Last Tuesday, I represented Trulia at the 2008 Carolina One Real Estate Marketing and Technology Trade Show in Charleston, South Carolina. Having attended many real estate industry conferences nationwide, this is the largest individual company event I’ve participated in to date. It was very well attended with approximately 900 real estate agents. Kudos to Carolina One’s Philip Cheves, Marketing Director, Les Sease, IT Director, and their team for putting it all together. A first class event for sure.

The night before the trade show, I searched for local Carolina One real estate agents online and on Trulia Voices. I made some notes about some of these agents and when I saw them at the show or walking up to the booth, I already felt like I knew them. I told some of them that I knew who they were and they were shocked, pleasantly of course. I was hoping they would have this feeling as I wanted to demonstrate to them how it would feel when an educated online consumer contacted them.

The first person I recognized walking in the aisle was Seth Siegler. I told him that I knew him. He looked at me like I was nuts Seth has a great understanding of how to make social media and blogging work for him. In fact, he also gave a presentation on social media at the conference. Nice meeting you Seth.

Then I met Foster Smith. He has a good online presence in the Charleston and Summerville area. We had some wonderful conversations about blogging, social media and Trulia Voices. I look forward to seeing him get more active on Voices.

One of the highlights of the trade show was meeting Millie Martin. She told me a very cool Trulia story. Once upon a time she wanted to post a piece of land she had for sale on Trulia but she couldn’t. I asked why? She said that her piece of property was priced at $9,000 and that the minimum price we allowed at the time was $10,000. She contacted customer service about her unique situation and we fixed it. So thanks to Millie, you can post real estate listed for under $10,000. A perfect example of how your feedback can help shape what we do at Trulia.

As the only Trulian at the event, I had a busy non-stop day. Besides manning the Trulia booth, I gave two presentations - Three Ways to Generate Business Online to a group of 40-50 agents. I received lots of great feedback afterwords about Trulia and have since followed up with many of them. The second presentation was called Agent 2.0 which I presented to about 900 agents. Easily, the single largest audience I have ever spoken in front of. An amazing experience that resulted in many great follow up conversations about Trulia, blogging and social media.

On behalf of Trulia, I want to thank everyone at Carolina One Real Estate and all the attendees for a memorable experience.

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Harlem U.S.A. - On Thursday, I had the privilege of speaking to a wonderful group of Halstead real estate agents at their Harlem office at 175 Lenox Avenue. The topic - How to Proactively use Trulia and Social Media to grow your real estate business and sphere of influence. I talked about how your proactive participation on Trulia Voices Q&A and Trulia Blogs can help you better connect with active home buyers and home sellers and other real estate agents for referrals. The consumers are out there asking for help, you just have to engage them.

Before I spoke, Diane Ramirez, the President of Halstead Property, addressed the office. She is an amazing speaker that knows how connect with her audience. Her agents are lucky to have such a great leader to follow. Anthony DeVivio, the Director of Sales, did a fantastic job as well talking real world strategies for adapting to this current market.

Diane Ramirez of Halstead and Rudy Bachraty of Trulia

I got a first look sneak peek at the new Halstead Property S3 Luxury campaign. They will have special digital signage atop New York City taxi cabs for the next few months highlighting the benefits of using Halstead for your luxury home buying and selling needs. It’s a special campaign targeted for the $5 million and up market. Clients in this tier will have a customized marketing plan for each individual property where they can see the results of the campaign in real time. No more paper checklists - this is real time information that will help them better understand what Halstead and their agents are doing to sell their home. I guess it’s a new level of transparency that Halstead should be commended for. As Diane said in her presentation, “It’s all about accountability.”

All in all, a very good day.

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We just added some more user friendly details to our maps on Trulia. Now, you can find Yelp Reviews for local restaurants, grocery stores, schools, banks and gas stations on the Google map on each listing details page on Trulia such as this one located at 235 East 73rd Street #2-E, New York NY 10021.

Just click on the “Places of Interest” link under the map to see the local Yelp reviews.

Trulia-Yelp Real Estate Social Media Marketing Strategy

If you haven’t used Yelp to help build your real estate business and sphere of influence yet, this is a great time to start. As the local neighborhood real estate expert, I’m pretty sure you know all the best places to eat and shop. Yelp allows you to add reviews for these local businesses for free.

In the 1st screen shot above for the listing I found on Trulia, I highlighted Petaluma, a local Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side in New York City. If you click on the Petaluma link, you will be taken to the review page on Yelp where you will see my brief review.

When you click on my name, you’ll be taken to my Yelp Profile where consumers can find all of my local business reviews as well as more information about me and links to my real estate website or blog.

Whether you currently have active listings or not, by taking the time and proactively reviewing the local businesses in you geographic farm areas on Yelp, you are giving yourself free exposure to a huge consumer audience - some of which are looking to buy or sell their home. And with our new Yelp Review integration, consumers who look for properties on Trulia and click on the Restaurant or Grocery store icons will be taken to the review of that business. If you reviewed the majority of businesses in your geographic farm area, consumers won’t be able to miss you :) 

Be here. Be there. Be Found.

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Trulia iPhone App on the home page of the iTunes App Store page

On August 25th, we released our Trulia iPhone app.  Consumers and agents are starting to get more mobile everyday. We knew they wanted the ability to search for homes and open houses conveniently from the palm of their hands and at their leisure. The response, feedback and adoption of the Trulia iPhone app by consumers and agents has been amazing thus far. To date, our application has been downloaded more than 70,000 times. Whoa!

As more consumers get mobile, agents and brokers will now have a new way to reach them and interact with them directly via our app. Plus, upcoming versions of the app will add more usability and functionality to the user experience. It’s a great reason to make sure your listings and open houses are active on Trulia. Are yours?

A few days ago, Ted Mackel - aka -@realtorted, a Realtor® and blogger from Home Buys Blog, sent me a message on Twitter that a home buyer found his open house via our iPhone app. I’m waiting to hear back from Ted to see if that home buyer and their agent made an offer…Check out the conversation below.

Seth Agranov - @MemphisSeth, a real estate technologist and blogger at 5′oclock Memphis said:

  Tyler Wood - @tylerwood - Realtor® and blogger from The Big Bear Real Estate Skinny said:

Some consumer Twitter posts about our app:

Henrik Gehrmann - @g1011010 said:

@Soxiam said:

Sol Young - @sol said:

@Kentbye said:

Here’s some more feedback from Real Estate Agent bloggers using the app:

Derec Shuler  from the Shuler Group wrote a blog post titled -Power in the Palm of your Hand - where he said, “The iPhone and Trulia application combine these features and users can now have the Trulia application show them homes on their iPhone based on where they’re currently located using the GPS technology, and even according to a search criteria, like 2 bedrooms under $400,000.  Consumers now have access to property information in the palm of their hand and know where to find homes in an area they want to be in! ”

Martin Bouma from The Bouma Group wrote a blog post titled - Are Real Estate Agents being help to a Higher Standard? - and said, “By uploading our Ann Arbor listings to Trulia, our featured properties are “exposed” to a whole new set of potential buyers who search for homes via their iPhones.”

Mary Ann Knell from The Knell Group  wrote a post titled- Marketing to a New Type of Peoria Home Buyer - where she said, “Leaving nothing to chance, your Peoria home is featured on numerous nationally syndicated websites. One of those websites (Trulia) also uploads your Peoria home to a powerful iPhone APP. The image below is an good example of the new iPhone Trulia property search application.  Everyday more Peoria tech-savvy home buying consumers are hitting the streets armed with their iPhone and smart young home buyers are using it to possibly locate their next Peoria home.”

It’s great hearing open house feedback like this from consumers and agents in the field. If you have any stories, experiences, comments or feedback on our Trulia iPhone application, we’d love to hear it. You can email me directly at rudy at trulia dot com or tweet me @trulia.

Many thanks to the 70,000 people who downloaded our app and to all those who have provided us with valuable feedback!

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You Only Get What You Give

Have you been caught up in the Social Media frenzy? Overwhelmed about all the national websites and social networks out there? Not sure where you should be participating and spending your Time besides your “Home Base” blog or website? You’re not alone. There are many places online that you can strategically spend your time. Depending on your participation levels and engagement, your time spent there could really help you establish your Social Media presence while building your sphere of influence.

Back in June, I wrote a post on the Trulia Blog called, “The Top Three Non-Real Estate Social Media Sites for Realtors®”. Besides Facebook, Linkedin and Meetup.com, there are many other non-real estate social media sites real estate agents can take advantage of. Creating a profile on these sites is just the first step - and a very important one at that. You profile page provides consumers with an overview of who you are and what you do. It’s important to make a good first impression when networking online - your detailed profile helps you do that.

Just Having a Profile is Not Enough

If all you do is create a profile you will never reap the benefits some of these communities can provide. It’s called social networking for a reason - you have to be present and active to benefit. Otherwise, were just being anti-social and social notworking. Don’t get me wrong, you can still get a tremendous amount of value by just observing and reading. In fact, it’s best to be an observer first. Each community is different and the vibe and culture is unique in each. Understanding the culture will help you become a better participant.

From a Fly on the Wall to a Participant

After you create your profile and learn the culture, it’s time to engage and join the conversation.  Besides being active on our popular Trulia Voices Q&A and Blog platform, I participate on and test numerous national sites and social networks. I frequent some more than others and learn new ways to use them all the time. It’s pretty obvious how to use some sites, e.g. Trulia Voices - it’s a great place to engage local home buyers and home sellers. It may take a little longer to figure out how some other sites, e.g. Plurk, can help you grow your business and sphere. Nonetheless, the best part is connecting with people and building solid relationships.

Here’s a non-real estate specific real life example of how I went from being a fly on the wall on Yelp.com to participant. I have been using Yelp for over a year now as an observer to search for local restaurants. Recently, I started getting a little more active there by adding some restaurant reviews myself. Just this week, I participated on a really interesting thread. I complimented one of the commentors and as a result, he sent me a private message. We had a nice back and forth and I’m meeting with him next week for something pretty cool which I can’t talk about - yet. The point is, that I was proactive. I engaged in a conversation with someone I didn’t know and something positive has come out of it for Trulia. Ultimately, your level of engagement will determine the results you receive. You only get what you give.

Where’s my Yardstick?

As agents, it is vital that we understand which types of networking and marketing works and doesn’t work. It’s important that we measure everything we can. On social networks, gauge how many people you have communicated with whether it be via chat, email, private message or phone. Were they meaningful conversations? Did they help you or your business in any way? Did it just make you feel good? There is no wrong answer here. You will quickly learn what you want to get out of each site and how to do it. Measure your results.

For your Home Base blog or site, using tools like Google Analytics or Clicky to track your traffic will help you decide where to actively participate online. There are even services that allow you to track and measure phone calls to specific phone numbers you create on your advertisements. Use these tools to help you decide where to spend your time and money – free is always good.

Social Networking Karma Challenge

Try different things before you let others convince you what works and what doesn’t. No one can walk in your shoes. Take the steps necessary to find out what works for you and your company YOURSELF!

Good luck and please let us know what works for you.

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If you Google the word “weather”, you’ll find national sites like the Weather.com and Wunderground.com. Both sites start with a national forecast. Then, you can narrow down to the local area you are interested in and find what the weather will be for that day or week. You’ll see a 5 day forecast and all the local data about current weather conditions. Google “New York Weather” and Wunderground.com, NYTimes Weather and Intellicast.com appear. They are all national sites that allow you to focus in on your specific area and get hyper-local weather related information.

So What’s All this Talk that Real Estate is Local?

We all know that just like the weather, real estate is local. Unique micro-climates exist in each of our Cities and towns we live and work in. You won’t hear the weatherman say the average national temperature in the United States is 65 degrees. Nor would you hear him say that it will be 82 degrees in California today.

Real estate is a very local and relationship driven people business. As agents, we live in the markets we serve. We know our neighbors. We know the people who work in the local businesses we frequent. Over time, they become our friends. They become our clients. But we can only be in so many places at once. We can only meet so many people each day. Wouldn’t it be great if we could expand our reach and grow our sphere of influence? Yes it would. And yes you can.

Have a Home Base

Having a local blog or website about your business is essential. You need a “Home Base”. You need a place to add your listings and create local content that consumers could use. You need a place share your expertise. Your blog and website are great for this. But is this all you should be doing? Some would have you believe that it is in your best interest to just contribute your knowledge and listings on your own site or blog. I believe otherwise.

In addition to your “Home Base”,  there are numerous national and local websites, social networking sites and micro-blogging sites where you can establish a valuable local presence. Consumers are frequenting these national sites and are actively participating on them. You should too. They are sharing information about themselves, their home buying and home selling wants and needs and are asking questions. You should be there to engage them. Say it ain’t so Rudy? Really? Yes. But most of you reading this already know this. I am talking to those who might be confused, on the fence or just unaware about how YOU can be sharing your knowledge by marketing yourself and your businesses and networking outside of your own blog or website.

Were you hoping for more details? Great, for those of you who are interested in being more proactive in the Social Media space, my answer is coming up in a follow up blog post…….later today.

 Note: Hurricane IKE is bearing down on the Gulf coast of Texas. Our thoughts are with everyone. Stay safe.

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As the Social Media Guru of Trulia, I have over 500 “friends” on facebook, 227 on Linkedin, 947 followers on Twitter. If I can just complement one person or or share a positive experience or story about them every now and then, it would be great. I’ll try. But being as busy as I am, I should be finished in a couple of years or so. So please don’t feel slighted if I don’t get to you until next year Acknowledging our friends and business associates that we so dearly cherish can go a long way. It might help them get their next job or impress a potential client. Lot’s of work to do.  This will be interesting. 

Since Linkedin serves as our virtual resume, I’ll start there.

I just recommended 2 people I admire on Linkedin today Can you guess who they are?

Update: If you have an iPhone, download the native Linkedin iPhone app here.

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Mike Price from MLBroadcast has written a fantastic post which I think every real estate company should read called - Scouts of the New Frontier: Social Stewards & Custodians of Community. It’s a type of post I have been wanting to write for some time now -the reason every company should have a spokesperson. Ok, so maybe the word “spokesperson” is a little old school or web 1.0 but the point still stands. Your company should have an easily identifiable and accessible face and voice both online and offline that your fans and critics can interact and communicate with.

The Front Lines of Conversation

The reality is that the new frontier is most certainly upon us. Conversation is what drives relationships. And when building and maintaining the reputation of a brand, it is absolutely essential to build trusting relationships everywhere you can. This includes on your own site, blogs and the most popular social networking sites like Twitter, facebook and Linkedin. People are talking about you and your company whether you like it or not. If you do not have a dedicated person to participate in these conversations, your are missing the boat.

Those Who Get it

By being proactive and engaging others you are being real. Now your company no matter how small or large has a voice and face that the consumer can identify with. In addition to the companies Mike Price mentioned, here are some companies who have people on the front lines. Just look at Active Rain who has 3 Community managers - Rich Jacobson, Brad Andersohn and Bob Stewart - they all do a fantastic job. Let’s not forget Glenn Kelman of Redfin who has two official hats - President & CEO and one unofficial hat as the Social Media Maverick for his growing company. Then there is a new wave of social media brand management on the Brokerage level evolving being led by Sherry Chris and her outstanding team at Better Homes and Gardens. On the hybrid blog/brokerage level, Greg Swann of Bloodhound Blog and Lani - first name only required - of Agent Genius successfully serve as the voice and face of their companies/brands. Last but not least, on the blog/mortgage level, we have Brian Brady of World Wide Wealth Advisors, America’s self professed #1 Mortgage Broker getting sh%$ done everywhere you look and Todd Carpenter of Lenderama who is now getting into the real estate trade show business. They all get it. They all do it. When it comes to representing your company and brand, first impressions matter. Make them count.

Represent, Represent!

I represent Trulia and everything we stand for. It’s quite an honor and I love it. We are all about creating the best user experience for both consumers and real estate brokers and agents. We strive to help you connect with each other in an efficient way. Our entire team is passionate about what we do. We are here for you.

It’s all about relationships!

Building and maintaining relationships with agents, brokers and consumers is part of what I do on a daily basis. Whether I do it via email, phone - yes, I still use the phone, text, IM, blog comments, in person or by smoke signal, at the end of the day, I hope to have answered your questions, informed you more about who we are and how we can help you and your business and ultimately, made a meaningful connection. Being the social butterfly that I am, I crave people’s opinions and and always look forward to getting to know people I meet. So if you have any questions or comments about Trulia and what we’re all about, just google me or follow me here.

So what do you think,  should every real estate company and brokerage have a dedicated Social Media “spokesperson” to represent their company? Does yours?

Vote in the poll here

Update: Just added this Poll Daddy poll as the Toluna poll was not embedding correctly

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I’ll be off the grid for the next two weeks. So if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, news or funny jokes you’d like to share with us, please email my fellow Trulian and VP of Marketing, Heather Fernandez at heather [at] trulia dot com. She’ll take good care of you. Peace!

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I am a Facebook junkie. There, I said it. I love widgets, I am a Ninja, a Mobster, a Knight, and for some reason people love giving me Karma.

That being said I do believe, whole-heartedly, that Social Media is a viable source of business. Business, that Coldwell Banker and others are trying to wrangle up as they stake their claim into the new medium. I give lot’s of them credit as they are doing smart things. Sherry Chris and her team at Better Homes & Gardens are all over Facebook, Twitter and other sites establishing themselves as the “new” Real Estate model, leveraging technology and social media from the onset of their brand. They even have a blog that is frequented by their top brass.

But can you teach an old dog new tricks?

YES.

Coldwell Banker has recently launched a great Facebook Application, Housetrology, that has real business credibility behind it. Sadly, I tried loading it and using it today on my profile, but i got an error - maybe crashing due to popularity from all the press? In the meantime, you can find the app on the Coldwell Banker homepage. With Housetrology, users are presented a series of photos that would place you in one of 6 homebuyer types. Thus giving you your “housetrology” sign. Then they enlisted the help of a well-known psychologist to interpret the findings and release some interesting details about these buyer types. Depending upon your selection, you are either a Colonialista, Urbanist, Contemporarian  or 3 other categories of buyer.

 So, in one fell swoop this Facebook Application has gotten them National Press, over 1,500 users on Facebook and an insight into what homebuyers really want. Plus a great level of brand engagement for the users engaged with the application. Coldwell Banker is not the only one, and clearly Real Estate is not the first industry, but it is great to see a brand like Coldwell Banker embrace this genre with this kind of application.

There may very well be other facebook applications for real estate out there, there must be, and feel free to link them below - but this one, just has that little something, the authenticity, the ease of use, and “game” quality that you need with a facebook application. I give this one a big thumbs up! You can read more here at FoxBusiness.com.

See you on the web: Facebook, Linkedin

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