Real Estate 2.0 Hot Topic: Online Reputation Management

By Joel Burslem on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Filed Under: Internet
Tags: Internet

This post was originally published June 6, 2006.

When the Internet first arrived on the scene, many fretted about its impact on our social structure. Many voiced fears that it would weaken the ties we had with our peers. In fact, quite the opposite has proven to be true. The Internet now plays a bigger and bigger role in allowing people to gather, compare and cross-check information, and find support when they face important decisions. The Pew Internet & American Life Project calls this phenomena “networked individualism”.

People also love to share their opinions. In a recent report, the Keller Fay group found that the average American has about 56 conversations around brands every week. And whereas before, these opinions were confined to personal spheres, the web gives the little guy a platform to connect and share his or her opinion on a global scale.

The user review has been one of the most powerfully disruptive forces on the Internet. First popularized on e-commerce sites like Amazon.com, user reviews are now beginning to spread into other industries as well, including real estate (I’ve mentioned AgentLine before). And they can have an extreme impact on a company’s bottom line. Especially if they are bad.

(I know if I’m shopping for, say, a new digital camera - the first thing I do is hit up Amazon’s reviews of the unit and see what other people are saying about it)

Several new sites have launched recently that are trying and combine these two forces: social networking and the user review. One of the best is Judy’s Book, so-named after one of the founder’s mothers.

Judy’s Book offers an interactive forum where users can share rankings on everything from restaurants, to shopping to real estate. In the real estate section, you can rank and review individual agents, inspectors, appraisers and property managers among many others. There’s even a list of the best agents in each metro area.

If you’re not watching this list in your city, then at your peril.

One nice feature behind Judy’s Book that I haven’t seen elsewhere though, is they offer business owners a rebuttal if you are getting slammed in a review. You can sign up to receive alerts whenever your business is reviewed and Judy’s Book allows you to weigh-in with a one-time response to a review, if you want. This seems to me to be a fair balance.

Marketing has been traditionally about broadcasting your message - what I like to call the ‘Spray-and-Pray’ model. But that’s changing in the face of these new social patterns. The future of marketing is about listening to the community, tailoring your message and narrowcasting to your audience.

More great reading on this subject here: Church of the Customer Blog

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8 Comment(s)

bill j. | Apr 17, 2007 | Reply

Funny that this should be the post today, as I just wrote my second letter to Niki Skevac of Homethinking.com about reputation management.

I stumbled across Homethinking.com by accident and found every significant piece of data about me and my business (which brokerage I am affiliated with; how many listings I have; etc.) to be incorrect, out of date, and or just plain wrong. I had gotten a gracious and prompt reply from Niki about how I CAN correct the data about me. Well, that’s nice but isn’t it the responsibility of that web site, which purports to offer an objective picture of an agent based on data to actually have correct data?

I was OK to let it pass until I did some research and stumbled across this entry at the Trula blog about his site, and it got me edgy:

http://www.truliablog.com/?p=110

To paraphrase what I wrote to Skevac, this seems to clearly outline the purpose of the site. And I think, if executed flawlessly, the site can be helpful to the real estate market. Not to beat this to death, but the delta between their stated intention summarized in excerpts like this — “So should agents be afraid of HomeThinking? Only the bad and/or underperforming one’s says Niki. Now the consumers will have the numbers, and the numbers speak for themselves” — and the utterly and harmfully inaccurate information the site has on agents listed on it starkly illustrates the troublesome failure to live up to the responsibility they have taken on, not too mention the underlying hubris of that statement. Skevac seems to indicate that it is as simple as allowing the records speak for themselves. Well, clearly this is not working for him.

I do not feel it is an overreaction on my part to offer my opinion that they should have a big old disclaimer regarding the unreliable nature of their information. Otherwise, they seem to be playing fast and loose with other people’s careers. Please feel free to tell me where I am wrong.
Incredible Agent | Apr 17, 2007 | Reply

The review economy is a growing sector that we should all be paying attention to. As the founder of a real estate agent review site (www.IncredibleAgents.com), I obviously find this a very important topic in the real estate industry. I hear from agents everyday complaining about a review that was left for them or that they don’t want to be on our site anymore. The truth is that none of us have any control of what other people are saying about us; true or not.

Let’s face it, the Internet has turned into one big tabloid where credibility is scarce. Our site allows agents to respond to the reviews left by them. That’s the only way we’ve found to make it fair to the consumers and to allow Realtors to manage their online image. In business, image is everything. ALL Realtors need to be able to manage/respond to what consumers are saying about them on the Internet. It’s their business and their livelyhood. Every review site should take that seriously.

As far as providing listing stats on each Realtor, I really don’t know how it’s possible to keep it accurate and fair. Accuracy is an important part of Credibility. Those two items go hand in hand. Some agents are 100% buyers agents and therefore they aren’t going to have a lot of information in regards to the quantity and value of their home listings (since they have none). Buyer representation isn’t as trackable as Seller representation. Therefore I find that kind of data to be inaccurate and unfair to present to the consumer as a reliable source of information. If accurate data were easily available, then I would add that information to our agent review site as well. As it stands right now, I don’t find it fair to add that data.

Overall, everyone needs to get used to other people saying whatever they want about us on the Internet. We can’t stop them and we can’t get mad about it. We can only do our best to respond to any reviews/ratings and do our best to manage our online image.
shaun mclane | Apr 18, 2007 | Reply

It only makes sense that this is the direction we’re heading in. I’ve often thought about adding a rating system (a la itunes) to my website. I feel comfortable with my clients rating me, and actually feel it would be beneficial. To me, it takes clients’ testimonials to a new level. With the flood of new agents over the past few years, we need something in place to help consumers finding the perfect one.
Mark Boyd | Apr 18, 2007 | Reply

As usual, great information and a very timely post. It seems that many agents (usually the more inexperienced ones) only worry about their reputation and how they affect potential clients AFTER it’s too late. They’re more focused on their own wants/needs (i.e. money) than on servicing their client(s) properly.
These are the agents who complain that a lead they followed up on “only wanted a free CMA,” whereas a smart and successful agent would look at that same lead as a listing appointment and wind up closing the deal somewhere down the line.
I think it’s very telling that the president of NAR was practically begging agents to follow up with clients and prospects just a couple of years ago, due to the number of agent (Realtor) complaints they were getting.
Joel, I’ve got your blog on my Google home page and I check it every day. Thanks for the props on our podcast. We gave you a much better shoutout on this week’s podcast, which will be posted later today (www.rorysteveanddave.com/category/podcast). I thought you deserved a much better shoutout than the one last week. It was pretty lame.
We also have an amazing new web tool for agents…check it out at http://www.remarkableagents.com. It’s groundbreaking stuff.
Have an awesome day, Joel!
Ryan from Property Doctors | Apr 18, 2007 | Reply

Great topic! We currently are taking the approach of taking your reputation into your own hands. Show the industry and prospective clients your reputation proudly by what we call “proclaim your reputation”. This goes for investors, realtors, inspectors, contractors, you name it… This keeps the professional accountable by not wanting to recieve an “avoid”, but also encourages them to build their reputations and then show them to prospective clients. Either way, building some level of instant trust is crutial in order to try to bridge that initial gap of fear with a consumer.
bill j. | Apr 18, 2007 | Reply

Not sure how much the subsequent posts after my initial post were taking mine in context, if at all, or were just in response to the main post by Joel. But I think it is important to make the distinction that my complaint re: homethinking.com had nothing at all to do with client/customer reviews, which I don’t fear at all and would welcome. Rather, my beef is that the site does not have even the basic contact information or sales/listing activity correct. I fear a potential client searching me on the site and seeing 0 listings for the year when in fact I am off to what could be one of my best years. I agree we have no control over what is said about us on the internet (I am quite used to this after 15 years of reviews as a musician in the other half of my dual life). It is the inaccuracy of the data which I have the biggest issue with.
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