For real estate agents and professionals, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has many uses and is an increasingly popular marketing method to distribute real estate website content to their clients and prospects. RSS enables distribution of your real estate web site's content to third-party web sites and RSS news readers.
RSS newsreader (or RSS feedreader) use is growing rapidly in the real estate field. If you have a customized My Yahoo! or My MSN page, then chances are, you are already using RSS feeds. You can put real estate RSS feeds on those pages and display syndicated RSS feeds on real estate from various news and information sources.
RSS Newsreader software allows users to grab specific real estate RSS feeds from various sites and display them to read and use on their computers when the user is online. These readers are in real time and usually update periodically.
For real estate agents and professionals, RSS has many uses in their online marketing scheme. For instance, someone looking for a house or a property can simply use your real estate web site's RSS feed to keep up with the latest listings. If they see an interesting piece of property or home, they can click directly to your realtor web site for more information.
Some other uses for RSS feeds in your real estate marketing scheme include: featured homes and commercial properties, rental properties, the announcing of your open houses, new virtual tours of your listings, current mortgage rates, real estate news & announcements, and promoting your newest real estate newsletters.
Real estate RSS feeds are extremely targeted because they are controlled by the end-user and, unlike e-mail in your real estate marketing scheme, they have a 100% delivery rate. Unfortunately, e-mail is quickly losing much of its marketing potential due to e-mail filters and recent anti-spam (can-spam) legislation unless done properly.
Another thing, a real estate RSS feed is simpler to maintain than an e-mail list. There are no address lists to maintain and no software needed to send messages, plus no risk of spam problems because users deliberately sign up for your RSS feed.
RSS can also help with the marketing of your real estate web site though the traditional search engines. The search engines index and rank RSS feeds quickly. Your real estate RSS feed will have links back to pages of your real estate web site and therefore aid in its ranking higher. It's a win-win situation. Here's why:
Because your website (through its RSS feeds) has more "fresh" content in the eyes of the search engines, your website will be indexed more frequently by search engine spiders (usually every day). Therefore, anything that you add to your website will be picked up by search engines that much faster.
RSS is a growing technology that should be taken seriously by any realtor that has their own web site for online promotion. Start early and reap the benefits of RSS marketing today. It's just one more tool in your realtor marketing scheme to put you above the competition.
