Adam Taflinger, MLS Help Desk Manager, attended the technology track at the Inman Conference in NYC this month. One of the thought-provoking concepts he brought back was a from a session on website marketing. The speaker suggested that REALTORS of the future will save a lot of money and increase their brand awareness if they eliminate their websites and put their time and energy into the FREE social media websites.
The speaker stated that was what he had done. He replaced his traditional website which was very static and any changes were more dollars to the website vendor he used, with a personalized link to the public-sided website his MLS offered (We offer this too.... keep reading), facebook page, linked in profile, free blog site and a twitter page. Of course he used this items correctly and purposefully. To understand how to use these items for business building please go through the DOMUS U tutorials and sign up for the webinars. This is a free service of OKCMAR.
While this isn't a recommendation from me it does lead to many of my articles and posts on this blog regarding website analytics. Unless you are tracking sales to website expenses you are doing yourself a disservice. It is essential that you fully comprehend and analyze where your closed transactions (not just leads) are coming from and then after all transaction-related expenses did your net from that sale outweigh your expense of the generation.
This is certainly something worth investigating, especially if you can't directly track a closed transaction(s) to your site or your site is costing you more than the net income you are generating from the site activity.
I found a great short little video from the San Francisco Inman Connect that I hope will give the members a sense of the information we are receiving when we attend this conferences. Connect to Inman Video Here.
Also for a link from your social media or personal website that is personalized to you from the public sided MLS go to our public sided search site home page, centraloklahomaproperties.com and in the lower left click on the members only link. This will take you to a page that will generate the link based on your associate ID in Tempo 5.
Showing posts with label Inman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inman. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Why we go to Inman Connect
Tonight your leadership met post conference to discuss all that we had heard at the Inman Connect Real Estate Conference. The 2010 MLS President, Keith Taggart, brought back a wonderful idea for a broker service. At Inman there are 4 tracks that run simultaneously and tomorrow there will be a period of time where there will be 6 tracks running. By sending several of the MLS leadership and key staff (Chris Chappell - Broker & Vendor Services & Adam Taflinger- MLS Help Desk Manager) we are able to cover all of the offerings and get the most out of the conference.
Ideally, all of the vision & policy for the membership/subscribership should come from the REALTOR volunteer leaders. Paid staff should have the skills and the insights to implement the ideas and strategies effectively. Committees should be the hands-on development of programs and services that go up to leadership for alignment with policies, budgets and strategies. Through key staff and leadership attendance we can give the member the most bang for their investment buck because we have both sides of the equation filled.
Anyway, at our post conference discussion, Keith had presented to the group what he had heard in the presentation he attended. Automate contact with the seller for the broker with real data. He had listened to how a NY firm had implemented this service for its agents. Every week, sellers get an automated update on how many hits from the public sided site and ListHub their listing received as well as an automated update on any new properties on the market (in their neighborhood comparable to their home) or any new sales comparable to their home in their neighborhood/area opening up the "Is it priced correctly" dialogue. The report is emailed weekly to all the sellers' personal email who have listings held under that brokerage firm.
Keith expressed what a valuable service this would be to OKC brokers. As the 3 key staff players were in the discussion we answered with that the public sided site hits on specific listings were available to every agent, the value my home feature could easily target solds and new listings, and that brokers can pay List Hub for detailed property specific listing hits at a very reasonable price. So staff could share with leadership that the tools themselves were available now.
However, as a working broker, the MLS President gave us the agent perspective- yes there are tools available but as the agent this task could become rapidly very time- consuming and, as the broker, ensuring that this contact was made weekly could become a full time job in itself for either very large firms or firms that specialize in working the selling side and are primarily listing (rather than selling side) oriented.
It appears that the MLSOK has the tools available to provide the program and MLSOK does have the capability of packaging this as a broker program with one exception the broker would still have to pay ListHub for the syndication hits but we could work on an interface with ListHub. Therefore there would be a basic package with MLS data only and an enhanced with the ListHub data. The group tossed around various delivery models (of course we would like this to be a free service- my concern is that what if the volume became large enough to require additional staff- would brokers at a certain point be willing to pay for the service if it hit certain specific volume levels?).
This service would address both of the seller's most pressing questions to the agent: "What have you Done for Me Lately?" and "Is my home Priced Correctly?". We are very interested in your feedback- please comment or email me at dkennedy@okcmar.org
JOIN THE INMAN CONFERENCE VIRTUALLY
Ideally, all of the vision & policy for the membership/subscribership should come from the REALTOR volunteer leaders. Paid staff should have the skills and the insights to implement the ideas and strategies effectively. Committees should be the hands-on development of programs and services that go up to leadership for alignment with policies, budgets and strategies. Through key staff and leadership attendance we can give the member the most bang for their investment buck because we have both sides of the equation filled.
Anyway, at our post conference discussion, Keith had presented to the group what he had heard in the presentation he attended. Automate contact with the seller for the broker with real data. He had listened to how a NY firm had implemented this service for its agents. Every week, sellers get an automated update on how many hits from the public sided site and ListHub their listing received as well as an automated update on any new properties on the market (in their neighborhood comparable to their home) or any new sales comparable to their home in their neighborhood/area opening up the "Is it priced correctly" dialogue. The report is emailed weekly to all the sellers' personal email who have listings held under that brokerage firm.
Keith expressed what a valuable service this would be to OKC brokers. As the 3 key staff players were in the discussion we answered with that the public sided site hits on specific listings were available to every agent, the value my home feature could easily target solds and new listings, and that brokers can pay List Hub for detailed property specific listing hits at a very reasonable price. So staff could share with leadership that the tools themselves were available now.
However, as a working broker, the MLS President gave us the agent perspective- yes there are tools available but as the agent this task could become rapidly very time- consuming and, as the broker, ensuring that this contact was made weekly could become a full time job in itself for either very large firms or firms that specialize in working the selling side and are primarily listing (rather than selling side) oriented.
It appears that the MLSOK has the tools available to provide the program and MLSOK does have the capability of packaging this as a broker program with one exception the broker would still have to pay ListHub for the syndication hits but we could work on an interface with ListHub. Therefore there would be a basic package with MLS data only and an enhanced with the ListHub data. The group tossed around various delivery models (of course we would like this to be a free service- my concern is that what if the volume became large enough to require additional staff- would brokers at a certain point be willing to pay for the service if it hit certain specific volume levels?).
This service would address both of the seller's most pressing questions to the agent: "What have you Done for Me Lately?" and "Is my home Priced Correctly?". We are very interested in your feedback- please comment or email me at dkennedy@okcmar.org
JOIN THE INMAN CONFERENCE VIRTUALLY
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