple once again redefined mobile devices with their announcement of the iPad Mini.

Wait. No they didn’t. Except for another Apple tablet—two if you count the fourth-generation iPad, which I don’t—yesterday’s event doesn’t add anything new to the market.

So what does the iPad Mini actually mean for Apple and the device market at large? Not much, really—and while that wouldn’t be a big deal for most companies, it’s a problem for Apple, whose reputation is built on innovation.

Competition, within and without

Apple is entering a crowded category with its 7.9-inch tablet, pitting the Mini against established product lines like Google’s Nexus 7, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD, and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2. All of them have the Mini beat in terms of price, offering the same 16GB of storage (and, in the Note’s case, an actual phone) for up to $80 less than the $329 price tag of the Mini’s base model.

Granted, the Mini tops these tablets in a few key categories, with a rear-facing camera, higher screen resolution, lighter curb weight, etc. But these miss the whole point of the 7-inch tablet class: a mix of features and affordability.

This begs the question: if the Mini isn’t competing with other 7-inch tablets, what is it competing with? The answer is other Apple products. The new full-size iPad satisfies the desire for a premium tablet experience, while the new generation of iPod Touch (itself overpriced at $299) offers economy and portability. The iPad Mini seems poised to cannibalize both products’ market share without attracting a significant new demographic or customer base.

Will people buy the iPad Mini? Of course. After all, it’s an Apple product. But these sales will mask a brand identity crisis that, if unchecked, could spell disaster. Remember when we were buying every BlackBerry RIM threw at us? How well are they doing these days?

A new challenger (sort of)

If the iPad Mini unveiling undermines Apple’s image as an innovation engine, perhaps it’s time for someone else to take the mantle—and believe it or not, Microsoft might just be the brand for the job.

For starters, Microsoft is taking a major gamble on Windows 8, which redesigns the tried-and-true Windows OS from the ground up, largely doing away with the desktop in favor of an interface tailored to touch devices.

While some have complained that Windows 8 has a steep learning curve, this seems only natural. After all, if innovation is all about approaching a task in a new way, then adopting that innovation will involve shedding old expectations and habits, which takes time.

Microsoft has also entered the tablet market with Surface. Early reviews of the device have been mixed, with many criticizing Surface for its weight, screen resolution, and lack of apps. But it’s worth noting that Surface is the first tablet Microsoft has ever built, and it will probably be a while before the product line finds its footing.

Still, it’s Surface’s intent that makes it innovative. Microsoft aims to change the way we think about productivity and touch by creating devices not just for consumption, like the iPad, but for creation.

Surface may have its flaws, but it also has lots of powerful features the iPad doesn’t have: expandable memory, ports for USB and HD video out, high definition front and rear cameras, and an operating system with Microsoft Office and multitasking capabilities. All of these features point to Surface’s potential to transform the tablet from something pretty, a novelty/luxury device, into something as versatile and indispensable as the laptop.

Make no mistake, Microsoft has a long way to go, and they’ll have plenty of opportunities to screw it up along the way. But they’ll also have opportunities to get it right—and if I were Tim Cook, I’d be watching closely.

image credit: www.sme-blog.com

Social: Not Just for Procrastination Anymore

Social media has changed the way we interact with friends and family, as well as the way we market our products and services to consumers. But it’s also created new possibilities for the internal workings of a business.

Social enterprise applications are challenging email as the primary tool for information sharing and collaboration, and while some of them are clearly priced for big corporate outfits, there are also plenty of no- and low-cost solutions out there for communicating and collaborating within your business.

Google Apps

Price: Free (through 2013)

What would this list be without the tech giant? Google already offers free voice and instant messaging, as well as free video calling with Google Hangouts. The company is folding these features into an integrated social enterprise tool, adding real time editing and private, intra-office messaging via its native social network, Google+. While not exactly “social,” Google Voice also brings tech to your voicemail box, transcribing messages and sending readouts to your email account.

Jive

Price: Free 30-day trial; $12 user/month afterward

One of the earlier players in the new social networking for business movement, Jive has also been among the most successful. While it’s the most expensive tool on this list, Jive boasts big-name clients like Cisco, Nike, and Intel and offers a number of features and tools ideal for small businesses: Twitter-like microblogging, YouTube video embedding, file sharing, groups, etc. Jive also supports integration with your web app or site.

Asana

Price: Free for teams of up to 30 people

Founded by Daniel Moscovitz of Facebook, Asana is a task-based tool for social enterprise. Users can create, assign, and, collaborate on tasks, communicating and updating progress via message threads within each entry. You can also create multiple workspaces for different branches of your business. Perhaps Asana’s main selling point is its simplicity and speed, boasting fewer mouse clicks, fewer page loads and a host of keyboard shortcuts.

Yammer

Price: Free for Basic Network; $5 user/month for Business Network

While the paid version adds admin controls and customizability, eighty percent of Yammer’s users subscribe to the free package, which includes its microblogging tool, communities (secure, spin-off networks centered on a project or customer), file sharing, and desktop/mobile apps. Yammer has also added support for third-party apps like HootSuite, and recently offered chat functionality to compete with the likes of Google. Need another reason to consider? Yammer is backed by Microsoft, which purchased the company back in June for $1.2 billion.

Unison

Price: Free for teams of up to 20 people

A relative newcomer on the social enterprise scene, Unison is specifically geared toward small- to medium-sized businesses, with free functionality to teams of up to 20 members. Unison takes a unique approach to cutting down unnecessary noise by organizing different projects, departments, and teams into “rooms.” Users can switch between rooms freely and view communication streams in real time. So far, Unison’s main selling points have been its intuitive interface and quick, easy setup.

Don’t just stick with email because it’s what you’ve always done. Explore these tools today, and start using your social media savvy to streamline your business.