I had the pleasure of speaking to Marnie Blanco, Vice President, eBusiness at RE/MAX. I first heard Marnie speak at Real Estate Connect NYC a few months back and was really impressed by what she had to say about social media and what RE/MAX was doing on a corporate level – but also to support their agents in the fast-changing social media world.

Best Practice Over Policy

When asked about policy around social media, Marnie says that they focus more on “best practice” over policy. She says,

“We can always do more. We offer a lot of education to our agents and brokers about Facebook business pages, Twitter, the ROI of social media, rules and regulations and best practices. RE/MAX is an extremely entrepreneurial brokerage, so we encourage everyone to get involved in social media and then we give them the tools to make the best possible decisions.

I asked Marnie about what she says when agents ask her “where to start.” Many agents get overwhelmed with the number of options and seemingly never-ending stream of new technology. Marnie advises: “Start as you intend to go.” RE/MAX encourages their agents and brokers to get educated first about the different mediums and then decide the role they’d like to play.

Social Media Education

Social Media superstar, Gary Vaynerchuk was a recent keynote speaker just a few weeks ago at RE/MAX’s convention. Marnie said that Gary talked about how he felt like right now there is a four-year window in social media – right now everyone is on it – but everyone can really capitalize on it in the next four years.

The social media education that RE/MAX provides includes training agents on the separating some of the personal and business that happens on social media and the importance of relationship building – not just promoting their listings. They recommend LinkedIn as a great starting point, because an agent is not expected to be on LinkedIn 24/7 – there is a low barrier to entry and an easy starting point.

I asked Marnie about Twitter and she said they don’t do as much Twitter training as they do with Facebook. She says that Twitter is a great listening tool. “On Twitter it is important to hear what is being said, interject when you can, and then tie it back to you when it is appropriate.” But, she said, it is not for everyone.

In addition to conventions, RE/MAX also offers a number of webinars as their ongoing social media education with agents and brokers. At their conventions, they strive to have speakers that are really on the cutting edge of social media like Gary Vaynerchuk and Nicole Nicolay (Nicole is also one of our emcees at the Agent Reboot evenst that are happening nationwide)

Providing Opportunities

They have social media tracks at their conventions and at their last convention – they had a “Twitter Lover’s Lounge” where people could meet “in real life” and do some great face to face networking. Also at many conventions, they provide camera crews onsite who are available to film a short professional message for agents on a one-on-one basis. These videos could then be published on the agent’s web site or blog. Marnie says that RE/MAX feels it’s very important to assist their agents in creating content for their social sites. In addition, agents are encouraged and trained to start a YouTube Channel of their own and then link their channel to our RE/MAX dedicated channel in which can share content across.  It creates a bigger reach for the agents at a local and national level.

Training on Demand

RE/MAX also offers “RE/MAX University” which Marnie calls “Training on Demand.” At their headquarters in Colorado, they have a full television production area where they are able to create “Quick Hit” 3-5 minute training videos that can then be passed onto the brokerage level. She also said they like to take their training on the road, and will travel to various offices, and get very hands-on with agents and their computers.

Agents and Brokers Doing it Right

Here are 5 RE/MAX Facebook pages that are doing a really nice job of providing local content, building a community and engaging their audience:

• RE/MAX Real Estate Concepts
• RE/MAX Southern Shores
• RE/MAX Gateway of the Washington DC Metro Area
• Cory Kramer- Re/Max Agent
• McCoy-Freeman Group RE/MAX ELITE

How is This Going to Create More Business?

Marnie says at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself “How is this going to create more business?” With social media it is not always that tangible. What I like about RE/MAX’s approach is they are putting a creative focus on the basics of the tried and true approaches, are embracing change and new technologies and arming their agents with the tools and education to succeed.

You can find RE/MAX on Facebook here and on Twitter here.

What type of social media training is your brokerage doing? Are you an agent or broker with RE/MAX?  I’d love to get your thoughts and opinions – leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News, @katielance

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Rehava, a small brokerage based in South Carolina, (featured in 2008 in an article on Inman News) recently got into a dustup with RE/Max, the national franchisor, over its logo.

Last week, RE/Max challenged Rehava’s trademark filing, and claimed the brand was too similar to its own. 

In an article in the Charleston Post and Courier, RE/Max’s legal counsel Adam Scoville explained the rationale this way:

First of all, both names start with “r” and have logos with accent lines near the letter “e,” he said.”It goes beyond that,” Scoville added. “If you chop the top off of the ‘h,’ you (almost) have the ‘m’ in Re/Max. The next letter is an ‘a,’ and if you take the ‘v’ then you have half of an ‘x.’ “

Clearly, anyone looking at the two logos would be hard pressed to find the similarity and any allegations of trademark infringement on that basis border on the ridiculous. 

Rather, Rehava’s owner Steve deGuzman suspects that the challenge was issued because of his company’s controversial rebate program, which may have been perceived as a threat to RE/Max’s traditional commission model.

“I think they did it because they’re worried about the future of real estate, and they really know that we might be onto something,” deGuzman said. “Anything they could do to slow us down would be to their advantage.”

This is an experience that the folks at Redfin can no doubt empathize with. That company suffered similar hurdles when they first launched.

In any case, the issue drew outrage from the online community on blogs, Twitter and in online comments and today RE/Max, perhaps sensing the blowback, dropped its suit (see ReMax Withdraws Logo Suit Against rehava).

We will probably never know the true motivations behind the legal challenge, but one thing is clear; in this day and age, the community will ultimately hold you accountable for your actions and these types of uncompetitive actions do very little to help your brand’s credibility in the eyes of consumers.

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by donmimi83 (mostly away )

In an interesting story from the WSJ.com, RE/MAX is using data from Cox Communications DVRs to track viewer watching patterns and figure out where to place their advertisements.

Using a new process that taps into data from cable set-top boxes, RE/MAX found that, along with home-improvement shows, those households were also likely watching cable channels such as auto-focused Speed, as well as shows including TNT’s “Without a Trace.”

They also merged the viewing pattern data with demographic data in order to segment their audience.

By using viewing data from cable set-top boxes and merging it with information from demographic data companies such as Claritas, the technology can create a general behavioral profile of a viewer. For instance, RE/MAX wanted to reach women 25 years to 54 years old with $75,000 or more annual income and who were in the market to buy or sell a home in the next 12 months.

This sort of precision is already commonplace on the online world — even more precision is available in social networks (see Marketing Yourself with Facebook Flyers) — but it’s interesting to see the same targeting abilities start to move into the offline world too.

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