Guest Blogger, Mike Bowler, Sr. has been in the real estate business (Lansing, MI) for the past 32 years. During that time he’s educated and consulted hundreds of REALTORS. Mike is a former owner; broker of Coldwell Banker Bowler Real Estate and is currently an Associate Broker for Coldwell Banker Hubbell Briarwood in Lansing Michigan, who bought his company in 2001. He also owns his own company PRETEC (Professional Resources, E-Business, Technology, Education, & Consulting) and is an avid fan of social media in the workplace. Mike was named in 2009’s Top 25 Most Connected Real Estate Professionals by PROXIO and selected by Inman News as one of the 50 Most Influential Online.

The real estate industry is in a constant state of evolution and changes every day with technology, regulation changes, and economic challenges, never experienced by most of us in the real estate business.  You can either bury your head in the sand or dig in and get on this exciting train ride. I choose to ride it out and continue becoming educated by some of the best resources I have witnessed over the past 32 years.

When our industry gets lax in education, it contributes to the lack of professionalism, our growth as REALTORS, and affects how competitive we as real estate agents will be in the coming years.  I really believe that adapting and learning new ways to do business will help brokers, managers, and agents stay ahead of the knowledge curve and strengthen our ability to survive this paradigm shift.

Who would have thought a few years back that:

• Move would be acquiring Threewide (ListHub) providing a huge syndication for Listings (See Inman News story)
• RPR – REALTORS Property Resources would be formed and providing 98% of the nations property data (For those who have it)
• That YouTube would be the number 2 search engine
  • That Facebook would have 500,000,000 members, the average user would have 130 friends and People would spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
  • That approximately 2.5 million foreclosures would be in the process, and another 2.5 million mortgages would be 90-plus days delinquent.

Yes, we are in a whole new era of education for REALTORS, with short sale designations, foreclosure classes, green designations, new mortgage regulations, classes on how to work with your ancillary related businesses like appraisers, mold technicians, home inspectors, and of course loss mitigation.  The sampling of changes above are just a small portion of drastic game changing events that any REALTOR, who has an interest in being a player for the future of real estate, must be aware of.

So where do we begin?

Professional development, learning new trends, and adapting to a more complex industry are musts for brokers, sales managers, and real estate agents. This also includes ancillary businesses like appraisers, mortgage originators, and title companies that have experienced massive change. My point is that as professionals we must adapt to new business strategies that enhance our knowledge, give quality service, and meet the demands of the e-consumer. We Must Raise the Bar!

Here’s a Place to Begin at Zero or Little Cost:

Right Tools Right Now
Agent Reboot™
Real Estate BarCamps
REALTOR University
Your Local Association, Company and Professional Educators

Setup Google Reader and Subscribe to the following sites:

Future of Real Estate Marketing
Mashable
Inman News
RISMedia
Realty Times
My Tech Opinion
Trulia Blog
Zillow Blog

I could go on and list many other avenues to education, however this list will help you grow your own list of favorite places to learn. Developing an edge in today’s market requires that real estate practitioners be proficient in Blogging, social media, search engine marketing, and how to work with the e-consumer once they contact you.

It is imperative that those real estate professionals who have come through this challenging market be fully prepared to take advantage of new steady growth that will be forthcoming. My point is that our industry needs to step up to the plate and sharpen our competitive edge by using good old fashion service integrated with new technology. Consumers drive the industry and have always driven it, however today they are looking online first. Are they finding you when they go to Google, Yahoo or Bing? If not, you owe it to your family, company, and yourself to get on board and learn this business all over again. All this is part of your newfound professional development, learning new trends, and adapting to a more complex industry.

Please share your strategies for staying abreast of the current trends in real estate.

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Polls close Sunday night, so make sure you get your votes in.

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For more, read Using Sex to Sell Real Estate (and Other Drama).

[poll=1]

For more, read Realtor.com Dives Deep into Neighborhoods.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent FOREM Readers Survey (see Help Me Kill The Google Ads).

Congratulations to Mike Lyon for winning the drawing for an Amazon Gift Certificate. Mike has graciously declined the prize and asked that the money be donated to a charity instead – so we will be making a donation to Aaron Anglin’s family in the name of all FOREM readers (see Leave Realtors Alone).

Also, please join me in thanking Mike for his generosity and make sure you check out his site Do You Convert and his new book – Browsers to Buyers: Proven Strategies for Selling New Homes Online.

Thanks again. Those Google Ads will be coming down any day now.

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The pace of blogging at FoREM has slowed a bit over the last few days. I’ve been buried wrapping up a number of projects for my current employer before I make a pretty significant transition.

I’m happy to announce I will be joining the nice folks over at Inman News, as of March 26. I will be joining them to help steer some of their social media projects as well as drive marketing to their popular semiannual Connect Conferences.

Inman News has always been at the forefront of covering and promoting
real estate technology, so I naturally saw them as a perfect fit for me. I will however, continue to blog here at FoREM.

Brad Inman, Jessica Swesey and the rest of the team have been very welcoming and I’d like to publicly thank them for that.

I’m excited for what we’ll be able to accomplish together. Stay tuned.

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A little self-congratulatory note here. The Future of Real Estate Marketing just passed 1000 readers on its Feedburner subscription chicklet today. This is a pretty big personal milestone for me, so I’m pretty excited.

Thanks to everyone who stops by this blog and a big thank you to all the readers who read my feed daily. (Well, everyone except this guy). You are what make me keep pushing forward with this.

Cheers. Joel

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vFlyer, who I’ve written about before, has just launched a series of enhancements that tailor the service even more specifically for real estate professionals.

Among the new features are more real estate-related categories and new syndication partners, including Trulia. vFlyer also now lets agents post their photo and company logos, as well use the REALTOR^® logo. For brokers, vFlyer has implemented a bulk upload capability that can integrate into their existing systems to eliminates the need for manual entry.

vFlyer is evolving into a nice automated tool for an agent to build a minisite for every one of their listings, a trend that I see becoming increasingly popular in the future, whether it’s done through a blogging platform or through one of these third party services.

vFlyer remains free, for the time being.

More reading: Greg Sterling likes vFlyer but has some doubts about their business model

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After a lot of hard work, I’ve finally got this new site up and running. As of today, I will no longer be posting to the old site. If you read this site via RSS, our feed will continue to hosted at Feedburner so there should be any disruption.

I’d love to hear what your think of the design, navigation etc. And you may have to bear with me for a few days as I iron out some of the kinks, so please let me know if you find any errors.

Finally, I’d ask if you had a link on your site to my old page – please update it to reflect this new URL (www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com). Thanks!

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