I am going to take some words from Chris Brogan blog, which will help us set the tone for the next following posts that we will be providing to you in regards of the tools on the Web for real estate agents and agencies.

a) I would create a blog about the community where I am selling and renting properties.

We all know by now that publishing on the Web is easy, but what is challenging about it is how to write and where to publish, answering the ¿How? requires practice and persistence because this will be just another task in our daily marketing effort for our real estate listing. The ¿where? is not that easy to define, you will soon find that there is a lot of sites to publish on.

So you need to consider two things:

1. who do you want to reach? You have to mentally create the type of audience that will be interested in reading your blog and foremost the information you will be providing them, so make it relevant.
2. where do our potential customers gather? There are forums, social networks, network of blogs or portals on the Internet where they get together to solve their problems, exchange ideas and socialize on the web. They are not difficult to find and remember always give more than you receive.

Most social networks today give you an opportunity to publish content, but this is not the same than having your own blog on WordPress, Typepad or Blogger. Being part of these platforms makes you a member of the community and you will have the chance to interact with very specific niches.

b) Publish many photographs on the blog.

A very important aspect of publishing is keeping the intellectual property of your creations, I know that by now you would have publish many photos on different social networks, but you need to know that you are giving up the rights to exploit the photos to those platforms, which means that you are sharing the rights to use them. You no longer have control over that content.

The following services can easily be integrated into many Blog platforms, like Flickr, Picasa, iPhoto, Photobucket o Photo.net they are easy to use and have different type of accounts, many have a free service and a paying service. The main difference is the storage capacity they can provide.

c) Create walk through videos of the communities where my real estate agency is selling homes and appartments.

This will provide information that is relevant to the interested party in renting or buying a property from a realtor, because your are providing a virtual visit to the neighborhood.

It is not very complicated to create, now the majority of photo cameras have the capacity to film video and many of us have digital recording cameras as well, maybe laying around the house inside the closet. This is a great opportunity to get some return on that investment, besides filming your kids or parties.

On the Internet we will find the very well know service from Youtube where you can upload the video tour of the neighborhood and also the real estate property you are promoting. There are alternatives like Vimeo, MetaCafe and Ustream. they provide great service, but Youtube is still the most popular and it is crawled on most search engines, so it has some search engine optimization advantages.

We also have a post about  video services on the Internet to sell and rent properties in Mexico.

We are not finished.

The list that Chris provides us is quite big to finish it in one post, so I will leave you with the link to the Blog called  “If I were a realtor”.

This week the Inman Connect technology conference was held in New York, where every year the real estate industry gets together to discuss trends and the market. This has become more international as the years go by, when in the beginning it was focused for US realtors and now many global companies and real estate enterprises are seen in this event.

Inman Connect

The speakers are from the technology industry, but give their opinions on the real estate market and how they see it evolving for the coming years. So the industry listens to them from service providers, banks, real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, real estate franchises and government institutions, everyone in the same place looking to work together and find partners. We have seen this past years that working with a common goal as an industry we might stand a chance to stabilize the real estate market.

Next tuesday you can find the presentations from Real Estate Connect in the Inman site, during those days REBarcamp NY was held one day before ICNY. Where you could hear most of the speakers from the Inman conference so you could get an appetizer of their talk, but the most important aspect of it was that speakers and attendees could share their experiences in a lay back environment with out paying an entrance fee.

Realtor Social Network

There where parallel events to ICNY, like RainCamp and a workshop held by PropertyPortalWatch. Where the discussions revolved around important events and statistics of the real estate market, but also discussions on new tools to measure your reputation on the Internet or the effectiveness of your web initiatives.

RainCamp NY 2010:

• Twitts from #RainCamp
• A good post from RainCamp.

REBarcamp Ny 2010:

• Twitts from REBacamp NY o #rebcny.
• In the  Facebook Tweal_Estate there is a good ammount of information, nice work guys.

We hope that next time we will be at the event to provide more insights into what was happening during the those days in New York, for now Twitter will have to do…..just for now.

This past 5th of October some bloggers and realtors got together in San Jose, CA for the first ever unconference in Silicon Valley, so it was natural to call it REBarcamp SiliconValley.

Real Estate Barcamp SiliconValley

We where there to talk with real estate professionals and service providers about our niche market, but also try to get a first hand view as to what are realtors doing online, how agencies and brokers are working together. So we could pinpoint contact points with their real estate peers at the International border between Mexico and the United States.

It was very instructional for how real estate agents are leveraging web technologies to help them accelerate the process for generating leads. We had the pleasure of seeing some familiar faces like Brad Coy, Andy Kaufman from REBarcamp Seattle and meeting new people like Mike Mueller, Ginger Wilcox, Cindy Lin and many more.

Now that everyone is talking about Twitter and how social media is expanding into the everyday lives of people, enhancing the way they interact and communicate with the real estate industry. Propagation of our message and transformation of our contacts into clients, was a hot topic in conversations. We had a chance to analyse the Mexican real estate industry and we have seen a clear opportunity to start an educating process about these technologies like social networks and microblogging applications to real estate associations in Mexico.

But the great digital divide in Mexico is something that is deep rooted in realtors, because the majority have not integrated 100% the use of the Internet as a channel for marketing para real estate. Lots of real estate brokers and agencies do not have a strong presence over the Web, so many internet users do not have a digital “brand” to go for resolving their housing needs in the North of Mexico.

This creates a “chicken and egg” problem, since there is no central hub of information about real estate in the North of Mexico, more than the traditional media channels of printed magazines and news channels. The real estate industry does not adopt new ways that social media is offering on the Web, because they do not see a clear return of their investment (ROI).

The problem (that Mexican realtors have) is that if their is no “web listings offered and information backing it” on the Internet, it will be quite difficult to emulate the demand that US realtors are creating.

Case in point for real estate at the Mexican international border, it is providing lots of information regarding seaside view properties and beach housing, which is focused on middle and upper class population. Meanwhile housing in urban residential areas is minimal, because most are offered to the working class low income families in Mexico which the majority are handdled via INFONAVIT credit loans. This could be a potential market for Hispanics in the US, because these are inexpensive housing opportunities that could be quite affordable for their US salaries. But little of this information is focused to them.

On the other side we have new generations of potential agents and brokers not entering the real estate industry, because of their close group and difficult network to reach, there are some initiatives by the Asociación de Profesionales Inmobiliarios or Professional Real Estate Associations, to reach out to the general public to generate a better understanding of their profession and a better image of realtors in Mexico. This is to get University graduates interested in getting into the real estate industry.

These will be some challenges that the real estate industry will face so real estate associations, agents, brokers, public institutions and companies offering services to the real estate industry need to work together to have the same message.

We believe that REBarcamp will play a crucial role filling the gaps, that for the moment is not focused for the general public it could be used as a tool to reach our to prospects and future buyers. So we invite you to be part of the 2nd Virtual REBarcamp, that will be held today from 9 am to 4 pm PST. You can register here.

We hope to meet you there are the many sessions, or feel free to contact me. My username is Claudio.