I was one of the lucky ones (lucky and smart!) to be able to attend RainCamp Los Angeles yesterday. It was well worth the investment of time and money. Besides getting to meet and hang-out with a terrific group of Los Angeles real estate professionals (a big shout out to the men and women who traveled from as far away as Hawaii, Puerto Vallarta and New Jersey!) I got a head full of new information to incorporate into my blogging and social media efforts. I took away great info to propel my Los Angeles home staging business to a higher level. I was happy to see there were 3 or 4 other Los Angeles home stagers in attendence.

There was a lot of great information pouring out of Brad Andersohn, Ben Kinney & Tom Ferry.

I took 4 pages of typewritten notes! I tell you what...there were a lot of fingers flying over a lot of keyboards in that room; all of us trying to record this valuable knowledge for later use.

Jeff Dowler wrote a post here on AR with a very extensive list of the recommended websites.

Here's some important information I came away with (via Ben Kinney):

Why you should care about social media:

• 74% of Americans are spending twice as much time on the Internet over TV
  
• 32% participate on social websites
  
• 112,000,000 people are on FB
  
• 13,000,000 people in CA are on FB
  
• 5M people in Los Angeles are on FB
  
• 85% of qualified searches come from search engines
  
• 75% of consumers don’t go past 1st page of Google
  
• 87% home buyers are using Internet to search for homes
  
• 94% of 24-44 year olds are using Internet in home buying process
  
• 37% of home buyers found their home on the Internet

Here's some information about Active Rain and why it should be an important part of your marketing efforts (via Brad Andersohn):

• 180K members
• 200-300 new members per day
• 2,000 new blog posts per day
  
• 2.5M unique visitors each month
• 1.7M blog posts on AR
  
• National & hyper local news media coverage
• Superior SEO due to all the activity
  
• #1 top Real Estate Networking site
• (numbers are approximate)

The day flew by! I was fully engaged and absorbing information from 9:00AM-5:00PM. It was worth every penny and I highly recommend you attend if you get the chance.  (I bought a platinum ticket which included wireless Internet, lunch and an after party). I was sorry that RainCamp LA was only a 1 day event (hint, hint).

Ben Kinney

Brad Andersohn

Tom Ferry

Irina Netchaev, Pasadena real estate agent (and my carpool buddy)

Hobnobbing with the brains behind Active Rain (and a bunch of really nice Los Angeles real estate pros)