Duncan Wierman’s Blog

One of the newest forms of  hype information “gurus”  are  pushing is for real estate  investors to use Web 2.0 .  This basically means they want real estate investors to be marketing on social networking websites to connect with prospective clients.   The problem that many of these investors are running into, is that they are not able to effectively generate the leads, or when they do, they are not convert these interested parties into actual clients.

Yes, Web 2.0 can be used as part of a larger marketing strategy,  BUT it is not a “miracle” pill!! Web 2.0 and marketing thereupon still has some inherent factors that you must realize.  Firstly that many people who get involved,  quickly lose interest !!   There are a few things that you should avoid that will give you a much better chance of succeeding using Web 2.0.  Many of these gurus have not even figured out yet!  (It never ceases to amaze me how  small their social networks are as information gurus, yet the  pump you full of their expertise??  Would you not want to follow someone who has “mastered” marketing? )

The first thing that you must do is make sure that you commit to a schedule each and every day. You must publish your listings and pictures at the same time every day so that interested parties will know when to look. The problem with releasing this information at random times is that most people have hundreds, if not thousands, on connections on these sites. Therefore, they are receiving an overload of information every day, so they have to filter through this information and pick out the things that they are truly interested in. All it takes is for someone to miss your listings once for that person to move on to someone else, so it is well worth your time to make these posts. Also, make sure that you monitor your company on a consistent basis, as this will allow you to answer any questions that potential clients might have immediately. By actually communicating with people by using Web 2.0, you can bring your services into these peoples’ worlds, which will make you much more accessible for them.

When you are making your daily updates or posts, make sure that you provide value for your followers. If these people feel as though reading what you have to say is a complete waste of time, you will not have a whole lot of success. Even if you do not have many new listings on that particular day, you can still provide these people with information that they can use. You do not have to write a whole lot, but it will be well worth your while to provide these potential clients with some information that can help them going forward.

One statistic to remember is that if you are unable to convert people to visit your site within the first 30-days, these people probably will never become a customer of yours. People who are joining your social networking sites are likely interested in purchasing a home right now. Therefore, they are following you because they believe that you can be of service to them. Once a certain amount of time has elapsed, these people will no longer be interested or will have found someone else to give them a similar service. They will probably get tired of visiting your site as well, since they obviously do not like what you are offering.

The truth about Web 2.0 strategies is that they can work, but you must be committed to making them a useful part of your selling routine. It is not as simple as signing up for an account and inviting people to join, as you must be prepared to convert these people into sales in the same manner you would over the phone. This is not a way to put your business on auto drive, but is rather a method of connecting with your clients in a new and exciting way. By being able to instantly connect with many different people who are interested in what you have to offer, you can definitely increase your chances of success. Make sure that you are active on a daily basis on many different social networking websites, as this is how solid leads are generated online.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Web 2.0 sites should look as professional as possible. You do not want to look like someone who has never used a computer before, so it might pay to have someone help you out with the design. Also, remember that this technology should be used to build up actual leads. When someone shows interest on one of these sites, make sure you follow up in the same way you would a phone call. This is the way that an increasing number of people are expressing their interest in homes and you are selling yourself short if you do not at least follow up. This is a supporting method of providing your prospects with the information that they are looking for, so try to provide them with as much as possible and then move to the next step.

The key here is to act as professional as possible, as difficult as that might sound while using Web 2.0. Since these are social networking sites that are normally reserved for friends and family, you will have to work extra hard in order to provide these people with the professional real estate investor that they are looking for.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they think that if they just put up a few interlinked squeeze pages by a Web 3.0 company is going to bring them hundreds of leads.

Each individual has to take responsibility for their own lead generation using their Web 2.0 sites. I have seen some companies charge 1,000’s of dollars saying they have “created” miracle money pumping squeeze pages for use with Web 2.0 (or Web 3.0) that provide no such results. The fact is that these companies cannot possibly provide the daily work that needs to be done to generate leads. Honestly, ask yourself, how many leads do you convert into sales from companies such as these companies?

By being able to learn and utilize these sites efficiently will definitely put yourself ahead of the other investors in your city, as many of them have not yet figured out how to use Web 2.0. There is a very good chance that social networking will be the next big boom in advertising, so get involved today, and be at the forefront of this new method of selling homes.

There is a lot of buzz today in the computing and IT world about something that is being called “Web 3.0″.  This is supposed to be exactly what the label implies: the next generation of the Internet. The next great quantum leap forward in communications and doing business on the Internet.

We are currently residing online in Web 2.0. If “Web 1.0″ could be considered just getting the Internet up and running and working out the incredible “bugginess” of its original platforms, Web 2.0 was what we first reached at the dawn of the 21st century. Computer programmers are basically the ones who first notice any quantum leap forward in the entire fabric of Internet applications, and when they mutter “Web 2.0″ they mean an Internet with:

* enhanced communications by way of social-networking technology;

* improvements in communications and interactions between separate software applications by way of open Web standard applications for accessing and describing data;

* enhanced Web interfaces which mimic desktop applications’ real-time responsiveness inside of a browser window.

Now, say those who believe that Web 3.0 is landing on the White House lawn momentarily, we are about to see implemented a new Internet experience, one in which the Internet “gets smart” at long last and becomes much more like Artificial Intelligence (  A.I. )  This will, in part, be the “Semantic Web” that was prophesied at the close of the 20th century by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web.

The Semantic Web, said Lee, will enhance every piece of data on the Internet with related “metadata” . This would, for instance, enable currently passive computer applications to think about the data you enter and advise you. In the world with the Semantic Web, your Yahoo calendar will suggest other people who might want to come to a certain meeting that you are attending on Thursday afternoon, for instance; it will make these suggestions based upon metadata about you and then linking with other, tightly related metadata of people on the Internet. Another example of this might be Ning, which is a Web service that allows users to design and own their very own mini Facebooks.

For business applications, it’s easy to conceptualize situations where the computer can be set up to automatically cold-contact highly targeted leads–without any need for autoresponders or opt-in e-newsletter lists. Cold contacts would always be niche target and there would be no need to follow up except to close a sale. Even ongoing communications pre-sale and post-sale could be carried out by your Virtual Self.

But are we really there yet?   NO !!! And anyone who tells you otherwise is either full of it or just not all that aware of how things are. We are, at best, approaching or in “Web 2.1″.

Let’s consider trying to use that Virtual Self. Today’s leading “virtual self” software program is known as My Cyber Twin, and owned by Sydney, Australia’s Relevance Now company. With My Cyber Twin, you set up your very own virtual clone. This clone of you is supposed to mimic your personality in every way (as far as holding conversations with other, real people online), and it can be embedded in your website, into your Facebook account, on your blog, and so on. With your virtual clone at the ready, you can be away on vacation for a whole week, not even check your website’s visitors the entire time, but let others learn more about you as a person and perhaps about your professional offerings–all in a personalized, totally interactive way. It won’t be people needing to read your profile or articles or watch your videos. The idea behind MyCyber Twin is that it responds to spontaneous questions from even total strangers, and does so in a way that captures your particular way of phrasing answers as you would do in real life. Maybe your clone could even open and close sales for you–while you are skiing, taking your wife out to dinner, or just catching up on your creative literature reading.

Says Liesl Capper, co-founder and CEO of Relevance Now, “We wanted to build software clones of humans that learn about you and effectively function on your behalf. The problem with creating a chat AI is that it’s very laborious, trying to think of variations on what people will say and then creating responses. Building one has always been a labor of love that takes months, if not years. What we have built is the ability for people to make a cyber twin really quickly.”

Well, unfortunately, this positive outlook may be fact in the future–but that would be the more distant future. Perhaps by 2020. But not today. And tomorrow doesn’t look good, either. Today, it’s a sci-fi version of wishful thinking.

My Cyber Twin could take an entire day to program with pre-scripted answers that you put in your own writing in response to a wide array of possible questions from strangers drawn from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a very widely used personality assessment test. And while it’s definitely impressive as far as it goes, you won’t have created a thoroughly real simulacrum of yourself for all those efforts–although visitors who come to your website while you are inabsentia might very well learn more about you and what you offer and be more intrigued about coming back to tal to the real you than they would if they only had blogs, articles, website content, or videos to inform them about you. But yourCyber Twin won’t be closing any sales for you.

Also, to program your Cyber Twin to be even more advanced and spontaneous-seeming, you can laboriously sift through and answer 425 pretty deep questions across 18 subject areas including family, philosophy, religious views, and sense of humor. But even if you take this trouble, there are already other virtual self software programs in existence that are more realistic but still don’t pass the Turing Test.

This is just one example of current Internet technology that proves that if you run a business, you will need to continue doing your own marketing and continuing your current efforts. There is plenty of technology–including the current version of MyCyber Twin–that can help you out. But for today, and tomorrow, there is no such thing as Web 3.0. Real Estate Investors beware of services that promise you technology that does not exist. Its not ethical to call a service Web 3.0 that is no more than Web 2.0 marketing done for you.

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