Owner: Executive Conversations In Real Estate URL:www.ExecutiveConversationsInRealEstate.com Join Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 04:57:57 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Exploring the Intersection of Web2.0, Social Media and Real Estate Site statistics:Click here
Entrepreneurship Education in Real Estate - it's the Agent2.0 Way! 2007-11-12 16:43:29 The 2007 Arizona Entrepreneurship
Conference is over now and there were a few items I wanted to share - one is that I felt wonderful at acting in the role of the show producer / coordinator; it was my responsibility to manage the catering, the AV, the volunteers and a hundred small details to make sure that the attendees had a rewarding experience. It was not that there were not a few wrinkles, but mainly the event went off smoothly. The rest of the details; content, finances and the other hundred details were undertaken by my mentor and friend Francine Hardaway and the CEO of the Arizona Small Business Association, Ms. Joan Kerber- Walker - what an awesome team to be a part of! The event was presented by the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation (OTEF) who seeks to provide education to the disadvantaged to help them escape the cycle of dependency that often traps them in a recurring model that drives abuse, crime and drug use in our culture - show th Read more:Education
, Estate
, Agent
, Real Estate
The Social Graph and Real Estate 2007-11-12 16:43:25 What is the the social graph? Last week I wrote at the Future of Real Estate
Marketing on the Impact of OpenSocial
for Real Estate
and this week, I am posting about the Social Graph
. The first time I heard the phrase 'Social Graph' is was in a three part video series that Robert Scoble did (see the links below). At the time, I did like I usually do when I come across a new phrase - file it away, absorbed it and carry on. I am waiting to see if it gets used again and if so, how often. Last week Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategist wrote a great piece on social graph - he greatly simplified the term 'social graph' to mean the essential, basic network of friends, family, peers and co-workers and how it is connected via the various social networks (socnet). He also commented on how frustrating and difficult it is to participate in one socnet and then another and wanting to transfer / duplicate the social graph of one soc net to the other. This comment
PodcampAZ - A Success for All Attendees 2007-11-11 04:36:23 Brent & Michelle Spore and the team did a real stand up job today. PodcampAZ is was today and I have had not one, but three presentations on topics I follow and enjoy. I've posted them here -
The ROI of Social Media; Hard & Soft Metrics Considered
Marketing in 3D Internet; Sex Sells... and other tactics
Real Estate and Social Media: Hit or Miss?
These links are here. (update - I changed them to .PDF files) If you were in the audience today, thank you for attending and if not, where the heck were you!
Post event analysis - what a great day! I met so many people and had so much fun today. My daughter was with us all day and she had a good time an people I think enjoyed having her around.
For the people in the 3D Internet and Real Estate sessions; here are the preso we developed and we talked through... sorry they did not make it to the big screen, but we still had a great time talking it through.
Thanks to Lon Safko for his backup in the 3D s Read more:Success
, Attendees
Arizona Point2 Users Get to Decide if the Arizona Point2 Technology User Group is Launched 2007-11-11 04:36:12 I am a big fan of the Michael Gerber school of thought that you need to determine 1) what is the market for a product / service you want to offer and 2) then your ability to provide the product / service. It is not always quick to know the answer to those questions nor easy, but it is what I am about in the realm of Web2.0, social media for real estate. What's that got to do with this post is that Brendan King / COO of Point2 Technologies came to town and we were all treated to a snapshot of the Point2 system and some of the upcoming features they are working on.
I understand that this was the first ever event of it's kind for Point2 - that of a local user group meeting and Jay Thompson and I hosted it. We had about 50-60 people show up and enjoy the catering from BobbieQ's restaurant. Here are the pictures from the user group meeting posted at Flickr. You might even catch a picture of Greg Swann, not a Point2 user, but who was invited to the event t Read more:Arizona
, Technology
, Group
, Launched
Phoenix Local Real Estate Social Media Technology - PodcampAZ 2007-11-04 11:42:20 Coming this weekend is the first time Arizona has hosted a Podcamp - well, probably the first, not sure what Tucson has done... Podcamp is an un-conference; an event that has no cost to attend and does not require the speakers to submit papers and go through a process of selection. It focuses on new media technology, like podcasting (audio blogging), vblogging (video blogging) and whatever other topic or media the presenters care to put up for consumption by attendees. The PodcampAZ is this Saturday at the UAT facility on Baseline, West of the I-10 freeway. I was across the table from Brent Spore / IBoughtAMac when he said back in March, "let's do a Podcamp!"; having no idea what he meant at the time, I said "sure! how can I help!". Brent and Michelle have dedicated hours and days of their lives in making the event a reality and while I've made some contributions along the way, Brent and Michelle are the one to thank for their efforts to make PodcampAZ a real Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
, Social
, Technology
, Phoenix
, Local
, Social Media
Ghost Writing a Real Estate Blog for Failure and Derision 2007-11-03 15:19:17 I have started seeing people who think they can skirt the social media / blogging model by having the blog ghost written - that is to have their blog written and posted by someone other than the agent of record on the blog. This tactic may work to improve search engine ranking but the impact of showing up at a listing, coming across someone who may have read the blog, or responding to a phone call and giving a 'deer in the headlights' look to the comment "I like your blog - but what were you thinking when you wrote about _________ ?" would permanently damage their credibility. This is closely followed by a practice called 'Splogging' an activity that is just as abhorrent in my mind. A Splogger simply decides that they will steal content from one site and post it as their own - Teresa Boardman and I had that happen to us just last week on the same site and we acted to have the content taken down immediately - Teresa also has a section of her blog about flagrant splogger Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
, Ghost
A Bit of Fatherly Pride - and a fundraising plea on my kids behalf 2007-10-30 11:48:47 I have some very amazing kids - three to be precise; I am not married today, but have been twice and the most amazing blessing for me from those relationships are my three children. The two youngest are still in school (one in Middle School, the other a Sophomore in High School) and get good grades, participate in extra-curricular activity and enjoy the community they have at their church. Recent those same two youngest children have been selected to participate in a foreign exchange program called People to People as student ambassadors. I do not know a lot about People to People, but I have traveled internationally a few times, have a current passport and their mother was raised overseas for a time - I believe that a persons perspective on the size and scope of the world changes a great deal once they've had their passport stamped; it is a smaller place then and we come to understand that people living in Bali are basically no very different than we are; they live, eat Read more:Pride
Are Print Ads in Real Estate Dead? 2007-10-29 20:48:44 Today Glenn Roberts Jr / Inman news reported that Classified Intelligence, LLC released a report suggesting that real estate agents (by and large) are still spending dollars on print ads, at about the same clip as last year. We've all been reading that the print ad is dying and that 70-80% of the home buying experience begins on the web - so why is this money being spent!? The report was commissioned by a print company by the way, Realty Times - not sure that had anything to do with it, but it may be that it has something to do with the NAR stat that states that the average real estate professional in the field is a 57 year old female. My experience is that whenever I come across one of these 'average realtors' these words (or something very much like them) invariably comes out of their mouths "...that [something on technology or social media in real estate] is a great idea Steve, but right now I think I'll just keep doing what I've been doing for the last _____ years - it' Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
, Print
Google Search Engine Rankings for Real Estate - Who Can Tell What Matters Most? 2007-10-29 11:09:33 The answer is - I don't know... and what I learned today is that no SEO-snake oil sales person can ever guarantee you top of page listings - ever. What I learned today is that while there is a formula, or rather a set of over 200 algorithms that are applied when a consumer types in a particular search term, is that unless you are a part of the Google
machine and have specific access to the formulas, we are not likely to have any idea soon what the complete formula is or how to crack the code to make it to the top of a search - even if we did, then there is the work to put the algorithms to work for our favorite search phrases. Both expensive propositions... What we do know, based on experiential data, is that update frequency of a site and the recurring use of valid links matter a great deal - in other words, what we do as a natural part of blogging matters. All this insight came because today I sat in on a presentation by Douglas Merrill / VP of Engine
ering at Google, sponsored Read more:Estate
, Search
, Rankings
, Google Search
, Google Search Engine
Video Education for the Real Estate Blogger - Agent2.0 Video HQ 2007-10-25 17:47:23 Today I am opening the Agent
2.0 Video HQ - a members-only site for real estate professionals who want to sharpen their skills and learn by way of viewing videos about the why of social media technology and specific how-to's.
There are only a few videos available now, but the format for the site will be quick clips on blogging and using various real estate technologies.
I am doing this because of all the requests I get to help people setup blogs and how to use them - it's a way for me to scale my time, & effort to a larger number of users and to monetize them.
This is the first video; a short (less than 5 minutes) intro on why a real estate professional would want to add blogging to their on-line presence. It does not cover all the reasons a blog is useful, but it does convey the essential info I think.
This video is for the yet-to-be a real estate blogger, not for the already blogging real estate professional - but I would like your comments! Find more videos like this Read more:Education
, Estate
, Real Estate
, Blogger
Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference Recap - Many Thanks in Time for Thanksgiving! 2007-11-21 10:18:46 Today I received the link from Essential Event Technologies for the conference video and all I can say is 'Wow!'. Chance and his team have delivered a top-notch experience with the videos. The landing page is very crisp and is a perfect mirror of the the OTEF AEC site. The videos are very well done, they are indexed and... well - you'll just have to visit and see what he's done - it is just flat awesome... Click here to visit the 2007 ArizonaEntrepreneurship
Conference Video Archive by Essential Event Technologies Technorati Tags: Arizona+entreprenuership+conference, real estate, entrepreneur, real+estate
Read more:Recap
, Thanks
, Thanksgiving
RealEstate2.x - The Future of Real Estate Panel from the AEC 2007-11-21 10:11:39 The 2nd Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference is in the books now. A link and special thanks to the people at Essential Event Technologies is forth coming, but I could not hold on to this link any more. Here are the links to the real estate panel presentation I was able to assemble which was titled 'Real Estate
2.x - How Real Estate
is Changing'. We were blessed with participation from Brendan King / COO of Point2 Technologies, David Miller / VP at Chicago Title and Joel Burslem / Social Media Manager with Inman News - here is a link to the presentation and links directly to the various questions that were posed by the attendees to the participants. The format of the conference was a highly interactive one. The audience did not have a microphone, but I was able to restate most of the questions - but not all of them. Enjoy! Real Estate 2.x - How Real Estate is Changing - complete panel presentation from front to back Why Use an Agent? The Importance of Blogging Does Read more:Future
, Panel
Social Networks and Real Estate - Which Ones? 2007-11-28 17:34:47 Social Networks (SocNets) and the relationships they support (the Social Graph) are a growing phenomenon in our culture. What kind of an impact will they have on real estate professionals though? Today I participated in a webinar that came to me via a twitter from Jeremiah Owyang / Forrester Research. The webinar was put on by Teresa Valdez Klein / Community Web Forum and hosted by PRWeb and was titled "Demonstrating the PR Power of Social Networks" (I'll link to it when they post it). Teresa demonstrated her knowledge and enthusiasm for Facebook, but came up short of being able to make any meaningful comparison of FaceBook to any other SocNet. It did get me thinking though because as a web strategist and real estate tech analyst I get the question about which SocNet and why almost daily. Other than prolific writers like Jay Thompson / PhoenixRealEstate
Guy, who is on about a dozen SocNets, I see it that there are three, maybe four SocNets for a real estate pro Read more:Social
CribFinder Listings in Facebook - Part 2 of the Podcast with Adam Oppenheimer 2007-12-04 12:55:03 Facebook
has angered more than one of it's users with the Beacon debacle. I nonetheless predict that 1) they will overcome the bad press (they are getting some good counsel from the likes of Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang), and 2) other social networks (SocNets) will continue to grow and once the social graph is more portable, SocNets will likely hit an inflection point and likely take off even more. How does a real estate agent interject themselves into Facebook? I've seen two good ways and this podcast is with the second one of them, CribFinder from Jenius Industries. In this segment the President of Jenius Industries, Adam Oppenheimer, discusses how CribFinder provides statistics on their listings and supports various tactics for getting leads from the postings they support in FaceBook. When we made the recording they had 238 properties now they have 1,300 - 546% growth in a few week not bad! There are reported leads that have come through Crib Read more:Podcast
Listing Property on FaceBook - CribFinder by Jenius Industries 2007-12-04 09:18:01 FaceBook is now 55 million users and 250,000 new users sign-on everyday. If their growth stays where it is, they will have over 100 million users in six months. Should real estate professionals care? Teri Lussier asked me that very question today and I said I really think so; the fastest growing user demographic for FaceBook is the over 25 age group and they have 85% market share of the college graduate crowd. This is smack dab in middle of the first time home buyer demographic.
Will real estate agents want to approach this market? I think it is a decision for the average agent but an Agent2.0 will DEFINITELY want to be there. Ideally the user will come to the agent via a listing but how do you get your listing into FaceBook?
There are now two applications I am aware of for getting your listing into FaceBook - I've talked before about the Point2 Neighborhoods app, now they are being joined by CribFinder from Jenius Industries
. This podcas
Twitter and the RE.net Community 2007-12-13 14:36:25 I've written before about how Twitter
adds to social capital (here is the post from last June) and now the RE.net is getting the message. The Bloodhound Blog, Greg Swann, Jay Thompson, John Dalton, Daniel Rothamel, Jeff Turner, Teri Lussier, Andy Kaufman and Brad Coy all come up in this podcast.
In this podcast I talk in depth with Andy Kaufman / Keller-Williamd Berkley and Brad Coy of San Francisco Real Estate Services.
We talk about what it has meant to their business so far and we discuss some of the prospective impact we see ahead for the RE.net. Andy points out how it has impacted the traffic to his blog and how he use it to pull in people to his open houses. We review how Twitter differs from IM and how it is a part of how you engage in the global conversation laid out in the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Click here to download the interview or play it now using the controls below.
It is also available at iTunes for your iPod (just search for 'Steven Groves' in
Changes Up North - Point2 Management Shake-up 2007-12-10 14:03:12 Wow - I go on my annual retreat and look what happens by the time I get back! The retreat is with a group of guy that have been banded together for over 20 years and we go pretty much incommunicado for the duration of the event - this year it was in Greer, Arizona and there was no phone / Internet access to be had. What I found in my email when I returned was a question asking what the changes at Point2 Technologies would mean - I had no idea; needed to get plugged back in so to speak and see what was up. After reading at Jay Thompson's Blog and the Point2 REliberation Blog, phone calls and some quick research I can see clearly that the management team at Point2 is changing - Brendan King is out as COO and Jeff Tomlin, the architect of the P2 syndication model, has also left; along with about 5 others of the senior management team. Many of them, OI met last year when I visited them in Saskatoon. My first thought was OMG! - it was a bit unsettling. Not because I use P2 in Read more:North
, Management
, Shake
Twitter - an Arrow in the Quiver of the Agent2.0 2007-12-19 16:44:08 This is part 3 of 3 of an interview with Brad Coy and Andy Kaufman, both real estate professionals in the San Francisco area and both using Twitter
. The message that prompted this interview was one from Brad that he and Andy may have actually used Twitter to connect for a transaction - "Wow," I thought, "here is a perfect example of what social media tools, well employed, can mean to a real estate professional - a real estate deal begun on Twitter!" I had them call me and as we explored the idea, it became clear that a deal was not in the works - yet - but that Andy, as a long time user of Twitter and Brad, a newcomer to the Twitter-verse, bit had perspective on the use of Twitter that I felt would be of interest to the rest of the real estate community. There are a myriad of other uses for Twitter to Real Estate professionals, I'm sure, but how will we uncover them if we do not become familiar with them? Does Twitter belong in the quiver of an Agent
2.0? the answer is yes Read more:Arrow
Using Twitter in Real Estate - Part 2 of 3 2007-12-17 19:31:25 Twitter is a great tool to connect person to person, but can a real estate professional use Twitter to get blog viewers and connect to prospective real estate consumers? If all you do is tweet back and forth to other real estate professionals agents, the answer would be no - you're not going to be able to ever monetize your use of Twitter and connect to consumers, but if you extend yourself and look for other users in your community, you can readily become the real estate professional they look to when they need to buy or sell. In this segment we explore that question with Andy Kaufman and Brad Coy; both real estate professionals in the San Francisco bay area. We look at if there is an ROI on the use of Twitter and how they use it to connect the online community to an off-line, real world sales effort. Click here to download the interview or play it now using the controls below. It is also available at iTunes for your iPod (just search for 'Steven Groves' in the iTunes Store Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
, Twitter
It was the best of times... and one of my gaffes 2008-02-13 09:00:35 The concall last Friday was reasonably well attended. As a wrap to the event we have winners to announce... Winner of the Blog is Travis Houston of Rising Tide Investments / San Diego Winner of the one-year subscription to Point2...
Support the RE.net Tornado Aid Project 2008-02-08 09:26:01 I received a note last night from Lani Anglin-Rosales a contributor at BloodHoundBlog.com, AgentGenius.com and her own blog at RERevealed.com in Austin (yes, I do miss Austin!). I like Greg and the Bloodhound gang and how could I deny Lani?... Read more:Support
, Tornado
, Project
Point2 and RealTown - Both under the Leadership of Saul Klein 2008-02-04 11:15:04 When Brendan King left Point2 technologies many people, including myself, wondered where they were going to get the kind of leadership Brendan exhibited in growing Point2 from it's roots in heavy equipment into the real estate powerhouse it is today.... Read more:Leadership
, Klein
The Entrepreneur in Real Estate - is it time? 2008-01-24 16:45:43 It is happening... bit by bit, but I think it is happening and may actually be accelerating - what is it? the real estate professional recognizing themselves as an entrepreneur. For certain, not every agent will make the transition; I... Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
, Entrepreneur
Real Pro Systems Villagemaker Screens 2008-01-07 11:35:12 Joe Lininger provided these screen captures of Villagemaker. I missed including them in the previous post. I've put them on my photo page here and included the captions they provided. Portal Screen - Every village has a portal page, managed... Read more:Systems
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