Gen Blue..."Take Aways"

I just got back from the Coldwell Banker Gen Blue Conference in Las Vegas and my head is still spinning with information.  There were so many great "take aways" from this conference and the pace of technology and social media still continues to capture our industry and the world on a whole.  Because the information was so vast I will have to post several times to share with you more details of the conference.  It's too much to digest at one time.

The conference focused on our ever present changes in communicating with the world at large. First of all I'm going to have to ditch my Blackberry and go with either the Droid or the Iphone...the industry seems to be evenly split on these phones.  But to keep up with the pace of communicating with our clients, family, and the planet this is a "Must".  The other tool I recommend everyone to carry is either an Ipad or Zoom tablet...something I'm going to have to research as well. 

In addition to these tools you must have methods of communicating with the world via the Internet.  For those of you resisting "social media" my strongest recommendation is to get over it and get young fast.  Today's consumer is using Facebook and Twitter for a lot of their shopping information.  If you want to know about a good Realtor there's a good chance you will ask your friends on Facebook or Twitter.  The majority of your future clients have been on the Internet for 18 months already engaged in the home buying process via the Internet.  They are looking at You Tube videos on neighborhoods, Realtors, great homes for sale etc... They are reading blogs and they are conducting Google searches.  So where are you in the scheme of all of this?

The other great "take away" from the conference was Coldwell Banker's partnering with Google.  We are the only real estate company that can use You Tube officially on our signs.  Google is the number one search engine and it owns You Tube. As you guys know Coldwell Banker's On Location site is part of our Google partnership. We also were introduced to a ton of new applications that would take our business to the next level.

My last "take away" is video.  Check out Christophe Choo of Bevery Hills or Jessica Riffle Edwards of Wilmington North Carolina.  Both have propelled their career with Coldwell Banker using the power of video on You Tube and video blogging.  That's all for now...I'm teaching a class on Friday on some of the great tools we learned about on Google so I will share more later.  This is Michelle Amador "Taking it Under Advisement".