Presenter @matthewshadbolt.

Use notes and tips to help people live better in your local community.

Facebook Places

Leave a photo of what you’re doing. Leave a tip with the photo.

Use FoodSpotting. Share photos of what you’re eating. Help build a living menu.

Flickr

Tag photos with location. That surfaces your brand in local search.

Foursquare

Corcoran leave tips all over Manhattan.

Using advertising

Find out what apps people in your market are using. Target people based on their location.

Create digital breadcrumbs that give people a feel for what it’s like to live in an area.

Mobile is now the value added line item to a web buy.

Corcoran create connections on Foursquare that move to Twitter. It’s a way to share what’s inside an agent’s head. That information is hard to get into the hands of consumers on a blog.

Here are a few WordPress widgets that bring life to your real estate blog.

Presented by @bradandersohn.

Weather.com – local weather.
Google translate tools
Facebook page and profile badges
Sharethis – social sharing
RSSMix multiple RSS feeds in single feed.
Feedburner subscribe widget.

Contact widgets
Google voice
RETechBlog for text messaging.
Jaxtr for free calling
Zillow
Zopim free chatting with other interactive features.
Add ratings and reviews – Zillow, Trulia, Yelp.

Grab the code, paste it into a text widget. It’s easy.

Presenter Sherry Chris.

There are opportunities to brand agents in the same way as Apple and Harley have focussed on lifestyle.

Collaboration

Baby Boomers

Agent branding was once agent focussed but customers don’t care about that stuff. They want to know about how you’ll serve them.

Don’t wait for the industry to change. This is the market. This is the new normal.

86% of consumers will pay more for a product if they perceive they’ll be served better. Don’t compete on price, build service quality.

Office space isn’t necessary. Big offices are yesterday.

Use free, simple tech.

Social media is the core.

Customer service is first and foremost.

BHG Real Estate. Read their blogs.

It’s abut delighting the customer.
Exceed expectations

Presenter: @darinpersinger.

73% of homeowners prefer to work with agents who use video but only .8% of agents use video. Big opportunity to create a point of difference.

Grab a a pocket size camera. Get one with an external mike connector.

1. Check out Ian Watt. Share information about what’s happening in your local real estate market.
2. Share information about your community (lifestyle branding). Check out Dale Chumley.
3. Do a Q & A or get on camera with someone else.
4. Create a screencast.
5. Give a tour of the community or neighborhood.
6. Client testimonials.
7. Check out Capture.
8. Implement. Keep videos under 2 minutes.
9. Don’t worry about editing. That comes later.

Syndicate video with tubemogul.com but be careful about doing that. Follow up on all comments.

Clients are finding Facebook as a way for people to connect to agents. Place for agents to share hyper-local content.

Put together a business plan first. Use Trulia voices to build credibility.

Agents using groups on LinkedIn. Match your style with the platform.

If they enjoy creating a blog start a blog. If you’re not a writer find free content and become a content curator.

Follow local people on Twitter. Search for people with interests outside of real estate.

Think relationship not transaction.

Use Alltop or Google Sparks on G+ to find relevant content.

Having someone do your social media is like outsourcing taking your wife out for dinner.

Have tasks that you do daily.

Don’t build something unless you’re willing to live in the space.

Create a LinkedIn profile and a Google profile.

Peter Rollings from Marsh & Parsons.

Unshakable dedication to customer service. Get the balance between hard core sales and laid back agency practice.

Marsh & Parsons. Local know how. Better results.

People want to do business with nice people who can deliver. Show that you know local.

New colour is chocolate brown. Works well.

New systems.

New people, new commission rates. Started with 53 staff, finished with 14. Got rid of the dead wood. Paid someone $50k to leave and everyone was happy.

Employing the best talent. We never take our customers for granted.

Be hands on. Have regular meetings with the team. Only employ people you like.

Peter gets an email of all the business his company does. Rarely reduces a fee.

They have loads of team incentives, especially for referrals.

Friday meeting everyone shouts out their numbers, everyone is supportive and encouraging.

Ask customers what they thought of the M&P experience. Most came in with great feedback.

They provide corporate gifts at settlement.

Be a brand, be obsessive.

Each office looks the same, each has local photos. All have a red wall, all have a clock, all have tub chairs.

Creating a brand. Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.

Embrace social media marketing. Does a regular video blog. Was a top 20 company on Twitter.

Use Adwords successfully. And bus ads.

Web is important to M&P. Brings them lots of success.

They do a lot of sponsorship.

M&P use a text service that allows them to use the same sign board on all properties. Better than QR codes.

Time management the holy grail. Every person has an ideal day. Aim for 5 viewings per day.

M&P aggressively renegotiated salaries, supplies and contracts to save m money. Don’t waste a good recession. 3 percent profit margin. Now 23 million t/o for a 27 percent profit.

Consumer is sovereign. Brand is key. Talent is precious.

If you’re a great listener no one will forget you.

Four listening strategies or modes.

Not listening
The most common listening strategy. Allows us to tune out other noise and focus on the conversation at hand. There’s a lot of noise in social media. Actively use filters. Hootsuite filter out people with low Klout scores.

Listening for reinforcement
RTs and the Like button is lazy listening.

Read links and comment on them. Make an effort.

Listening to reply

Listen to learn
Listen between the words. It requires a conscious effort both on and offline. Many engage at the level of common interest and not common values. Your responsibility as a listener is to help the speaker articulate their message. Works well in a consultative selling mode.

We do business with people based on shared values not shared interest.

Stop worrying about your next update and start being concerned with the needs of others. How would it change if people could say about you that you were there for them.

We have an opportunity to make a difference. Become a better listener.

Your credibility determines if you’ll get the listing.

Know the value of the property. Ask: did the other agents tell you what they truly thought today?

Be accessible, be available. Phone people back quickly.

Form relationships with people based on honest and open communication. Build long term relationships. Don’t be scared to admit you don’t know, that you’re out of your depth.

Treat real estate the same as a restaurant. Build word of mouth. Protect your reputation. Your desk makes you a proprietor of your own business. Don’t leave it up to your principal or broker.

Have a weekly sit down meeting with your sellers. The nineties are gone. Not all properties belong in the auction room.

Think before you put your mouth in gear.

Accessibility
Credibility
Product knowledge
Honesty

I’m writing this as I listen to Bob Bohlen at AREC11. These are simply the course notes.

What’s with this guy’s shirt and tie combo. Mustard shirt and multi-colour tie? Sorry, I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying.

A new agent has 10 appointments to 1 transaction. Top agents go 3 appointments to 1 transaction.

Above 35-40 transactions you’ll need a PA.

Different brokerage model on the way but doesn’t say what that might be. QR codes and single property websites are the next “big thing”.

200 million people on Facebook. I’m sure he meant 600 million.

US agents are using meetup.com to sell properties and recruit.

Bob became a vegetarian after years of producing beef.

Your sphere of influence, expired listings, FSBO’s, just listed, just sold.

It’s going to take 10 years for the US to get out of the current slump.

They use Top Producer, Agent Online and Transact as a CRM.

Facebook announced some major changes to the Facebook Pages platform last week. Here is your one-minute guide to get you up and running.

Facebook Pages new profile

Page admins can now upgrade to the new page layout voluntarily until March 10, 2011. Pages not upgraded by then will automatically convert to the new profile.

To-do: Act now or do nothing, the result is the same.

Featured Admins

Now admins can feature themselves as a page owner in the left hand column. I expect to see a number of agents doing this to to build their number of friends. Admin staff will probably want to remain anonymous but principals will probably want to go public.

To-do: Go to Edit Page/Featured then choose the page owners you want to feature.

Posting as a person not the page

This is a big one!

One of the complaints agents had with the old page format was that admins became invisible. Posting as the admin meant posting as the page. There was no way out of it unless you created a second personal profile and that breeched Facebook’s Terms of Service. Now admins can chose whether they want page posts to use their profile or the page name. That’s a big advantage for agents wanting to build their personal brand, and especially for agents who chose a generic name.

To-do: Go to Edit Page/Your Settings. Decide if you want to post as your page name or as your personal profile. Make the appropriate selections.

Use Facebook as your Page

Another big one. No, make that really, really big!

Click on Account then Use Facebook as a page. Choose your page and now whatever you do on another page shows as coming from your page, not your personal profile. There’s also an option to do this from the righthand side of an upgraded Page.

To-do: Using Facebook as your page find the businesses related to yours. Hit the Like button. Now click the Home button and you’ll see all those businesses latest activity in your page newsfeed. Add comments to some of those items. That activity will show up in the newsfeed of those fans who like both pages. Newsfeed mentions are always good.

Page email notifications

Yet another big one. Close to the biggest in fact.

Why is it so big? One of the big beefs with the old page style was there was no way to know when someone wrote on your wall or commented on a post or photo without viewing the page and all its contents. It was a pain. Not anymore. Now, whenever someone does anything on your page you’ll be notified by email. Page admins can now respond to comments and posts in almost real time and that increases the level of page interaction. That’s always a good thing!

To-do: Go to Edit Page/Your Settings and make sure email notifications are turned on.

Categories

Page admins can now change their page category. That’s handy if the page was wrongly categorised during setup.

Impact level: low

To-do: Check page category and adjust accordingly.

Photo strip

[tweetmeme]The latest photos added to the page will be displayed by default. If you don’t want a photo to display hit the ‘x’ button at the top right hand corner of the photo.

To-do: Check photos regularly. Make sure they represent your brand values.