This past week I was immersed in three conferences for real estate professionals in San Francisco – all of which included discussions of blogging.  I spent the morning of July 12th at Inman’s Agent Reboot and Monday afternoon at REBarCamp.

• Agent Reboot was designed to bring real estate agents and brokers up to speed about social media – blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• REBarCamp is an “un-conference” gathering, were social media and blogging experts interacted with each other more informally.
• Inman Real Estate Connect , held July 13-15, 2010 was geared to real estate brokers, marketing directors and technology people.

Engagement -The word that stood out to me at all three venues was engagement – the word applies to Facebook, blogging, corporate websites, home search, mobile technology and was even reflected  in the different format styles of the conferences.

Gone are the days of personal agent branding, static agent billboard websites, and push marketing.  Consumers are less interested today in an agent’s self promotion; the younger your clients, the more this applies.

Today’s Realtors need to learn the art of engaging friends and clients in a more friendly, indirect ways.  Consumers are turning off to one-way broadcast efforts in favor of two-way conversations.

I thoroughly enjoyed engaging with leading edge social media, real estate technology and management experts; here are some overall highlights and impressions from last week:

• Facebook- Usage of Facebook now exceeds Google searches with 540 million unique visitors per month and 570 billion page views per month.  It is a media for lightweight engagement – casual, social, episodic contact, not for pitching listings!  Likes, shares and comments are three primary ways people engage with content posts, pages, photos, etc. on Facebook.  EdgeRank gauges how people interact with a piece of content; engagement is what places posts in the Top News feed rather than the broader Most Recent feed.
• Twitter – This short (130 character) communication is where people inspire, share, educate and entertain their followers.  This too is about engagement rather than pitching your listings.
• Blogging – Yesterday I posted about the future of real estate blogging.  Again the theme is engagement.  Encouraging engagement is akin to the practice of not moderating blog comments before they are published (managing the risk of not being able to control with the benefits of serendipity).  As a sidebar, a REBarCamp blogger noted that she needed to regain her voice, having been overly influenced by the voice of others preoccupied with the task of managing risk ; she knew that a more free expression of her opinions would makes for more lively conversation and engagement.
• HyperLocal - With geo-coded, locational smartphone apps such as Yelp, FourSquare, Gowalla and blog/website apps such as SpatialMatch, there was a strong emphasis on Hyperlocal.
• Websites - Brokers engage visitors primarily by home search engines, market valuation, financing and relocation.  The trend is toward lifestyle and hyper-local search criteria.
• Mobile - Smartphone technology, particularly the IPhone, IPad and other technology solutions currently in design have already changed and will further change the way we engage with the web, other devices and each other.

Engagement at the Conferences- equally interesting to me was the format/style of engagement of the three events, which themselves are a metaphor for shifts in relationship between clients and real estate professionals.

• Agent Reboot and REBarCamp – The first day I was struck by the contrast between a polished performance (putting your best foot forward, marketing approach) and the very casual, social, interactive engagement that springs from online and personal face-to-face authenticity, vulnerability and honesty.  Many of us sort of knew people online, but had yet to meet face to face and interact on another level.  Polished marketing still has its place, but today’s consumers are short on trust and like to get to know with whom they are going to doing business.  The internet is now often the first point of contact.  Friends of friends expands our sphere.
• Un-programmed Programing- The main Inman conference started out with Brad Inman’s rambling interview of Craig Newmark, which had a semi-planned  interruptions by audacious text message questions from the audience projected on the screen behind the speaker and an unplanned  confronting member of the audience (upset about politics and the continuing poor state of our economy). To his credit, Brad seemed to enjoy the sparks and candid confrontation of his friend Craig and rewarded the audacity rather than squelched it.  This engagement added spice, but was not comfortable for control freaks.
• Broad range of speakers and attendees -the Inman conference successfully brought together contrasting groups of people to engage with each other (brokers, marketing professionals, technology experts, entrepreneurs and vendors, but only a few agents like myself).  There were the:
  • casual, friendly, open, young entrepreneurs who boldly experiment with breakthrough technology to engage people and make them loyal clients and evangelists to grow their business on their behalf
  • hip, youthfully exuberant brokers with panache – brashly making end run touch-downs around sleeping corporate giant real estate firms
  • leaders of some presumed stogy institution, who gave wonderful and surprising visionary riffs
  • supremely professional, thoughtful and well prepared corporate strategists
  • very young  techies in T shirts and hoodies, somewhat awkwardly nerdy, but brilliant and articulate
  • well groomed, pin-stripped, stylishly trendy and slick
  • those representing a very focused and well disciplined but cold lead machine mentality – it’s all about numbers: lead generation, capture and conversion
  • vendors with thinly veiled, self-serving sales pitches for their technology system and training

What was thankfully missing from Real Estate Connect?

• preoccupation with the continuing problems of foreclosures and short sales
• doom and gloom about persistent lagging recovery in employment

Other take-away buzz words from the conference are: HyperLocal, Mobile, Social, Real-Time, Community, Apps, Maps, HTML5, Curation, Consolidation, Integration…

Orchestrating a successful real estate conference must be like the fine art of using a chef’s recipe: having the right ingredients in the right proportions and sufficient spices (not too much so that the dishes are overpowered) to make the memorable dining experiences – managing chaos and encouraging serendipity.

Managing a creative and productive real estate office must be somewhat like herding cats  (who don’t know if they want to be outside or inside) with very different personalities and skill set , but are lovable all the same and we would not choose to live without them.

Attracting friends who may become clients involves taking risks and engaging by authentically revealing your personality in such a way that others will grow to know you  and trust you.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.  Engage in the conversation.

Rick Bonetti  | APR Referral Network | 408-857-8800 | DRE#01237009

This year Inman launched Agent Reboot instead of Blogger Connect so on Monday, July 12th I listened to the morning presenter at the San Francisco Hilton and then headed off to interact with friends at REBarCamp (an un-conference) held at Fort Mason in San Francisco.  This was my forth REBarCamp (second in San Francisco) and it was smaller than last year when there was not competition from Agent Reboot.  Nevertheless, assembled this year were some very well known voices in real estate blogging:  Jay Thompson, Ginger Wilcox, Kelly Koehler, Kris Berg, Heather Elias, Rob Hahn and Dale Chumley to name just a few.

Blogging is but one of a number of facinating topics discussed at Agent Reboot, REBarCamp and Inman Connect.  More on that later.  Here are some of my thoughts and gleaning from this past week specifically about the future of real estate blogging :

The Context- Joel Burslem’s (1000 Watt Consulting) July 9, 2010 blog post entitled The Death of The Real Estate Blog was the springboard for lively discussion among these REBarCamp rockstar bloggers.  The resounding consensus was that blogging is very alive and flourishing, although some of context is changing:

• Facebook and Twitter are getting more play because of their growing dominance.
• The ease of use of Facebook’s like button has resulted in not as many people now leaving comments or doing back-links compared with last year.
• Successful blogging is only one element of social media such as Facebook and even traditional marketing such as email and face-to-face meet ups.  Facebook (which is more for non-real estate social connections and entertainment) is collecting  lifestyle preferance data and will become a strong search player.
• Human aggregators are playing more than feed readers.

The Hub- For most of these successful blogging real estate agents, their blog is still the hub of their online social media strategy and they are getting most of their business from it. Real estate bloggers want to own their own content on a WordPress platform and use Facebook to drive visitors to their blog.  Some such as Derek Overby recognize that Facebook has become the hub where many people start their day.

CMS – Blogs are viewed as content management system rather than a lead generation systems.  Blogging real estate agents are using their blogs to connect and keep in contact with people they already know.

Connections- The best Realtor bloggers are trying to create connections with people not just to create business. Broadcast is one-way communication, but bloggers are skilled at encouraging two-way communication.  A good blogger is a good listener; I always love to hear from you! Blogs are good vehicles to communicate personality and humanize content.

Content – Content itself does not create connection. Content itself is not king in real estate blogging. Content does not automatically communicate personality. Using a culinary metaphor good real estate blogging is the difference between the special magic created by a chef like Bobby Flay and just food.

Content farms – Joel Burslem asserts that these are starting to gain better optimized search engine results for the biggest websites; but I think they may not be effective in generating real connections. Interesting writing and content will generate readers; canned content will not. Keyword packed content may get SEO ranking, but it will not yield desired results. Blogging is not a mercenary activity!  Many bloggers at REBarCamp stated they would continue to blog even if it did not result in immediate business.  Not every blogger has the talent to attract readers, but those who do will create loyal fans.  The message must be right for our readers not just for Google.

Community – The homebuying process is all about choosing neighborhood and community before choosing a house. First homebuyers drive around and select neighborhoods they like and then buy the best house you can afford there. The community connections communicated in a blog are important – mom and pop and the intangibles of community are in there. Passion creates community  you can tell when someone loves where they live!

Hyper-local – Many developer apps and boutique Realtor websites such as M Realty now focus strongly on the neighborhood. One of my favorite brand new lifestyle and home search tools (soon to be on my blog) is SpatialMatch.  In my opinion, hyper-local is an important part of the future of real estate blogging that generally has been under-utilized.

365 Things to Do – Dawn Thomas, Dale Chumley and others have made a name for themselves blogging about things to do in their local area.  This raises questions for bloggers wanting to copy the idea for their local area: will the idea be just an overdone fad? Do they have the commitment to stay the course?  What will they do after 365 days?

Finding Your Voice – Blogging helps real estate agents see our world more clearly and heightens our interest of what’s happening in our community.  If we are astute, we really get to know what is important to consumers and can serve them better.  Finding your blogging voice is beyond journalism, which teaches one to be objective and not express personal opinions, so some bloggers have to develop new skills so that their writing is expressive, engaging, entertaining, has a clear point of view and is thought provoking.  The public is looking for authenticity and people who will speak the truth as they see it and not just Realtor hype.

News Aggregation and Curation- There is a trend toward curation of local news content as people look for other resources than their newspaper to get their real time local news. Some online magazine style blogs such as A News Cafe have multiple writer and are supported by advertising.  Others are neighborhood resource centers.  Established aggregator platforms such as ActiveRain will wane as individual users decide to blog on their own WordPress platform and server.  Magazine or Newspaper WordPress blog themes will emerge in addition to more traditional real estate websites that primarily address only three concerns: home search; what’s my home worth and what’s happening in the market.

Video and Podcasting – this has been talked about for years, but few Realtors have mastered this skill. Mobile devices and improved bandwidth will make this even important.  Look for more of this from me in the future.  Architectural photos are important in engaging interest in the community.

Summary - Real estate blogging is changing, but it is not dead. The future of real estate blogging has to be more than an “add-on, marketing widget” that agents can buy off the shelf, add to their arsenal and increase their effectiveness without a time commitment. Periodically writing in a standardized company-provided blog platform will have little effectiveness for the individual agent (although it will help the SEO of the company) unless writing is done regularly with passion and is a natural expression of their personality. Most bloggers want to control ownership of their own blog content.

Because blogging is time consuming there will be more multi-user real estate blogs in the future with agents, managers, corporate staff and guest contributing writers.

Neighborhood focus is a big part of the future for successful real estate blogging. The more finite the geographic area or niche the more likely smaller blogs will dominate SEO through long tail searches.  Blogging is the current expression of older, traditional neighborhood farming through direct mail and newsletters.

I would love to engage and continue this conversation with you online or offline or help you anyway I can.  Let me know your thoughts

Rick Bonetti | Alain Pinel Realtors | 408-857-8800 | rbonetti@apr.com