Over the next weeks as complaints on-board grew and my Internet bill reached over $600.00, I again posted my thoughts and was told by the responder that they would “pass it on”. What does “pass it on” mean?

My suggestions to Holland America are:

1. Don’t monitor the “spheres” unless you are prepared to deal with the good and the bad. It doesn’t ring true and Social Media expects transparency.
2. Provide the best Internet service you can at non-usurious prices. Your clients want to communicate with their families telling them what a good time they are having and sending them the photos they have taken on the way. What would be better advertising for Holland America?  Word of mouth trumps corporate TV ads these days.
3. Even though the demographic of “Cruisers” is tilted toward retirees, look at the growth potential in those who are still working and need good access to the Internet.
4. “Value” cruises are no longer a value if you have more and more add-ons. Think of the market share that “Free Internet” would add.
5. When surveying your customers on the services you provide, make sure you include all services. In the four page survey, Internet was not mentioned at all, nor was there free form space for other comments.
6. Make sure that the person running the Internet Service on-board has “people skills”. However, that being said, the poor guy was dealing with complaints every minute, in a no-win situation.
7. Closed circuit television presentations featuring the benefits of your On-Board Online Services, should be an honest representation of what you can deliver. Better to under-promise and over-perform.

Those are my suggestions for Holland America . Please note that it was a great Cruise in all other respects and the ship was filled with hardworking people. We hit some great destinations.  We’ll see in the future if “I’ll pass it on” has any currency. So far, no word.

If you are considering some travel and Internet, here are some tips from the New York Times.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 Similar posts:

Gary Vaynerchuk at Inman Connect NYC 2009

The day started off with Deanna Brown of Scripps Media of HGTV:

She discussed “Push Pull and Throw”… Which is working for you??

Traditional media is important as a local source but also must get involved with the Consumer. She had these tips:

• The consumer is becoming their own media source
• Today is less about spending money and more about spending time (too many REALTORS tell me that they do not have time to Blog…but how many times in a year must you explain the same point to many clients ie. When is the best time to sell??)
• Tweets need to be valuable to your consumer… any consumer connection should have value…
• Become part of the conversation. Engagement is the key and no different than any social involvement…
• It is about you engaging in the conversation…
• You have to embrace the Social Space. It is not going away..
• Set as schedule…Play in all the platforms…Newspapers are the local voice. Spend 10 minutes a day on Facebook, then add Twitter….send out three relevant Tweets a day.
• Have fun with Social Media but take it seriously…

The Inman Innovator Awards were given out. These Innovators were honoured:

• Nest Realty Most innovative Agency
• Closing.com Most innovative site
• Ubertor Most innovative web sites
• The Phoenix Real Estate Guy Most innovative Blogger
• Domus Consulting Group Most innovative Social Media consultants
• Frank Borges LLosa (FranklyMLS.com) Most innovative Realtor web site

More Social Media Tools:

• www.xobni.com: Free plug in for MSOutlook (great stuff…I’ve downloaded it and am using it)
• www.awayfind.com Get the most important emails to you by text
• www.Bit.ly a URL shortner but also gives you follow up
• www.Goldmail.com dead simple video email
• www.getdropbox.com sends large pictures and files for free

Here are some great tips that were spoken of that morning:

1. www.paulgraham.com Essayist and Entrepeneurs Understanding Makers and Managers
2. Assign a dollar value to your time and outsource or delegate anything that is not worth your time
3. Don’t spend time on things that don’t scale
4. Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Work week…Only check email 2-3 Times per day www.fourhourworkweek.com
5. www.xobni.com Use Social Connections to learn more about your contacts..3rd time it was mentioned…must say something…

At the start of the Conference, two Technology teams were given 72 hours of less to come up with new innovations:

Morgan Carey Real Estate Webmasters…

Justin from Diverse Solutions: “Agent Scouting Report” An Experiment in Transparency. Very Cool!!! Surfs the Board Data to see how many houses each agent sold, how long, within price range, MLS must approve the Sold Data jlejoy@diversesolutions.com. I suggest you read their report which can be found at http://www.diversesolutions.com/blog/2009/08/12/agent-scouting-report-an-experiment-in-transparancy/ When the audience was asked how many REALTORS would be happy to have a system like that on their MLS, a great number were in favour and Houston Area Realtors  HAR.com is already working on a similar project…Are we ready for this kind of transparency?

What are the take-aways from the Conference?

• Capacity for creation seems greater…
• Need to embrace Video more…
• We are living in a mashup world…
• Optomistic about the future…
• The world did not come to an end when Twitter went down but…(I forgot to tell you that on Day Two Twitter went down)
• Twitter: is whispering in another person’s ear….”a little birdy told me”
• Facebook and Twitter becoming huge…
• Social Media is the swell of the Conference..
• How do I do it in a way that is effective…
• How do I get the best ROI(Return on Investment) out of it…
• layers of integration of the tools..
• If you suck at Social Media offline, you will suck at it online…one of the best lines yet and so true!!

Great Conference with Great Ideas…One of the best Inmans ever…1700 attendees…It is no longer enough to be a good agent, you must be a great agent…become the better trusted advisors..

Suggestions: Throw out the rules and excuses when you come to a Conference. Be open, listen and learn…

Related Posts:

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

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.

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, at a Conference in Quebec City where we spent a day on Web 2.0 and it’s relevance in today’s Real Estate market, I overheard a comment in a break that went something like “oh, this stuff is way above me, I’m 58 years old, you know”. As someone who is older than 58, I find it sad when someone uses age as an excuse for not learning.

My mom was a huge follower of the Arts so I was shocked when in her 80’s she became a closet Baseball and Football fan. Her friends were often 20 years younger than her who accepted her as their contemporary. It wasn’t until they started dying off that she started to show her age and died at 91.

When my dad turned 82 I bought him a computer. Within one week he had figured out email and shortly thereafter he found family in South America that had been lost to him for over 75 years. I know that experience extended his life a few more years.

My friend Harry moved to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico at 90 to surround himself with younger people and learn to sail.

You are never to old to engage your mind in something new. You are old at 25 if your mind is closed; you will get lots of excuses when you could get lots of results instead. Age is not the issue, it’s engaging yourself in what is around you that will keep you young. That is the true secret of youth.

It is never to late to learn to sail!

Instead of mailing out Newsletters, I will now be doing monthly Market Updates by email. Feel free to subscribe yourself and tell your friends that they can go to my website and subscribe. I will try to keep it as topical as I can and will happy to post some upcoming events. Let me know, if you have any that you would like to get posted.

I have also been working on a Blog about Downtown Toronto and the Real Estate Market and some of the changes that we are going through.

For those of you on Facebook,  Twitter  or LinkedIn you can also find me there and I look forward to hearing from you.