When I first open these new apps, I always think of the intent and this one is pretty obvious.  The Realtor.com iphone app iss totally and completely designed with the end consumer in mind (sorry Realtors if you thought it could be about you).  It’s about providing the latest property information in the quickest, easiest and most user friendly fashion possible.

When you open the app, a home screen gives you several options, including searching for nearby homes for sale, nearby open houses or perform a new search by location or MLS ID.  You can allow for the app to use your current location and it actually gives you nearby listings currently for sale (also giving you the option to narrow down your criteria).  This can be really cool if you are driving in a neighborhood and just want to get property information without having to even get out of the car or make a phone call.  (Bad for agents that rely on the client to actually make that call to capture their business).

You can view a map option or a list option of properties and are able to actually click on any given one and get detailed information, not only on the property, but also the listing agent and the brokerage (very similar to what you see on Realtor.com).  You can scroll through photos of the listing and turn the phone to get bigger photos and you can save the property and include notes to go with it.

What’s even more fascinating is the option to contact the listing agent on the spot.  You can call them by clicking on their telephone number, you can email them,  visit their site and add them to your contacts.  (I know I’m an over achiever, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could tweet or facebook them as well?).

My favorite feature is the “drive around and use your location” to find listings – but you can also enter an address for a particular listing and/or its surrounding competitors and even enter the MLS number.

Great move on Realtor.com to empower the consumer.  Personally, an educated consumer is the best one in my book, but here’s the beef many will have…You can now say “Buh Bye” to Buyers’ Agents, with this app, listing agents will have the upper hand – this will give quick and easy information to the local consumer (not the end for those buyers agents that work with absentee and relocating clients).

Problem?

I can now see me getting bombarded by calls from people who “forget” to tell me they are working with another agent and just wanted quick info.  I can also see my clients calling other agents just because their information was handy.  We’ll just have to see how this extra communication tool will evolve….it could be detrimental for many.

The question of who does Realtor.com work for will inevitably come up.  Many will criticize this as a tool of disintermediation, but if we are smart, we will not only know how to use this information in our favor, but we will welcome it with open arms.  I do wonder if it could be possible to personalize this particular iphone app for a fee so that Realtors can offer it to their clients (of course I would try to come up with a win-win for everyone).

For now it’s time for everyone to make sure their contact information is correct on their listings, and especially Realtor.com.  Listing agents will have the ability to answer inquiries on the spot, staying above the competition with customer service always at the top of the priority list.

And for the record, I’m not associated with Realtor.com, so feel free to kill it if you have the itch.

Going into the holidays where we are all so busy, running from party to party, celebrating with friends and family, buying gifts, being stuck in traffic, trying to find time to finish “the list”….I thought it would be appropriate to ask a question of Agent Genius Readers.

The definition of success is the following:

the accomplishment of an aim or purpose – the attainment of popularity or profit – a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity.

It seems that the RE.net goes through a cycle of wanting to quantify and prove the validity of people’s business and I totally understand, but like many things in life, success is subjective and depends on each of our goals and lifestyles.

So I want you to reflect for a few minutes and think of what success means to you - is it to be able to live off the interest from the money in your bank account? is it to be “popular”? is it a certain way of life? or maybe it’s only about family…….(maybe it’s about knowing how to spell “cemetery”)

What is success to you?

image courtesy of Nitot on Flickr

Well, as I have been telling you for three years now, that is hogwash. Social media is a sinkhole that absorbs time, effort and money that could better be spent on finding listings and selling houses. Social media is the new blogging. It too will peak, then decline with one very large exception: affinity group business communication.

Before I can even start commenting on this article I feel a need to define Social Media – isn’t it another “tool” in our marketing bag of tricks? Isn’t Social Media a marketing tactic like any other that should be used strategically with other marketing tools in order to obtain a balance that works for you as a real estate agent and becomes a good conductor between you as a professional and your audience? (the audience that ultimately buys and sells real estate from you).

I’ve learned a lot from my marketing genius friend Murray Izenwasser who I first heard speak in a local BarCamp and later at a Social Media Club meeting and his message was clear. Social Media is not just marketing but a marketing TACTIC - should be used intelligently according to your needs and should be understood for its power to reach an audience you may not have had the exposure to with customary and traditional marketing tools.

So if our industry is about relationships and social media has added a “social” aspect to internet marketing, doesn’t it seem like the perfect fit?  I do agree with Mike that it can be a time suck if not used properly, but I don’t agree that you can separate blogging from social media, because blogging is part of it.

The section in his article called “Why social media won’t be a long-term selling tool for real estate” is one of the ones I find the most intriguing. I think most of you will agree that it is crucial for someone that will post an opinion on Social Media tactics to understand the dynamics, intricacies and social behaviors of the medium before they start coming up with conclusions. If you understand the basics of SM being about permission based marketing as opposed to interruption marketing then you would see that statement as absolutely ludicrous. In an age of an educated consumer with spam filters and TiVo – you need to know that posting your listings and ads all over the Internet will never work!

Just came back from NAR’s annual convention in San Diego where numerous real estate agents proved how they were using Social Media successfully – some of them utilizing their blog as their hub and the rest of the platforms as prospecting tools that lead potential clients to that hub which consequently has plenty of google juice and calls to action.  Others using different platforms to add to their “bag of tricks”, others simply answering questions directly from the consumer in places like Trulia or Zillow.

I do agree with Mike in his statement about the success of an agent online being measured by the speed at which you answer inquiries – but that in itself is a demonstration that you cannot turn your back on Twitter, for example, where the conversation is happening real-time and you have the ability to answer and connect on the spot.

One thing we do need to understand is that there are different users of SM. I recently told you about my presentation to top producers in their late 60’s who don’t need to make any changes or even learn how to turn a computer on, but are still curious about SM. There’s also the successful agent who has ventured into SM to compliment their already effective marketing and who can stop their efforts at any point and still be successful. And there are the newer agents who have immersed themselves in the medium and are expanding their sphere of influence at a pace that traditional media would have never allowed.

Mike Parker advises thousands of agents and brokers on the subject of online marketing services for realtors

- I’m sure Mike is great at what he does, but I’m also convinced that he doesn’t quite get SM, maybe some of our readers can enlighten him.

Last night Lani and Mariana tweeted “I love lamp” – of course it’s the out of context nature of the statement that is funny, but it goes beyond that.  It made me think of the many times our industry fails to provide good service because of the mere fact many of us don’t listen (for the record, I’m including myself just to be polite and to see if anyone is paying attention).

Some of us have the bad habit of interrupting or worse yet, thinking of a response while the other person is talking.  Can you shut up for a second and listen?  It amazes me that listening has become a skill, one that is difficult to find in our industry.  Clients complain all day long that their needs are not being met, not because they can’t find the right property or because they don’t qualify for a loan, but because their agents are not paying attention to their needs!

Come on people, it doesn’t get any more basic than that!  Stop and Listen, let your client talk, pay attention and you will see what a difference that will make in your business.

We received this via email today…

…that represents what I’m talking about:

I am a loyal person who openly, honestly, and respectfully communicates my expectations and you can expect that from me as your client.  And, in the spirit of transparency and open communication from the get-go, in truth, my frustration with prior REALTORS both in NYC and here Miami since my search began have surrounded around what I have determined as REALTORS simply not listening to, or ignoring, what I’m saying…. regarding architecture and style of home, for example (or its eventually potential should it need work) … over the past year what I’ve heard about homes shown is simply, “this is a good-buy,” without taking into any consideration what I’ve said from the beginning regarding what I’m looking for in a home.  More specifically, overall space or mass raw square footage in a house is not paramount for me, but rather the thoughtful use of that space and how it is, or could be, designed that really matters – especially taking into consideration how I and my family typically spends our time and uses our home, you know?

So please humor me and shut up for a bit – really take time to listen to your clients needs and expectations. Our industry will thank you for putting a stop to the stigma.

**NOTE:  if you love lamp……then you are a good listener**

There are mixed reviews about Foursquare right now:  just a game?  what’s the point? can it help your business? or is it just a waste of time?

Like everything else, if you start with the mentality that it is a waste of time, it will totally be a waste of time – so stop reading and go find something useful to do.

A few months ago I would see a couple of twitter friends announcing their locations and “mayorships” from cities like Chicago or San Francisco and couldn’t join in because Foursquare was not in Miami yet.  That all has changed and now have an opinion, although it’s still too new to really give you tangible proof. (And for the record, they keep adding cities….you can even request yours if they haven’t yet).

This past August, while attending REBarCamp San Francisco and Inman Connect – the game became really competitive – stealing mayorships from each other, being the first to write in an address to a location to get more points and then fighting for first place position (don’t believe the stories of @Tyr and I cheating either – we did go visit the cat-in-a-box).  But the whole point is that you log in when you visit a place and can only compete with locals also playing along.  Points go back to zero on Sunday nights and you get badges and discover new things as you play along.

The Social tells us about Ashton Kutcher playing Foursquare.  The New York Times calls it

“A combination of friend-finder, city guide and competitive bar game, Foursquare lets users “check in” with a cellphone at a bar, restaurant or art gallery. That alerts their friends to their current location so they can drop by and say hello”.

Techcrunch says (in one of their dozens of articles about Foursquare)

“foursquare’s primary function is to help you figure out where your friends are. Users frequently ‘check-in’ with the app to update their current location, which is then broadcast to their friends”.

Mashable says,

“The location-based application has managed to strip the fat out of other location-aware mobile ideas, find just the right formula for encouraging check-ins, and hit at the right time”.

But here’s the thing – once the game is established in different cities – you start meeting new people, start engaging them and you may just find out that you have tons of things in common.  Isn’t it what it’s all about?  The whole mayorship thing has introduced me to a couple of great business contacts and has become the start of conversation – it’s all good!  And the best part is that you decide how much you want to be involved and it doesn’t have to rule your life.  So right now it’s proving to be more than just a game for me….although keeping up with my local socialites would have been plenty for me.

And here’s proof that I did some major butt whooping in San Francisco – hear that Jeff Turner? Todd Carpenter? and Brad Nix? Muahahaha!

The average age of attendees was late 50’s – everyone there was a top producing agent with years in the business and successful businesses at that.  So why were these people interested in Social Media for their business?  Some were just curious and had no intention to even venture into trying something new, but a lot of them, to my surprise, recognized that it was important to at least get their feet wet and see what all the commotion was about.

The first question – and one I will share because we need to ponder and then ponder some more, was:

If I’m new to social media, what are the three most important things I should do RIGHT NOW?

Some of us have been at this for a while and going back to basics may seem a bit trivial and useless….but guess what??  If you really think about this question, it may simplify your social media marketing strategy today.

Gia answered the following:

1. Put up profiles NOW (in Twitter, Facebook and Linked In)
2. Start at Blog
3. Change your business cards  (include your social media stuff)

Denise Reynolds (aka @LuxuryWriter), third panelist and Luxury writer shared 5 stages of twitter acceptance and everyone in the room could relate to at least one of those stages – priceless information, from Influential Marketing Blog:

If this doesn’t help you identify your goals on Twitter….I don’t know what will.

I of course tried to be funny and said:

1. get a computer (the crowd burst into laughter….but I saw a couple of nods in the crowd as well)
2. stop using 20 year old photos for your marketing – when your client finally engages you online and then meets you in person, you will scare them away.
3. drop the “fear factor” – you can’t get started if you are afraid

And lastly, earlier that day, I took the question to Twitter and received the following responses:

Most of you reading this are way beyond the “beginner” point – but some of you may have started blindly and without direction.  I think the basics that need to be understood before you can really begin to reap benefits is to understand SM reach (the fact that you have access to your Sphere of influence’s sphere) and the fact that the medium is used to engage and make connections.  The most trivial moves in any of the platforms may lead to meaningful conversation and possibly a business relationship.  Stop telling people about your achievements and start asking others about theirs, the days of Interruption Marketing are over ….and… the Interwebs have no age cut off!

DUH! by kercam21 on Flickr

Don’t know about you, but we’ve been hearing about so many people getting scammed on-line with vacation and regular rentals and I hate to point a finger, but most of them are coming from Craigslist.

People finding agents and sending deposits to then find themselves with arms up in the air wondering what they were thinking.  DUH!!  In Miami we have another type of scam, this one not so serious, but very common nonetheless.  We have agents advertising our listings on Craigslist even if the MLS reads “do not advertise“.  We used to love for other agents to advertise for us until we found ourselves showing up to our listings and the clients would express feeling cheated thinking the listing belonged to the person advertising on Craigslist.

Today we hit a new high – an agent advertising one of our “do not advertise” rental listings, calling us to bug us about 15 times per day, doing everything wrong and after having an executed Lease loosing the client over amateur incompetency.  We found out because after the prospective tenant walked, they called us directly to help them out.  The prospect had been reading Miamism and didn’t know it was our listing, and after getting fed up with her agent, ended up finding out that the listing was ours to begin with.

I know the logistics can be complicated – but can’t we do something about these Internet scams?  Unqualified agents not only making our lives impossible, but making us and our clients loose time as well.  I’m so over it!  May listen to my friend now and open up Ineslist.com……NOT!

The worst part is that even though this is a rant about incompetency and wasting time, it ultimately is about misinterpretation of information which hurts the client directly.   I still try to understand the logic behind people who don’t want to work with agents, choose to be unrepresented and end up getting cheated.

Rant over

Disclosure:  my dis is not against Craigslist directly, but those that choose to misuse the medium