At the end of last year we wrote an article called “
Embracing Social Media Marketing and Customer Service”. This was a discussion centred on a new American social media site for the home buyer called
www.yourplace.com. We wondered at the time if this idea would come to the UK?... well it has!
Rightmoveplaces calls itself a place “where you can rate and review UK cities, towns, villages and suburbs, and where you can promote or talk about, well, just about anything related to your place.” This concept of gaining personal reviews of any product, service or person is something we are all familiar with as this is what we do on a person-to-person level. The web has been relatively quick to catch onto this idea with site such as Yelp, Tripadvisor and many more.
The property portal Rightmove has made a great move by setting up Rightmoveplaces. People don’t want to just see a property listing, they want to know all about the area, the schools and get real opinions from real people. Social media acts as an extension of our natural networking group where we can ask opinions and get referrals just as we would with our friends and family if we were looking for builder or a good crèche for our kids.
There are a few nice features too such as being able to post articles, a ‘neighbourliness’ rating and even a fun feature to compete with Rightmove’s experts to guess the price of a house in that area by going ‘higher or lower’.
This is a sign of things to come, estate agents could really do well to boost their reputation and the houses they offer by telling people more about the area through their websites and social media channels.
By Chris Haines, MD of Evolvin Ltd
Chris strives to stay ahead of technological developments and build solutions for the property industry. You can contact him
here or follow him on
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