Takeaways:
- For now Trulia and Zillow remain two separate sites under the same umbrella, but if you have a professional profile on either, they are now merged into one.
- If you didn’t have a profile on Zillow before, you do now.
- There are ways to maximize exposure such as scrubbing your listing inventory and linking your profile to social and your website.
Trulia and Zillow are still among the top real estate websites used by consumers. Recently, Trulia became part of the Zillow Group brand, which raised a lot of questions.
Would there be any changes to Trulia? Would Trulia still be around after the merger?
For now, Trulia and Zillow remain two separate sites under the same umbrella, but there is a recent change about which real estate pros need to be aware.
If you are a real estate pro and have a professional profile on Trulia and Zillow, it’s vital to know that your profiles are now merged into one. More specifically, your Trulia profile is now merging into Zillow.
Here’s the announcement straight from Zillow: “We’ve combined the information within both Zillow and Trulia profiles, including past sales and client reviews, to provide a single, complete profile that agents only need to edit once to display updated information across both sites.”
For details about the new profile setup, you can visit Zillow’s help desk.
In the meantime, here are a few essential facts about this profile that you should know:
1. Your Zillow profile is now your primary profile.
Any edits you make to your Zillow profile will reflect on your Trulia profile as well.
2. Reviews you have received on Trulia may not be displayed on Zillow.
Here’s the explanation straight from Zillow: “Zillow has strict review requirements that differ from Trulia’s. All Zillow reviews are carefully screened for authenticity, vetted for helpfulness and approved by Zillow staff. In transferring over your Trulia reviews, Zillow filters out all reviews that do not meet [these] criteria.”
3. If you didn’t have a Zillow profile before, Zillow has auto-created one for you and will send you an email to create your password.
As a real estate pro, you can gain a lot of exposure through your professional profiles, online reviews and listing inventory on these sites.
By having a profile on both sites, you are increasing your online exposure to potential clients online. I mean, who doesn’t want that?
Now you need to focus on leveraging your profile to stand out as the real estate pro buyers and sellers need to work with.
Here are four tips to help you take full advantage of your professional online profiles to stand out in your local market and to potential new clients:
1. Get more online reviews
Customer reviews can have a huge impact on converting potential clients. Think about it for a second. Before you work with someone or before you purchase something, how many times do you reference customer reviews?
Make it part of your closing checklist to ask your clients to write a review you can use on your online profiles.
2. Scrub your online listing inventory
Make sure your listings, both sold and active, are properly marketed and attached to your profile. Do this so that if a consumer finds your listing online, they can see your name attached to it.
Also, if someone finds your professional profile, they can see your listings both active and sold. It’s vital to claim your active listings to your profile, as well as record when you sell a home (both listing and selling sides).
Even if your listings are syndicated to Zillow and Trulia, it’s crucial to double-check still to make sure your listings made it there, they are attached to your profile and show the proper information.
3. Check out your competition
Have you ever looked to see how your profile compares to other real estate pros in your local market? Do you know how you stack up against them?
It’s crucial to know your competition and how your profile compares because that’s also what a potential client might be doing.
On Zillow, there is a feature called Agent Finder where you can run a search to find a particular agent by name or by city or neighborhood, and it will show a list of agents to the consumer.
Check it out, and use it to see how your profile compares to others in your area.
4. Link your profile to social and your website
Make sure those viewing your profile can access your website, blog and social profiles easily. After all, you want them to follow you on social, and who doesn’t want more Web traffic?
Add links in the provided spaces in your profile and you can even add links in your profile description as well.
Bonus tip: Do you have a landing page, e-book or item of value you are highlighting? Add that link and a call to action to your About Me section to get more exposure for your marketing campaign.
Any other changes coming with this merger are still unknown. One thing that’s for sure is this profile merger is going to make things a lot easier.
Now you don’t have to worry about getting client reviews on two separate sites, editing different profiles and monitoring sold data on both.
Anything to save time and get back to helping buyers and sellers is helpful. Take advantage of these profile tips and stand out to potential clients as the local real estate expert they need to call.
Alexandra Krause is a speaker, trainer and owner of Your Biz Tank, a real estate marketing company. You can follow her on Twitter or Facebook.