Has anyone heard of the Benoit College Survey? Probably very few of you have but they produce an interesting survey on what the world looks like to their incoming freshmen, people you will be trying to sell homes to in the not so far away future. It provides a look at the cultural landmarks that shape the lives of these students entering college. It may seem far off, but these students will soon be potential buyers and they require a new way of advertising and marketing that many real estate brokerages aren’t prepared for.

As we read this survey let’s ask ourselves a few questions:

• Are we doing enough today to prepare for a generation that grew up in a wired and digital world?
• How I am going to connect with a generation that has never used a landline or pay phone?
• What is it going to take to recruit this generation into our organization?

The teenagers entering college over the next few weeks were probably born around 1990. That in mind, I am going to attempt my best David Letterman, Top 10 observations from this generation’s “mindset.” Please feel free to post your top 10. (more…)

Inman Connect 2008…what a great trip! We had five Enterprise clients join us at the conference and numerous meetings with new potential Enterprise Network Members. As always, it was well worth the trip.

After reviewing last week’s events and the impact that Inman Connect had this year, I left with the feeling that Brokers are finally starting to embrace technology! However I must include that it did take a huge market slump and all time high foreclosure rates to get them to finally let go of the old security blanket. That aside, change is in the air. 

Still, with one mountain behind us, there are always more to climb. (more…)

Podcasting is a superb way for marketers to reach highly targeted niche audiences. Active Website’s fundamental view on the future of podcasting has not altered since last year. As the medium breaks away from its progenitor, Apple Inc., podcasting is becoming a mobile technology that’s popularity continues to grow. Millions are plugging in to download audio files for listening and communicating.

According to eMarketers, “the podcast audience will continue to grow at an impressive rate into the next decade. Podcasts will reach 18 million regular subscribers in 2011, with a total potential audience that year of 55 million people.” (more…)

Surface Computing – is this technology coming to a Real Estate office near you? Microsoft has announced its release of a new, ambitious technology they call ‘surface computing.’ Check out the table computing platform at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html.

How can this technology change how we do business? Imagine you have a potential client coming from out of town and you schedule a one hour meeting at your office to see what’s available in the their price range. When they arrive you sit down at the Table PC and start pulling up property searches. As you search you can pull up endless photos and videos of multiple properties all at the same time. This is a truly a unique real estate experience and its available today! (more…)

We just returned from a training at Rubloff, one of our Enterprise Network members out of Chicago. We introduced the Active technology to over 100 powerful agents. Throughout the week, the most frequently asked questions were about the Agent Rebrandable Websites, so we wanted to address this important topic here. (more…)