15 things I learned at Real Estate Connect

1. Real estate techies are hungry for social media and participatory applications.
2. The verdict is still out on whether consumers share this hunger.
3. Blogging remains a mystery to a lot of folks but everyone agrees it's cool.
4. Blogging created a new community of like-minded real estate entrepreneurs. It brought us new faces with similar personalities, strong opinions, an appetite for new business and fearlessness of trying something new.
5. Inman News will be hosting Bloggers Connect in New York in January. (OK, I already knew that before this week.)
6. Listings are still key to an online real estate strategy, but so are all these new social media applications, despite the unknowns.
7. Agents will have to learn social media in order to communicate with younger buyers and sellers.
8. Companies don't create online communities; online communities create themselves. There's an inverse relationship between the amount of money spent and the success of an online community.
9. There are at least 50 ways to market yourself and your listing online – either free or at minimal cost.
10. VCs are still biting on real estate, despite the market slowdown.
11. Young techies love the idea of creating something in the real estate space, but they need brokers to help them make it work.
12. "Lead generators" are out. "Media companies" are in.
13. If you're not managing your online reputation (i.e., tracking your name on blogs, in blog comments and on various review sites) you need to start now.
14. Beyond the buzz and excitement over new developments online, there is still value in good old-fashioned, face-to-face or friend-to-friend business referrals. (Real estate is still local.)
15. An MLS fraught with problems is better than no MLS at all.

Attend Connect? We'd love to hear what you learned.

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