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"To be successful in the Internet era, agents need to be almost instantaneously responsive to customer inquiries," according to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff.

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Posted in MBI Advantages, Technology And You, Join Metro Brokers, Marketing, MBI Headlines, Metro Brokers Offices, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff, Real Estate Trends

photo credit: anneh632

Tips, training, updates, advice, with all of these you would think we would be adept at this website stuff, but were not. There are a lot of tinny little details we need to be aware of when marketing our business, when interacting with customers, when starting our business, when listing a property, and now we need to know about SEO. What the heck is SEO? And more importantly, why do I need to even know what it is, let along how to use it. We all have so much to do and deal with it just seems like so much to keep up with, especially with all the new social networking we need to keep up to date.

Well SEO is Search Engine Optimization, which simply means saying the right things on your website to get to the top of the search engines. Thats it! Nothing fancy, its just what you say and what you put on your website. It is a simple concept, but a lot goes into it, its an entire industry. Here is a basic rundown of what it is and how to use it.

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Posted in Education And Training, Giving Back, GenX GenY, Online Education, Metro Brokers Offices, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff

photo credit: statPaige

City Group had a pretty good bead on things to come. The housing numbers are not good. They are the lowest they have been since 1995. "The existing home sales, completed transactions including single family, town homes, condominiums, and co-ops dropped 27.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units in July from a downwardly revised 5.26 million in June, and are 25.5 percent below the 5.14 million unit level in July 2009."

We all thought the tax credit would help, but it made things worse. Lets all hope the numbers pick up quickly and the government makes it a little bit easier to hire people and kick start the economy.

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Posted in Education And Training, Giving Back, MBI Headlines, Buyer Resources, Online Education, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff

Inman Real Estate Connect, San Francisco 2010; Mr. Guest on how technology has changed the face of the real estate work flow and experience. We need to get back to the business of actually showing properties and selling real estate.

Tom Guest: My thoughts are in the old days we used to have a real state book we would open up, we go and show properties and everybody were dependent on us. What I see now is that there is so much technology out there that I am just absolutely amazed its almost like you could do a full time job with just technology and do nothing else we wouldnt have time for real estate but you would have a lot of fun going through all these applications all these programs and all those research and you go through all these broker matrixes and you will not be an expert on everything real estate because you dont have the time. So my thought is, is that...

Mark Eibner: Get an assistant?

Tom Guest: You have to have an assistant but you have to take time to actually do the business of showing properties listing properties and going out there and doing the nuts and bolts and I guess you could supplement that with transaction broker have somebody be there for you getting assistant do that for you, you have somebody who is a lead assistant have somebody who does your Internet for you but there is so much more to doing nowadays that used to be really easy the old days where you would just go out so properties everybody was dependent upon but now they are not dependent on you so its a whole new world that I am just amazed not to be kept we could do it, we would have to do in the course of the day everyone in the US like with all the technology thats available

Mark Eibner: Absolutely great.

Tom Guest: Im amazed.

Mark Eibner: Thanks Tom. Tom Guest President Elect 2011 Metro Brokers, chow.

Tom Guest: Chow

Posted in Industry Events, Technology And You, Marketing, In The News, Movers and Shakers, Industry Leadership, Giving Back, MBI Headlines, Online Education, Metro Brokers Offices, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff

Inman Real Estate Connect, San Francisco 2010; Mr. Shields discusses apps at the Inman Real Estate Connect as well as the increase of interaction from attendees.

Mark Eibner: Scott Shield Metro Brokers so what can you add to what Joe had to say?

Scott Shields: Continuing on it was all about apps and I want to say what was that one company thats going to put out the other company when their when their apps releases next week.

Second Person: Oh I dont know they were saying its going to be another Twitter thing like there is going to be a Twitter run for their money.

Third Person: Its going to replace Pulse.

Second Person: Announce whats his name Scoburg didnt.

Third Person: Yeah Scolburge didnt..

Second Person: He said Pulse is done.

Scott Shields: Yeah Pulse is done so find out next week at whats to be done?

Mark Eibner: So Scott did it change from the last time you were here, you were here about a couple of years ago?

Scott Shields: Two years ago.

Mark Eibner: And so you feel what do you feel thats different?

Scott Shields: More booths.

Mark Eibner: Smaller booths.

Scott Shields: More food.

Mark Eibner: More food I agree.

Scott Shields: Hey that was true.

Mark Eibner: More heaters too here.

Scott Shields: Yeah more involvement by the participants more attendees interaction yeah, acts through.

Mark Eibner: So most its the most questions I have ever seen asked, thats true.

Posted in Industry Events, Marketing, In The News, Movers and Shakers, Giving Back, MBI Headlines, Metro Brokers Offices, Metro Brokers Agents, Metro Brokers Staff