RISMedia to Introduce the Real Estate Social Marketing System

RISMEDIA, February 26, 2010—John Featherston, CEO and publisher of RISMedia and chairman and co-founder of the Top 5 in Real Estate Network®, announced today that RISMedia and 1parkplace, under the direction of Allan Dalton, chief marketing officer of RISMedia and president and co-founder of the Top 5 in Real Estate Network®, along with Steve Hundley, founder and CEO of 1parkplace, have developed what will be branded as the RISMedia Real Estate Social Marketing System(SM). This transformational system will be launched at this year’s RISMedia Leadership Conference—“The Real Estate Social Media Summit," being held June 9-10, 2010 at the Hilton Rye Town in Westchester County, New York.

For more information on the conference, or to register to attend, click here.

Featherston announced that Dalton and Hundley have spent the past several months, along with the RISMedia and the 1parkplace developmental teams, creating what will be branded as “The Real Estate Social Marketing System(SM).” “This much-needed system,” Featherston stated, “will merge only the more strategic purposeful and real estate-relevant functions of existing social networking and social media resources available to real estate companies, agents and networks.” 

“The level of frustration that has been expressed by thousands upon thousands of interviewed real estate professionals regarding the chasm that exists between their time spent engaged in social networking training, education, classes, and in social networking activity itself, compared to any significant and measurable ROI is startling,” said Dalton, a former 20-year president and owner of a 32-office real estate company. “Our research has provided irrefutable evidence that the preponderance of real estate professionals who claim to be significantly involved in the conventional practice of social networking and social media and who have built an enviable aggregation or community of ”so-called” or liberally defined friends, fans, followers and users are struggling to attribute much, if any, additional income for what has become a pressing time-management issue to some and almost an addiction to others.”

Dalton, former CEO of Realtor.com®, also shares that many real estate professionals report that they are experiencing conflicted feelings, or an approach-avoidance conflict, regarding how some consumers might be viewing their online activity within certain communities as representing a real estate-related form of trolling. Given how most consumers already enjoy relationships with at least several real estate professionals leads one to wonder if social networking and social media, if not elevated to real estate social marketing, does not, in a sense, represent “chasing a solution to a consumer problem that really doesn’t exist.” Dalton specifically suggested that “mere social networking, meaning connecting friends, fans, communities and even tribes, although a much more efficient way to promulgate oneself and one’s brand, without a strategic purpose or providing valuable content, is like inviting 100 people to your home for dinner and not feeding them.”

“Real estate professionals are far too hardworking, knowledgeable and skillful to miss out on how these great qualities can be best reflected through a more strategic online marketing strategy,” he said.

Therefore, according to RISMedia and 1parkplace, the Real Estate Social Marketing System(SM) needed to be developed in order to properly integrate the best of social networking and social media as a more forthright, clear, consumer-acceptable and strategic use so that real estate professionals can better serve the needs of the real estate marketplace.

1parkplace CEO, Steve Hundley, who is responsible for much of the technological integration of this new, robust solution, suggests that a major paradigm shift is necessary—one where forward-thinking real estate professionals recognize that yesterday’s approach of personal promotion and contact management must give way to what he has coined as “content management.”

“The difference between contact management and content management, when one considers how consumers want content more than being contacted, is similar to how social networking/social media is different from real estate social marketing,” Hundley asserted.

Featherston summarized this major company announcement by offering, “In my 30 years as CEO and publisher of a real estate-based media company, I am thrilled that what we in publishing refer to as ‘the new age of citizen journalism,’ or the ‘democratization of information’ is now empowering consumer-centric real estate companies and agents to go beyond making superficial networking contacts and elevate these potentially invaluable online relationships with exciting real estate content. That said, information or content alone does not spell success, nor does networking as a stand-alone. Real estate success is achieved when the two converge for the purposes of strategic real estate social marketing.”

Featherston added, “We look forward to enabling all real estate professionals who want to strategically insert themselves through the targeted use of actionable real estate content and who are interested in measuring their online ROI and SEO to join us at our industry-altering social media summit, where they will be most welcome.”