Monday, February 2, 2009

Your Listings on Craigslist in a Jiffy

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The Problem: When you promote your listings and decide that you would like to post them on Craigslist, you may find yourself needing to re-enter listing information into web forms and also needing to format it to make it presentable. Even if you copy-and-paste this information (there are 8-9 fields on the craigslist form!), you will still probably find it too repetitive and unnecessary when you multiply it by the number of listings you want to post.
 
The Solution: MyRealPage has created an easy tool to "paste" one or more of your listings into Craigslist while avoiding any repetitive chores. The process is still manual and tagets one listing at a time (as dictated by the Craigslist terms of use) but it is now reduced to just a few clicks per listing, without any typing or copying-and -pasting. This makes it possible for you to post a listing in just a few seconds!
 
Each listing that you post is nicely formatted and includes all the listing photos. It also contains links that connect the posting to its full details view on your website, as well as links that take the reader to your listing searches and your other listings. In addition, you can specify a default header and footer, as well as custom contact banner for each posting. This may be useful if you decide to brand your listings on craigslist in a consistent banner (TIP: do you have an image that you use for your email banner? why not use it for craigslist default header?)
 
It is hard to underestimate how important it is to give your listings maximum exposure to the public. Craigslist is a very popular classifieds website and by posting there, you are likely to catch the eye of many home sellers and buyers who frequent it. Having your website links in each of your listing postings will help drive web traffic to your website, create leads and increase sales. We hope that we are able to make your job easier for you with this helpful tool.
 
Craigslist Screens
 
Watch this helpful video that shows you how quickly you can post your listings on craigslist:
 
Craigslist Video

Comments

by Bo Kauffmann on Tue, Feb, 3, 2009 08:50 AM
You keep getting better and better! Good Job! For the customized header for Craigslist, is there any way that we can use our website banner? that would really help 'brand' the listing. Bo
by Bill Skrypnyk on Tue, Feb, 3, 2009 01:57 PM
Thanks Bo!

It may be hard to provide website banner images at the general level, because many of our banners are flash.

However, here is what you can do:

- Take a screenshot of your website with the whole banner visible
- Crop the image to show only the banner (or use our online Image Editor!)
- Upload your image to your Web Drive in the Manage Website screen
- Right click on the image and select "Copy URL..."; select the URL and use it in your default header. Your full image code would look like this:

<img src="[your url here]" alt="Bo Kauffmann">

Hope this helps. If something doesn't work, drop our support a quick line.

Happy craigslist-ing!
by Mark Roozendaal on Mon, Feb, 9, 2009 05:33 PM
I just wanted to say thanks for this great tool. I appreciate you thinking out of the box!
by Mike Eddy on Fri, Feb, 20, 2009 02:08 PM
I must be doing something wrong because once my post is published on Craigslist, all the encoding shows in the description. Also, it would be nice if there was an option to limit the amount of photos to post as well, since I have more on my website than I would like posted to Craigslist.
by Bill Skrypnyk on Mon, Feb, 23, 2009 01:24 PM
Mike, this issue has been solved now (as you have confirmed with me offline). Thanks for pointing it out.
by Jan on Thu, May, 14, 2009 07:17 AM
I am not ver good with the computer and my assistant no longer works with me. Can you help me out with this in very simple terms?? I would like to take advantage of this if I could--but feel lost.
thank you
please send to my e-mail address
by Bill Skrypnyk on Thu, May, 14, 2009 11:59 AM
Jan,

I have let our customer support folks know. They will contact you shortly.

Fear not, the craigslist function is easy!

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