Buzzre Live Blog
A live blog of the Buzzre conference in Portland, Oregon.
Building An Online Marketing Strategy by @garrons
10:43 am: “Consider using the Internet.”
10:46 am: “Before you blaze out of here with all of these tool ideas, take a step back and look at ‘the moment’ when new appointments are set. If you understand what drove that moment, you’re way ahead of the game.”
Garron is talking about three sites, for three different agents that are archetypes of conversation points. Each one represents each agent’s “moment” points.
1. Showing requests prospecting DB.
2. Sphere referral, direct inquiries, prospecting sign ups.
3. Sphere referral, IRL meetings.
10:57 am: @garrons is talking about blogs that are designed to support real life relationships, not Google. clairewidmark.com is not designed to attract search engines, it’s designed to support what Claire actually does each day to get to the moment.
10:59 am: “Realize when you find something interesting & ask, ‘how can I share that?”

11:00 am: Garron getting animated.
11:02 am: “I want my website to reflect me in a way I’m proud of. I want to be proud to share my site because it reflects who I am.”
11:06 am: “Take a look at your online presence. If it does not reflect YOU and how you connect with clients, you will not be as succesful in your online marketing efforts.”
11:08 am: “Utilize supportive tools. Understand your community & use tools that work.”
I want more on “the moment” concept from @garrons
Creating A Successful Real Estate Hub By @tyr
“Your real estate business comes from your ‘sphere’ and yet most tools are direct to consumer and doesn’t play to your existing skills.”

11:14 am: The agent business cycle.
11:17 am: “Tools fall into 3 areas, lead generation, client management & sphere building.”
11:18 am: Building your sphere: Facebook, Twitter, Blog
11:21 am: Keys to Facebook success: 1. Super easy. 2. Awesome referral marketing tool. 3. Focus on status updates.
11:23 am: 365 Things To Do In Vancouver, WA is a great example of a Facebook fan page that has impact in increasing sphere of influence. Created by @dalechumbley
11:25 am: Facebook tracks the “influence” and interaction on your fan page. The greater the level of interection, the more Facebook promotes the page.
11:27 am: “You need to have a solid hub for your social media activities, a place to lead people to.”
11:28 am: “A blog is just a series of emails to the world.”
11:29 am: Lead generation has to happen from your hub. The first step is having a hub you’re proud to show off.
11:30 am: “Your hub has to have dynamic content. The content must change!”
11:31 am: “Your hub must have home search.”
11:32 am: “You really need to be able to prospect against the database you create.”
11:33 am: CRM –> Conversion
CRM Keys
11:36 am: 1. Get them into the CRM! 2. Observe activity and track behavior. 3. Know when to ask for business, understand the trigger.
11:37 am: “Most important: make your blog the hub of your agent business cycle.”

11:52 am: Dale Chumbley & John Payson close the morning w/ a discussion of their strategies.
Afternoon Breakout Sessions
1:17 pm: mugtug.com <– had not heard of this one. @1000wattjoel is detailing apps that help you move to the cloud. This one is an online photo editor.
1:19 pm: blacktonic.com allows you to tell a story with your slides. Entirely web-based.

1:22 pm: Joel Burslem presents the cloud.
1:24 pm: notableapp.com is mostly designed for websites, but will work for any document or image to notate changes you’d like made to the document. Entirely browser-based.
1:30 pm: @1000wattjoel thinks mailchimp.com is the best email marketing site.
1:33 pm: squarespace.com is being discussed, but it’s “cool” features have been replicated in themes like Headway for WordPress. It has lost it’s luster for me.
1:36 pm: Note to self: take a look at kissinsights.com
Lifestyle Branding: Why It Matters by @bhgre_wendy
Shifting gears. Wendy will be focusing on strategy. Pointing out the differences between traditional and lifestyle branding. This is a shift away from commodity features to values and aspirations and vehicles for self expression.

1:47 pm: Wendy Forsythe
1:48 pm: “Informed consumers & pervasive technology = consumers in control.”
1:49 pm: There are 73 million echo boomers… the next generation of agents and consumers driving change.
1:51 pm: “The traditional business model of real estate is old fashioned & broken.”
1:53 pm: How do we fix the model?
1:55 pm: “RE brands were built on ego & status quo.This won’t work going forward.”
1:57 pm: “Leave the past behind.” The focus needs to move to value, quality, design, innovation and relationship. Relationship is the glue that holds it all together.
2:00 pm: “C-Level Life – Complete Consumer Control” What does today’s consumer want? Simplicity, speed, scrutiny, customization, innovation, freedom, entertainment, collaboration, transparency.
2:01 pm: “Brand interaction is a dialogue -requires integrity, authenticity, performance.”
2:07 pm: “One of the mistakes we make in building our brand is being to generic.”
2:15 pm: @bhgre_wendy is using @tboard & @locoheather’s blogs to illustrate community focus.
2:17 pm: Recommendations: 1. Focus your branding on neighborhoods and communities. 2. Focus your branding on lifestyle.
Traditional branding is out. Lifestyle branding is in.
Why Your Name Matters Most – @barryhurd
“We’re all Big Foot to people searching for us online.” They’ve never seen us, all they can learn about us must be pieced together from what they find online. What will they find?
2:42 pm: “48% of searches on Google are based on names.”
2:45 pm: “If I know people are searching for me, I may as well manage my appearance.”

2:51 pm: Barry Hurd
2:55 pm: Interesting ideas about putting ads for yourself on searches for your name. I’ve never looked at the ads associated with my name results on Google.
2:57 pm: “One reason why tweeting matters: it occupies search results quickly.”
2:58 pm: Video matters for the same reasons, especially on YouTube.
3:03 pm: Showing Webmynd’s Firefox plugin to move Google ads out of the way to get quick snapshots of someone your searching for information on.
3:07 pm: www.SocialMention.com allows the export of search results to an RSS feed and excel spreadsheet.
3:09 pm: Note to self: take a look at addictomatic.com
Barry’s presentation is available at slideshare.net/123socialmedia
Implementation Without Procrastination, Frustration or Complication by @darinpersinger
Darin is discussing the fears that keep us from making a choice and moving forward. Began his discussion with the MIT Door Study on fear of loss.

3:30 pm: Darin Persinger
3:34 pm: Encouraging action –> “You’re already ready.”
3:36 pm: rescuetime.com monitors how much time you spend on web sites and shuts them off to you if you’ve exceeded preset limits.
3:37 pm: Identify and focus: “What is the one thing that I will start doing tomorrow morning.”
3:38 pm: Motivation: “Is this something I really want to do?”
3:39 pm: Focus: eliminate, delegate, don’t complicha
3:45 pm: Implement: hesitation is a productivity killer. “Just do it.”
The Future Of The Real Estate Brokerage

4:19 pm: Great conversation:

We need to build a “don’t include link” option into the app. There are times I want to generate the content and tweet, but don’t need to continually lead back to this post.
I love these live blogs you do Jeff… thanks for taking the time