Why Aren't More Real Estate Websites Using Outside.in for Hyperlocal Content?
We all know consumers are wondering what’s currently for sale, what their home is worth, and how their local market is doing and that every agent and broker website should have content and functionality to address those consumer desires. But I agree with Eric Stegemann that hyperlocal information should also be on every real estate website. People buy homes on average every 7 years (or something like that); why would you want your website to only appeal to them only during the time they are actively buying or selling? You wouldn’t — and shouldn’t.
Instead, why not fill your website with everything a home owner may be interested in no matter where they are in the home ownership cycle? Neighborhood news, school information, demographics, crime stats, local business information, etc. — this is all information of interest to buyers as part of the process of finding a place to live. I covered some available sources for local data quite some time ago, but one to add to that list is Outside.in. They aggregate news from blogs down to the ZIP and neighborhood level and allow others to integrate that data into their websites (and BTW – if you have a local blog, you should syndicate your content to Outside.in as a way to get traffic). Here is an example page for the Brentwood community in St Louis with data from Outside.in integrated by Eric Stegemann, who runs the Tribus Group.
So, is your website maintaining relevance throughout the homeownership cycle?
geordieromer
Posted at 17:08h, 09 FebruaryI certainly do syndicate to Outside.in from my blog, but I had not thought to look to them as a source of info. After taking a peek, it looks like they don't have much to offer in my zip.
akoya condos
Posted at 02:20h, 10 FebruaryThanks for the update!!! Wow, awesome real estate blog.
camillac
Posted at 07:36h, 10 Februaryhi georideromer – what zip / area are you looking to cover? we cover over 53K neighborhoods and ingest over 40K unique feeds from news sites, local blogs, social media, etc. would love to see how we can help!
Matt Dollinger
Posted at 08:30h, 10 FebruaryDrew – great post and totally agree with Eric that this needs to be included on every single real estate page. We did this when we launched the property detail page and neighborhood pages for the @properties website about 7 months ago http://www.atproperties.com/info/neighborhoodDe…
I might also suggest you throw in information from additional free sites like Education.com and even Metromix.com if your area is served by them. Amanda McMillan has done this extremely well (although linking out to them) at her site http://www.chicagohomepartner.com on the neighborhood page. Flickr is a great way to “show” the neighborhood as well.
I think that one of the concerns with outside.in especially in major metropolitan areas, is the local coverage of crime. If someone is mugged in a particular area you could get 5-6 bloggers covering this same event and outside.in will pull all of those posts. It's kind of up to the individual if they want to share this data or if they want to use a “filter” program to display only certain data.
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Ed Kohler
Posted at 13:21h, 10 FebruaryOne challenge with outside.in and similar products today is that they're better in theory than practice. For example, the top-2 news stories for Skokie on atproperties.com right now are about the Hollywood sign, which is obviously no where near Skokie.
http://www.atproperties.com/info/neighborhoodDe…
A lot of this type of content falls into a “just because we can doesn't mean we should” bucket. Syndicated content that doesn't pass the sniff test hurts the reputations of companies publishing it. It's hard to claim you're the local expert when you're publishing unrelated stories from across the country.
In theory: cool stuff. In practice at the very local level: are you helping or hurting yourself?
Mike Price
Posted at 14:44h, 10 FebruaryEd, Well put. Efforts to aggregate hyper-local content will continue to evolve. I'm convinced that the real opportunity for real estate professionals is to create and publish relevant local content that remains their own unique perspective, and in turn, their own intellectual property. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using good tools for syndicated content like this (i actually like the idea of using outisde.in), however, real estate professionals need to stay cognizant of the fact that consumers want to know what they know, not a bot.
ColoradoHomeFinder
Posted at 16:11h, 10 FebruaryHey Drew, great, great post. I've never before looked at my site from this point of view. I'm embarrassed to say but this was an eye opener for me. I've narrow-mindedly focused on providing info to current buyers and sellers. This approach allows the possibility to nurture relationships over time and hopefully be top-of-mind when they are ready to take some action.
Bob Stahl
Posted at 16:43h, 10 FebruaryThanks! I didn't know about Outside.in but I am going to check it out right now. I think it's great advice to offer valuable content about everything real estate-relevant to your area.
Matt Dollinger
Posted at 16:50h, 10 FebruaryHmmm… Well, I'm going to err on the side of yes Ed. I understand that this isn't exactly what someone is looking for in Skokie, but since this is pretty much citizen journalism I'll take the good with the bad.
As far as hurting us – I'm going to say probably not. I'd be very surprised if someone actually left our site and overlooked all of the excellent search, education, etc. data because of an incorrectly tagged story. Also think about the fact that we're pulling this on a pretty small area – if you pulled stories regarding Naperville or in your area it would have less errors.
But to say that because a story is incorrectly tagged takes away from our knowledge of Chicago areas is like me telling you that because your RSS feed on your Cupcake or Le Centre story show up as code should knock you out as a website reviewer. It's something that in the true spirit of innovation people are willing to deal with.
Ed Kohler
Posted at 07:14h, 11 FebruaryMatt, I enjoy debating this sort of thing at the theoretical level. But, in the end, more can be gleaned from measuring what impact this type of syndication has on site visitors. Back up at the theoretical level, I definitely don't mean to pick on Outside.in. What they're attempting to do is very difficult. I've seen this with how Outside.in treats my personal blog, where I occasionally write about local issues in Minneapolis or surrounding communities, but also write about things I see when I travel (as your noted), and many non-geo-specific issues. This makes it tough for Outside.in to put my blog in a bucket for Minneapolis and has to analyze things post by non-geotagged post.
In practice, other syndication sites have data issues as well. For example, many business directory sites include what looks like a really cool coffee shop with WiFi only two blocks from my home. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. As far as I can tell, many restaurant review sites get their base data from the same source, so this inaccurate nugget of data is consistently inconsistent.
Theoretically, I see a website as an extension of an agent or broker who's in the business of providing local expertise. If local content is being presented on behalf of agents and brokers in that fashion, I'd expect it to reflect the agent's or broker's expertise. If an agent in my market told me “There's a great coffee shop just two blocks away!” I'd question their local knowledge. If an agent in Skokie said “Have you heard about the Hollywood sign project?” I'd question whether their heart is in Los Angeles.
I guess that my take on this is that many syndication services, as they exist today, look better to me from 30,000 feet than they do when I get down to the city, neighborhood, or property level. And the closer I get to a property (the localist of local real estate levels), the more concerned I am about the data being correct.
harrystyris
Posted at 20:40h, 10 FebruaryI have noticed that your physical location has a great deal of influence on where your website ranks in the local 10/7 pack. I have seen a trend across many industries that shows businesses that are closer to the center of a city, much higher in the results, compared to a business in surrounding towns. It seems that the results are not as relevant as they could be because of this.I think Keller is wrong, too. For him to argue that less staff automatically means less coverage, he has to believe the place is perfectly organized, prioritized and staffed. It’s a damned fine paper, but it isn’t operating at perfection or even very near it – and not all those people are as good as they think they are.
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Jim Duncan
Posted at 05:04h, 11 FebruaryI like outside.in. I actually have a page just for them on my blog, but they don't have coverage in either niche I target – Charlottesville or Crozet.
This seems to be the year of the local news aggregator … until one or three of these new companies/services reaches critical mass it seems that they will remain most useful in larger cities and metropolitan areas.
And what Mike said.
“There's absolutely nothing wrong with using good tools for syndicated content like this (i actually like the idea of using outisde.in), however, real estate professionals need to stay cognizant of the fact that consumers want to know what they know, not a bot.”
Denise Hamlin
Posted at 07:00h, 11 FebruaryI agree with some of the other comments here. Great idea in theory, but Outside.in needs more content before it becomes a viable option for me. Totally on board with the hyper local content on websites though – Great post for making agents aware of that.
bnix
Posted at 04:54h, 13 FebruaryI have used Outside.In's API in the past (years ago) to integrate real-time updates (from twitter and blogs) into my local community pages. No one cared, so I dropped it. However, I have been watching OI learn and improve their service to where it's becoming more valuable as a publisher. The ability to curate the feeds to meet my exact goals per market is very powerful. I'm testing on a few stealth sites, but hope to integrate with my brokerage site in the coming months.
aside: Jared from Oustide.In will be at REtechSouth giving a session on the tools available from OI for the real estate industry http://www.retechsouth.com/schedule/ – I can't wait to ask more questions in-person.
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Posted at 09:41h, 16 FebruaryI don't know what you really mean here so try to make it simple.
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Posted at 17:41h, 16 FebruaryI don't know what you really mean here so try to make it simple.