Realty World Northern California & Nevada

Facebook joins the so-called “location war” with the launch of Facebook Places. Places is currently available for Apple iPhone users (with the newest version of the Facebook App) and mobile users accessing touch.facebook.com and allows users to “check in” using their mobile phones to inform friends of where they are. In addition to checking in their own location, users will be able to “tag” friends that are with them as well. Users will also be able to see if any friends have chosen to check in nearby.

Places is currently rolling out to all US users. However, when I first downloaded the iPhone App it appeared as if this new “feature” was not fully ready and available. The new icon “Places” appeared in the app and after clicking on it only to display a message stating “This feature will be available in your region soon.”

By the time I was done writing this article it appears as if Places became available for me to access. Following are some screen shots of the iPhone App.

Places is looked to be picked up by younger and socially active individuals. Maybe someone is at a bar or restaurant and that person checks in with Places and views if anyone else is nearby. Communication can then ensue to meet up. You can also leave comments with your check ins. Maybe it is positive comments about a restaurants food or service. Places will also allow users to identify hot spots in their area and new area to check out.

With all of the geolocation services in the news recently and the rising concern of privacy, is Facebook Places something to be concerned with?

Facebook has made a solid attempt to alleviate concerns of privacy by adding privacy settings and setting up the default setting with a fairly conservative approach. By default, if you are a Facebook user, Places will have very minimal impact to you. First of all, a user would need to initiate an action of "check in" for Facebook (and users) to see where you are. So Facebook is not looking at where you are and posting it without your knowledge.

There are several several new privacy settings for Places. The first new privacy settings is under the section "Things I share" and it is called "Places I check in." By default this setting is set to "Friends Only" which means that only your "friends" will be able to check in and see where you are. If you would like to have more privacy, change that setting to "Customize" and either specify which of your friends or groups can, or can't, see where you check in.

The second new setting is "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in." This setting lets others at the same spot know that you are there. It is important to know that the people who see this may not necessarily be just your friends seeing this list. By default this setting is disabled which means that in order for your friends, and others, to see you in the list of people nearby to them you would need to enable this setting.

The third new setting is under the "Things others share" section and is called "Friends can check me in to Places." By default this setting is not set and displays "Select one" in the drop down list. It is important to know that the first time a friend tags you through Places, you will receive a notification on Facebook and you will be given the choice to allow your friends to check you in to places or not. When your friends check you in, it is as if you have checked in at that place yourself. You also will appear checked-in to your friends. If you don't allow friends to check you in, then when they tag you at a place, your name will appear in the same way it appears in a tagged status update. You will not appear checked in at that place. Similar to photo tagging, you have the ability to remove yourself from Places check-in or tag.

The last privacy option is a bit tucked away and is listed under the "Application and Websites" section under "Privacy Settings." Click on "Edit your settings" and click on "Edit Settings" next to "Info accessible through your friends." The new settings is labeled "Places I've Visited" and by default is checked. This means that the Places you have checked in will be available to applications, games and websites when your friends use them. To disable this setting uncheck the setting.

Creating friends lists and why it is recommended

One final topic regarding privacy that many Facebook users don’t know is that you can create a list to organize your friends. Some suggestions for lists would be one for family, one for friends, and one for business. I’ve heard from some users that they have two separate Facebook accounts setup, one for personal use and the other for business use. I feel that not only is that incredibly difficult to manage, it really isn’t necessary. After you have these lists setup, you can modify your privacy settings to allow certain lists to see some things and other lists not to see other things. So for example you can modify your privacy settings so that photos and video that you are tagged in (which sometimes can be a bit embarrassing!) are excluded from “friends” listed under your business list to view.

I hope this helps!

In the wake of attending the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco this month, I have digested the wealth of discussions concerning the latest technologies, and the future expectation of the real estate industry.

The overall theme of the event focus was based on innovation, hyper-localism, and market recovery. With the newest buzz being placed on the infamous Developers Challenge boasting “geo-mapping” tools for mobile devices, one click data to video, and dynamic call routing provided by new comers like RealtyVoyager.com, and Stupeflix.com. They are never short of originality in naming their companies that’s for certain.

The common theme in every session I attended was certainly focused around the ability of an agent to leverage their knowledge within the community using all of these “viral” tools, and social media platforms to position the agent as the utmost local real estate expert. Encouraging today’s agents to focus their marketing efforts on the communities in which they live and work every day, as opposed to trying to capture a much larger audience.  With the advancement of the internet and the mass popularity of social media, there is still one thing that will always prevail…personal touch, professionalism, and knowing your community. There is no substitute for the personal interface you can have with clients to win their future business, and the referrals that will follow. Mastering the advantages of online marketing and social media is definitely a must in today’s market place. However, is entirely meant to compliment your best practices as a real estate professional.

There is a digital cornucopia of cool web tools, and widgets to convey an instant sense of credibility to your audience through your web presence. Although you must be able to put your media where your mouth is and provide the excellent customer service that you advertise through all of this great technology. The internet continues to provide a phenomenal vehicle to drive your message home,  and be the expert consumers all hope you are when you meet face to face.

Google Buzz was released 2 days ago. 2 days later nets over 9 million posts according to the Google Gmail blog.

Wow. That is a lot faster growth than I had anticipated. Additionally Google is stating it is seeing over 200 posts per minute from mobile devices. Very exciting news for sure.

Google officially announced Google Buzz, the Google push into the social media irruption. Google Buzz is kind of a combination of Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp and integrated directly with your Gmail and Google Talk. That certainly sounds like a mouthful. In other words, Google has updated your Gmail email to allow you to share with those that you email and chat with most, all of your online updates, photos, and videos. Your Gmail contacts and Google Talk friends are automatically added as people you are following and allows you to share your items publicly to the world or privately with users you email and chat with.

Google Buzz integrates with your inbox and sends updates to your email and allows the conversation to continue with responses directly from within the email making comments updating in real time. @replies are also supported so you can send responses directly to someone’s email sending a buzz to their inbox.

One of the most compelling aspects to Google Buzz is that it can utilize your phones GPS location (or nearby location) to share with others where your Buzz was started. You can also go to the “Nearby” tab to see what others nearby are Buzzing about.

Most of you might be thinking, is this the new social media to take over Facebook and Twitter? It’s hard to say, especially with Facebook surpassing the 400 million user mark. Facebook is undoubtably the dominant player and additionally announced that Facebook will be eventually be launching its own webmail service. It will be interesting to see how many people will be ok with Buzzing while providing their whereabouts.

You can make your voice be heard by voting in the poll below and joining in the debate.

Erin, Hilda, Aaron... the Erin/Aaron sandwich!

Yesterday I attended my second real estate barcamp event – this one at ReBarCamp Silicon Valley (#rebcsv for you Twitter fans) before this week’s CAR Conference in San Jose. Admittedly, the first was during my second week of work in real estate at the annual Inman Conference and I spent most of my time in that initial experience with my mouth agape and senses reeling.

I’m a barcamp veteran in the technology industry, but there are some vast differences from the barcamps I’d attended featuring deep dives into widgets, application builds and cloud computing and the world of real estate.

Here are a few similarities and differences I noticed:

Difference: Formal v. casual wear. You guys came dressed up in suits, shiny shoes and wielding business cards. In tech barcamps the attire is jeans or shorts, t-shirts, sweatshirts and you can’t get someone to look up from their smartphone long enough to give you a business card.

Who wins? Tech. Realtors have to come in comfortable clothes (it’s only other agents, no worries!) because often times the sessions are outdoors, on benches, folding chairs, etc. You won’t pay attention as well if you’re sweating bullets in that suit!

Similarity: Everyone is on a cell phone/laptop. At tech and real estate barcamps alike, I look at people through the lens of their camera phone as they snap pictures for blogs or Twitter, or I stare at the back of their laptop, netbook, etc. as they feverishly look up the new technologies mentioned, add me as a friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter (and catch up on a few emails of course).

Difference: Humility. In tech, we can’t admit we don’t know about tech very easily, so you’ll see a lot of us thoughtfully nod and then jot down notes furiously on acronyms or websites to look up when we steal a few moments away from the myriad of prying eyes (we’re a paranoid bunch) but you won’t see us ask a lot of “basic” questions. At real estate barcamps it is refreshing to see people question the basics and slow the pace down to make sure they aren’t left behind!

Who wins? Real estate. Knowing that asking questions without being afraid of what your colleagues will think serves Realtors well, as it ensures the entire group gets a good education.

Similarity: We all like the “bar” part of barcamp. It is a universal truth that most of us look forward to the part of the day where we open up some wine, have a beer, or in our case yesterday – a handle of Johnnie Walker, and kick back and talk about what’s up in our industry. At the end of the day, barcamps are not just a place for education, but also a great place to connect with those in the industry who are passionate about integrating new media and methodologies into our lives.

I highly recommend checking out barcamps if you have the opportunity – come to learn, share information, ask questions and meet people… because the best way to make the most of social media is to actually be social.

Erin Robbins
Social Media & Marketing Director
erin.robbins@rwnc.net

Before there were tags, WordPress.com (and other blog hosing sites) only allowed categories to be used.

Categories allowed for a broad grouping of post topics, but when you wanted to describe a post in more specific terms, more categories were required. That lead to very long category lists inside the blog and very long lists in categories widgets making it harder to find what you needed a backlog of general categories stacked into posts.

Someone realized how silly this was and now have tags as well.

Tags are similar to categories, but instead of a list of words to choose from, you write them in a list (separated by commas) in the tags module of your post editing screen. They are free form words and allow you describe your post in more detail and help people narrow search results to get to relevant information faster.

For example, a post titled “Last Night At El Tapatio” might be filed under the “Dinner” category, but could have tags such as, “taco, margarita, salsa, Mariachi.” This will help people looking for information on where to get good tacos for dinner find something more specific than all of the dinner places in an area. Get it?

Since it may be a bit confusing upon first glance (especially to new bloggers),  here are some common questions and answers that may help you out:

Q: With regards to capital letters, is “Tag” the same as “tag?”
A: Yes. Capital letters do not change a tag. “Blogging” is the same as “blogging.”

Q: Is there a limit to the number of tags I can have?
A: No. You may associate as many tags with your posts as you like.

Q: Is there any advantage to using tags or categories, or both?
A: Tags will allow you to be more specific and narrow searches, so they are recommended. It cannot hurt to do both!

Q: Do I have to use tags?
A: The use of tags is entirely optional (although each post must be attached to at least one category) but they will help filter searches.

It is recommended you limit your number of categories to no more than 10. For real estate experts, good categories include “Buyers,” “Sellers,” “Community,” etc. Your tags can include identifiers that fall under these categories, like “first-time buyers,” “short sales,” or “schools.”

Categories and tags are both useful in helping your readers find posts of interest. You can think of categories as being utilitarian and tags as a more creative way of indexing your blog.

Ron Dillon
Director of Online Education
ron.dillon@rwnc.net

I recently posted a blog about rebranding yourself titled Rebranding Your Cow So Your Buyer Can Find It so your customer could find you in this rapidly forming mountain of consumer generated information, social networks and other sites growing in the Internet. And, while your marketing, prospecting and relationship building skills must be adjusted to these new forms of media; your personal skills will ultimately be called on by the all demanding consumer. So, if you think that you can survive in real estate with only some technical savvy and a high powered PC, you’re sorely mistaken.

In fact, I believe your personal relationship skills will be called on even more in the days ahead, especially with advertising being shifted to conversations rather than the old push methods that generally had a “selling” message. If you’re in your forties you may even recall a time when you used the services of a travel agent to purchase plane tickets. Now that experience seems like a distant memory as you use online programs to obtain information and “buy” the service for yourself.

Unlike the simple purchase of a plane ticket, real estate, among other things, is a different animal and consumers are going to have questions and shop. The shopping part is going to be relegated to your use of technology and the question part is going to be all you, “unplugged” as they say today!

The crossroad is where your relationship and trial closing skills have been called upon through your implementation of good tech habits and systems that help attract consumers. As I write this today, Facebook is the fourth most visited site in the world trailing only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sites, according to comScore. Social networks are ultimately about friendships, where members add value to each other’s lives through interaction.

This interaction is all about your knowledge and personal relationship skill sets. It is about meeting and greeting the consumer; establishing rapport; seeking needs and confirming those needs to be true; isolating customer indifference from objection; providing supporting statements and finally asking for the close.

Nothing could be less technical. The road ends leads directly to your raw talent and abilities as a professional salesperson, product specialist and steward of exceptional customer service.

Scott LeForce
President
scott.leforce@rwnc.net