An average of 10 percent of brokerages’ online profiles are inaccurate or outdated, according to an audit by the WAV Group, a real estate consulting firm. And the slower winter months are the perfect time to do a digital clean up.
Start by identifying all your business's online profiles, whether they are on your own website, Realtor.com, Facebook, Homes.com, Zillow, etc. Then collect the necessary information to update those profiles. This could be as critical as your office addresses and phone numbers, agent names and numbers, URLs, email addresses, and more.
“When we audit brokerage firms, we find that companies who have moved offices rarely put forth the effort to remove the old offices from association data bases, MLS data bases, brokerage websites, and syndication websites,” says Marilyn Wilson, partner with WAV Group. Agent profiles should also be updated with recent photos, bios, and contact information. Inaccuracies could be causing you and your agents to miss out on leads.
Victor Lund, listing syndication specialist with WAV Group, says it's also a great time to audit your syndication websites to measure effectiveness. “If you are going to share your property listings with third party websites, you should do so with intention,” he says.
Test the site by inquiring on one of your own listings to see if a lead is produced in your system. Be sure to review each site's terms of use to ensure listing content and copyrights are being followed. Also verify that the site is adhering to the
fair display guidelines, the WAV Group suggests.
Lastly, keep a file of each website where your information appears, Lund says. Include administrative passwords so your company's marketing personnel can make regular updates going forward. “Brokers are onboarding agents all of the time, and discharging others,” says Lund. “If you do not have someone tasked with making the changes, the firms online profile gets rusty in a hurry.”
—Erica Christoffer, REALTOR® Magazine
Source: "Time For Brokers To Clean Up Online Profiles" (Dec. 2016) WAV Group
