Register your name and brand on facebook to avoid cybersquatting

It is interesting how one thing can lead to another.  On the same weekend that I was quickly making sure thathttp://www.facebook.com/victorlund would be my new handle on facebook, I was also researching a social media strategy for a client and recognized that someone was Cybersquatting on their brand everywhere - Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed etc.  Hence, thier brand was not available on these important social networks.  Hurry out today and register your name and your brand’s name on these networks, especially facebook - who changed from numbers to names over the weekend. This is important on many different levels of brand [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:26-07:00June 15th, 2009|Main category, Twitter for Real Estate|0 Comments

Bloggers overtake Newspapers as a leading source of news

Now that blog readership has passed newspaper readership in most US communities,  I wonder what is next for blogs. Today, blogs are all about open access to content.  Indeed most bloggers are expressly interested in having readers “share” their blog content, and even provide socialization tools that allow readers to republish the blog content to any number of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. As the plummet of newspaper readership continues, what happens to the writers?  It is easy to hate the newspapers, but the writers have fans.  Today, despite the efforts of unions, newspapers have been faced with [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:26-07:00June 15th, 2009|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

Tips on building a great real estate newsletter

Though many online marketers send emails that are very similar to their websites in terms of navigation and linking, major differences in the way consumers view emails vs. websites indicate that emails should be designed differently to achieve the best results, according to a recent report from Smith-Harmon. The report, which is based on an analysis of website and email data for 100 top retailers (non-real estate) collected in March and April 2009 by the Retail Email Blog, found that horizontal navigation bars, emails with fewer links, HTML coding (vs. images) and special tactics to highlight sales, seasonal specials and featured departments work [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 9th, 2009|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

Real Estate Domain Auction information published in Inman

We have gotten a lot of emails and calls today regarding the Real Estate Domain Name auction that headlined in Inman News today. Here are the details of the Auction Auction Information Date:: Thursday, June 11, 2009 Time:: 1:00PM PST. Registration for the Auction begins at 11:30AM PST. Location:: Fairmont Hotel San Francisco 950 Mason Street San Francisco, California United States 94108 TEL (415) 772-5000 FAX (415) 772-5013 Click Here for the Directions Information, Domain Listing and Opportunity Overview Download the White Paper Here Download the Map of the Portfolio Here Download Domain Portfolio Overview Here Download Full Listing of Domain [...]

By |2009-06-09T13:58:53-07:00June 9th, 2009|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

WAV Group releases Smartphone adoption rates for Real Estate

WAV Group has done a significant (perhaps the most significant) research on mobile phones in real estate.  In a recent conversation with one of the nations’ largest MLSs, SoCalMLS - we took a look at the devices in use by their membership.  This year has seen the release of some outstanding mobile phone applications by Trulia, Zillow, and new comer - C.A.R.  Are they missing a big sector of the market by not offering apps for Blackberry and Palm? In SoCalMLS here is the breakdown 37.7% use a mobile phone running Blackberry O.S. 33.9% use a mobile phone running Palm [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 5th, 2009|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

The first Real Estate Association iPhone app. is here!

This week at the California Association of REALTOR conference in Sacramento the REBS(Real Estate Business Services) division of C.A.R. announced the first ever real estate application for iPhones.  Alan Arora, head of REBS premiered the application for the C.A.R. board.  The application helps real estate agents demonstrate their local market expertise.  […]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 5th, 2009|Main category|0 Comments

calREDD™ announces intent to join CARETS

Press release is below - great news for CALMLS Regional Subscribers - they will also be part of CARETS - the nation’s largest data share.  WAV Group recently completed a review fo CALMLS for one of California’s most prominent regionals. LOS ANGELES (June 5) - calREDDTM today announced its intent to join California Real Estate Technology Services (CARETS). calREDDTM anticipates becoming a full member of CARETS once its MLS services are launched in late summer. In the meantime, calREDD is actively working with CARETS to align slight differences in rules between the two entities prior to calREDD’s launch. “calREDDTM will [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 4th, 2009|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Real Trends releases TOP 400 Real Estate Agents and Teams

Top performing sales professionals ignore market downturn and turn in record year. The Wall Street Journal and LORE announced the 2009 rankings of the top real estate professionals in the country based on calendar 2008 results.  The rankings will be posted onRealestatejournal.com, Realtrends.com and Loremagazine.comas of 11:00AM eastern time June 4th. The Wall Street Journal/LORE Top 400 is based on a survey of over 7,000 brokerage firms, associations of Realtors® and hundreds of other sources to determine the top real estate professionals in the United States.  Now in its 4th year, this ranking is the only independent study of its kind where [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 4th, 2009|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

Diverse Solutions and realPING Announce Integration Alliance

Real Estate Technology solutions provider to enable realPING Click To Talk NOW Technology realPING, LLC announced today that Diverse Solutions will extend realPING functionality throughout its respective marketing platforms. realPING ‘enabled’ indicates the marketing platform can display the agent?s realPING button in various locations without the agent having to play with code. realPING is a VoIP-enabled ‘CLICK TO TALK NOW’ service agents use throughout their e-marketing. Statistics from the National Association of Realtors indicate that 78% of the time, consumers will ‘deal’ with the first agent that gets back to them when a question arises.  In today’s market when buyers [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 3rd, 2009|Main category|0 Comments

Harvard Study tells us how people use twitter – twitter for real estate

2:15 PM Monday June 1, 2009 by Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter’s purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing tool? We examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to find out how people are using the service. We then compared our findings to activity on other social networks and online content production venues. Our findings are very surprising. Of our sample (300,542 users, collected [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:27-07:00June 3rd, 2009|Main category, Twitter for Real Estate|0 Comments

10k Research Marketing Launches competition to cyberhomes-Altos-Clarus

As Real Estate agents divert traditional marketing tactics from showing photos of homes to becoming market experts, they rely heavily on the mining of real estate market data from suppliers like Cyberhomes, Altos Research, Clarus Market Reports and now, new commer 10K Research Marketing.  I checked out their website and their reports look very nice. They plan to be at Inman Connect in San Francisco.  Check out these prices and let me know what you think.  Remember that Cyberhomes is $4 – $10 per report.  Clarus is free if your REALTOR Associaiton picks up the site license.  The prices look [...]

CMLS welcomes Marilyn Wilson to the Board of Directors

Marilyn Wilson, founding partner of WAV Group, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Council of Multiple Listing Services.  Wilson will serve as one of two Business Partner board representatives, who are appointed by the president. The WAV Group is one of the most successful technology consulting firms in the industry.  They work with many leading MLS organizations, associations, technology vendors and brokers in North America and Europe. Wilson has a strong background in technology and consumer products. Prior to forming WAV Group, Wilson was president and CEO of Surveyor Corp., a leading provider of web camera [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:28-07:00June 1st, 2009|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments