Sherry Chris has written a superb post on the problems with Real Estate Brokerage.
In looking back one year after the publication of the book Groundswell (now in my Amazon Cart) she noted that agents have picked up social media by the boatload... brokerages and franchises have not.
I could not agree more.
My Nuclear Options Manifesto discussed the problems with the future of sustainable real estate brokerage architecture. One of those problems has to do with an aging real estate industry. Technologically-speaking, first-adoption or early adoption of the Twitter and Facebook bugs was bound to be slower. Not many real estate brands are run by social media users.
But the reality is that brokerage no longer leads. Brokerage often thinks it leads, but as Seth says "we need you to lead us". Most big business has the really important leadership coming from within as the tribe of heretics challenge authority and pre-conceived notions time and again. So the problem is there in real estate brokerage and franchising; but it has peers.
The bigger problem is the non-acknolwedgement that things have changed that seems to come from the leadership of Big Real Estate. Larry Kendall talks in Ninja III about the rise and fall of the brokerage-based business. His contention is that in the 1970's and 1980's the brokerage-based model was the staple. The split-model worked because the generation working real estate at that time respected the large company looking out for their interests and it made logical sense therefore, that all business was the business of the brokerage. I mean, if you think about it, the idea of working until you retired and collected your pension from GM and IBM had some romance to it. Generationally, I have plenty of friends that would like to think they will retire. But they will retire to do something else. I could live to 34 or 134. I have no idea how much I might have to save. That has a profound effect on how I go to work.
Correspondingly, as the generation changed and matured, real estate brokerage architecture matured. In the 1980's and 1990's, the 100% model ascended to supremacy, and Re/Max, Real Estate Executives, John L Scott and other 100% franchise models blossomed. So dawned the rise of the Agent. It was a business lead by the industry still, but brokerage mattered less than creating an environment where the individual agent was supported and thrived rather than supervised and treated as a contractor of the larger brokerage.
Mr. Kendall would say (and I would agree) that this too has matured and changed. Most franchises and large brokerages have not caught up to that. What changed was that the business became consumer-lead. Look at any major development in real estate post Realtor.com and the consumer brought that change to the industry... and the majority of agents either restricted or relented after much kicking and screaming.
I can not say I am 100% innocent of trying to control the outcome. I would not put an IDX widget on my site until 2007 because I was obsessed with controlling outcomes. But I've been evangelized. At the end of the day, freeing the consumer, my source of business, to be the consumer, makes sense.
It makes sense to have a Twitter Account, a Public Facebook Page, a Linked-In Profile that is open and not closed. It makes sense to publish market stats, analyze them at Mid-Year and then blog about it with the feeds hitting all sorts of different, easy to find places. How could a large, faceless corporation bent on selling membership "tools" even really use these if they had already failed to focus on that most important of social media hooks: TRUST?
Social Media is great, but really it is just another tool to disseminate something more powerful: TRUST. I like the fact that I follow 100 fewer people on Twitter than follow me. I like that I have fewer than 400 followers. The truth is, THEY FOUND ME. I didn't find them and they reciprocated. They saw me post something about someone, they caught a Re-Tweet, someone was talking about me and they found me. I call it Organic Twitterization. My far more successful and Seth Godin MBA Graduate Jon Dale uses the same strategy. I challenge you to find a person more dialed into how today's culture and marketing works than Mr. Dale. He has passed 1000 Twitter followers largely because people almost always RT what he has to say. Now THAT is a permission asset. I got the organic idea from him. His business is totally about the authority of trust. Without a permission asset: social media is SPAM.
If 95% of your business is word of mouth and personally-referred, SEO, does not matter. I have picked up two buyers in three days based on the failings of other agents. Both "asked" if I would work with them. The Permission Asset Matters. The Quality of the Relationships, The Consistency of the Message... these matter. These are the conduits of conversation in social media.
I received a survey two months ago from ERA Corporate asking 1.) if I used Twitter and if 2.) I thought it would be a good idea for ERA to use Twitter. I guess to a degree I understand their point in asking. How does a big, face-less franchise make the jump from spending years on "tools" and reactive devices based on lead-capture to the sophisticated use of a tool best used for customized relationships or the ballyhoo of a Permission Asset? I sure as hell don't want tweets about the Direct Marketing Resource Center or that Lead Router will have a service outage from 12 to 2 am EST for maintenance. That's called "email". Static. Dead-Web-Point-0.
Here was my answer to their survey that I never heard a follow up on: FOLLOW ME. Can I help? Please? Can I show you what you missed the last four years? Please? Stuck in the place of "leadership", my request has fallen on deaf ears.
The sad reality is that ERA is among many brokerages that based themselves on "Education," "Top Production" (whatever that is) or "Oldest and Therefore Best (See CB's thud of a 2006 campaign), whereas the corniness of KW Family... actually has a hook to it. Even if you hate family reunions the all-inclusiveness of the brand that is based around a social concept... works. In this decade at least.
The problem is not so much that Brokerages and Franchises are failing in their own leadership to use Social Media; The Problem is that they failed to Build a Permission Asset. I can think of only Windermere among national real estate franchises that built their company on "really damn good agents you respect and might want to have a cocktail with". Outside of that brand based on Permission Assets, there is nothing for the consumer or the Realtor to relate to but a big, faceless corporation that takes 3 to 10% of each commission when only the creativity, deep smarts and years of built-up trust successfully deployed by the agent put together and closed the deal.
I can think of many other 1980's relics that would do poorly as a Facebook Fan Page or blasting tweets. If social media is about trust and consumers now lead the real estate industry rather than the real estate industry leading itself... well, I think the problem for Big Real Estate is pretty painfully obvious. Ms. Chris is a rare exception among franchise leaders because she uses the stuff herself as an avenue to build trust. If brokerages and franchises are more interested in income, than in making smarter, better, more efficient agents with fewer conflicts of interest... the social media wave could be their doom.
Comments