What the heck is a RainCamp™? Isn’t it really a TechCamp?  Is RainCamp™ anything like REBarCamp?  Maybe you heard this is an event for ActiveRain only?  What makes RainCamp™ different, and why would you want to attend?  Do I have to pay a fee to attend a RainCamp™?  What’s the true value and benefit of going to RainCamp?

Hopefully, this will help get some of these questions answered for you.

“Real Estate RainCamp™ is a full day Conference/Seminar that is packed with valuable content, presentations, and some of the most useful and applicable ideas, tools, and processes that you can implement immediately into your Social Media, Networking, Blogging Strategy, and Business Plan.  RainCamp™ was created and developed for anyone in the Real Estate Industry looking for successful methods and tools to maximize and grow their online business in today’s Modern Day Real Estate Market.”

The event focuses on numerous areas that are of great importance to any business in this market.

• Assess how you stack up in the modern market.
• Listen to people that are practicing what they preach, and having outstanding success doing it.
• Learn the methodology of a newer agent who has leveraged the Internet to become a ‘Mega Producer’.
• Walk away with executables you can put into action immediately.

RainCamp™ is Hard Core Real Estate Technology edu... not a fluff event.

• How do you stack up in the modern Real Estate Market
• Target consumers MUCH closer to buying than average Internet leads
• “Ten Days of Pain” lead conversion method – converting Internet leads
  
• Discover what works and doesn’t work using Social Media
  
• Listen to pros utilizing what they preach and have outstanding success
  
• Discover 40+ tech tools that can be integrated into your business
• Understand what it means to be the “Online Mayor of your Community”
• Learn to use Hyper-Local Blogging to get on the first page of GOOGLE

This is just to give you an idea of some hot topics, technology, discussions, and tools that get shared at RainCamp™.  The value and benefit of attending far out-weigh the price of admission.  The pricing is structured so that nearly anyone and everyone can attend.  There are different levels of pricing, but they all get you in.  There’s even donation based tickets available.

You can find more details about each event at RainCamp.com.

I’m serious, if you get the chance to attend a RainCamp™ in your area, GO! I haven’t missed one yet.  Don’t take my word for it, listen to what some of these RainCamp Guests had to say.

Special thanks and shout out to Zillow, as they are one of the Platinum Sponsors who help to make RainCamps possible for the Real Estate Industry, and available to industry professionals like yourself.

RainCamp™ - “Because the way we do business has changed!”

Here’s a link to the Next RainCamp Event Coming Up Next Week

“You’ll walk away from RainCamp™ with successfully tested technology, tools and concepts that you can apply and put into action immediately to increase your business!”

Google Map Buddy

I saw this on Lifehacker last week, a great Google Map tool for real estate.

Google Map buddy allows you to easily print out wall-sized satellite views of  a neighborhood for your listing, or make a full-page street map of the neighborhood for a buyer.  I can think of a few real estate applications for this tool.

Maybe use it to keep track of your company’s listings?

From the maker’s website:

* Capture Google Maps images offline and store them on your hard drive
* Print out maps of entire cities at zoom levels that would take hours to put together

If you have ever spent hours print screening your Google maps into Paint and stitching them together you NEED this program!

Map Buddy is a free download for Windows only.

Got any other ideas on how to use this for real estate?  Comment please…

You might remember just a few short weeks ago I wrote a post, here on GEB, coining the phrase “Human Aggregators”, entitled “Kiss Your RSS Good-Bye”. It was about how, using an application like Tweetdeck (Though Hootsuite and others would work as well), you could essentially reduce your time commitment on reading, recommending, and even commenting on Real Estate related blogs simply by placing your ”trust” in the hands of the finest Blog Readers in Cyberspace!

I built a simple column in my Tweetdeck called, of course “Human Aggregators”. In it I chose an initial group of 24, of my then, 500 or so Tweeps. This 24 was whom I considered highly capable based on my years of following them on Twitter, meeting them at BarCamps, drinking with them, talking with them,  and in many cases going to them for help when I had a question regarding Real Estate on the Internet. I then stopped going to my Google Reader and simply clicked on their recommended “reads”, from their Tweets.  

I found that I cut the time, I had dedicated to this exercise, by more than 60%!!! While maintaining, and maybe even improving my exposure to quality Blog posts. Posts that were informative, educational, humorous, and down right entertaining. I love having that time back to dedicate to other useful activities like; My family, my friends, golf, coaching little league, and so many other things.

It’s not that I am telling everyone to do this, but if you are one of the 4.2 million Real Estate Agents struggling to get a handle on Social Media, give this a try! think of it as your “Training Wheels”, when you are ready, take em off and fly!…

…and to get you started, here are my “Top 10″ “Human Aggregators” (in no particular order), as I have paired them down from 24…

** With nik_nik, you get “egg-roll”…meaning you also get the guy she sleeps with, @ReggieRPR - Reggie Nicolay – Dir of SM for RPR. Together they form one of the finest Duo’s in The RENet!

So there you have it! My “Top Ten”  if you have someone you think should make my list, let me know! I would love to have an opportunity to be edumacated by them. I will put them in my “HA in Waiting” column, and who knows, they may make it to “Big Leagues” some day

Stay Blogging My Friends!

The Coach – @TheRECoach

Last week we found that even in this pretty techy community, many people are not relying heavily on the web for their closings.  I have a theory that it’s all about the follow up, or lack thereof.  Let’s find out.

As many social media experts, gurus, and ninjas try to “monetize” social media for their clients, others are focusing simply on the connection and interaction with clients.  Dare I say “engaging”?  Engagement used to be for when 2 people decided to get married, but today it has quickly become the reason you use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.  In fact, it might be the most overused word of 2009.  We all agree social media and engagement are here to stay though, at least for now.

I want to take this article in a slightly different direction.  That direction is using Facebook, Linkedin, and maybe even Twitter to boost your lead conversions today.   At my brokerage, Investor Nation Realty, lead generation is the lifeblood of our company.  We distribute leads to our Realtors who then call and follow up using a CRM tool to nurture the leads.  As a company we have your standard Facebook Fan Page and I have all my Realtors on Linkedin.  Getting them to use Twitter has been a struggle or even actively use Linkedin and Facebook.   As with any group of people, some of them get it, some of them don’t.

The problem with lead generation is you seem to get leads in various forms; some with phone numbers, some without.   The problem is also the solution. This is what you want.  In converting leads frequency of call attempts, emails, or otherwise comes to mind as does the most important element; recency.  He who calls the lead first seems to win the business in the real estate industry.  I want to add a third element:

Recency – How quickly you try to reach a lead after you receive it.  Often the quickest person or company to respond gets the business

Frequency – How often you try to reach a lead after you receive it.

Format – What methods are you using to try to reach a lead?  Most of us are using phone and email.

In the summer of 2009, we started using social media to convert leads by changing up the formats in which we tried to reach them.   First let me preface by saying that any attempts to reach a prospect or lead are done in a non-salesy manner with serving the client at the forefront of this type of campaign.

Using Social Media to Vary the Format

Assuming as an agent or as a brokerage you have Facebook Pages and Linkedin profiles already set up which are clean, professional, succinct with your website or blog, and somewhat memorable  (Please no Mafia Wars or growing tomatoes on your Farmville).

The strategy is this;  when a new lead comes in which has an uncommon name (example:  Ryan Hinricher, since there’s only one), quickly search on Linkedin, and then send a request to connect with that person.  Here’s a sample request I recently sent out to a prospect who signed up on our site to view properties for sale:

If the potential client or lead does accept your request, you now have access to a trove of information which you didn’t before including; employment, education, and a general idea of who they are as a person.    Also In doing so you’ve reached out to them in a way in which your competition, at least for now is not.  Those are obvious pros, but what are the cons?   First off you’ll be spending additional time searching and you’ll come up empty handed.  Try doing a search for your new prospect, John Smith.  Good luck with that one.  I’d say roughly 20-25% of the time we’re able to locate them on Linkedin and maybe 25% of those folks will accept our connection request.

The pros outweigh the cons and I feel that while it may be a bit more aggressive, most prospects who are serious appreciate the aggressiveness. They’ll realize we apply the same aggressiveness for finding and negotiating the perfect foreclosure for them.   Plus isn’t in our best interest to do everything contact and service someone who is showing genuine interest?

The second method, which I’ve found a bit less effective, is using the Facebook page.  Many people see Facebook as a very personal, non-business, experience, so our response rate is pretty low.  It doesn’t, however, take up much time and we’ve had maybe a 10-15% success rate in securing the connection this way.   The agent will go to the bottom left hand corner of the Facebook Page and hit the “Share” button.  This will prompt them to either share it with a friend if you start typing or just an email address.  We use this as a requirement on all of our leads we’re generating.  Everyone gets an invite to join our Fan Page.  Remember to make it about adding value to the user, not about YOU and YOUR Page.

Although I wish everyone would accept our invitation on Facebook, the majority won’t.  I rarely accept all the invitation causes I receive from my friends on Facebook, so why would I from a total stranger?  If that stranger is truly interested in finding more information about your market, or getting the content you’re offering, then why not?  If they do, you now have access to a lot of personal information including their Birthday.  This makes dropping the Birthday card out in the mail much easier than the awkward questions that result from phone interviews and profiling.

In a new real estate economy where each and every lead and prospect is a precious commodity, real estate professionals can maximize the volume they already have versus always chasing after more leads.  Plus these tools are free to use.  Unfortunately it is extra effort.   Most of us are no stranger to that, especially in this economy.

These strategies work no matter if your lead generation is in-house or via Zillow, Trulia, or somewhere else.  You must tailor your reply and specifically mention where the lead originated from.

These methods can be used with most any other social media site, though outside of Linkedin and Facebook we’ve had abysmal results.  Usually too much time spent searching for them.   So go where your prospects already are and make this strategy part of your ongoing process.  I’ve incorporated a checklist on our CRM, SalesForce.  Prior to deletion of a prospect, the Realtor must complete the checklist which includes multiple calls, emails, a Linkedin request, and Fan Page suggestion on Facebook.

In doing so, you’ll likely have a leg up on your competitors who see this as too much effort.  The effort yields results.

Back on December 23, I wrote an article here on GeekEstate Blog about a Wordpress plugin that Diverse Solutions was developing that would allow IDX listings to be fully indexed by search engines.

Earlier this week, the plugin came out of beta testing and has been released for general availability.

Here is part of the Diverse Solutions press release (full release):

Diverse Solutions announced today that they have released a new IDX product called dsIDXpress. The product allows agents and brokers using WordPress to get property listings on their own website and own domain to be indexed by the major search engines. dsIDXpress is different than traditional IDX solutions in that it has both the standard consumer search capabilities as well as the ability to insert specific listings or groups of listings into any page or blog post with their Live Listings(sm) shortcodes. The plugin also automatically builds in search-engine-friendly city, community, and zip code pages that show available properties in the respective areas. Furthermore, listing detail pages are available for every property in the MLS. Overall, dsIDXpress is being touted as a low cost alternative to functionality that was previously only available in high- end custom websites.

Diverse also has a web site dedicated to the plugin — dsidxpress.com

Pricing is currently set at $99.95 for set up and $29.95/month per domain (some MLS’s may have additional fees).

Since installing the various beta versions of the plugin (and still not using it anywhere close to its fullest capability), I am continuing to see heavy indexing of plugin generated pages.

As you can see in the Google Analytics chart below for Phoenix Real Estate Guy (TPREG), there has been a distinct increase in traffic since installing the plugin:

The plugin was installed on Dec 18 and on Dec 26 I added several sidebar links that generate IDX pages as well as a zip code “directory”. Shortly after that, a noticeable increase in traffic occurred. The traffic bump the week prior to Jan 1 is partly due to a post about local New Year’s Eve events, but there is no question that people are Googling addresses, MLS numbers and “longtail” search terms and landing on the site. Here is a real-time shot of some Sitemeter stats showing where currently on-line visitors landed:

Red arrows indicate visitors landing on dsIDXPress generated pages

This particular mix of visitors landing on normal blog pages and dsIDXPress generated pages holds true pretty much every time I take a peek at the real-time visits.

Of note, these results may not fold true for every user. I’m not an SEO expert, but I do know that TPREG enjoys a fair amount of “Google juice” and authority. I was also the first user of the plugin in Phoenix, so there may be a “first adopter” advantage. There is a legitimate question the release of this plugin poses — what will happen when multiple people in the same market are using it? (See a good discussion of this on Jeff Corbet’s xBroker blog, and the Diverse Solutions blog).

Personally, I feel the real power of this plugin is NOT in getting every listing in your MLS indexed (that won’t happen anyway. I doubt there is a single real estate web site out there with the “juice” or authority for that to happen). The real power comes with building content around indexed IDX pages. I’m in love with the idea of writing a blog post about a particular neighborhood, or type of property, and “embedding” indexable listings into the post. This way, when a user comes by 6 months (or 6 years) after the post is published, they will be presented with live listings at the time of their visit, not from the time the post was written.

That is freaking cool. . .

Aloha Tony did a survey in recent post that asked, “What percentage of your closings come from the web leads on your personal site? “.  I was amazed to see the high percentage of net savvy Geek Estate agents in the 0 -25% range. I would assume that most of the people that took the survey focus a large amount of time working on and energy driving traffic to their sites. I tried to come up with a list of the various reasons why the conversion rates (closings) were so low and possible ways to increase them.

1. They focus more of their time on other ways of generating business.
This is great if you are able to have a more diversified approach mean while still converting a decent amount of business from your website. Some of the other ways of generating business (prospecting expired listings, FSBO’s, past clients and COI) are still highly effective if done consistently. If you are spending time doing any of these methods you may want to find a way to get them to start using your website as a tool. This could help convert more of those prospects.

2. They don’t have search engine traffic.
Possible Solutions: A. Educate yourself on SEO and either do it your self or hire someone to do it for you (focus on the low hanging fruit first). B. Think about doing some CPC campaigns, but only if your site is easy to use and set up to convert leads into business. C. Always promote your site through Craigslist ads, Facebook, Twitter and any other promotional stuff your are doing.

3. Their websites are too busy (noisy).
Possible Solutions: Try cleaning up your pages and not having so many widgets and clutter. You worked hard to get the user their for a reason (don’t distract them). Keep the page focused and clean. Make the property search the main focus not a hyper link to a search that is hard to locate.

4. Their sites are not easy to use.
Solutions: Make sure your IDX search is easy to use and gets the user into search results quickly.  If the user has to work at it, you are definitely going to lose a high percentage.  If you use a required registration make sure the user can see & knows what they are going get before you ask them to sign up.

5. Their follow up is weak.
Solutions: Follow up on email requests from the site ASAP. If you are not your competitors are If you require registration you should be calling them ASAP and asking them if there is anything you can do to help them. Most people really appreciate this and it will keep them using your site if it works well!

I am always looking for ways to get my conversions rates higher and new ways of generating business. Currently my team is generating about 90 – 95% of our closings from my personal site, which is well into the triple digits. We probably should be focusing a little more energy on other things as well to get a little more balanced. I would love to hear what you are doing to increase your business from your website and how others can increase their closings.

Everyone knows that the quickest way to make a website stand out from the crowd is by hosting tons of high quality content. It sounds simple, but producing lots of great content is extraordinarily tough and time consuming! Thankfully, the real estate space is littered with free out-of-the-box tools that savvy agents can use to build more compelling websites.

Here’s just a small taste of some of my favorite free widgets. Disclaimer: Two of them were built by my team. I have to do a little bit of blatant self promotion .

Calculators

• Mortgage Loan Place Calculator – This is one of the tools that our team is responsible for. The unique thing about it is the fact that it visualizes mortgage payments in a different way than most calculators. There’s also a slick white label version available that allows you to add a custom logo and colors making site integration a snap.
• MortagageCalculator.org Widget – One of the most popular mortgage calculator sites on the web is MortgageCalculator.org. This popular widget is a plain and simple calculator that works well if you’re looking for something easy to slap into a blog sidebar.
• How Much House Can I Afford? Widget – Prospective homeowners are constantly trying to figure out how much house they can afford. This handy calculator makes it easy to estimate the answer to that question.

Maps

• Google Maps – The industry standard mapping product. A lot of the widgets below are based on Google’s product but if you need something custom, Google makes it pretty easy to do your own mashups.
• Walkscore Widget – The concept of a walkscore is fairly new but really relevant today more than ever. Many buyers demand homes that are in close proximity to certain amenities (to be green, to live in the “action,” and for other reasons) and walkscore’s widget is a standardized way to compare different areas.

Real Estate Specific Sites

• Zillow Widgets – Real estate mega-site Zillow has an awesome array of widgets to jazz your site up. My favorites are the Real Estate Stats Chart tool and the My Zillow Linstings widget tool.
• Trulia Map Widget – Zillow’s arch-rival in the online real estate has a nifty white label listings map. If you’re a Trulia user, you can customize it to show just your listings.

Real Estate Research

• AltosResearch Widget – Altos offers a cool, free local real estate index chart. Web savvy shoppers love research tools and Altos is the expert solution in the space.
• RentBits Widget – This might not be the most relevant widget for RE agents but it’s cool nevertheless. It allows users to create a custom rental comparison list that shows average rents for various areas in an MSA.
• Zilpy Widget – Zilpy is another slightly less relevant home-selling widget but still really awesome for general RE related info. It’s similar to the RentBits tool and aggregates average rents for an area.
• Topix Widget – Topix’s real estate widgets is a simple news aggregator that can be used to populate your sidebar with free, relevant info and links to articles.

Michael Price had a great post the other day providing an overview on the new Apple iPad. Seeing as this blog has the word geek in the title, and seeing as I’m a geek myself, I thought I’d build off that post with a few ideas for potential real estate uses. Besides, I really want one and have to build the mental case for it first.

Open Houses:

• Build a fun, interactive signup sheet for visitors. You could let them choose to subscribe to various value add lists right there, and depending on what you use it could put their info right in your list/ database, no tedious transcribing later.
• Set it on a table and play your virtual tour and slideshow w/ music.
• Let visitors dig deeper with links to your website/ blog posts about the area.
• Show them all the awesome neighborhood places on Yelp (if it’s in your area of course)
• If the listing isn’t for them, search other open houses in the area and email it to them (I smell contact info…)

Listing Presentations:

• Michael touched on this in his post, and I agree there’s a huge opportunity to make stunning presentations.
• Integrate a video resume into your keynote (the mac’s powerpoint) presentation, make the entire presentation paperless, and email it to prospects right after you’re done.

Buyer Tours/ Showings:

• Plug one of the last remaining holes in the paperless transaction: just save a pdf of all the listing sheet’s you’d normally print.
• If your MLS works on Safari, then you can easily search listings on the fly in places too fluid for a laptop (walking down the street, crowded cafes, in listings, etc). This gives you something better to do than stand there like an idiot while your client searches listings on their Redfin iPhone app
• Take notes directly into your online CRM/ organization software, with no risk of losing them and no tedious transcribing later.
• Potentially in the near future, record your client’s feedback and have it automatically transcribed for you, just like Google Voice does now with messages (this isn’t here yet but it’s just a matter of time).
• Have all your client’s info (kid’s names, etc) always at your fingertips for those with less than stellar memories.

Again, these are just a few ideas, and just as we saw thousands of new apps appear for the iPhone, I believe we’ll see thousands of even more innovative apps take advantage of all that new screen real estate. The only question remaining for me is one that haunts many geeks… do we jump into the inevitably buggy first edition or be patient and wait for the second one?

Say hello to iPad. Today was the long awaited day that the Apple “tablet” device was unveiled. It’s being touted as magical and revolutionary. The jury is out on those statements but I have to say that with exception of one big glaring omission, I like it. It has the potential to be a bit of game changer due to the new iBook online bookstore and the fact that an SDK for applications will open up some cool mobile applications. I plan on one day owning an e-reader for books. I have not been impressed with offerings from Amazon, Sony or B&N yet.

Primary Features (Check out Apple.com/ipad for more information):

• Safari Web Browser
• Mac Mail E-Mail
• Calendar (not i-cal but a very cool planner style calendar)
• Contacts (looks like a traditional contact book, nifty)
• Photos (very elegant way of handling photos and albums)
• iPod
• iTunes (interface is different than standard OSX)
• iBooks (new Apple bookstore. Can you say Ouch Amazon, Sony and B&N?)
• Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
• Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
• Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
• Weight:
• 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model
• 1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

You can purchase an iPad starting at $499 for a Wi-Fi only model, or you can combine 3G and larger capacity models that run as high as $829. AT&T is offering data plans with no contract starting at $14,99 per month with free access to any AT&T wireless hotspot. The tablet is powered by custom silicon A4 chipset (aka proprietary). Apple touts 10 hour battery life, which in Apple battery hours is probably more like 4 or 5 (just my opinion).

The Ultimate Presentation Tool
Should real estate professionals rush out and by an iPad? The smart business professionals will. Apple has developed a mobile specific version of it’s popular iWork software suite. The suite includes Keynote for creating slide presentations, Pages for word processing and desktop publishing and Numbers for Spread Sheets. Listing presentations never looked so good and the learning curve for creating stunning documents using these tools will have you using your MS Office tools for the mundane business communication that everyone else does. Before you allow someone to tell you that your MLS won’t work on Safari, check it first, that’s usually a myth.

Stunning Visuals / Teeny Learning Curve
Presenting photos, videos, virtual tours and listing presentations take on a whole new dimension of quality with the iPad. There really isn’t much of a learning curve with a device like this and since most of the content real estate professionals present exist in the cloud, opening Safari or using a finger to flip through content is about all it takes. Apple has already taken that into consideration with accessories: a keyboard dock that holds the iPad upright and a nifty notebook style holder that flips over to hold the iPad at a presentation angle. If your video is in iTunes or an HD version on YouTube, you’ll be able to present it in all of it’s Hi Def, full screen glory.

This device and its interfaces were designed to look and be used like traditional tools. Just look at the appointment planner and address books. Otherwise it includes the tools that most people use computers for. E-Mail, web access, solitaire, facebook, twitter, foursquare, farmville, episodes of lost and the occasional romance novel. What else could a super busy professional ask for in a computer?

Looking Further Into The Future
Kidding aside. I think there exists the potential to use this device and the Apple developer platform to bring together self published information in a very meaningful way. In fact, self publishing provider Lulu is already promoting their service as “iPad ready”.

The gates of broadcasting have been crashed by video and audio podcasters that are creating and distributing top notch content without the convoluted, old guard processes of the past. Authors may see the rise of new publishing platforms in which to expose their content to the world via App store like outlets. Take it a step further and you could see really creative folks mashing up video podcasting content along with publishing content using some sort of development tool. Then it becomes a matter of distribution via outlets like Lulu and Vook.

Sin of Omission
O.K. – I’m a Mac sucker, I have been for 15 years. I know the routine. Release a whip ass new product that everyone has to have and leave out one big feature so that the folks that resisted the urge to be early adopters will rush out for the next gen version and those that have the 1st gen just won’t be able to live without it either. The fact that the iPad held out on a built-in web cam is just ludicrous. Web cams are embedded in everything but the kitchen sink these days. Apple, if you wanted to grab a big slice of the advanced market of gadget people, you would have included it. I was speaking to David Gibbons about the iPad shortly after the event. “Until they add a camera the iPad will remain scratched off of my wish list. I use Skype too much” I’m sure someone will have a 3rd party solution to this problem before they even ship, but that’s not the elegant solution. I want something to give my parents to keep up with the Grand Kids. Close but no cigar.

I wanted to congratulate fellow Geek Estate contributor Steve Jagger (and his friend Shane Gibson) for releasing a new book in the Amazon store for $25 — Sociable – “How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down”

I haven’t read the book, but Steve does know a thing or two about social media, so I feel comfortable recommending trying the book. If you’re feeling nice and want to help Steve promote his new book, here are some resources to help you write a blog post.