In the R & D phase of MultiFamily360, I came across a great article on www.apartmentinternetmarketing.com titled Brave New World Wide Web by Dr. Danielle Babb.

 

This article fired me up because it validated and advocated the website systems I've been building over the years for various apartment properties. So, I sent Dr. Babb an email explaining what I was doing and asking for her advice. My expectations were low that a person in her position would be willing or able to give me the time of day. I was pleasantly surprised when Dr. Babb promptly wrote back with some great advice for me.

 

Subsequently, I read Dr. Babb's latest book entitled Real Estate v2.0, A Professional's Guide to Dynamic Websites, Blogs, and Podcasts. Though I've been a web professional for many years, I must admit, I learned a great deal from this book about Web 2.0, marketing to Generation Y, and practical business application of blogs & podcasts.

 

In reading this book, it also became clear to me that many of the services I was offering apartment property managers were complimentary to real estate agents and brokerages. Granted, with sites like Realtor.com, Zillow.com and the like, there was already an established industry of real estate web technologies that allow people to do all sorts of analysis from their home computer. What I was seeing is the need for real estate agents to embrace and leverage all this new tech to help differentiate themselves from the crowd. In this book, Dr. Babb paints a powerful picture of the future of real estate and the painful impact technology will have on real estate agents who don't embrace the wave of new web technologies that are now becoming mainstream in the real estate industry. This book also shows the benefits for real estate agents who team up with competent web architects to implement dynamic websites for their community to interact with them on. Obviously I'm a fan of this strategy ;-)

 

Based on strong market data supporting this need, I decided to create a new service line for real estate professionals called WebRealty360. Again, based on w360, WebRealty360 is focused directly on helping real estate professionals embrace the web and build interactive online communities. One of the main goals of this new service line is to open up new, expanding markets to real estate professionals as traditional marketing approaches become less and less effective, particularly with Generation Y. With use of a built in blog, podcasting & videocasting engines, an extremely easy to use content management system (EECMS), hands on training, and ongoing support, I believe WebRealty360 is strongly positioned to deliver powerful results for real estate professionals in a single solution approach, right from their own attractive website.

 

Just as with w360 and MultiFamily360, WebRealty360 is an ongoing approach where by we come along side our clients at their understanding level and work with them to become comfortable and effective using these new fangled web technologies.

 

I'd love to hear your opinions, good and bad. Do you think it will fly? What do you think it's worth? What questions do you have?

 

Thanks for reading!