SMMCamp 6 – Mobile Marketing for Real Estate was a huge success. Over 1,200 real estate professionals attended the three hour webinar featuring 6 real estate mobile marketers. My deepest thanks to all the presenters and attendees for making it the best real estate social media event.

Here’s a short recap with the promised links and downloads. I’ve also attached a link to each presenter’s Facebook profile or website so please LIKE his or her page and leave a comment or question.

You should also go to www.facebook.com/smmcamp and look at the comments. There are many, many more resources and links on the fan page.

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Owlio Real Estate Platform – The Owlio real estate platform is a marketing and referral platform for real estate professionals. You can open a free account at www.owlio.com or you can upgrade your account at www.owlio.com/pro and get the entire Social Media marketing course as a bonus (worth $497).

This offer is good for a few more days for SMMCamp attendees.

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Session 1 – Mobile Marketing 2011 – Ross Hair

Download – The Mobile Marketing for Real Estate Guide.

The Mobile Marketing for Real Estate Guide will give you an overview of the mobile market and how you can use mobile devices like your smartphone to buy and sell real estate.

Check back in at www.facebook.com/smmcamp for updates to the guide.

Session 2 – Essential Smart Phone Devices and Apps – Chris Smith akaThe Tech Savvy Agent

Download – Chris offered a copy of his presentation to anyone who LIKED his fan page and posted a comment with a reference to SMMCamp.

Here’s a short cut straight to the presentation slides.

Session 3 – Power Panel Discussion

Shooting Video with your iPhone – Sharon McNamara

You can see the exact videos that Sharon takes and publishes at www.bostonconnect.com 

QR Codes for Real Estate – Mike Bowler

Here’s Mike’s QR code plus if you want the 25 ways to use QR and the 90 day test drive on clikbrix you need to email direct mike@mikebowler.com with PRE1122 in subject line.

Mobile Real Estate Search – Drew Burks

LIKE Drew’s page as he always has great tips and advice.

You should also take a look at his website at www.webrealestatetools.com

Your Own iPhone Real Estate Search App and QR Codes – Chuck Marunde

Here’s the link to download Chuck’s eBook.

Chuck also provided the details on how to get your own real estate search app but you need to go to his blog at http://www.sequim-real-estate-blog.com/ to get the details.

Session 3 – Mobile Marketing System  – Jonathan Rivera aka The Real-Tech Guy

Jonathan shared his Mobile Marketing system at www.mobilemarketingforrealestate.com

You should also LIKE his Official Real Estate Referral Group and look for referrals in your area.

As part of my mobile education I created a QR code for Social Media Marketing Camp 6 – Mobile Marketing.

To view the code you need to download a QR Code reader app to your phone and take a picture of the code. The QR code reader will render the image into the marketing material for SMMCamp.

One of the most effective ways to use real estate video to engage your clients is to create a neighborhood real estate video.

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Register for SMMCamp 6 Mobile Marketing for Real Estate on Dec 9  ===>>>

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The goal of the video is to capture the look and vibe of the neighborhood (and position you as the local real estate expert). Take your audience on a virtual tour and capture the best and most iconic local features. Pay special attention to the style and architecture of homes in the neighborhood.

One company that has really incorporated real estate video into their marketing is Nest Realty in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Not surprisingly Nest Realty was received the 2009 Inman Most Innovative Brokerage award.

Nest has produced quality videos for the town and each local neighborhood. The videos are short (between one and four minutes) and really reflect the feel and flavor of the community.

Nest has produced a high quality product but you can produce your own professional looking video using an inexpensive camera and even an iPhone. The key is that if you can’t afford a professional production then make the video a little more personal and really inject your personality.

A couple of power tips:

You can shoot a video with a Flip camera. It’s very low tech and includes very basic editing software. I recommend that you shoot very short clips of up to 5 seconds and simply splice them together using the Flip software loaded on your laptop (Flip makes it easy).

Blend your brand into the video through “product placement”. Make sure you record a scene with your listing sign in the yard.

Upload your video to YouTube and don’t take short cuts when it comes to adding the right title, keywords, tags and description. You can also add your video to WellcomeMat and use their tools to spruce up the presentation.

Don’t forget that the purpose of the video is show case you as the local real estate expert. Make sure that you look credible, knowledgeable and professional if you introduce, narrate or appear in the video.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is bald and a huge fan of real estate social media.

On Day 5 I basically took the day off to finish promoting Social Media Marketing Camp (SMM Camp) but still made some progress.

First I interviewed Mimi Bell, the organizer of the Art Walk and asked her how she expected the community site to help the community. Here’s what she said:

Then I quickly popped over to the site and was really surprised to see how many people had become fans.

Remember I only told a few people about the site so I’m thrilled to see it grow by itself.

Take a look at some of the comments. I hope this kind of participation continues as it adds tremendous value to the site.

Results from Day 4 of my quest to use real estate social media to build a local community on Facebook that I can later leverage to drive more real estate business.

You can view Day 1, 2 and 3 at www.smmcamp.com/blog

Day 4 was a slow day for me as I took time off to produce promotional cards to give to business owners to distribute to their customers.

I went to Office Depot to print the promotional cards. They had a special of just $4.95 for 50 cards or $39.95 for 500 cards. The card is basically just a business card with the web address. I also bought little heart stickers from Target for about $7 for a few hundred stickers. 

The goal is to have business owners distribute the cards to their customers. I expect that the site will go viral in a short period of time as people join and start to tell their friends.

One interesting point is that I’ve already run into a little opposition. Not everyone is thrilled about the site. The main reason is that there’s already an official site that has been endorsed by the local business association. Unfortunately it’s growing very slowly and I’ll quickly overtake their membership numbers.

One of the first posts on my fan page was by the business association encouraging people to join “their” site. I don’t know about your town but this little town is very political and everyone has an opinion about everything. I deliberately didn’t consult the local business association as I don’t want to build the site and make decisions “by committee”.

This may or may not be a mistake – time will tell.

Now all I need to do is co-opt a few more community leaders into promoting the site and I’ll be ready to open it to the public in a few days.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is bald, a fan of real estate social media and a wicked genius with a Flip camera.

More results from Day 3 of my quest to use real estate social media to build a local community on Facebook that I can later leverage to drive more real estate business.

I finished off Day 3 by meeting with a number of local community leaders. In particular I wanted to meet with community leaders who will help me virally grow the Fan Page.  Here’s a short video of my meeting with Bert Steele, the owner of the only grocery store in town. My goal was to be allowed to distribute a small business card with the Fan Page address to shoppers as they paid for groceries at the cashier. In return I promised to promote Bert’s store on the community site. Back Scratching 101!

This is Day 3 of my quest to use real estate social media to build a local community on Facebook that I can later leverage to drive more real estate business.

On Day 1 I set up a Fan Page on Facebook for my home town of Niwot Colorado.

Day 2 I added content, video and photos to the Fan Page.

On Day 3 I’m going to customize the Fan Page by adding a community directory, events and I’m going to get a unique URL.

The first step is to make it easy for people to find the Fan page so I registered a unique username or URL. Basically your unique URL is a sub-directory of Facebook. As an example, my personal unique URL is www.facebook.com/rosshair.

It’s worth noting that Facebook allows you to register a unique URL for your personal profile and Fan Pages but not Groups. There’s also one little catch with Fan Pages – you need 25 fans in order to get a unique URL.

To get past this obstacle I simply sent a message to my Facebook Friends and 25 of them quickly became fans of my new Fan Page. Here’s a copy of the message:

I need a little help – I just started a local community page for my village and need to rent 25 fans. Please sign up as a fan for a few days so I can get a username for my fan page – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Niwot-Colorado/291835003898?ref=search&sid=630458847.1119697440..1

It took a couple of hours to get 25 fans but I was then able to register my unique URL. It’s www.facebook.com/niwot. That’s a great name and I’m surprised it was available.

Here’s a short video on how to register a unique URL:

Next I wanted to add a community directory and a few local events. To do this I needed to download two Applications from the Facebook Applications home page. To find applications go to the bottom left footer of your profile page or www.facebook.com/applications.

First I downloaded an Application called Static FBML. This application allows me to create custom pages within the Fan Page. You can find the application by typing in the keywords “Static FBML” in the search applications box.

I added the Static FBML application to my Fan Page and used it to create a new tab and page called Community Directory. Here’s a snapshot of the Community Directory page:

The second Application I downloaded was the Events Application. This application was developed by Facebook and is extremely powerful.

I then added a number of events on the local community calendar. Again I basically “borrowed” the copy from the town’s official website.

Here’s an event I set up for the monthly Art Walk. It’s held on the first Friday of the month and features local artists, craftsmen and designers.

I mentioned earlier that the event application was a very powerful application. This is because you can mass invite people to attend an event. You’re not limited to just your friends on Facebook. You can also import a contact list and Facebook will send an invite to the event on your behalf.

The reason I love this feature is because I can co-opt local business owners and ask them to invite their customers to the event. This is one way to get the site to go viral.

That’s it for day 3. I’m pretty pleased with the progress as I now have a fully loaded Fan Page that has a great unique URL and has been seeded with content.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is bald, a huge fan of real estate social media and the founder of Social Media Marketing Camp (SMM Camp).

This is Day 2 of my quest to use real estate social media to build a local community on Facebook that I can later leverage to drive more real estate business.

One Day 1 I set up the Niwot Fan Page on Facebook. One of the main features of the page is video so I decided to use video to promote the Fan Page and encourage the local community to join and participate in the site. Every visitor to the site is encouraged to submit a 12 second video about “Why I Love Niwot…” At the end of each week I’ll award a prize to the best videos. The prizes will all be donated by local business owners and are each worth about $25.

Here’s the sample video that I shot: