Hi, I'm Marissa Myers. I help small teams leverage social media to tell their stories and expand their reach without breaking the bank. Click to learn more about me.
“I budget time every morning to read and blog. I do that before I check my personal email or work email. I believe you have to pay yourself first. When you open your email you pay someone else, because it’s usually people reaching out to ask you for something. Taking the time to read blogs, synthesize and add value, that builds your community. That’s paying yourself first.” — Jeremiah Oywang
“The Luxury Home Next Door” - Forbes
Atherton home values falling, Menlo Park looking good
These are people who buy and sell homes, folks!
Outside.in launched “Outside.in for publishers,” which allows website owners (e.g., a real estate brokerage, agent, or listings site) to integrate neighborhood level news, blog posts and tweets with their own content. This is a compelling addition to a listings detail page for a couple reasons: It’s fresh (indeed, in some cases, real time) and provides the user with a sense for the ambient noise of a place, the stuff charts and graphs can’t render.
— 1000watt blog post
Consumers typically do not socialize with real estate companies. Instead, their frame of reference is centered around searching and finding homes — not friending and RSS (really simple syndication) subscription.
Repositioning a brand first requires the brand to thoroughly nail the basics of what its consumers expect from them as opposed to abandoning those critical elements in wake of introducing gimmicky new ones.
As it pertains to real estate, as long as your IDX feeds, response times, service promises and Web sites remain second rate, and as long as you continue to not offer market data, local insight or tools to help users make better decisions, your efforts to reposition will fail. Tweeting sure is fun, but your customers don’t need you to be their Twitter follower. They need you to be their adviser and they need your site to be as amazing as you say you are.
— 1000 watt blog post
Over the last few years many of the major real estate search sites have moved over to Google Maps from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth as their mapping API of choice (Redfin being the most recent notable defector). HomeGain, Trulia, Homefinder, Estately and others all use Google Maps. But, interestingly, both the #1 and #2 sites; Realtor.com and Zillow, are still Microsoft clients.
http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com/photosynth-could-spark-virtual-earth-comeback
Wwhat about Google Street View feature in Google Maps as part of the stream?
Jamie from Trulia here, nice pic on the BlackJack. We have spent some time thinking about mobile here at Trulia and I did as well when I was at Yahoo Real Estate. I think there are a few factors limiting rapid development in real estate mobile applications:
1. devices and networks have not really been able to handle web browsing to really enable a good experience, however now with devices like the BlackJack and iPhone coming out I think this will change;
2. consumer adoption in the US has been quite slow w/ advanced mobile functionality so it’s kind of the chicken and egg problem, there are no users so no one is building apps in the spaceWith this said, I think mobile is quite exciting especially as there are more GPS enabled phones where a user can just open their browser on their phone go to Trulia and view all homes for sale around their current location, driving directions, recent home sales and local information. The next 18 months will be exciting times for mobile real estate.
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blog comment from Jamie
for the lifestream?
check them out
@Eric You’re right that people want these things while on site and interested. People are also more passive these days, for better or for worse, and would like to get as much information as possible without having to get pitched by the REALTOR®. We’ve put all this together. The customer gets a text (standard info)with a link to a mobile-optimized site, complete with pictures and information that can’t fit into the constraints of SMS. They can also call the agent if interested, but the agent is notified of their inquiry and can follow up with the prospect should they choose to. [Ian is a mobile vendor]
blog comment by Ian S. Greenleigh
@Eric “People want pictures, virtual tours, all the info they can find from their home computer, but they want it while sitting outside the home.”
blog comment by Kori Covrigaru ‘s
