Realtors and the Web 2.0 Community

This week O'Reilly Media held their "invite-only" Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Big Shots galore- venture guys swarming like locusts, alpha geeks, all the Internet media luminaries, basically all of the rock star entrepreneurs-du-jour. My invite must have been lost in the mail, so I crashed it for a bit. (Turns out to be a great place to get together with those types you've been bouncing around the calendar for months.)

What does all this Web 2.0 hype have to do with the daily grind of marketing real estate? Recognize that these so-called New Rules are basically purely distilled versions of successful marketing tactics packaged in fluffy, don't-want-to-seem-crass-commercialist terms. Fortunately for you, I have no qualms about commercialism, so I'll translate.

Building a Community - in Web 2.0, the term "community" is everywhere. It implies lifting your website visitors beyond surferdom and engaging with them. Having a conversation. Here's the secret for Realtors your community is exactly something you've been doing ever since you started in this biz. It's your network. Your sphere-of-influence. Online. It's difficult to build your network by standing in the corner saying the same thing to everyone who stops in front of you. Likewise, a static website that says the same thing every time someone shows up is unlikely to help you build your online network. That's why a blog is often the first step in your community engagement.

Your community online is important for the same reason it is offline. Who are you? Do I like you? Are you at the top of my mind when it's time to do business? You are much more likely to do business with a friend than you are with a total stranger. If business comes from online, then make friends online. Period.

And of course business does come from online. So increase your search advertising budget.

Mary Meeker, the lone Wall Street analyst to survive the era-formerly- known-as-THE-bubble, had some salient points for Realtors in her comments on the financial side of Web 2.0. Internet demographics, local targeting, and unmatched tracking technology means the return on Internet ad dollars is far higher than the offline comparables. BUT Internet advertising spending is still a baby at 25% per household of Newspapers. This spells opportunity, folks. Better return in a less competitive market. Are you taking it? Meeker's slides are here.

Note the combination of the above - Community takes time but not cash. Search marketing takes cash but not time. Doesn't this mix sound like your offline marketing plan? Ignore either at your peril.

Bonus tip from the conference. You can safely ignore InternetRealEstate.com - This company sponsored the name-tag lanyards. I was probably the only one in attendance who's interest was piqued - who are these guys? Turns out, they market Internet Real Estate (read: they're domain name squatters) rather than marketing real estate via the Internet. Go Figure. (aside: can this possibly be a good marketing investment? How do you measure return on lanyard investment?)