Part 2: Online communities build buzz for real estate biz
Thursday, June 15, 2006
By Janis Mara
Inman News
 Vikki Morvant, Keller Williams Realty Mandeville
|
Editor's note: Real estate
agents are learning that online community sites can be useful in reaching their
target audience. Agents can use community Web sites to raise awareness about
their services and drum up local business, while consumers can use the sites to
rate, review, recommend and reach agents in their desired locations. This
three-part series uncovers how a few savvy agents are using these sites and
building their own. (See Part 1.)
When Hurricane Katrina hit, Vikki Morvant's discussion boards for southern
Louisiana neighborhoods served as rallying points for the community – an example of how
user-generated content can help clients bond with each other and the sponsoring
agent.
The agent has garnered a mailing list of 3,000 to 4,000 names from the
discussion boards and gets at least one lead a week from them, she says. As more
and more online content, such as social networking site MySpace, is generated by
users, real estate agents can capitalize on the trend to market their services,
as Morvant has.
As a marketing device, Morvant had already created discussion boards at homeonthenorthshore.com for 34 different subdivisions in the
Mandeville, La., area. She had given homeowners passwords to access the
discussion boards to learn about the neighborhoods.
When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, the agent was inspired to put the
boards to use in the wake of the storm.
"I realized we could use them to communicate," said Morvant, who co-owns the
Mandeville Keller Williams franchise, which has 130 agents.
"I stripped off all the passwords. I set up a forum and started e-mailing
everyone I had listed in my computer to try to track my agents down," Morvant
said. The Realtor was at work at the keyboard before lunchtime on Tuesday, Aug.
30.
"Tuesday I must have gotten 500 hits. By Wednesday and Thursday I was getting
5,000 and 6,000 hits a day and hundreds of e-mails," Morvant said.
People who wanted to know if their friends or relatives were all right could
key the name of their city or subdivision into a search engine and turn up
Morvant's site, then drill deeper to find the discussion boards to see if there
was news. Agents could post their whereabouts.
By the time the crisis was over, Morvant's message boards and her identity
had made a strong impression.
Morvant established the boards in 2000 and advertises them on her Web site
and on the postcards she sends out to neighborhoods when a house is listed or
sold. The agent said she has amassed a mailing list of between 3,000 and 4,000
people who registered on the sites.
"Most real estate practitioners would love to be able to get a message out to
3,000 or 4,000 people for free," Morvant said.
"Right now, insurance availability here is a hot topic. We just had another
major insurance company say it is cutting back on the number of policies it
wants exposed here. I view this as a chance to do a public service, send out an
announcement, 'here are some of the insurance companies we as real estate
practitioners are able to find writing insurance policies,'" Morvant said.
Every week, she gets at least one lead from the sites, the Realtor said.
Visitors to the site can fill out a drop-down menu asking for information about
homes for sale in that neighborhood, and these are e-mailed to her.
Only homeowners in the specific subdivisions are allowed to post on the
lists, and Morvant is very protective of their privacy. She does not admit
anyone, including reporters, to the discussion boards.
"People talk about a variety of things. They give referrals to people who
will do work around the house, and referrals to roofers and similar services,"
Morvant said. "Good places to shop, specifics about the schools."
Individuals log in using their e-mail address and password, so the chance of
people passing out a generic password to friends is small, the Realtor said. She
uses EasyBoards.com, software that helps her set up the boards – she is now up
to 36 – and manage them.
Morvant visits the boards regularly to make sure no flame wars or other
unpleasantness break out. Generally, she said, people are well behaved, though
she has had to send a few warnings and once expelled an individual who was using
the discussion board to pursue an argument with a neighbor.
"With today's software, all message boards are set up so the user can go in
and have new comments flagged so you're not wasting time reading everything
twice," she noted.
Overall, the boards have worked well for her, Morvant said.
"From a business standpoint, I'm getting my name out there. And right after
Katrina hit, it turned into a humanitarian effort," she said. "It's an excellent
way to connect with people you want to do business with. It's fun because I like
being on the computer anyway and if I'm going to be interacting with people it
might as well be the people who just might hire me to sell their house."
***
Send tips or a Letter to the Editor to janis@inman.com or call (510) 658-9252, ext.
140.
Copyright 2006 Inman News
