Ed Kohler with WhereToLive.com at the 2009 Inman Connect SF

Mark Eibner: This is Mark Eibner with Broker IPTV and we are at this year's Inman Connect in San Francisco, and I am here today with Ed Kohler and Ed is the web strategist, the lead web strategist for WhereToLive.com and Ed welcome.

Ed Kohler: Hello Mark how are you doing?

Mark Eibner: Great, hey we are just having some interesting conversations and first of all let's just start any... what do you... thinking on this year's have been at the Inman?

Ed Kohler: Its always interesting to try to figure of what kind of some of the trends are you know out of different start ups for example up in [Inaudible] that we saw yesterday, one thing I saw is a lot of companies are taking a shot at trying to figure out how did you agent ratings, know to help people, figure out who is in the market who actually, actually does business in a certain neighborhood within a certain price range who actually sold something before or to help someone buy something before, I don't think that's a solved problem but I see its one that seemed that people are you know trying to figure out but its not done yet.

Mark Eibner: Yeah well Yelps had a lot of more success than I thought and that's something they could definitely move into as far as the broker field?

Ed Kohler: Yeah I wouldn't be surprised to see them move into a lot of additional verticals including real estate where there is still lot of things to be done there.

Mark Eibner: So web strategist, maybe could tell our audience out there what that entails, first person I have met that's a true web strategist.

Ed Kohler: Web strategist, a web strategist to me is someone who understands how to use the web for business. So I mean you can use the web for a lot of things. You can use to socialize, you can use it to communicate, but what is it you can do to get people to a website to get them to contact someone you know to do business together or how do you use the website to conduct business? So you know within real estate its often around different ways to generate leads like how do you look credible online, how do you get people to your website and once they are there create an experience that helps them understand that you know what you are talking about and you can be trusted as someone to help with a very you know important transaction.

Mark Eibner: Great information, how about anything our audience should be looking to do in the rest of the year 2009 and looking forward into 2010?

Ed Kohler: Well the thing that I still see the most of is people really need to just make sure they get the basics right and we spent a lot of time on this WhereToLive, where with our clients we are trying to figure out what are the systems we can use to get people to create a really professional experience online where they have actually said something about themselves, explained their professional background, their personal interest, their hobbies, you know you got to give people a reason to want to do business with you, you know something that allows them to connect with you, both professionally and emotionally. So put some content out there whether in a profile in a blog post whatever it is and also of course do a really professional job with your listings because people are going to look at those and figure out, are you someone that's going to do a good job for them? So you know if you are putting up listings with no photos I mean sadly it so happens way too often...

Mark Eibner: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: You know so get the basics right and you are going to be a lot better off but until you have those right you really don't need to start worrying about marketing until you have something that's worth marketing.

Mark Eibner: Right well once again that great insight, great information and for more great videos in the real estate world and technology, check out brokeriptv.com.

Posted on August 27, 2009 06:55:52 by Blog Author