Marketing Technologies on the Internet
There is a lot of talk these days about the future of Real Estate and its new presence in the market. Terms like blogging, XML, API and RSS are being tossed around left and right, and it's easy to get lost in this new shuffle. Please allow us to shed some light on the subject.
I've heard a lot about Blogging. What's the big deal?
Blogging is the new way to pitch special events and listings on the internet, using your own dialog. Buyers can then read
your blog and find out about such things as soon as your entries are posted. There have lately been numerous success stories
from real estate agents that have simply used blogs to push their internet marketing angles. Blogs are a quick and easy way
to publish great deals and receive immediate buyer feedback through a blog's commenting functionality. Get Your View is proud
to offer blogging free with every product.
So, what about all this technical talk?
Today's popular internet search engines and listing websites (i.e. Google Base, Trulia and Zillow) have recently implemented
extra technology to simplify the process of submitting information to them. This is done through electronic information
transmission services like API and RSS in a format called XML. While many are unclear about what these mechanisms are, they
have become increasingly important to Real Estate agents everywhere, as they cut work down incredibly and ultimately increase
the visibility of the agent and their listings, strongly increasing sales potential.
What's XML?
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. This format appears in so many ways everyday and is responsible for a lot of our
digital activity as people. Daily processes like financial transactions, text messages, email and even html get transmitted
in subset renditions of XML (html entities like '' and '' are just pre-defined XML entities). As such, XML is
the language of choice when information needs to be stored or sent from one place to another.
That's Great! What's API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API can be a stand-alone widget that runs on your computer or
specifically written web-application that lives on a server. Get Your View uses the latter. Basically, any time a property
is added to our system, you have the choice of submitting it to several listing engines immediately, engaging a script we
have written which communicates independently with each of these websites. Every API supporting site has issued us a Token
that identifies us uniquely, thereby allowing us to transmit XML data and perform functions securely like Inserting, Updating
and Deleting. Hence, this API stuff is pretty neat and very useful. You don't have to do a thing except list with us; we take
care of the rest.
OK, so what's this RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Let's say you want to read the New York Times, but you don't want to go to their
website - ever. So, you learn that you can install an application on your computer called an RSS reader. Some browsers, like
Apple's Safari, include an RSS reader. By entering a URL with a 'feed://' prefix, known as a feed, you can get all the
information from the New York Times directly, in an uncluttered format. These feeds would resemble nothing but text and
perhaps include an image, audio file or movie, without advertisements or any extra stuff you wouldn't want to see. You
could liken it to a news wire that types out simply the information that is necessary for delivering the story, except in
our case it would be submitting properties, not news stories. So, in the same way a website would get a property through
API, they would look at one of these URLs (without a token, since it's public) for new XML entries on a regular basis, say
once a week. Get Your View automatically creates an RSS feed for you. Once available, it can be implemented with whichever
RSS accepting website you choose. So, RSS can be pretty useful too!
You can specify to which degree you would like to implement these advanced technologies. Get Your View continually do our best to make these processes automatic. However, in cases for which you might need to submit XML documents yourself, we have included links for download, found in the 'Publication' portion of the Get Your View 'Properties' editor.
We hope this document has been able to shed some light on how these technologies can give you an edge in this new evolution of Real Estate.