As an increasing number of real estate firms seek to embrace and integrate Web 2.0 principles in to their websites, many of these firms may encounter a sense of frustration in having to “upgrade” once again to meet, or exceed, customer expectations regarding Internet-based services. Is real estate an Internet based service? Absolutely. With over […]

McKinsey Web2.0 survey

Visual analysis of blog content
Web site semantic analysis
Emperical basis for social networks
Identifying brand influencers in social networks
Impact of trust in social networks
Target marketing in social networks
Correlation between LinkedIn and Facebook
Correlation between LinkedIn and Gmail, YahooMail, and HotMail

In 2004, Inman News profiled e-mortgage processes. In the ensuing years, paperless mortgage processes have improved but have yet to achieve wide agent adoption rates, as do many other real estate technology initiatives (e.g., real estate ecommerce centers). Could this be a classic example of the Technology Acceptance Model theories at work? ( Wiki definition […]

Continuing the discussion from the McKinsey interview of Cammie Dunaway, she states
[Yahoo!] is using behavioral data–really mining the wealth of transactional data we have about how people are spending their time online and trying to marry that data with attitudinal data…that’s where the most powerful insights can really come from.
Insights into what? It could be […]

According to McKinsey, global companies are increasingly using Web 2.0 technologies to engage their customers. Tapping web services, collective intelligence systems, and peer-to-peer network capabilities were the top three technologies companies were currently deploying or planning to deploy. Respondents indicated that customer acquisition was the number one reason they were deploying social media (the respondents also stated that they use […]

Social media has created a challenge for website brand / product managers. Where social media is a rich fount of ideas, product information (negative and positive), etc, website brand / product managers have a challenge in using web analytics from these sources to drive site optimization (in terms of user experience, performance, etc).
Two recent research […]

Jeremiah Owyang explains the concepts and value of social networks from a marketing perspective in an easily digestible manner. Yang et al (registration required), Battiston et al, and Hill et al discuss the scientific underpinnings of these topics. Juxtaposing these discussions against one another leads to some interesting insights with respect to social media marketing.
Yang […]

HitWise has demonstrated a correlation between LinkedIn and Gmail, YahooMail, and Hotmail and a corrleation between LinkedIn and Facebook. Hypothetically now…assume that LinkedIn and Facebook and Gmail, or YahooMail, or Hotmail share their databases, where a user’s email account address is the unique identifier. At this point it’s a matter of relational database mechanics to […]

eMarketer predicts that in 2007 advertisers will spend $900 billion on social network advertising. As a real estate professional witnessing an explosion in social network sites (e.g., Active Rain, TruliaVoices) aimed at agents (and consumers), what are some first steps to engage this form of real estate marketing?
Step 1: Just understanding it. In this regard experience is the best instructor. […]

Notes from my presentation on ROI at the recent Inman Real Estate Connect conference:
Issue: What are the first steps real estate firms should take to get a handle on their data to enhance near-term and long-term ROI on this data?

Since 80%+ of all originating real estate transactions begin on the Internet, firms should consider utilizing […]

I just finished watching the Bourne Ultimatum. Prior to the movie starting several hundred of “us” “consumers” were bombarded with advertisement after advertisement–most still, some animated, some filmed. We certainly were a captive audience. But many of us certainly were not engaged. This type of marketing is the epitome of hostage marketing.
I distinctly remember one […]

What does the recent market success of Guitar Hero have to do with innovative concepts in real estate marketing? Activision, the third-party publisher of Guitar Hero, recently dethroned Electronic Arts. Activision’s market-leading success is due, in part, because it created a social object in Guitar Hero.
Attendees at the 2007 Connect conference will recall Hugh MacLeod’s […]