Real Estate Industry and Social Media

Another industry that has been proactively implementing social media as part of their business plan is the Real Estate (RE) industry. The Real Estate industry has found that social media is a great to connect with potential home buyers so that information can be shared with them.

Some of the examples of how the Real Estate industry has been implementing social media are:

• ActiveRain.com: ActiveRain is a Bellevue, WA based technology/media company hybrid that operates the largest and most active social network in the real estate space. In June 2006, we launched the ActiveRain Real Estate Network, a free social network and marketing platform for real estate professionals. This network helps agents to create business relationships both within the industry and with the consumer.
• Zolve.net: Zolve connects homebuyers and real estate professionals by providing a platform where real estate practitioners can demonstrate their market and neighborhood expertise by sharing the information that home buyers, sellers, and owners are looking for on the internet.
• WordPress + RE plugin: For those real estate professional who want to create a website using WordPress, a good plugin that will allow you to display your listing in WordPress is the Great Real Estate plugin. The property information and listing templates allow for consistent display of the property listings across the site. Authors do not need to format the content, they simply enter it into a form. Then you can integrate your social media networks like Twitter or Facebook into your WordPress website.

These are great ways that real estate professional can integrate social media into their online presence. Another viral way is to implement sharing videos via YouTube. Below are a couple of example of how a couple of real estate industry leaders have begun to use YouTube.

ColdwellBanker.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/coldwellbanker

HR Block
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/hrblock