BlogWorld Takeaways 3/5: Real Estate New Media Community Emerging
A noticeable difference from previous Blogworld’s, and similar new media events, was the presence of Real Estate and Mortgage professionals at this show. This is part 3, in a 5 part series documenting my takeaways from Blogworld 2009.
Led in part by a dedicated track for the Real Estate industry called REBlogWorld; the track of sessions marks a series of new media events making their way into the Real Estate industry domain.
Just recently we’ve seen the first ever Real Estate Barcamp (rebarcamp.com) in San Francisco, led by Andy Kaufman.
I began my career working with Real Estate agents and became very familiar with the industry. I saw the multiple listing service get packaged in the form of IDX, and watched while service providers got rich by brokering MLS data back to agents that provided it. As much as Realtors were taken aback by the web revolution, I think the current change in media is going to shape the future of the industry as much as it did 10 years ago with templatized websites and MLS data.
What’s more, the current change is slightly more confusing. It was fairly easy to justify to agents that people would look for homes online, however it is noticeably more difficult to explain to an Realtor why they need to build relationships of Facebook and Twitter. The innovative Realtors that really understand how to invest their time wisely in the proper use of social media, will have a decided advantage.
I predict that those who make the investment in social media today, will be rich in social capital tomorrow. The leadership positions in the future of your communities are being formed right now. Agents like Ginger Wilcox and Heather Elias provide great examples for what it means to be a community ambassador online and how that translates to success as an agent.
What are you doing to ensure you have a leadership position in your community? If you aren’t sure, you might want to talk to folks at RealEstateTomato.com, they provide social tools and training for real estate and mortgage professionals.
Facebook and Twitter are not services you can ignore, unless of course you don’t plan to be in the industry for more than 3 years.
7 Responses to “BlogWorld Takeaways 3/5: Real Estate New Media Community Emerging”
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It has been developing within the industry for over three years now. We have developed corporate training programs specifically designed to educate our brokers and agents of the benefits of utilizing social media in their marketing efforts and as a powerful branding tool. I will be attending http://rebarcamp.com/indy/ Indianapolis’ first REBarCamp and hope to attend Atlantic City’s later in November!
Very good points; our long-running, community-based blog and various social media channels that emanate from Loudoun County, VA have long been very popular sources of community and business information, and secondarily a source for local/regional real estate information or other specific business services (from myself and another Real Estate partner). It’s essentially a social-media sourced business ecosystem that’s been established – for real estate buyers, sellers, marketers, business owners, community nonprofits, etc.
My point was that service providers, businesses, agencies, conferences, and finally getting their head around the ROI/value of social media in the RE industry and it’s great!
That’s great that you’ve been experimenting with social media for 3 years now, considering Twitter wasn’t a commodity back then.
I would love to talk with you about your use of social media within the enterprise.
Can you DM me your contact info to @sdMatt so we can connect.
Thanks for the mention Matt. It was a pleasure connecting w/ you at BlogWorld and I’d agree that the REnet’s presence is really starting to become apparent in the new media community.
As an industry, the REnet is continuing to adopt new media and form as a community at a pace that I’m not seeing in other verticals and I love that people are continually amazed that not only have we had a RE specific barcamp, but that we’ve had multiple ones from coast to coast.
Critics can scoff all they want, but IMO getting the forward thinking RE professionals together multiple times in an informal environment where we can interact has been instrumental to the formation and the advancement of our REnet community.
[Blog Post] The real estate community charges forward with new media http://bit.ly/vJTsY (cc: @gingerw @hthrflynn @AndyKaufman @retomato)
RT @sdmatt: The real estate community charges forward with new media http://bit.ly/vJTsY (cc: @gingerw @hthrflynn @AndyKaufman @retomato)
RT @sdmatt The real estate community charges forward with new media http://bit.ly/vJTsY (cc: @gingerw @hthrflynn @AndyKaufman @retomato)