NAR’s Top Ten Tech Strategies for 2011

Rossi Speaks at NAR

With Mike Barnett and Ken Baris

What an extreme honor to share the stage with Mike Barnett and Ken Baris. Their years of awarded, frontline experience in the real estate industry and recognition of technology expertise are humbling.

I used an excellent tool for REALTOR peer-to-peer communication, eCampaignPRO, to invite everyone I knew, and then some, to attend – and boy did it work. The room was set for 500 and there was standing room only.

Attendees seemed totally open to my idea of ‘no outline’ and few PowerPoint slides, along with all three of us presenting in a form of chaos like Social Media and a chat room.

I opened with the question, “Does everyone have their outlines?”  Everyone, 500+, started complaining and looking for the outline. I then directed them, as well as you, to text ‘Rossi’ to 82257 for the auto responder with the link to the complete outline! The crowd was abuzz with excitement to have, not just an outline, but to have every link in their smart phone. I’m still getting thank you emails, tweets, and Facebook invitations raving about this method. Try it, it’s still up and working. You can also go directly to it at http://NAR2010.RossiSpeaks.com. I believe this to be the first time a NAR convention class was totally green, no paper!

Think of how you can use ‘short codes’ to put your market data, outlines, listings, agents, testimonials, or areas of expertise on a cell phone connection. To find more information on how to do this, text ‘ProTexting’ to 82257 and get your ‘short codes’ rolling or go to ProTexting. Uses are only limited by your imagination.

Everything that was presented in the NAR Membership Forum is in that outline and it was updated just an hour before session time. Imagine, not only can you have the information, but you can also get it to everyone in your office at the same time?

Here are some of the highlights of our session:

Mike opened the session with the stimulating video, http://SocialMedia.RossiSpeaks.com, thanks to HULT International Business School. The power of social media cannot be denied. By sheer numbers, business MUST become social.

Nokia, as noted in the outline says, “In order for a business to go social, one must first socialize the company.” That is, the company adapts social media before it goes social media. As I said in my blog on the Evolution of the Real Estate Consumer, they (the consumer) have all the information. Add to that, they are Social – 500 million on Face Book, 2 Billion tweets by the end of the year. Everything must go social!

Next Jump – Social & Context Analytics

Data is the new OIL! Taking this data, analyzing it, and providing live time information gives the consumer/associate/broker the competitive edge. Look at what Jordan Baris (Ken Baris’ Family Company) provides their associates in live time. For example, the associate walks into a consumer’s home, puts the address into their mobile media, and gets, via geographic fencing, a defined collection of data based on the current location of the smart phone; i.e., average price listed, sold, currently on market, days on market number of sales, expireds, listed – and much more! As Ken Baris says, “Mind share equals Market share!” Again, what makes this so phenomenal is it’s visual, geographic, and it’s LIVE! Plus, the system Ken uses sniffs out the mobile media tool you’re accessing the information with and correctly formats it. Just think, are you using HTC, iPhone, Blackberry, etc? It knows.

By the way, talk about a lightning bolt. Ken shared with us that his company website is a BLOG! Wow, the minute I heard it, I got a big aha, all listings can be blog entries. Google then sees your site in all its raw form causing your position to soar. That Ken Baris is genius!

Video Virtual Tours & 3D Imagery

Speaking of visual, how about the power of video? You know I’ve been pushing video for the last year as the #1 Marketing Tool. It’s the only way to instill emotion in a static website. Now look at the numbers.

According to Gartner, an independent Internet consulting firm, “There were more videos uploaded on YouTube in the last two months than if ABC, NBC, and CBS had delivered content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since 1948.”

Mike Barnett shared how Property Panorama automatically posts all listings to YouTube and, with their patented process, stitches all your photos together into a beautiful video product with special drum rhythms that calm the viewer verses elevator music that irritates.

Mike also unveiled Property Panorama using new 3D imagery. As we say in the South, “You ain’t going to believe this ____!” 3D floor plans derived from your photos! A real WOW!

Last night, I updated the outline adding Mike’s complete definition of virtual tour. Excellent Mike, thanks.

There was so much new info and so little time that I was unable to introduce Bambuser – a FREE program for mobile media using Live Video Streaming! Picture this: holding a virtual open house where the consumers can send you text inquiries in live time!

Here is another company that has made productivity easy. Point2Agent – the premier website and property syndication for the real estate industry. And the first 3 months are FREE.

Business MUST go Social!

Okay, Social Media is a must (look at the rules in the outline). YOU must be everywhere in Social Media. One app that simplifies this is Posterous! It allows you to enter your social media post once. They format it and send it to all of your accounts for free.

And don’t forget to get a social business card for free at follr.

What’s Next?

The Internet has been all about information – the ‘knowledge layer’. The prevalence of Social Media, referred to as the ‘social layer’, has changed everything we knew about the Internet. When data derived from these two layers is combined, the information is crunched providing context and content analytics. That is more live time useable data than we have ever had before. Today’s technology has created a platform for MASSIVE change.

Intro the ‘Gaming Layer’ to business. There are more gamers than social connecters. So gaming is only natural as the next layer. It’s an age-old adage, if we can’t have fun doing what we’re doing, we’ll have fun doing something else. People want to have fun. As I see it, the ‘game layer’ is the third part of the evolutionary process and it is predictable.

Applying the three parts of the evolutionary process ‘dependence’, ‘independence’, and ‘interdependence’, as discussed in my blog, Evolution of the Real Estate Consumer, validates the ‘gaming level’ evolution. We have become a society dependent on the Internet. Gamers are those who have sought independence and fun. Main stream society has actually fought this evolution into games claiming addiction, over involvement, and time consumption. Now it’s time to move into the third stage, that of interdependence; that is, acceptance, adaptation, and application of GAMING as a business, education, and training tool.

Prudential Georgia used SCVNGR to create a custom game for their consumers. See the video. SCVNGR is the leader in adapting gaming to business. In this instance, the game experience used geographic fencing to direct players to a specific area where the GPS in their mobile technology logs them in and gives them the next clue to the next geographic location. The prize for this game was $20,000 toward the down payment of a home. The real prize was the number of leads, listings, and sales generated for Prudential Georgia.

There it is – a quick flash of a POWER PACKED, 2 hour presentation. My thanks to NAR and the REALTOR Federal Credit Union for allowing us to unveil Technology Strategies to increase REALTOR productivity in our most exciting and changing world.