Have You Checked Into Foursquare?

By Katherine Tarbox, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

While attending Inman’s Real Estate Connect in New York two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hear from the young, somewhat geeky, somewhat hip founder of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley. I’ve become of a fan of Inman conferences, but the truth is, sometimes it takes me some time to digest how the presentations relate to real estate.

Foursquare is a social media application that you load on your smartphone, which allows you to check into the locations you’re at. If you’re at Panera Bread, you’d hit a few buttons on your phone to “check-in” and you could see the profiles of other people that are also there. If you want to see which bar your friends are hanging out at, just look at your Foursquare app. Read more

We Want Your Facebook Tips!

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Are you on Facebook? Do you do business through it? If so, we want to hear about how you’ve leveraged this social network.

Specifically, we’re looking for your personal experiences with and insights on the following:

• What are the most important steps to take in creating a Facebook fan page for your business or brokerage?
• How can real estate pros be good “friends” on Facebook?

To share your ideas on these topics, contact Online Editor Brian Summerfield at bsummerfield@realtors.org.

Google Ventures Further Into Real Estate, and Other Inman Connect News

By Katherine Tarbox, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

During a session yesterday morning at the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect conference in New York, Inman News founder and publisher Brad Inman pressed Sam Sebastian, Google’s director of local and business-to-business markets, about the search engine’s plans to buy Trulia. Sebastian would neither confirm nor deny, but did elaborate that Google is actively looking to acquire one to two small technology companies a month.*

Corporate M&A activity aside, lots of innovative real estate ideas and tactics were discussed at the event. A majority of the 2,000 practitioners and techies in attendance agree that 2009 forced them to do business differently and rethink their plans. Read more

A Fresh Look for All NAR Blogs

By Todd Carpenter, Social Media Manager, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

While Speaking of Real Estate relaunched last May, today marks the completion of our migration to this fresh new look for the entire group of NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® blogs. Here’s a complete list:

• YPN Lounge – http://ypnlounge.blogs.realtor.org
• Styled, Staged & Sold – http://styledstagedsold.blogs.realtor.org/
• Appraisal Insights – http://appraisalinsight.blogs.realtor.org
• Resort Life – http://resortlife.blogs.realtor.org/
• The Weekly Book Scan – http://theweeklybookscan.blogs.realtor.org/
• The InfoCentral Blog – http://infocentral.blogs.realtor.org/
• Leadership Lab – http://leadershiplab.blogs.realtor.org/
• Voices of Real Estate – http://voicesofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/

Check ‘em out!

The most important social network to participate on is your own.

By Todd Carpenter, NAR Social Media Manager

Online community building expert, Chris Brogan wrote an interesting article last week on what he would do if he was a REALTOR®. I disagree with his strategy not to talk about work, but that’s another post for another day. What I really like about his post is its focus on building online communities hosted by a REALTOR®

I’ve often been quoted from a presentation I did at SPARKt a year ago with regard to the rules of participating on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I compared them to church. Why do you go to church? Is it to play bingo? Do you go for the free crackers? Do you go so you can talk with your friends about football? What about this: Do you go to sell real estate? If you said yes to any of the above, you’re going to hell. You go to church to worship. If all that other stuff happens secondary to worshiping, great! But worshiping is why you’re there.

Online social networks are like any other social network (church, the Rotary or an Elk’s Club…). The key is to identify the rules for that network and work within them.

Consumers don’t turn to Facebook to find a new home. They might use it to find an agent. But if you did your job outside of the sales cycle, that consumer will already be connecting with you on your own social network when they’re ready to buy a home.

The most important social network to participate on is your own. Read more

Top 10 Real Estate Developments of the ’00s: #8

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Our review of the top real estate developments in this decade rolls on with a look at the eighth-ranked entry: Read more

foursquare, and the Mobilization of Social Media

By Todd Carpenter, Social Media Manager, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

There’s been a lot of talk lately about foursquare, the new kid on the social media block. And whenever a new social network starts to take hold, the first thing many professionals want to do is measure the return on investment (ROI) involved in participating on such a network. My reaction? Meh.

foursquare is a silly game. The ROI ought to be fulfilled by the smile on your face while playing it. Silly games like these rarely result in a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That said, foursquare is a really fun silly game that also happens to represent the future of social networking, especially in the real estate industry.

Below is a copy of the slides I used for a presentation I gave to the Cyber-Professionals Group at their semi-annual meeting in San Diego last month. They’re mostly screenshots I took while playing foursquare on my iPhone and might help you follow along with my train of thought here.

foursquare is a mobile, smartphone-based social networking platform centered around the idea that people should go out at night and have fun instead of sitting in front of their TVs and watching Friends reruns. The idea is to go somewhere fun ( a restaurant, bar, movie theater, the park…) and check in. The more times and places you check in at, the more virtual currency you earn.

This virtual currency comes in three forms: Read more

Are You LinkedIn?

By Todd Carpenter, Social Media Manager, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

During NAR’s 2009 Conference & Expo, I was able to grab a quick interview with Gary Rogers, a key contributor to our LinkedIn networking group. See what he had to say in this video:

Listing Videos: They’re That Easy

By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Making informative and even entertaining videos of your listings seems like a complicated undertaking involving a professional camera, lights, editing equipment, and a lot of knowledge of how all that equipment works, but in fact you can be uploading videos tomorrow without too much trouble.

I’ll be talking about this at 1 p.m. today at the NAR Expo booth at the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Diego. Maybe you won’t be posting videos tomorrow when you’re back at the office but you’ll certainly see that it’s pretty easy to do. Read more

The Socially Networked Neighborhood

By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

If you want to become recognized as your neighborhood’s real estate expert, you should create a fan page for it on Facebook, advises Max Pigman, vice president and national speaker at REALTOR.com®. Pigman talked about how to get some marketing traction via social media in a Friday morning session at the 2009 REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Diego.

He said that real estate pros can “take over” their neighborhoods if they create a fan page, invite residents to join it, and post updates regularly about community events and local real estate and development trends.

“This becomes the perfect place to assert that you’re the real estate expert for your area,” he said. “Every time you send an update, everyone can see it. If you get strategic with this, you can connect with your sphere at an unbelievable level.” Read more

Next Page »