Matthew Shadbolt is the Director of Internet Marketing for The Corcoran Group, Manhattan’s largest real estate brokerage.

Follow Matthew on Twitter at @corcoran_group

Over the past few years there’s been an explosive growth in the number of things marketers can do, especially online. Even the trusty banner ad seems to be in rapid decline. As the internet becomes more pervasive in our lives, to the point where the ‘internet enabled device’ (often called ‘the internet of things’) is ubiquitous, the implications for real estate professionals are potentially seismic. How will people look for homes in the future? By what’s around them? Through recommendations from their friends? Through ‘curated’ search results assembled for them by experts?

The simple answer is, of course, that nobody really knows. A lot of these technologies are still in their infancy. Five years ago most of us had never heard of checking-in or status updates, and tweeting was something for the birds (many maintain that it still is). The idea of a multi-touch device we’d have in our pockets that knew where we were all the time still seemed like science fiction. Yet we don’t think like that any more. Many of us have embraced this new technology as it becomes more user-friendly and a lot less about the nuts and bolts of ‘how it works’.

Here’s 3 emerging ways we’ll interact with the internet in the coming years.

1. Moving between devices will become easier and more a part of how we move around the real world.

Imagine you’re a train commuter who has a long commute each day. To pass the time you watch movies and TV shows on your iPad, streamed directly through Netflix. You arrive at your stop but you haven’t finished watching that oh-so-climactic episode of Lost. When you get home, your internet-enabled plasma screen will remember at what point you left the episode, and automatically pick up from where you left off, allowing you to finish watching the show seamlessly. This technology is here today.

What does this look like for real estate? Imagine you were in a certain area, browsing around a neighborhood you’re thinking of potentially moving to. Your smartphone could record places you were interested in, then allow you to download relevant local video and information based on where you were via your desktop or television when you got home. It’s an increasingly common phenomenon that people are watching the television and also online at the same time. The idea of these screens combining is something we’ll see a lot more of soon.

2. The internet will be built-in as a standard feature into the things around us

The idea of more devices that would be able to handle transactions, especially smartphones, is one that’s right around the corner. Square are already doing it, Google are talking a lot about it, and the concept of your phone replacing your credit card is here. An electronic device with a built in reader that would automatically recognize your location and offer you loyalty rewards for coming back to the store is something we see in the Foursquare and Facebook Places models as they attempt to redefine customer loyalty. Imagine a scenario where you’ve created an electronic version of your grocery list on your iPhone before you go to the store. Upon arrival, the store will recognize you as a return customer, optimize your route through the aisles, and show you featured products you might be interested in based on your interests and related purchases.

3. When we’re moving

The un-tethering of the internet from the big box that sits on your desk is increasing with rapid pace. Not just GPS directions, but using the internet to build out and enhance the driving or flying experience. The idea of ‘what’s around me now’ is already here for smartphone users who are walking around (its adoption rate in urban areas is much higher than in more rural parts of the country), but it hasn’t made it to the car yet. Of course, there are obvious safety concerns with anything that might cause distractions, but the idea of remote diagnostics, local information, or using your car essentially as a large smartphone with wheels is here today. What does this mean for real estate? Think guided open house tours, saved locations, voice-activated notes, and even record imagery (think Google Street View) of the surrounding area. Then once you got home you’d be able to transfer that information from ‘outside’ to any device.

In an uncertain future, what is certain is that the pace at which the technology formerly known as the web will continue to evolve and grow at an increasingly aggressive rate. Cutting through the noise and being able to deliver information that’s timely and valuable to users will be where many businesses will need to focus, especially real estate. Outside of sharing property information, what services could you potentially provide for these platforms?

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Last week I stumbled across a really interesting and easy-to-use personalized search plugin – Kikin.

Kikin, plugin you download for your browser, was launched in late 2009 and is still in beta form. When you search on Google, Bing or Yahoo – in addition to your regular search results, it will also aggregate relevant content from: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Reader, iTunes, eBay and/or Amazon.

Although Google is beginning to aggregate social media into its search parameters – what is different about Kikin is that you see results from YOUR streams – which means you are getting richer, personal and more relevant search results.

Here’s a screen shot from a search I did with the word “news”:

Who wouldn’t prefer the recommendations of friends through Facebook or Twitter over results returned by a search engine?

There’s a few things I really like about Kikin:

1. It’s compatible with Firefox, Safari and IE (Chrome coming soon)
2. Quick download. It took just seconds to download it and I instantly start using it.
3. Re-tweet function. Within the twitter stream you can instantly re-tweet something.
4. Customize Twitter stream. You can opt to view just your Twitter stream or all tweets.
5. Facebook news stream. Kikin connects with your news feed via Facebook Connect.

I also really like that you can easily moderate what content you want to see and which content isn’t useful to you.

You may not be interested in results from eBay for your searches, which you can disable (of course, it will still show up in your Google results). And if you tire of Kikin’s results, you can easily minimize the pane. It will interesting as Kikin moves out of it’s beta phase to see what kind of impact this may have on real estate home searches or agent searches.

For fun, I typed in ‘Realtor’ into Google using Kikin, and this Twitter post came up:

“If the realtor & her client next to us each stopped answering incoming cell calls they might get their biz mtg finished. Weird. Rude. Unpro.”

I also typed in ‘Realtor Bay Area’ and from iTunes dozens of real estate podcasts came up! from ReMax and Prudential. Interesting!

The bottom line is this: search is becoming more and more personalized and relevant. Not only that, but Kikin makes perfect use of how so many of us interact on the web – we surf from one site to another looking for prices, reviews, etc.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this company evolves!

What do you think? Would love your feedback, please leave me a comment below!

Written by Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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Let’s be honest – when is the last time you updated your web site? For most real estate agents it’s a couple times a year.

In 2010, it’s no longer ok to have a web site that is static – one just sits there and never gets updated.

If you are thinking of updating your site – it is easier now more than ever. More and more agents are moving to a Wordpress platform. It’s easy to use and edit, there are tons of great templates, and it’s SEO friendly (a.k.a – the search engines love Wordpress!) Plus, there are more and more IDX plug-ins available practically every day on Wordpress.

If you are like most agents – you have a site you either got for free with your brokerage, or you paid some one to design it 5-10 years ago and really haven’t done much since.

Here are 5 things to look at when re-evaluating your site:

1. Am I getting leads? If so, how many? If you are not consistently getting new leads from your web site you are missing the boat. I know, you will probably say: “But Katie, most of my business is from past clients and referrals!” That is GREAT! But imagine if on top of that business you were getting 5 solid new leads a month? 5 leads a month x 12 months = 60 solid leads (by solid I mean people who are truly interested in buying or selling within 3-6 months).

2. Do you know what your web traffic is like? If not, sign up for Google Analytics – it’s free and super easy to install. Many people consider analytics like accounting, but for your web site. It’s a crucial part of monitoring your success!

Pay attention to your site’s “bounce rate”–the percentage of visitors who leave your site without clicking even one page deeper into it. A high or rising bounce rate is a sure sign that your homepage is boring or off-putting.

3. Is my content fresh? Think about the last time you went to a web site only to realize the content is old. The fastest way to have people leave your site is to have stale info. By using a platform like Wordpress you can easily add new content like: 1st time home buyer tax credit info, a link to your e-newsletter, events in your area, market stats, and your blog (if applicable.) You also need to schedule time in your monthly calendar at least twice a month where you will update your site – perhaps the 1st and the 15th.

4. What is the 1st thing people see on my web site? Take a hard look at your home page. Every link, every image, every word should have a purpose. I am a big believer in simple and easy-to-navigate web sites. One of my favorite sites is Nest Realty – I only wish more info was ‘above the fold’ – but overall I think Nest does a fantastic job of having the right balance of information on it’s home page. Also, make sure when you are looking at your home page you have easy-to-find social media links – links to your Facebook page or profile, LinkedIn profile and Twitter profile.

5. Make sure your website is easy to figure out and loads fast, says Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. The biggest way you can lose people is having a complicated site that doesn’t make sense to the user.

The best way to test your site is to have someone try it who has never looked at it. At a recent Real Estate Connect conference, the marketing team at Redfin talked about the power of having someone struggle with your site right in front of you. Have a few people sit down in front of you, on a computer, and just watch them click around on your site. What do they click on? Where do you see them hesitate and struggle. You will be DYING to instruct them – but resist! Just watch and you will learn so much.

The bottom line is this – no one will care as much about your web sit as you do. It is up to you to take back your web site and make sure it is doing everything you need it to do!

Would love your comments and feedback. Please leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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I love going to the movies. I love the whole experience; the popcorn, the soda, the previews, being a part of the big audience, getting caught up in the plot, etc. Being a big fan of marketing, I always love a movie a little bit more if it has a great business theme or does a great job at marketing itself.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Favorite Negotiating Movie

• Wall Street – Greed is good? Maybe not anymore (especially if you are a real estate agent) , but you have to love Michael Douglas in this. Did you hear a sequel is in the works?

Favorite Sales Movie

• Tommy Boy — No one has probably had as many objections as this guy. Need a boost on how to improve your listing presentation – or how NOT to do it? Then rent this one!
• Glengarry Glen Ross — ABC: Always, Be, Closing.  Aren’t you glad you your sales manager or broker isn’t this tough on you?
• Boiler Room - A more modern version of Glengarry Glen Ross – this movie epitomizes what happens when the quest for money and power cloud your judgment.

Favorite Inspiring Business Movie

• Flash of Genius – Ever feel like it was you against the world? Its easy for a real estate agent to feel that way. In this movie, one man takes on the entire auto industry. This is a very inspiring movie (and true story) that makes you believe with persistence, anything is possible!
• Jerry McGuire – Help me, help YOU! Wondering what a mission statement is all about? Need help with your business plan? Looking to be inspired? Look no further!

Favorite Marketing
 of a Movie

• The Dark Knight and Cloverfield – Viral marketing at it’s best. These two movies looked beyond traditional media and created some of the most effective and entertaining viral marketing campaigns ever! Rabbit holes led to clues, that led to mysterious web sites and dedicated fans – these two movies are great examples of what can be done when you really think ‘outside the box.’

Bonus: Top 10 Movie Marketing Blunders – this is a fun list of what NOT to do in marketing!

What are your favorite sales and marketing movies? Would love your feedback, leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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Just in case you hadn’t had enough already, Yahoo! News has re-purposed Redfin’s controversial 60 Minutes segment into a new microsite called Real Estate: Buying And Selling Online.

Unfortunately, the original Lesly Stahl segment has been split into several short clips, losing whatever coherence the original had and making it nearly unwatchable (this was presumably done so they could sell more advertising spots). Also, the video, when played, launches sluggishly into a separate browser window — a web-video practice I thought had disappeared along with RealMedia and WindowsMedia codecs. When you lump this all together, the whole exercise really looks like a way just to repackage old content to sell ads.

That said, the site is cleanly layed out and incorporates some interesting social features; a lively comment section, video ratings (only 2.5 stars so far) and polls (60% would buy or sell a house online). It also features some cheeky copyrighting; the words ‘Old School’ under a thumbnail of a Remax agent loading a sign in a car, for instance.

Ironically, no link to Yahoo! Real Estate to be found on the site, though Yahoo! Finance (with a bad link to boot) and Yahoo! Answers are featured.

But probably my favorite feature (and one that nearly made me spit my tea over my screen) was the Most Popular Viewed Segments section, which perhaps subconsciously reveals the watching habits of the microsite’s visitors?

[h/t Matt Goyer for the head's up]

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photo by Lizette Greco

This, from today’s Wall Street Journal, author Jeremy Wagstaff tries to engage in a house hunt using the latest technology.

Finding a Place to Live
Is More Low-Tech Than You Think
August 10, 2007

The past few days, I’ve been engaged in that most stressful of pursuits: looking for a place to live, when my wife and I move to Singapore from Jakarta. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but since I’m doing it in Singapore, supposedly the most wired city on earth, I thought that technology might help. And it did — sort of.

This is what I thought would happen: My wife and I would do extensive research using online property sites and Google Earth (earth.google.com) to narrow down which area and properties we were interested in. (This bit worked well: Google Earth is fabulous for getting a fix on a place you’re interested in, although some of the images are a little out of date.)

Then I would be deployed, controlled like a guided missile by my wife, who remained behind in Jakarta, via SMS and 3G. Before my trip to Singapore she used Skype, the free or inexpensive Internet phone service, to arrange for four real estate agents to show me around a selection of residences. I would then stand outside my hotel each morning to be picked up by the first of the agents.

All this went very well — right up until the Agent Turning Up In A Car bit. The first turned up 45 minutes late and drove so erratically I thought the only accommodation in Singapore I was going to need would be a drawer in the morgue. Of the six properties she had promised, we saw one, and drove around so long looking for another that it had been rented out by the time we arrived. The one we did see didn’t meet our stated criteria. “When I said ‘three bedrooms,’ I didn’t mean ‘one bedroom,’” I complained. She looked at me as if I was being persnickety. I couldn’t tell if the other agents were any better because I never met them. One told me the night before I was due to meet him that he was getting married and needed the week to get ready. Another developed food poisoning.

So we had to refine our system. As we suspected, the only property listings worth taking note of are still those found in the local newspaper, which doesn’t put them online. Poring over the paper’s listings reminded me of days gone by — sifting through tiny script, highlighting the possibles and ignoring the many entries that are either out of my league or don’t mention a price (the same thing, I quickly learned). So far, so old wave. Clearly, technology was only going to get us so far. None of the agents I contacted seemed to like SMS, so I went back to arranging viewings by phone call.

My wife and I set up a new schedule using Google Calendar. This meant we could both add stuff and I could access it via my Nokia N95 cellphone’s calendar, using my cellphone connection and a Google Calendar synchronizing service called GooSync (www.goosync.com). A map of the area from a Web site called Street Directory (www.streetdirectory.com) could then be sent to my Singapore cellphone. Agents’ contacts could be zapped as business cards to my phone (most agents, it turns out, are called Wendy or Ray, so it’s good to add a few details to tell them apart).

Out in the field I took plenty of snaps and uploaded them to photo-sharing Web site Flickr direct from my cellphone so my wife could see what I saw. With the N95, which has a Global Positioning System chip inside, I could also mark the exact location of the residence — useful, say, if it’s one of those apartment complexes with a gazillion towers. This saved us a bit of time.

I did, however, come away with some thoughts. One is that technologically advanced countries aren’t always technologically advanced in the areas you’d expect them to be — especially in something that lends itself to technology so readily as real estate. Europe and North America, by contrast, are finally applying the lessons of Web 2.0 (the current era of the Internet, where users have a range of tools to create and share their thoughts, images and videos) to real estate. Realtors are setting up blogs — either to talk about the industry or, more usefully, to start a conversation with potential buyers. Real estate being about location, a lot of these blogs are “hyperlocal,” meaning that both writer and reader are interested in a very specific area, according to Joel Burslem, a blogger and social media/interactive marketing manager at real estate Web site Inman News in Oregon (www.inman.com). Other Web 2.0 features that have crept into real estate: search engines that, in theory, make it easier for house hunters to find what they’re looking for, using online maps (Washington state real estate site Estately.com, for example, lets users search not just by city or postal code but also by neighborhood, and see the results on Google Maps); and uploaded videos (www.wellcomemat.com, for example). Other Web sites, like Trulia Voices (www.trulia.com/voices), allow users to swap real estate information.

My concerns, however, are smaller-scale. As is often the case with technology, we seem to love to tweak the big stuff, but not improve on the small. Most of these new technologies help speed up the process of selecting a place to look at, but they don’t necessarily help us out in the field. For example, the N95, like a lot of cellphones, lets you down when it comes to snippets of data. Text from an incoming SMS, for example, could not easily be copied and pasted into the device’s calendar (or, indeed, anywhere else, unless it’s a contact).

More seriously, however good the photos or videos you take of a place, they still don’t really capture it for someone who hasn’t seen it. For that, you’d probably have to turn to something like Microsoft’s Photosynth (labs.live.com/photosynth/default.html), which will take a large batch of photos of one place and turn them into a three dimensional space you can wander around. (A somewhat simpler version of this idea can be found at fotowoosh.com, which will convert one photo of something into a 3D scene.) On the other hand, no technology I know of exists to answer the kind of questions my wife was asking, which went along the lines of: “What are the neighbors like? What does it smell like? Does it feel homey?” That, I suspect, is some way off.

Perhaps because of this, I didn’t find what we are looking for. So, if your name is Wendy or Ray, I’m still in the market.

A couple of thoughts.

First, the author’s position is pretty unique – moving from Jakarta to Singapore – and therefore not truly representative of most experiences. Admittedly, many of the challenges he faced are similar to someone moving from, say, Jacksonville to Sausalito, but finding a home on the Internet in the US is certainly easier.

Still, we’re in the nascent stages of Real Estate 2.0 and much of the technology found here has not spread to the rest of the world. That said, we are seeing pockets of innovation outside of the US (Properazzi in Europe; RealEstate.com.au in Australia; Nestoria, Extate et. al. in the UK) – and there’s no doubt the trend will continue to expand globally.

Second, the author hit the nail on the head, mobile is a huge weak link in the industry right now. There are slim pickings when it comes to truly usable mobile applications in real estate – though I believe this to be the next great frontier in Real Estate 2.0. But, give it a few years (and a couple model revisions in the iPhone, perhaps) and I suspect conducting a home search from a mobile device will become much much easier.

I’d be interested in hearing from any international readers on how a home search online stacks up in your neck of the woods. Is it as tough as Jeremy presents?

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That sound you hear is the great web crash of 2007.

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More seriously, TechCrunch says a major SF power outage may be to blame for some pretty major sites going down today. Technorati, Netflix (my quuueeeuuue…), Yelp, Alexa and others have been affected. Valleywag, on the other hand, is blaming a drunk employee at the hosting company.

This does have an impact on real estate. Craigslist is still down. TypePad, which hosts many real estate blogger’s sites (and the Inman Blog), is wobbly.

Don’t panic. All will be well…

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I’m pretty bearish on so-called ‘neighborhood’ sites right now. Relying on user generated content to provide information on local areas seems to me to be a tenuous proposition at best. This is particular evident at some of the higher-profile sites; the ghost town that is StreetAdvisor, Yourstreet folding up shop (see Yourstreet is Now Empty) – though they, at least, promise to relaunch in a different form.

One neighborhood site that I’ve found particularly useful however is rather beautiful in its simplicity. Walk Score is a mashup that calculates how pedestrian friendly your neighborhood is by asking the question; “How Walkable is your House?”

Punch in your street address and the site maps a series of local landmarks it has pulled from Google Base; grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops etc. – all relative to your location. Walk Score was refreshingly accurate in my neighborhood at least.

So, how does it work?

Walk Score™ uses a patent-pending algorithm to calculate the walkability of an address based on:

• The distance to walkable locations near an address.
• Calculating a score for each of these locations.
• Combining these scores into one easy to read Walk Score.

Brilliant. Walkability, at least for me, is huge criteria that goes into finding a new home. My current house scored a meager 62 out of 100, unfortunately. Better than Bill Gates however, whose house scored a microscopic 5 on the scale or George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch which got the big old Goose Egg.

I’d love to see this kind of integration into a broker or real estate search site. Very valuable information, beautifully executed.

Walk Score was created by the Sightline Institute, Cascadia’s (self-proclaimed) sustainability think tank. (For more on Cascadia, read this).

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by danihernanz

RealTyger is the new product from the minds at RealEspace (see RealEspace Launching Soon), led by Jeff Corbett, The XBroker. Both will be launching next week at Real Estate Connect.

So what is it? In a recent blog post, Jeff reveals it is:

An exclusive online real estate community, or social network, by Professionals for Consumers.

Sounds an awful lot like ActiveRain…

RealEspace itself however, turns out to be a suite of tools and ‘dashboard’ package that will help real estate professionals manage all aspects of their web presence, Jeff gives us a sneak peak today of their “blog-site publishing platform and backend office manager”. Some of the features include:

• Post Editor
• Spread Sheets
• Email
• Feed Reader
• RateSpeed Mortgage Search Engine
• Video Listing Suite
• Listing Manager
• Listing Map Mash-Up with Multiple Layers of Information
• All SEO, all the time…

Definitely an intriguing product mix. It seems RealEspace and RealTyger are lining up themselves up to be the single destination for web-bound real estate practitioners.

RealEspace is heading squarely into a very crowded marketplace; Point2NLS, Incredible Agent and VREO (among many) already do much of what is being promised.

That said, few of these vendors tie it all up nicely into a single experience for an agent and if RealTyger and RealEspace perform as hoped, then they stand a chance of cornering a good chunk of the market.

Only a week to go till we see the whole package. Until then, we’ll see about getting some Beta invites for FOREM readers. Throw your name down in the comments, if you’re interested.

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I stumbled upon this interesting tidbit recently while doing some research for another post. It looks like you can now filter a search for real estate listings by brand using Google.

This looks likes the initial implementation of the deals signed last year to feed listings into Google base (more on StartupSquad).

Right now the results are confined to two brokerages; Prudential California/Nevada/Texas Realty and Keller Williams. Listings are kind of sparse and the search results pages feel half finished so I’m guessing this is still early stages or just a proof of concept.

PruCal/NV/TX listings

Keller Williams listings

Also, no sign of any of Realogy’s listings yet, who have also signed a deal to feed Google Base (see Trulia Lands the Big One).

It raises an interesting question however — do consumers have any brand preference when searching real estate?

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