This is a great event in early May in Downtown Toronto and one of my favourite times to see the kids and their parents emerging from their warm winter accomodations and start to deal with the first signs of Spring. However this year, the Forsythia were almost one month early due to our mild winter but…it was still a great time had by all.

Many thanks to our Festival Queen’s Gina Dineen and Liz Kingstone. Enjoy the video and look forward to the first weekend in May for next year’s event!

Rob Hahn  and Bill Lublin  in the same room is a recipe for discussion…they love to take polar opposite opinions and battle it out…sort of like watching a Tennis Match….with no one winning.

Then Dale Chumbley  piped in with a great story…as usual.

The scoop is yes, it is harder to get the eyeballs of the masses but like the weather, Real Estate is local and sharing information about a local issue is always really well received.

Don’t miss these great leaning opportunities when they happen in your area. Your thoughts?

Any thoughts? Comments below?

We arrived a few days early and were able to take in some of the sites of San Diego and the REBarCamp San Diego  thanks to the great work of Jim Marks  and his team. REBarCamps are quite a phenomenon in the Real Estate Social Media World. They were begun by Todd Carpenter , Andy Kaufman , Mike Price  and Brad Coy , four energetic and crazy guys who decided that a “Un-conference” that gathered the best minds in the field in a large space with lots of viewpoints for a day of discussion might be fun. Little did they know that the idea would grow with BarCamps held across the States in one year culminating in the largest, held at the nightclub “Stingaree” in San Diego? It was my forth in the past year, filled with knowledge, networking and great conversation.

If you plan to attend an NAR Conference or an Inman Connect Conference , know that the REBarCamp is usually the day before so make sure that you add that time to your schedule. The REBarCamp is free to attend but to really benefit; you should participate as much as possible. I facilitated a group discussion on “How and if you could monetize Social Media”. The great thing about REBarcamp is that no position is right or wrong but great discussion brings great ideas…

Coming up is REBarCamp New York  on January 11^thand hopefully REBarCampTO on May 7^th or 8^th…more to come. 

NAR Conference San Diego 2009:

What follows is not all the sessions but highlights from them:

Max Pigman , one of the Social Media Speakers talked about taking a strong self assessment and growing your sphere of influence using Social Media. Those SM tools allow you to work smarter and leaner and suggested that REALTORS not spew Real Estate but also share personal information. He suggests short posts but ones that engage and that agents should leave comments and reengage old clients. He says that “commenting is like renting space in someone’s head” and that most would find greater success on Facebook than they might on email. He suggested using the chat on Facebook and make Facebook a major part of your marketing strategies.

He suggests that as well as a Fan Page on Facebook, you might want to create a neighbourhood page and invite your clients to share information about the “hood” that you work and live in with the odd listing being uploaded as well as specific content created for the community. I have created one on Facebook called the Cabbagetown Community Page and it is gaining momentum.

He pointed out something I love on LinkedIn which are the recommendations. Ask clients and friends for their recommendations and give them back.

For more follow Max at www.facebook.com/maxpigman

Another interesting session was on the Future of MLS:

A discussion of what the future holds is always interesting but the recent addition of RPR (REALTOR Property Resource) which marries parcel based information with Board/Association data makes the data richer than ever before and should help strengthen the REALTOR business proposition.

Jim Duncan of FranklyMLS.com  says that the consumer has good access to the data; REALTORS are needed to put it in context. The problem will come if the MLS is not perceived as the best data; the weak link is the Realtors.

I sat in on the Communications Committee of the National Association of REALTORS one afternoon.  

Interesting to note is that just before NAR San Diego Conference, Houselogic.com  was released in its Beta version. It is a public facing website wholly owned by NAR (REALTOR.com is not) that features all sorts of information about home ownership. I think it is a great move by NAR to try to make Houselogic.com the “go-to” location for homeowners.

NAR is also bringing Real Estate Today  to radio, another great move. They have also just released a Guideline for REALTOR Associations on Social Media. Feel free to email me and I will email you back a copy. It is the work of Todd Carpenter, the Social Media Manager at NAR and founder of REBarCamp.

There was a great Social Media course with Jeff Turner  (a perennial favourite) and friends: Amy Chorew , Dustin Luther , Rudy Bacharaty  and Daniel Rothamel :

As someone who has been involved now for a couple of years…the great thing about the SM movement is that the rules and ideas are still being defined and refined so that nothing is really hard and fast and few questions are considered “stupid”.

Some thoughts from the Friends:

• There are huge changes in marketing…
• The number of tools will expand
• New behaviours will be needed
• Keep your mind open to the new tools.
• Blog is hub…use the tools to drive people to the blog…
• Static has moved to interactive.
• Content gets pushed or pulled to other sites.
• The Consumer is the driver using it to search agents, communities…
• How do you connect and use the tools, how do you engage the consumer…
• Consumers are changing the way we interact…
• The consumer wants to be listened to by real people.
• Bring your personality online. It’s like having a beauty shot on your card and then showing up at the door…be real.
• Don’t allow a disconnect between online and offline.
• Develop a Social Media strategy. Think about it before you post.
• Every post should have a goal…
• Try to connect with friends of friends…F.O.F. marketing…creating content that friends would pass to friends is a huge game changer in Social Media.

Using Social Media to close more deals with Mike Parker  and Mark Porter . Some of their ideas:

•  14 percent trust advertising but 78 percent trust peer recommendations
• Make your Business photo pop: recently I had an Avatar created with the CN Tower in the background.
• You have to be true.
• Increase your friends every day by ten to generate more income.
• Not who you know but who knows me.
• Search for major employers in your area and add them as friends.
• Don’t post anything negative.
• Post updates 3 to 5 times a day

Going Beyond Listing Data:

• Listings are ubiquitous…now what else?
• Layers of data…communities, walk ability scores.
• Add video of the community and community photos.
• View and analyze your client actions on the web site.

Expanding your sphere of influence by using your Blog:

Here are some great Ideas from Ines Hegedus-Garcia , Teresa Boardman  and Mariana Wagner .

Ines:@ines

• It is ok to be yourself…
• Blog is the base.. it is the hub with “call to action” buttons on the site…
• Contact Flickr  users to post their photos, for permission to post photos of your Community.
• Anything you do online, be consistent.
• Social Capitol. The currency that you get online; your followers.
• Help put other businesses on the map.

Teresa:@teresa

• writes a blog post every day about the ordinary.
• It builds trust if you can be yourself.

Note: Teresa is admittedly anti-social but has built a great business from photos of her home town and engaging customers.

Mariana:@mizzie

• You have to be transparent…
• write directly to the target…
• think about what it is you want and write about it.
• Picture the perfect client and write like you are talking directly to them.
• Remember that whatever you put out there is there forever…

 The bottom line of a NAR Conference is that there is a huge amount of information, some great networking and a four day whirlwind that usually leaves participants reeling. This year there was a large contingent of Canadian REALTORS that contributed and as usual at all Conferences a lot of work happens behind the scenes.

Next year the Conference will be in New Orleans but San Diego proved to be an excellent location to get 20,000 REALTORS together.

Have you been there? What did you think?? Comments welcome.

It is not often that at this point in life, I can lose my Virginity but here is my very first Vlog.

Sorry for the production quality and the noise of plates being washed in the background but…there is a lot I want to convey and having the time to sit down and write is not always possible…Feel free to tell me if you think I should scrap the VLOGGING project and please let me know if there are subjects that we should talk about…

Comments are always welcome.

Jeff Turner

Provide a great customer experience.

Jeff then spoke of Tech Tools to Leverage Social Media. 

Use the tools that help you achieve your Social Media goals:

1. Look outside the real estate industry. What is happening in other industries…
2. Move Offline to Online (Find other modes to get the message out). Add clients to Facebook (take your client database and put them on Facebook)
3. Care deeply about something. (Don’t just give lip service…get involved)
4. Share openly and often. Always be free with your knowledge….
5. Listen with intent. Are you really listening or thinking about what to say next?
6. Target someone unreachable (David Armano). Great stuff on David Armano’s Blog.
7. Teach a newbie. Be a mentor.
8. Meet face-to-face. At the end of the day it is all about the face-to-face, the social media is a way of getting there.

Some great questions were asked through the balance of the day:

• Does brand mean anything anymore?
• Are they all the same?
• Does it matter what brand a REALTOR has behind them?
• As “Teams” have evolved within Brands, will they move to be Independents to have more control over the product.
• Are Brokerages and Boards/Associations too numbers driven as a profit model?

Discussion about the use of the Amazon Kindle: Harper Studio led the discussion but it was not geared to potential uses in the future of Real Estate however it is interesting to note that usage is increasing exponentially. As a Kindle owner and user, I await applications that will allow listings to be viewed on the Kindle. Newspapers, Blogs and magazine’s are now downloading content to the Kindle overnight.

In another Discussion about Boards and market statistics….it was stated that Boards need to explain the data to the members to explain it to their clients…the Skinny. Short videos about the market down loadable to agents web sites and Blogs for content!  

Houston Area Realtors HAR.com is now allowing closed Buyers and sellers to rate their REALTORS and the services they provide. They are also working on a REALTOR production analyzer that will be available to the Public and help the consumer shop for an agent by past success in different areas and price range. When I asked Bob Hale, CEO of HAR.comwhy they were moving to that kind of transparency, he rightfully stated that if the Board/Association did not provide this service, it was their belief that a 3rd party would soon be providing it and the quality of data from the trade association would be better.

In discussing tools for surveys Zoomerang.com, Redfincalculates bonus by surveying their Buyers and Sellers (Redfin’s Realtors are paid salary) on survey, the ultimate question, since reviews launched conversion rate has increased 100 fold. Before then, they had a lot of people using their web site to search but not converting to online Consultants/Realtors. At the end of the day however, it was suggested that the most important question to ask is:

“How likely are you to recommend this Realtor’s real estate services to a friend or family?”

A speaker from MRIS’ Homesdatabase.com had a great top 10 for Consumer Focused web sites:

• 10. Aim for a particular duck: Who is your consumer?
• 9. Turn the binoculars around: What is your consumer searching for?
• 8. The Wine is only as good as the grapes: Garbage in, garbage out…
• 7. Get the big picture and the big pictures…Large photos and lots of them…
• 6. Don’t set it and forget it: keep the content up to date and add more applications
• 5. If it’s real, it’s spectacular: if it is worth doing it is worth overdoing…(my words)
• 4. Build it and they will not necessarily come: make it easy. MRIS describes their site as the most comprehensive Registration-free MLS search.
• 3. Make it habit forming. Consumers will come back if there is always something to come back to…
• 2. Show me the money. Make sure that it is benefiting all your members and their Brokers in terms of leads…
• 1. Stop, look and listen: continuously monitor the site….and ask for feedback…

It was a great second day…and sadly the afternoon was divided into 4 different tracks…try as I might I could not be in all 4 at the same time but…still a great day.

Related Blogs:

What I Learned at Inman Real Estate Connect: August 2009 Day Three

What I Learned at Inman Real Estate Connect: August 2009 Day One

Inman Real Estate Connect: August 2009 Sano Stante’s List

Social Media: REBarCamp San Francisco August 2009

REBarCamp San Francisco August 2009.

So. Day One started off with Bloggers Connect:

Jim Cronin of the Real Estate Tomato started my day off with some simple tips and tricks to improve your blogs:

Search “Easter Egg” on RETomato.com or click here.  Great suggestions about links images and abbreviations. Add it in the title link. Edit Alternate text… <Abbr> add related posts to the bottom of your article…calls to action…ask the expert questions and search for homes… Read it to get the full scoop!

Widgets:

• www.vflyer.com  very cool marketing tools…
• cut and paste the code into the sidebar using widgetbox.com.  
• Diverse solutions has excellent IDX widgets for your Blog…

The WordPress Plugin:

He had great explanations of  My category Order, wordpress.org, Cforms II, Facebook Connect, Akismet, ListingPress (embeds MLS on my web site).

Facebook:

Be engaging, be conversational and add media…post on posterous.com…organizing Facebook friends for coffees! Set meetups offline, Ricardo Bueno and Craig Donato were great examples…promote other people’s content..

Promoting your listings on Facebook:

• Facebook Marketplace: housing…posting is free…fueling conversations. Comment wall…add a new tab.
• Blog.oodle.com newsfeed on Facebook. www.facebook.com/martketplace or www.oodle.com
• Make sure there is Social in Social Media…
• fish where the fish are…should I push my facebook people to my Blog or keep them on Facebook? Keep people in Facebook!

Some Thoughts from Sonia Simone (brilliant): copyblogger.com

• What is it about your brand? What is the hook? It is for relationships and trust!
• Resolve Underlying Objections! I don’t like Real Estate People! I don’t lake Salespeople!
• Write articles and content about barriers…
• Blog is part of a system. You have to be great to compete.. Personal and entertaining…friend and Authority…authority rules, 
• cookie content: content is too good to give away…that is where you want to be…
• write your blogs for your consumers not other Realtors…more content geared to your prospect.
• Specialized..communicate toward a perfect customer for your market.
• Who is your perfect customer? Write special reports: Downsizing Gracefully…Write special reports: Getting your paperwork in order to list…
• FAQ really FRO frequently asked objections…
• Email newsletter!! aweber.com, have valuable content to give…is your blog a Ginger or a Maryanne? Use the hit reality show. Read Big Red Fez. Be transparent…

The Nicholays: Twitter: Nicole and Reggie have wonderful insights!

• Closing business in 140 Characters, www.localtweeps.com
• @RealtorTed, twitter how-to’s, username, people connect with people,
• customize the background. Twitbacks.com, twitterpinch.com @cyberhomes…
• fb 140 www. Twables/fb140 : Follow your Facebook friends on Twitter
• twitterlocal.net, www.nearbytweets.com, www.twellowhood.com,
• Become the Trusted advisor: listening, responding, broadcasting.
• Be meaningful! The Tweet Plan: stay on track…make a topic list, identify resources, schedule drips , be spontaneous…google news…
• Hootsuite.comget the Hootlet (amazing)
• Farming Twitter: demandspot.com sign up for RSS feed..very cool Real-Time Lead Generation for Real Estate
• Monitoring and measuring: hootsuite, cligs (helps you understand your traffic), and bit.ly (shortens URLs), tweetbeep ( Twitter Alerts by email) and twilert 

MORE Twitter Apps: From the Nicholays

1. www.tweetdeck.com
2. www.topify.com
3. www.twittelator.com Pro(shares video)
4. www.tweetmeme.com
5. www.flickrmybackground.com
6. www.Su.pr
7. www.Blip.fm
8. www.tweetboard.com
9. www.bubbletweet.com,
10. www.wplifestream.com
11. www.business.twitter.com

Cutting Edge Tactics for the Wired Agent: Ian Watt, Vancouver BC,

• Outsources a lot of things, google Apps, google docs, Wiki,
• Amanda: altos research consumer-friendly market research. Give your business personality!
• www.chicagohomepartner.com
• Be compassionate…do what you do best and outsource the rest!

Rob Hahn (he is very smart) and Kris Berg (Blogger par excellence)…spoke of the value of independence…

Brad Inman’s Opening Session: more positive…with Morgan Brown

• “cost to rent and cost to buy is getting smaller”
• “absorption rate is going down”
• technology Trends: Trade Off by Kevin Maney (book), the middle ground is a wasteland
• travel agency service coming back… More service…
• look for new opportunities,
• unlocked information,
• social search..

Tools From Morgan Brown:

1. www.Issuu.com you are the Publisher
2. www.viralheat.com  track what people are saying about you
3. www.drop.io real-time sharing
4. www.jimdo.com create a free website
5. www.feedmingle.com create your own Google News
6. www.mailchimp.com easy and fun email marketing
7. www.screentoaster.com record whatever is on your screen
8. www.geochirp.com GeoChirp helps you search for people Twittering for specific things in a specific area
9. www.tumblr.com helps you create sites
10. www.usertesting.com gives you Feedback about your site
11. www.99designs.com allows you to have people bid to design your projects

Read Byte.snack.meal by Nick Bilton www.Bytesnackmeal.com coming out in 2010. Check it out online!

That was the end of Day one and because there was so much information….we will move on to Day Two next…

Related Posts:

What I Learned at Inman Real Estate Connect: August 2009 Day Three

What I Learned at Inman Real Estate Connect: August 2009 Day Two

Inman Real Estate Connect: August 2009 Sano Stante’s List

Social Media: REBarCamp San Francisco August 2009

REBarCamp San Francisco August 2009.

Recently, I was at the National Association Of  REALTORS Conference and was Interviewed by Michael Krisa, A.K.A. “That Interview Guy“. He asked me about my thoughts on Virtual Tours, Photos, and Video. Check out the Video above and feel free to comment….but not about my hair..It was the end of a long day.