Mouth 2 Mouth

Hello ActiveRain Community Members.  I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to respond to many of your emails.  As you know Matt and I have both been busy off-line connecting with the industry at Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. 

<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute;margin-left:0;margin-top:56.6pt;width:60pt;height:18.9pt; z-index:1;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square;mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt;mso-position-horizontal:absolute; mso-position-horizontal-relative:text;mso-position-vertical:absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative:text' wrapcoords="0 0 0 20571 21384 20571 21384 0 0 0"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Caleb\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png" o:title=""/> <w:wrap type="tight"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->I have to say the conference was fabulous.  Companies from all over representing the latest and greatest in technology for the real estate professional.  Standout themes had to do with, blogging, listings, and lead management.

In the blogging world Matt and I met up with the folks at RealEstateblogsites.com.  John Helmering, Rodney Rumford, and Kristen Veraldi. The five of us walked around San Francisco looking for John’s favorite Chinese place.  I was glad for the walk and enjoyed checking out the city.  I’ve never been to San Francisco.  Talking with John, Kristen and Rodney was a great experience.  They are great people very excited about what they have to offer to the real estate industry.  Blogs are being looked at as this year’s “listing”  whereas in the last few years the focus has been on utilizing listings to bring in leads from the web, today blogging is looked at as the latest to tool in the internet marketing toolbox.  I’ll be writing more about this later.  Real Estate Blogsites has some great tools available to the real estate professional If you want to learn more about the benefits of business blogging, then they are great people to talk to.

<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_9" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute;margin-left:408.6pt;margin-top:19.55pt;width:54pt; height:28.2pt;z-index:1;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square; mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:0;mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt; mso-wrap-distance-bottom:0;mso-position-horizontal:absolute; mso-position-horizontal-relative:text;mso-position-vertical:absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative:text'> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Caleb\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png" o:title=""/> <w:wrap type="square"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->There were many showcasing their lead management systems, something which ActiveRain Itself is known for through it’s work with Most Home Technologies Corp. I had the fortune to meet the team at Most Home for the first time, Ken Galpin,  Jim Secord, Josh Heppner, and Todd Shyiak.  A great team and fun, we talked to them quite a bit about their eTeam lead follow up system that includes at its core a live call center to follow up with leads.  As a broker I helped to bring in and process over 35,000 leads.  Their total package solution is excellent.  I know I would have benefitted a lot if I had their tools in place.

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There were many companies at the conference simply devoted to the dissemination of real estate listings. Trulia,  Propsmart,  LoopNet, HomePoint.com, Submit Your listings.com, Live Deal.com, Oodle, Edgio, Real Estate.com Craig's list and Google Base were some of the many participants positioning themselves for the listings segment.  There are more to name, This is a very croweded segment. It's clearly seen as a valuable resource for online real estate marketing, how best to take care of those listings though?  Ultimately what this means is that we have a lot of options and this segment is going to see some major consolidation in the next few years

There are plenty of tools to choose from out there.  Many of them can be very valuable tools to the real estate professional.  The technologies help us to connect, to pass on, to gather, and to manage information.  It looks today that the focus in these areas is the utilization of blogs and listings for marketing, with lead management systems to support the qualification of potential prospects.  The conference was great, there were a lot of wonderful people there to connect with.