SXSW Interactive: 5 Sessions for Real Estate Social Media and Technology

Last week I gave you some quick notes and background on SXSW Interactive. Today we will get down to the nitty-gritty of how a conference like SXSW can help you market and sell luxury real estate.

There were lots of pie in the sky ideas presented. Think robots, artificial intelligence, travel to other planets, and drones that continually check our body’s health. The amazing thing is that a lot of these technologies are not that far off. But these things are more futurist trends and not technologies that you can utilize today.

When it comes to real estate technology and real estate social media, some practical ideas were introduced that you can do right now. We plan to implement a number of the things that I learned in the coming months at Concierge. Here are a few tid-bits from my favorite sessions in regards to real estate social media and technology.

In chronological order, with the event-related hashtag:

1. Mosh Pit of Experts 2014 – The Future of Social (#sxswmoshpit): The first session I attended got everyone pumped up. In game show style, presenters called audience members up to the stage and let them answer questions from fellow audience members. I realized quickly that everyone in the room knew their stuff. Topics included converting YouTube views, what social networks to be on, and company policies on social content. The best piece of advice for real estate social media was regarding Facebook: Don’t pay to grow fan base, but do pay to target followers with tailored ads.

2. Show ur Work – Keynote Speaker Austin Kleon (#showurwork): Austin Kleon is “a writer who draws.” His work is pictured above. He mentioned the idea of the scenius, a sort of communal knowledge that allows people to be more creative and productive when they are surrounded by like-minded and creative people. The “just”: Hire talented people and you can tap into their ideas as you work yourself.

3. Neil deGrasse Tyson (#deGrasse): This crazy-smart astrophysicist was at SXSW to promote the upcoming science education television program Cosmos. He was awesome! One thing that resonated with me from his speech was his curiosity. “Curiosity is the most important thing for a scientist or a creative. If you do not remain curious, you are going to get old really fast,” Neil said.

4. Search Marketing Meet-up (#SXSWSEO): This was an informal discussion; often times the best part of a huge conference like SXSW. We talked Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, AdWords, and all the big SEO topics. Some good pointers for real estate and search: Make sure your Google Authorship is functioning correctly; share the exact same social updates on multiple channels, starting with Google+ first; guest blog on other sites to get inbound links, but it is not necessary to have guest bloggers on your site unless they are big shots that will bring their own traffic to your site; use re-targeting ads for YouTube videos because they are cheap and work great.

5. Solo Social (#solosocial): Social media practitioners from small companies and solo social people got together to vent. Tools discussed included TweetDeck, Hootsuite, and Interns. Yes, someone mentioned Interns as a ‘tool.’ And my contribution to the discussion…Hubspot. If your company can afford it and you are willing to commit to using it long-term, Hubspot is the best lead generation and tracking software out there. Another idea that came out of this session: If you are looking for blog posts, ask your team members for bullet points instead of a blog post. They are more likely to send you bullet points, and you can write posts from their notes. In a fast-moving, virtual business like ours, it’s all about efficiency.

And I have 5 more points to come (because this is already a really long post and I have so much more to share from the conference). So, stay tuned!

Image Credit: Austin Kleon

Please comment with your thoughts on SXSW Interactive. Or click the banner below for more on real estate technology as it relates to agents and the auction process.