One of the questions I get a lot when I speak in front of groups is “Is it too late for me start getting involved in blogging/social media/social networking etc.?”
My answer is always firm – absolutely not.
There’s always opportunity to take advantage of the latest technologies and there is still plenty of room for folks to gain first mover advantage in many areas.
Just look at some of these agents and brokers who are still pushing the envelope with new technology.
Kevin Tomlinson of the South Beach Real Estate Blog has launched on his personal real estate web site what I think is the very first commercial implementation of Google’s Street View (see Google Maps Hits the Streets). You can embed them individually (see New Google Street Views Can Be Embedded on your Site) but Kevin has gone as far as to build them in to his condo map of Miami.
Fantastic tool – though I do wish the picture were just a little bit bigger.
Intero Real Estate has launched a new site based on Terabitz’s technology. Terabitz lets a user create a real estate dashboard (see Terabitz To Allow You to Make your Own Mashup) — think Pageflakes for real estate — it’ll be interesting to see if Intero’s clients respond to the new interface.
ChaseNation is the perfect example of what I call a niche network (see Niche Networks and Marketing Real Estate). It was started by luxury brokerage Chase International as a way to connect directly with consumers around Lake Tahoe and Reno real estate. Built on Ning (see Create Your Own Web 2.0 Site with Ning) Chase Nation was steered by Diane Cohn of Reno Realty Blog. It’s a beautiful looking site – and functional too. Of course the challenge will be steering and encouraging consumer participation now but if it takes off it could be very successful. Plus by choosing to use an off-the-shelf product like Ning, the cost of entry was so low that if it doesn’t take off – they could easily ditch it.
And I think that’s really the lesson here too. Don’t be afraid to innovate and experiment and then move on if it’s not working.
