Foursquare | Writing on Life

June 28, 2010 in Making it Count, Social Media, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, business, facebook, features, foursquare, mashable, twitter by Erica Swallow View Comments

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Over the past two years, real estate professionals have found creative ways to overcome the real estate crisis, including finding innovative uses for social media. After facing drops in home sales well into 2010, real estate pros have been forced to utilize their offline skills in an increasingly social way online. By using photo and video sharing to enhance listings, along with professional networking sites to hone their sales skills, real estate veterans have made strides in moving inventory in tough times.

Agents, brokers and realtors have found successes in lead generation, sales and brand building through use of mass audience social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Meetup, and LinkedIn, as well as real estate specific platforms, like Trulia, Zillow, WellcomeMat and Architizer.

Whether they are sharing videos, listings or advice with their communities and prospective buyers or sellers, real estate pros are making progress in using social media for real results.

Attracting Buyers and Sellers

The core goal of real estate pros utilizing social media is to attract sellers looking to list their homes or buyers looking to purchase homes. Naturally, the 1.0 version of social media for real estate is setting up pages on social networks that fit your company’s content and audience.

Corcoran Group, the largest residential real estate firm in New York City, is a fitting example of how real estate agencies are going above and beyond to make themselves available for buyers and sellers. Corcoran differentiates itself by simply being available and open. The “Do More” tab on their Facebook page says it all — you can find them on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare, and Gowalla, among other sites. And if you need more, you can download their iPhone app, where you can find nearby homes for sale or rent and open houses. The app also promotes their Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages. If you dig a little deeper, you can also find Corcoran on Tumblr, Blip.tv and Vimeo. Simply put, Corcoran has found a way to be everywhere for its clients. This is the first step to converting fans and followers into buyers and sellers.

Matthew Shadbolt, Director of Internet Marketing at The Corcoran Group, filled me in on Corcoran's social media strategy. As a lifestyle brand, Corcoran doesn't simply create a presence, they participate in it. For example, the Corcoran YouTube channel features CEO Pam Liebman answering questions posed by Facebook and Twitter followers regarding the state of the housing market and New York living tips. Furthermore, Shadbolt proactively leaves local neighborhood tips on Foursquare and Gowalla for users to find. He notes,

“We have created and implemented a comprehensive mobile marketing strategy of leaving tips around New York based on the huge wealth of local neighborhood knowledge which we specialize in at Corcoran. Our brand premise of communicating what it’s like to actually live in a neighborhood and what living in NYC is like ‘beyond the four walls of your apartment’ is a key driver behind this approach.”

Shadbolt went on to explain that revenue from social media had been substantial:

“The main thing we’ve seen is that the quality of the referral traffic back into our main website has significantly increased. Not only are we seeing more traffic coming in, but visitors coming in from social media sites are staying longer and looking at more things — something we had also seen with search engines but not in such large numbers. We have generated business through both Facebook and Twitter, primarily on the rentals side. People engaging with us directly on Facebook in particular has been increasing significantly over the past two months.”

Another company that seems to be doing well with attracting customers is ApartmentHomeLiving.com, an apartment lifestyle guide and apartment finder. Their Facebook page is full of requests for apartments, which they promptly respond to with listings and ideas. They even have an admirable YouTube presence, with 1,600 videos, totaling over 113,000 views in the past year.

Sharing Listings, Tours, and Showings

In the real estate world, listings, open houses and tours are the main stepping stones towards making a sale, and the digital world has made those steps much easier.

Corcoran, for example, recently created a Twitter account, strictly for new listings, to accommodate demand. Meanwhile, the main Corcoran Twitter account stays fresh with local and industry news.

WellcomeMat, the largest community of real estate professionals, brokerages and filmmakers using full-motion real estate video tours to market themselves and properties, has made producing and sharing video property tours easier, as well. With a community of 18,000 real estate professionals, WellcomeMat serves real estate agencies, brokerages and firms of all sizes, and also partners with and powers video for some of the nations top real estate brokerages including Halstead, Weichert and Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The service offers over 3,000 local production teams for those who don’t have videographers on staff, and also allows for easy integration with your website and YouTube channel. Users can also take advantage of automated link distribution into Facebook, Twitter and Craigslist, and the advanced reporting tools offered.

Phil Thomas Di Giulio, Co-Founder of WellcomeMat, explained in depth how real estate pros are using the full-service video platform to make an impact on their bottom lines:

“The majority of the videos being uploaded to WellcomeMat involve property tours, neighborhood profiles, brokerage information and updates, or agency advertisements. The common identifier with each of the videos is their ability to engage and capture the imagination of the viewer online while delivering quality information about a property, place, person or town.
“Video enables agents and brokerages to share this local knowledge and connect with consumers in a whole new way. This is very important because consumers are more likely to work with an agent [or brokerage] who displays superior knowledge about the local area which they represent.”

After generating a lead, there are many options for scheduling, but one of the newest and easiest-to-use services is Tungle.me, a service that promises to mitigate “double bookings, time zone mishaps, or email ping pong.”

Drew Burks, 2008 San Diego Real Estate Broker of the Year, uses Tungle.me to schedule company meetings with his agents, new Realtor recruitment meetings, and to schedule showings on his listings. Burks elaborated on how his brokerage is continuing to experiment with the service:

“I believe [Tungle.me] will increase our agent showings, because there won’t be the missed calls and confusion over showing times, especially when the seller doesn’t allow us to use a lockbox on their property [where a spare key may be stored]. This technology is proving to be much more effective than scheduling appointments and showings via the telephone.”

Lending Expert Advice

While an occasional listing may be appreciated by your social media community, many experts advocate engaging your audience with industry knowledge and an expert perspective, rather than alienating users with useless information. Because there are so many factors that must align to make a listing pertinent to a single customer, such as pricing, location and size, there is a high probability that most listings do not pertain to most people in a given social media audience.

James Kimmons, real estate business expert on About.com, advises real estate pros to refrain from overwhelming their followers and connections with real estate listings. He advises,

“Promote you, your business, and your expertise in your local area real estate market. Do it with market commentary, education and statistics. Link out to your IDX search page, because a lot of your visitors will want to look at listings at some point, just not your listing du jour.”

There are many sites with specialized sections for real estate professionals to lend their expertise, such as Trulia Voices and Zillow Advice. Both sites are frequented by prospective home buyers, on the search for answer about topics ranging from pricing and relocating to financing and closing. A typical question on either site will yield quite a few answers from agents or brokers specializing in a specific geographic region or area of real estate. This type of interaction with folks on the market is a great way to build a credible reputation and build brand recognition for future consideration.

YouTube also presents a valid platform for sharing real estate tips. For example, Keller Williams Realty International, a real estate franchise company, maintains a YouTube channel full of videos on monthly real estate reports, real estate advice and current company events. Keller Williams boasts nearly 400,000 video views, 100,000 channel views and 2,000 subscribers. Those are numbers worth celebrating.

If you are a real estate professional, keep an eye out ways you to showcase your expertise and local knowledge. You should start to see an increase in interaction, as you provide useful, relevant information to others.

Connecting with Other Real Estate Professionals

In order to improve upon their skills and network in the industry, real estate professionals are using social networks specific to their industry. Some of these networks include ActiveRain and The Flipping Pad.

Although it is in beta testing, Architizer is the largest crowd-sourced database of architecture online, with over 10,000 finished and proposed projects posted from fans, owners and architects that are easily searchable. The site provides a networking space for real estate developers and architects, where developers can search for architects and architects can upload their projects. This type of social network is allowing developers to get a better grasp of the talent options on the market, while also giving architects a better chance at being discovered.

CEO and Co-Founder Marc Kushner, also an architect, explains that, “The old model revolved around magazines, in which architects had to make it into certain issues. So, say that that a developer picks up the November issue of a certain architecture magazine. The only way that the architect would have the chance of being discovered by the developer was if he happened to be in that November issue.” Architizer simplifies the connecting process by bringing architects and developers together in one place.

More well-known social networks, including Meetup, Flickr and LinkedIn are provided spaces for real estates pros to connect and learn from one another. Some examples of active Meetup groups include Chicago Real Estate Group and New Jersey Real Estate Social Network. Both Meetups are ranked highly and have received favorable feedback from attendees. For example, Loan Officer Lorna Roberts, said that the New Jersey Real Estate Social Network Meetup, is an “excellent way to network and learn more about what is affecting the community and businesses.” For more information on how to get a real estate Meetup started in your community, check out our tips on organizing a successful Meetup.

Other group settings on social networks, such as the National Association of REALTORS on LinkedIn, or the Photography for Real Estate group on Flickr, are great places to connect with specialized professionals in the real estate industry.

From connecting with buyers and sellers to networking with industry peers and lending expert advice, there are many ways to utilize social media as a real estate professional. What are your tips for using social media in the real estate industry?

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Graffizone

Reviews: Craigslist, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Gowalla, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Tungle, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, iStockphoto, video

More About: apartmenthomeliving.com, architizer, blip.tv, business, facebook, flickr, iphone app, lead generation, linkedin, meetup, real estate, real results, social media, trulia, twitter, Vimeo, youtube, zillow

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Tags: apartmenthomeliving.com, architizer, blip.tv, flickr, iphone app, lead generation, linkedin, meetup, real estate, real results, trulia, Vimeo, youtube, zillow

7 Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare

June 27, 2010 in Making it Count, News, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, foursquare, twitter by Delicious hotlist View Comments

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Tags: crowdsourcing, geolocation, journalism, location, media, social, socialmedia

What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location

June 27, 2010 in Making it Count, Social Media, Top Stories, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, features, foursquare, twitter by Jennifer Van Grove View Comments

Despite the bungled launch and short hiatus, Twitter Places is back in action. The feature has huge implications for the geo-location space and the location-sharing movement.

Places is a big improvement on Twitter’s previous geo-location offering, which was never widely adopted or embraced by the majority of users. Whereas before users had to adjust their settings and agree to posting every single tweet with their geo-coordinates, now Twitterers are presented with an elegant way to attach a place to their tweet, one tweet at a time.

Right now Places is a Twitter web and mobile experience only, but soon developers will integrate the Places API into their applications and services. Only then will we see Twitter Places reach its full potential. If Twitter can fix the issues crippling the service, then Places has the power to turn location-sharing into a mainstream behavior and significantly boost interest in applications like Foursquare — not to mention the monetization potential of location-based ads.

1. Location-Sharing to Become Mainstream

As trendy and hip as Foursquare may be, it’s still only reaching a small subset of the online population. While Facebook — due to its size and reach — is the most mainstream of the social networks, Twitter might have the best chance at making location-sharing a common behavior.

Twitter is still the primary purveyor of real-time information and news, and location needs real-time visibility to thrive. Location-sharing amongst friends is certainly well suited for Facebook’s purposes, but the value of location supersedes knowing where your friends are.

Just two years ago, Twitter and its 140-character updates seemed silly, if not absurd. Now everyone from all walks of life including athletes, politicians, celebrities and media are tweeting. Location-sharing — via applications that use geo-location to tie locations to places for the purpose of letting users broadcast where they are — is prime for a breakout moment. Twitter can help take it there.

The tweet has proved to be a powerful and revolutionary way to communicate and spread information. Add location, in the form of places, to these messages and we could see a surge of interest.

Places add context to tweets, which means that breaking news — whether it be related to a natural disaster, event, conference or other situation unfolding in real-time — flowing out in the form of tweets can be localized for further value. It’s this context that will finally help location-sharing holdouts understand why location matters and how they could benefit.

2. Boost Interest in Geo-location Apps

As it stands, Twitter is not a threat to location-based social games like Foursquare and Gowalla. In fact, it’s a complementary service that will positively impact user uptake.

Given that Places integrates with both services, users of Foursquare and Gowalla have double the incentive to continue updating their friends on their whereabouts. Checkins from either service are tied to places on Twitter, which means those updates get sucked into the Twitter Place feeds/streams.

Checkins will also have broader reach on Twitter via the Twitter Place page, which means more exposure for Foursquare and Gowalla. More exposure will translate into more users who checkin more often, and so on, and so forth.

Plus, as location-sharing becomes more accepted, users will begin to appreciate the added values that Gowalla and Foursquare bring to the table. Saving money — whether that be at Starbucks, Domino’s or Sports Authority — is something that never gets old.

3. Promoted Places

With Places, Twitter has an opportunity to serve up highly targeted advertisements in the form of Promoted Tweets.

Ads could appear atop the Places tweet stream — a.k.a. search results for tweets at a particular place — and engage Twitter users with specific messages about a locale. Obviously this a feature that brands like Starbucks — an early Promoted Tweets user and Foursquare early adopter — could use for store-specific promotions or messages. Perhaps there’s even a “Promoted Places” product brewing that will function similarly to the new Promoted Trends feature.

“Promoted Places” may just be a projection at this point, but we are quite certain that Twitter’s current fixation on advertising revenue will extend to Places.

[img credits: MariShelbey and courtesy of iStockphoto, jorgeantonio]

More Location Resources From Mashable:

- What the Future Holds for the Checkin
- 3 Key Location Trends for Moms
- Are Location-Based Services All Hype?
- 7 Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare
- Why Hasn’t Location Reached the Mainstream Yet?

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, iStockphoto

More About: foursquare, geolocation, gowalla, twitter, twitter places

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Tags: geolocation, gowalla, Opinion, twitter places

5 Cool Non-Profit Uses of Location-Based Tech

June 25, 2010 in Making it Count, Mobile 2.0, Social Media, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, features, foursquare by Geoff Livingston View Comments

Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.

The continuing evolution of location-based social networking has yielded creative solutions for advocacy, fundraising and crisis response. With the increased competition among services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Whrrl, non-profits are innovating even further.

Here are five cool uses of location-based technology for non-profit purposes.

1. Get the Jimi Hendrix Location Experience

Imagine doing more than just going to a Jimi Hendrix rock museum. Imagine walking where the legend has been, and reliving his “Purple Haze” history. That’s exactly what Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project is seeking to do with Whrrl.

Whrrl is bringing over 125 stories at over 100 places to six cities around the nation, with more to come. The Jimi Hendrix experience is just one among the many music-themed societies on Whrrl. They include the Grunge, Prince, San Francisco Psychedelic Rock, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bruce Springsteen and Max’s Kansas City societies. In all, more than 100 music venues are featured across the country.

2. Beyond Fundraising

Earlier this week, Larry King held a fundraiser to benefit the Gulf Coast, raising more than $1.7 million. But the effort was more than a simple TV program with phone banks. It also include location-based advocacy. Gowalla created a custom Larry King Live: Help the Gulf Pin for users’ passports.

To get the pin, users had to check-in at any spot in the “Park or Nature” category by Monday, June 21st. In addition to the pin, Gowalla provided a tip from one of the three organizations involved in the telethon — the National Wildlife Federation, United Way, and The Nature Conservancy — about how to support the people, wildlife and environment being affected by the spill. More than 9,000 people received the Larry King pin in three days and the message to watch the Larry King Live telethon (combined with a tip on how to help) was viewed over 22,000 times.

3. Advertising Call to Action for Advocacy

Playing to an already Foursquare friendly BART community, Earth Justice recently launched an ad campaign at Bay Area Rapid Transit stations for oil spill advocacy. The Earth Justice campaign was a direct reaction to the Deep Horizon accident. When riders check-in to the Earth Justice ad, a company donor provided $10 to the cause.

Earth Justice is seeking to use the money to fight unsafe oil drilling. The ads told riders “Use your cell phone to drill the oil industry.” The effort targeted younger audiences who don’t usually respond to ads.

4. LIVESTRONG Bracelets and Donations

LIVESTRONG and Gowalla now have a $1 badge program which was launched at the South By Southwest festival. By picking up and vaulting one of these, there will be a $1 donation made to the LiveStrong Foundation.

During the launch, everyone who checked-in at the Gowalla Tiki Room party during SXSW got a virtual LIVESTRONG bracelet item. When attendees added the bracelet to their collection, Gowalla donated $1 per bracelet to LIVESTRONG. LIVESTRONG also had a table at the party and free Gowalla t-shirts were given out for every in-person donation.

If you are a die-hard fan, you can track LIVESTRONG as a friend on Gowalla. LIVESTRONG is also promoting its Challenge series of events on the location-based network.

5. The Mass Celebration

Nothing is more precious than the annual rite of Spring known as college graduation. Throughout America, family and friends gather for the passing of the diploma to the graduate and the post-graduate. St. Edwards University took it a step further this past May with the mass checkin graduation.

More than 180 students checked-in using Whrrl so they could upload photos and share their experiences. The graduation, achievements, congrats and photos were threaded into one Whrrl story to pass on to absent friends and family.

More Non-Profit Resources From Mashable:

- How Non-Profits Should Approach Making iPhone Apps
- Are Social Media Giving Contests Good for Non-Profits?
- HOW TO: Turn Slacktivists into Activists with Social Media
- 5 Ways Mega Charity Events Can Harness the Power of Social Media
- 5 Ways Non-Profits Can Increase Engagement With YouTube

Reviews: Foursquare, Gowalla

More About: foursquare, gowalla, List, Lists, location, location-based, Mobile 2.0, mobile apps, non-profit, social good, social media, whrrl

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Tags: gowalla, List, Lists, location, location-based, mobile apps, Mobile Lists, non-profit, social good, whrrl

New Foursquare App Helps You Avoid Foes and Exes

June 24, 2010 in Making it Count, Mobile 2.0, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, facebook, foursquare, mashable, pop culture by Brenna Ehrlich View Comments

It’s something everyone dreads upon breaking up or having a falling out with a friend: the inevitable run-in. You’re out on the town and then BAM, a night can be ruined by a former friend’s face. Well, now you can circumvent all that heartache with a clever new web app that’s basically the anti-Foursquare: Avoidr.

According to New York Magazine’s Daily Intel, Avoidr was created by San Francisco–based technologist Jesper Andersen after seeing a bunch of his friends go through breakups.

Basically, the app works as a plugin for your Foursquare account (much like apps like Assisted Serendipity, but even more simple). You can label your Foursquare friends with a variety of colorful terms, and then choose to hit “Avoid.” Clicking on “Places to Avoid” will yield a list of venues at which your foes are currently present. Unfortunately, it appears as though this is only a web-based app. It would be much more useful if it e-mailed or pinged you alerts, like the aforementioned Assisted Serendipity.

Check out what it looks like below. I added Mashable Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow to my Avoid list — which is totally a joke, everyone. I’m sitting three feet away from him.

This isn’t the first app that’s acted as a kind of foil to social media — Please Rob Me functioned in a similar way, allowing one to scan a plethora of user checkins. And then there was Seppukoo, which allowed one to kill his Facebook profile.

Still, Andersen isn’t against Foursquare per se — just the awkward situations social networks present (i.e. unfriending someone is kind of a slap in the face). So if you’ve just split with a tech-savvy beau, you might want to check out Avoidr, so as to avoid a run-in via checkin.

image courtesy of iStockphoto, Zhenikeyev

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, iStockphoto

More About: App, avoidr, facebook, foursquare, humor, Mobile 2.0, pop culture, software

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Tags: App, avoidr, humor, software

FourWhere Adds Yelp and Gowalla Support

June 22, 2010 in Channels, Making it Count, News, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, foursquare by Christina Warren View Comments

The Foursquare-Google Maps mashup FourWhere has just added support for Gowalla and Yelp. The data from the three services is then displayed on a Google Map.

While this in and of itself could be helpful and cool — especially for finding additional information or reviews about a location — Sysomos (the company that created FourWhere) has also used intelligent matching to combine similar venues. So if a location appears as one name on one service and under a slightly different name on another, FourWhere will merge them into one entry.

That technology doesn’t work reliably 100% of the time (I was able to see additional Foursquare entries for the same restaurant, even though the addresses were the same), but a certain amount of that is due to duplication issues on the part of the location services.

The site itself remains highly usable and this is a great resource for people looking to find more information about a venue, without needing to log in or belong to all of the different location-based services. It would be really cool if there was a mobile or tablet-based version of FourWhere, although we understand that might be difficult from a development standpoint.

What do you think of location-based mashup services like FourWhere?