Comments on: Schooling Your Clients From Your Real Estate Blog

By: Judy Peterson

Judy Peterson — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:10:13 +0000

Thanks Kelly!

I’m so impressed with your quick response and willingness to make this school data as useful as possible for us. Good School and education information is so critical for many of my clients. Again, many thanks!

By: Kelly Finn

Kelly Finn — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:30:33 +0000

Hi Judy, great news, we have been developing the capability to customize the SchoolFinder widget by school district so you will be able to show just the schools within a certain school district. Also, we added the capability for users to show schools within a county, so users can choose schools within a school district, city, zip code, or county. We will be launching these enhancements within the coming days, I’ll be sure to let you know when they go live!

I agree that the widget looks better in a larger size so you can clearly see all schools in both the map and list view. Currently the user can make the widget as large as they would like if the page supports widgets. The other good news for you in particular is that we are creating a WordPress plugin so that you’ll be able to insert a larger sized widget within your Wordpress blog itself and not just the side column area!

Thanks again for your helpful ideas!

By: Judy Peterson

Judy Peterson — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:42:42 +0000

Seann and NikNik – I have added this widget to my blog. My sidebars are narrow so it could display better. It’s pretty cool though. Looking forward to the upgrades that let’s people search by school district. If it could be added to a page so that it could display in a larger format that would be good. Any plans for that feature?

By: Debbie Summers

Debbie Summers — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:50:59 +0000

Nik – I love the widget! I’m adding it to my AR blog and will be adding it to my new website and blog when they launch…

By: Seann Birkelund

Seann Birkelund — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:52:42 +0000

Judy, allowing users to set the widget by school district is a great idea. We’ll definitely look to add this going forward. One of the reasons we didn’t look to add this in the first release is that it can add several layers of complexity to the user experience and the design. For example, not all school districts in the area cover K-12, so in fact in order to get all the schools in the area covered, we would need to allow users to choose multiple school districts at the same time. Similarly, we have thought about this in terms of multiple neighboring zip codes as well. Thanks for the feedback.

By: NikNik

NikNik — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:40:59 +0000

Judy- I appreciate your perspective and you’re right that it would be nice to add yet another search criteria to the widget. However, I think these SchoolFinder tools are more functional than you realize.

Most parents are not always familiar with the names of the school districts. In many cases they may be familiar with a school name, or are looking at the geographic location of their new home and schools that are nearby. Additionally, private schools would be excluded from that type of search.

If you enter a zip code into the SchoolFinder Widget, you are provided with a list of nearby school and pins on the map. Click on your school and an overview page opens with additional data (scores, teacher ratios, etc). (http://www.education.com/schoolfinder/us/california/dublin/dublin-elementary/) And if you like what you see, you can enter a new search (including district) from the left sidebar.

As an agent, you should have direct links to school districts on your blog/Website. Including links to any/all private schools in the area. This widget is just one more way (visually) to search for schools when you are comparing different homes in different locations. After all this is just a widget (a tool or feature offering a snapshot). If you want fully integrated school information on your site, consider the SchoolFinder API.

Thanks again for your input…I’ll forward it to Seann at Education.com.

By: Judy Peterson

Judy Peterson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:53:18 +0000

NikNik – this is cute but not very functional. Most people don’t search for schools this way. Many search property by School District first in my geographic area. I would love, love, love a Widget that let clients search by school district!!

By: NikNik

NikNik — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:31:27 +0000

Back to SchoolFinder {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/gycIUvDC3M_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”Back to SchoolFinder ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/9DM3a4kVpr”}}}

By: Arkansas Land

Arkansas Land — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:04:31 +0000

I think it is very important to not only inform people, but to educate them. If you truly are a good realtor, you will do everything in your power to educate the public so they can make educated decisions.

By: Seann Birkelund

Seann Birkelund — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:36:24 +0000

Nik, thanks for awesome post. It’s great to see our tools well received by the real estate community!

By: Rajeev Sajja

Rajeev Sajja — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:27:47 +0000

Nik – It would help if I read your entire post!! It is possible to integrate to broker websites. Thanks!

By: Rajeev Sajja

Rajeev Sajja — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:24:20 +0000

Nik, cool tool. I wonder if a broker site could use this as well. They don’t seem to have any licensing programs. Any ideas?

By: Linsey

Linsey — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:19:06 +0000

Love that tip. I just added it to my blog and I can see that being very meaningful to my readers. Thanks so much!

By: Nick Bastian

Nick Bastian — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:08:26 +0000

Nik, this is great info. Perfect for community based sites. Another great MTO find!