Ed Kohler on Skyp-In says its a beautiful day on the Internet

Mark Eibner: Hello my name is Mark Eibner. This is Broker IPTV and we are here with Ed Kohler from the Technology Evangelist for another Friday Skype-in and Ed welcome to the show.

Ed Kohler: Hello Mark.

Mark Eibner: How are things going today out there Skype line for Ed?

Ed Kohler: Things are good so far it's a beautiful day on the Internet.

Mark Eibner: Hey well let's get right down to our Friday Skype-in. Today we are going to address floor time in the new world, otherwise known as social media, so any initial input from you on this, this right away Ed?

Ed Kohler: I think social media to me is you that are communicating with people online, so yeah it's really as basic as that.

Mark Eibner: Yeah kind of like interacting.

Ed Kohler: Yes, yes exactly.

Mark Eibner: Yeah I think in the old days we really are big interaction tool at least as far as in the hunter gatherer mode of real estate hunting for a new client, definitely would have been either telemarketing or direct calls in floor times which seems to as pretty much went to Zilch other than what I noticed is the calls that we do get "on floor" are actually a lot better quality calls because people have been shopping for a long time that's why they are calling.

Ed Kohler: Yeah people are able to do more work themselves before they contact people which are, you know scares some people in the industry but in the end you know consumers still want to work with a professional real estate agent on a transaction, so you know its not like the Internet has really had a huge impact on like the amount of physical business has been done. You know when it comes time to actually do a transaction they want to work with someone that they trust and also of course someone they could sue if things get screwed up or whatever.

Mark Eibner: Yeah I think that's mostly what they are looking for someone to sue. So, how about some the recommendations on some of the more commonly used social media venues out there?

Ed Kohler: Okay well couple of popular ones are well one will be Facebook. Now Facebook is you know an enormous site for communicating where the site happens to be best for communicating with people that you already know. So your friends, your family, relatives, former classmates, things like that it's a great site for connecting with those type of people and staying in touch.

Mark Eibner: How about like Zillow and Trulia?

Ed Kohler: Well there are a lot of real estate specific sites like Zillow and Trulia and ActiveRain would be another where you can you know have kind of a professional experience on there, those sites can vary from being kind of agent to agent you know real estate specific where you end up talking to lot of people in your industry, but lot of consumers also you can stumble across them there, I think Trulia is doing a pretty good job with that, with the Trulia voices where they are trying to help people find out local information and who the experts are in their actual area.

Mark Eibner: Yeah and maybe a couple of other little things I might mention, just kick.com and YouTube as far as what we consider social media video venues where people that are most sophisticated or not even that sophisticated great places to get involved.

Ed Kohler: Absolutely and another good one is flicker like few yeah.

Mark Eibner: Flicker you bet.

Ed Kohler: You know if you are really into photography for example, it's really easy to find people who are active photographers in your community.

Mark Eibner: Well let's talk about some other strategies.

Ed Kohler: I would say one thing that I don't see enough of it and I think real estate agents kind of haven't figure this one out yet is some of the best networking you can do is not at real estate specific websites, it's at other websites where you're the only real estate agent. For example you know offline you know the web is just kind of recreate types of relationships that already happen offline. So for example if you are active in your church or you are you know a volunteer coach at a football team or something like that you are out there interacting with your community and you are the agent you know so you know everyone you know they have their job outside of the work they are doing or the volunteering they are doing. So that's a great way to build a network where you are the go to person. So that can help online too, where example of that might be if you do food reviews on urban spoon or you connect with people on yelp something like that where you can differentiate yourself that way and be the soul real estate expert on a different type of community.

Mark Eibner: Yeah actually showing people transparently that you actually are an expert in the area.

Ed Kohler: Yeah I mean if you would review every restaurant in the area, you know shows that you get out to eat a lot which of course lot of real estate agents do. So maybe they can contribute some information there and if you sound like, you know what you are talking about you know if they click on your profile they can see oh, okay this person works in real estate.

Mark Eibner: Well let's just get this wrapped up here as far as the new floor the new way we are stalking buyers, social media or something you need to say to your viewers out there?

Ed Kohler: Well the one thing we haven't mentioned yet I think that we have to at least throughout there is to give Twitter a try because it's a very powerful site and what's nice about is out of all the different types of social media sites out there, its probably the easiest one to use because you can put content out on to the site from any type of phone that you have. So you don't have to be at a computer, which really is nice for real estate people because they are often not at a regular computer, but they do a lot of work from their phone their black berry iPhone whatever. So if you haven't signed up for Twitter yet, even if you have heard about it you know you will see it mentioned on CNN or whatever its like its always in the news now, go to Twitter, its free, sign up and you know just take a look around. You know today you may think this is ridiculous but at least you will have your favorite Twitter user name reserved for free. So go and do that and then one day it maybe a light bulb will go off and you will be prepared with that point take advantage of it.

Mark Eibner: Yeah probably one of the last things you mentioned is most social media venues are in fact, free.

Ed Kohler: Yeah that's true yeah just a matter of getting in a habit of going to these websites and interacting with people.

Mark Eibner: Great we will wrap the show up Ed, once again Ed Kohler, Technology Evangelist and this has been the Friday Skype-in Ed great tips and we will talk to you next Friday.

Ed Kohler: Thank you Mark, take care man.