Editor’s Note: we were asked to pull this video by the powers that be, so it is no longer available. Sorry!

In part one of our video coverage of Seth Godin’s keynote at Inman Real Estate Connect NYC 2007 Seth told us why traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore.

In Part 2 Seth tells us how to solve this problem by making our product or service Purple: i.e. Remarkable!

Getting people to talk about our product or service to their friends and family - otherwise known as viral or word-of-mouth marketing - is one sure way to get others to turn off their spam filter and let down their guard.

Why can Tiffany’s charge five times more for its diamonds? Why can Prada charge 10 times more for its nylon handbags?

Watch and find out.

I spent the month of January trying to find a roommate for an apartment I moved into in December. I put ads on Craiglist pointing people to my blog, which had a description of the apartment, pictures and a chat client that I planned to use to turn interested readers into a roommate. The ad on Craigslist drove hundreds of daily visitors to my blog. Sadly, however, I rarely logged into my instant messenger to actually talk to all the people that Craigslist was driving to the site.

While online chat clients for blogs and websites can improve chances of turning readers into clients (check out Kevin Boer’s blog on this topic), I had to be online at the same time as my blog readers to receive the chat immediately. With days full of open homes and client meetings, I imagine many agents are in the same boat.

For those who aren’t connected to the web all day, I suggest trying out jaxtr, a widget for blogs that lets readers call you on your mobile phone with just the click of a button. Yup, by just clicking on the widget, jaxtr puts a call through to your cell phone via the Internet. Talk about a great lead generation tool! Other upsides:

• Prospects don’t need skype or headsets: when a prospect clicks the widget they are asked to enter their phone number. This places a call to their landline. Only if they pick up the phone will your cell phone ring.
• Flexible: in addition to a widget for blogs and websites, jaxtr gives you a link that you can add to your email signature, Linkedin profile or as a link on your site. Here’s mine

Some downsides:

• Limited customization: jaxtr provides a few different widget styles but the one you’re able to put in your site depends on the hosting provider you’re using (we use Wordpress so the smaller “call me” widget works for us but I preferred the bigger widget above).
• Need to change privacy settings to talk to people you don’t know: by default jaxtr sends callers to your voicemail if you have not approved the phone number in your jaxtr account. As agents are probably more likely to convert callers into customers when you pick up the phone, you’ll need to change this setting in your account.

Although only time will tell if the average home or seller buyer will be comfortable initiating calls on the Internet, the potential of getting high quality leads from a tool like this seems strong and it’s certainly something I would use. Here’s more info on how you can get started:

1. Get a jaxtr account .
2. Add your phone number to your account and jaxtr.com gives your mobile a quick automated ring to confirm they have the right number.
3. You’re ready for prime time; jaxtr provides code for you to copy and paste onto your site. This will display the widget you see below on your blog.
4. You’re good to go!

Go on, give it a try -

(clicking here brings up a form that confirms you want to make the call. Hope to hear from you!)

It’s 4 days and roughly 6 hours before the Oscars, and I’m compelled to post. I mean, we dedicated something like 5,000 words to the Super Bowl; it’s only fair.

Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, you have to admit, you can’t avoid them. Call me a sucker, but I can’t resist a good rags to riches tale and every year, the pool of Oscar nominees includes at least a few hard luck stories and breakthrough performances.

This year, as I rallied around my picks, I found myself thinking – natch – any one of them might be in the market for their dream property given their sudden change of fortune. In exchange for the emotional fulfillment that they’ve provided me, I thought I’d provide some counsel on their respective house hunts.

Abigail Breslin- are you looking to jump into the next VW bus out of New York for a chance to be Miss Sunshine year-round? You should consider living off of Ocean Ave in Santa Monica–ideal for a tween starlet with an Oscar-worthy growl and some mean dance moves (helpful hint: if you click on one link in this post…it should be this one).

Jackie Earl Haley- as this year’s comeback kid , you might need to abandon San Antonio, TX, to shorten your commute to the studio. Since you’ve seen the volatility of the entertainment business, you should consider a crib in one of LA’s up and coming neighborhoods. Limiting the financial burden of your mortgage might allow you to make more choices like Little Children and less like Maniac Cop 3.

And of course, there’s the American Idol Jennifer Hudson. Jen, you’ve practically been given the Oscar already. Perhaps it’s time for you to leave behind the flat terrain of your hometown Chicago, to a location more suitable for the super glam. Bel Air is just perfect for you–with ample outdoor space and a pool of your own that you can enjoy year round.

Abigail, Jackie, Jen, feel free to ring me if you need more help. As for me, this might be the year of my very own turnaround story when I finally win the office Oscar pool and set out on a dream house hunt of my own…………

(A quick shout out to Christopher from Flashpoint for his help with this post!)

As you know, Trulia started as one of the early real estate mash-ups on the Web 2.0 scene. We thought it was only right (and about time) that we gave a little back to the developer community by providing access to otherwise private data from Trulia.com through the Trulia API.

What’s in the Trulia API?

The Trulia API provides access to two primary types of information for every state, county, city, ZIP code and neighborhood across the US, including:

1) Local real estate price trends - Average list price of homes for sale on Trulia, available from national down to the neighborhood level. Data available by number of bedrooms, dating back to November 2006.

2) Real estate search behavior online - Search traffic from national down to the neighborhood level, dating back to June 2006. Data is expressed as a percentage of traffic.

So with the Trulia API you can find out information like:

• “What was the average price of a 2-bedroom home in ZIP 94002 on the week of 11/27/2006?” (Answer: $809,533)
• “Which neighborhood was the biggest winner/loser in Manhattan over the past 6 months in terms of search traffic?” (Answer: winner=Flatiron District, loser=Battery Park City)
• We also have “helper data,” listing of all the cities/counties/ZIPs in every state, as well the longitude and latitude info for any of these locations.

You can use the Trulia API data to build a host of applications–from your own spin on our Heat Map, to home price forecasting tools, to mashups of Trulia’s data with…really any other source of data.

Can’t wait to get started? We couldn’t either.

A week ago we held a hackfest at good ‘ole 500 Treat Avenue to separate the cubs from the bears and illustrate the (infinite) possibilities of the Trulia API. The office was broken up into groups, and we all had 24-hours to brainstorm, design and build our hacks. We came up with more ideas than I will document here, but here are the winners, ready (or not) for public consumption:

PlotorNot merges average list price data for cities across the US with a diverse group of demographic variables to answer questions such as: “Do people pay more to live in cities with more women in New York state?” and “Do people flee the rain in Washington state?“  Data sources: Trulia API, US Census Bureau, flickr and public data sources. Credit to Roger and his entourage for gifting us with plotornot.

Truliaholic helps users visualize the differences in average list prices and search popularity for any city or county in the US. Data source: Trulia API. Credit goes to Erica and her crack team for their mastery of data visualization.

For developers: to learn more about the data made available by the Trulia API, head to our developer pages for full documentation, a forum and blog specifically to ask questions and discuss the API. As you build cool tools, let us know and we’ll add your apps to the application gallery to show off to the world!

February 19 is an historic day for all of us Americans, a time for us to honor the many former U.S. Presidents who have helped shape the country we live in today.

For those of us at Trulia, we are excited to announce our strategic business agreement with Keller Williams Realty. This is the first of its kind for Keller Williams; part of their company wide initiative to provide more cost-effective, innovative online advertising opportunities to their 77,000+ brokers and agents. When all is said and done, home buyers will be able to search through 100,000+ additional property listings on Trulia.com.

Fresh back from the Keller Williams Family Reunion Conference in Las Vegas, it was great to hear the enthusiasm expressed by Keller Williams brokers and agents alike. The common thread of comments centered on the importance of using more online tools to promote their listings and get serious home buyers to their Web sites.

And home buyers have responded in kind: within the first four days Keller Williams listings went live on Trulia.com, we delivered nearly 15,000 home buyers to Keller Williams broker and agent Web sites. One agent reported that she is in discussions with a prospective home buyer who found her listing on Trulia!

Today is President’s Day. However, we at Trulia are excited about our business, and this enthusiasm, plus the fact that both of our co-founders were born outside the US, result in us being in the office today.

So let’s talk about President’s day for a second. After some quick research, I found that way back in ancient times, in the early 1970s (probably around the time when Al Gore was inventing the Internet) the holiday was changed from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents Day. Seems like a bit of a knock to George, but I guess he’s still got the dollar bill. Also, if he were alive today, he’d be happy to know that real estate near his birthplace national monument, in Westmoreland County, VA is doing quite well.

And speaking of Virginia, is there something in the water there? Not only is it the home state of eight US presidents, but it also is also includes 4 of the top 10 cities that gained in search traffic on Trulia last month (see our monthly Trulia Trends report).

Way to go, Virginia! Maybe we should just rename the holiday “Virginia Day”. Then we’d just have to move our headquarters there so that we could have the day off.

Today we issued our February 2007 Trulia Trends report, a monthly snapshot of what consumers are searching for on trulia.com and real estate trends.

This month’s Trulia Trends identifies the top five most popular ski resort towns favored by mountain lovers across the country (graphic above). It also lists the biggest movers and shakers across the U.S.–both in terms of search behavior and list prices. And new this month, Trulia Trends introduces a “spotlight on…” section, an up close look at real estate in one city every month. Big surprise, our launch city is beautiful San Francisco.

Interesting findings:

• From July 06 - Jan 07, search traffic for ski resort locations increased 2.37x above all searches on Trulia. Best time to buy a home in the snow? If home buyers want to beat the rush, Trulia search data shows that July is best.
• The eastern half of the U.S. saw the biggest percentage gains in overall search queries. The sole New York entry on the top ten list was Queens, NY, indicating that the increase of development in the borough has been met with an increase of consumer interest.
• The representative U.S. home shopper on Trulia is looking for a 2,075 square-foot single-family home with 3.2 bedrooms and 2.2 baths at a cost of $479,254.
• Second home shopping season: seaside communities in locations as diverse as New Jersey and Florida were popular with home shoppers in January.
• Old is new again? Resale properties in Phoenix and neighboring Gilbert, AZ experienced price appreciation above 5%, despite competition from extensive new development in these regions.
• Keep an eye on Ohio: Akron, OH was tenth on the list of “biggest risers” in search queries and saw the second largest price increase during January.

In our “Spotlight on San Francisco”, we identify the 10 neighborhoods that are the biggest risers and biggest fallers in terms of search behavior.

San Francisco homes averaged $1.07mm on Trulia in January. Two of the top five neighborhood risers–Sunnyside and Bernal Heights–underscore that home shoppers were looking to obtain San Francisco’s style with out its notorious spend. With an average list price of $792,530, the Sunnyside neighborhood continues its path to SF’s next hot spot. And Bernal Heights views are still priced at a discount, with average list prices at $794,313.

Thanks again to Jonathan Miller at the Matrix for his help creating this report.

Download the full report here.

Editor’s Note: we were asked to pull this video by the powers that be, so it is no longer available. Sorry!

I got a few snippets (golden nuggets) of Seth Godin’s keynote at Inman Real Estate Connect NYC 2007.

Seth goes back a few (20, 30, 40?) years to find a time when traditional (TV, radio, print, outdoor, coupons, packaging, etc) marketing and advertising worked. How is it possible that these mediums could be so effective for one generation and virtually irrelevant to another?

Clutter! Way back then there was one brand of …pain medication, batteries, sliced bread (and a hell of a lot fewer real estate agents and mortgage brokers), etc. All Proctor & Gamble had to do was let people (with real problems and needs) know where to find their products and a path was beaten to their door. That’s all over now.

As soon as you come up with a clever idea so do ten of your competitors. Case in point - today there are 19 flavors of Oreos and Starbucks offers 19,000 varieties of beverages. People don’t need you, your product or service anymore and they have gotten really good at ignoring you. Today no matter what service or product you’re pushing - ah offering - people have dozens if not hundreds of options to choose from.

So how do you differentiate yourself from the crowd? Check back for Part 2 of Seth’s keynote later this week…

By the way, companies pay Seth ~$20,000 to speak for an hour or two at these things. I attended a day long workshop at Seth’s office once for which the going rate was $800! Ok, I actually didn’t pay the $800, but bought $300 worth of Purple Cow books to get my ticket! I gave the books out to the 50 most influential people I know or wanted to know. Almost all those people now include me in their Rolodex and consider me a resource. That was very Purple of me - Seth would be proud. Of course, Seth got me to “sneeze” his book to 50 influential people - how Purple of him! If you’re asking yourself “what the hell is he talking about?” then read Purple Cow and find out. More valuable content from Trulia:-)

This week’s ‘Carnie Awards’ can be found on ReyEstate.com. You’ll find an entertaining peak into the life of Emmit Smith post football as an aspiring real estate tycoon on queercents.com, as well as a guide to mobile home classifications on Sadie’s Take on Delaware, Ohio.

Trulia’s vblog with Homethinking.com CEO, Niki Scevak was noted under ‘Best Read’ but second place doesn’t win you a ring. The real prize went to Real Estate Tomato’s post “If Move.com Were To Murder HouseValues.com.”

It sounds so scandalous – makes you want to check it out doesn’t it?”

Robbie over at Rain City Guide just did us a big favor (well, he didn’t do it for us…but we’re pleased anyway).

We are often asked by brokers and agents about how to get their listings on Trulia (and can they use the same feed to upload their listings to Google Base, Craigslist and others). We’ve got our how to guide here for Trulia, but we don’t have a “how to” for everyone else.

Robbie just went through the process for a client and provided a bloggers play-by-play. I imagine that the comments to his post will provide some interesting feedback from the community as well. Check it out!

Shameless self promotion: “And in 72 hours, I noticed referrals from Trulia was already generating about 4% of the site’s traffic!”