Name: Lara Phillips
Title: e-Commerce Manager
Company: Rubloff Residential Properties

Q: We hear that you have truly raised the bar with Rubloff’s Web 2.0 and social networking initiatives. Can you give me some examples of ways that you have helped with these?
A: Sure. Since I’ve started with Rubloff we have about 37 blogs out there and about 65 active bloggers. We also make sure that everybody who joins the company is committed to having a profile on Facebook and LinkedIn. We have company pages on both of those profiles and we are working on a twitter account right now. We have two YouTube channels, one for general videos for everybody to share and then one that we created for a Rubloff training program that John D’Ambrogio and I have developed in which we will be creating videos of little tips and tricks for web 2.0. For example, whether it be uploading a photo to Facebook or uploading a YouTube video to their agent website, we will have short, two minute videos that we record and we post to the Rubloff training channel on YouTube and then we send them out as weekly web 2.0 e-tips that they can then go and watch. We also have about 15 more individual agent websites since I started. We are actually launching a new program around these soon and our hope is to get about 20 more agents to sign up.

Q: Do you do trainings with the agents when they sign up for Individual Websites? Are you the go to person for them?
A: Yes, I am the go to person. I have started doing three trainings a month; one on Individual Agent websites, one on blogging and then one on a varying Web 2.0 topic. For example, last month it covered Facebook and this month it’s LinkedIn. Eventually, going forward we are going to have beginner and advanced classes and we’re actually going to have Active Website participate in some of the webinars for the advanced users. We also do some training on blogging – some successful bloggers that we have out there, we are actually pulling them in to have them part of the trainings as well.

Q: Have your classes been successful? Do you have a lot of interest from your agents or is it mandatory for them to attend?
A: The people who already have individual websites with us get the first invites so they get first dibs on every training. I’ll send out the invite to them and then wait a day or two before I send it out to everyone else. Usually right now, because we don’t have the space, it is limited to about 20 people per class. We do have another office that is interested in starting to do this at their office as well but for now, each month I go to a different office to hold the trainings. Our goal is to hopefully eliminate some of it with the video program we are starting because they will be able to go and watch the two minute videos on our YouTube channel and get those training materials there. On our channel they could type in “how to upload a photo to Facebook” and hopefully our video will come up.

We also are, strategically on the back end, doing everything we can for SEO purposes by capitalizing on the terms that we want. We pay special attention to keyword on all of our videos and anything else that we send out such as photos and links. Everything is coded in what words we want to capitalize on.

Q: When you’re helping Agents learn the technology, do you find that a lot of them have some experience or don’t have any at all? What kind of level are you starting out at?
A: The majority of them don’t have any experience at all. There is a select ten out of our 250 agents that are really advanced. The rest of them have an idea or at least we have helped them understand where the technology is going. I think having us available as a resource for them encourages them though. They come to trainings because they want to learn more and we try to help it along by sending out success stories as much as possible.

Q: We hear that you are good at simplifying complex concepts. Can you give an example of how you do that?
A: The videos are kind of new. What I have been doing is taking screenshots and making training documents. So if there is a question that comes up, for example, “How do I upload a photo to my blog?” I will just do a quick screenshot with arrows and captions that just point out how you do it. Usually I will even just paste them in the email and then make them clickable links so that they can go to the spot that they need to, to start what they are asking for. We also post everything on our intranet so that if they need the training material because they lost it in their email they can still find it. I try to post everything in as many places as possible with as few steps as possible so that everything is simple and easy to find.

Q: What kind of technology are you using to manage and improve your e-Commerce efforts?
A: Right now we’re actually in transition to get a new e-blast system because our current e-blast system doesn’t really have any metrics for us to go off of. We can get a report of how many emails we sent out and how many actually made it but as far as open rates and click-throughs, we don’t really know. We will use Google Analytics to look at our traffic and where we are performing at, where we have a chance to increase traffic. I am also sending out similar reports to agents on their individual websites so that they will be able to see their performance as well.

Q: Do the Agents like the reporting? Do you feel that it encourages them to continue to use the technology or improve their sites?
A: Yes, we just started it. Here over the next month we should be able to get more feedback. In one of my trainings that are coming up, we will be focusing on Google Analytics and how to read the reports. We might even make them more simplified down the road, so that they just include certain information, like what Active Website does for us. It would be helpful to them to get it in a table with only the most relevant information. That way it doesn’t overwhelm them. Custom reporting is eventually where I want to get to.

We have set up a survey system in Google so that after every single one of our trainings they will get the video that John D’Ambrogio and I produced on the subject along with a survey asking them how their experience was and what we could do to improve better. Then we meet together as a marketing department and look at where we can improve on.

Q: Have you heard any success stories from your agents that use e-Commerce, whether it’s the blast, blogging, Facebook, etc? Is anyone getting business based on their participation in these?
A: Absolutely!  There are several agents that get referrals off of Facebook all the time. Building relationships online whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or even Trulia has worked. Also individual agent websites – they generate leads from the contact form. Blogging has been probably the #1 thing out there that has gotten the most success and has seen the most traffic from anything. Our traffic for Rubloff.com, just from social networking and blogging, has brought us more traffic that anything that we have paid to do.