Union Street MediaReal Estate and Ecommerce Web Design

One of the best ways to market real estate online is to get your listings in front of as many people as possible. This is pretty much common sense. On the other hand, negotiating ways in which the data that makes up a listing can be shared is a particularly touchy subject. Against a backdrop of prolonged discussions of a national MLS and an increasingly competitive market, technology companies are going ahead with plans to create a universal feed for syndicating listings.

There is a relevant “geek speak” phrase that come to mind in the real estate online marketing landscape of early 2008: Steward Brand’s “information wants to be free.” Here’s the full context, from his speech at the Hacker’s Conference way back in 1984:

“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

Sounds a lot like the careful dance of getting an MLS online in the most effective manner, doesn’t it.

As people were discussing at Inman Connect NYC, Yahoo!, Trulia and Zillow are getting together to work on a standardized feed for syndicating real estate listings. Here’s where they’re at now. Very interesting indeed.

While at Inman Connect in New York last month Maggie and Gahlord had a great conversation with Charlottesville, Virginia real estate maven Daniel Rothamel. He’s promoting his business by being an active video blogger in his community. One of the things I admire about his work is that he just keeps putting it out and doesn’t let the technology get in his way.

Later on during the conference Daniel approached us for some video quotes for his coverage of Inman Connect, which you can see posted on Real Estate Zebra blog.

During the Connect keynote Inman stood in front of a room  packed with  real estate professionals and advised them to call all of their past clients and ask if they need help with foreclosures. I thought that advice was bold, honest and probably difficult to do. But completely worth it from a branding perspective.

If you’re a realtor and are interested in building a strong brand through excellent customer service read John Keith’s Boston Real Estate Blog: “Survey: Most consumers don’t understand foreclosure”.

The Union Street Media crew returned home from Inman Real Estate Connect in New York this weekend. We had a great experience there, as we did last summer in San Francisco. A group of five of us attended and focused on social networking, blogging, internet marketing, MLS issues, and much more. The panels were great, including an appearance by the ever-popular Craig Newmark of Craigslist.

One resulting inspiration was the Real Estate Internet Marketing Map that I sketched at the conference, and then gussied up once home.
After all was said and done, among the trends this year were video, of course, as well as “instant” response to customer inquiries. We added a plugoo chat widget on our site last night - if you come by, say hello. I do think we will see many more agents and offices implementing some kind of basic IM/live chat into their sites, and it’s something that we are beginning to recommend to our clients as something to strongly consider.

Also, we were intrigued by the inexpensive Flip video camera and will probably pick a couple up to start playing with.

It will be interesting to see how realtors and others use the social networking space in the coming year. Like blogging, this can be a good passive channel for attracting customers. However, we are seeing more and more active types of marketing on Facebook, like groups, fan pages, and of course, ads. At the San Francisco Connect in August you couldn’t go through a whole panel without someone saying ActiveRain at least once. By contrast you didn’t hear this as much at the NY Connect. Nevertheless, the ActiveRain community is still a great place to spend some time online.

I just returned from San Francisco from the Real Estate Connect conference. It was an excellent experience and I was really impressed with Brad Inman’s ability to get at the core issues in a really thoughtful and provocative way.

Some of the great content can be found in the videos on InmanTV.

Real Estate Video by - Real Estate Blogger

Presentation material from several of the keynotes are available online. Jamie Glenn of Trulia gave a really interesting survey of 50 online marketing tools for real estate - from blogs and social networking to search. Check it out yourself at http://post.inman.com/t/72308/3721853/6051/0/.

Also check out the NY Connect in January of 2008.