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Are you offering Analog service to a Digital world?

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with Referral Builder LLC dba URBaCS

The winds of change are continuing to accelerate. The way we do business needs to change as well... if we are to keep up. 

 

This year is the year of the social networks. Twitter and Facebook seem to be the flavor of the day for now. How many of your co-workers have Facebook accounts? I guess the better question is to ask, how many of them don't? It was not too long ago that Facebook was only something that college kids were on. Now it has gone main stream. 

 

How about cell phones? I know many of you can recall the days before cell phones. Can you even imagine doing business without cell phones today? It would be imposable. Our clientele expect that we will be available for them at a moments notice. 

 

Text messaging is coming into it's own this year. This is partially do to the popularity of Twitter and similar applications. But it can also be attributed to  the maturing of the medium itself. This is the first year that the number of text messages will exceed the number of phone calls. More and more Realtors are finding ways to incorporate text based marketing into their marketing plan. 

 

So what is the next technology change? Photo Messaging

Many see the next change coming as digital images become more Mobil. Platforms like Fliker, Facebook and MySpace have trained us how to post pictures on-line for years. Cell phones are now equipped to take, view and send pictures far better than they could even as recently as 12 months ago. According to a recent survey by PMA Foresight;

  • About one-fourth of all US mobile subscribers sent or received images or video through their cellphone.
  • Photo/video sharing is the top multimedia activity on the cellphone in the USA, ahead of games, downloading of ringtones, applications, and more.
  • Photo messaging activity is highest in the months of December and August. 
  • Most notably, the 2008 M:Metrics survey recorded a 60 percent increase in the number of cellphone subscribers involved in photo messaging from the same survey period in 2007.
  • Participation in photo messaging increased across all age groups, as well.
So what does this mean for the Real Estate Industry?  We had better start providing access to more and more digital pictures of our listings. Consumers will need to be able to view pictures of our listing from their cell phones while standing in front of the property. They will want to be able to email pictures of our listings to their spouse, friends, and coworkers. They will want  to create photo albums of homes they are considering on their cell phone. 

Photo messaging is the next wave. So start getting ready. 

Comments (2)

Sharon Alters
Coldwell Banker Vanguard Realty - 904-673-2308 - Fleming Island, FL
Realtor - Homes for Sale Fleming Island FL

Timely post, Rob. There is a service where you have the buyer text you from a sign in the yard - and then you can text photos of the listing. Got to check them out again.

May 20, 2009 03:09 PM
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Sep 12, 2011 06:37 AM
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