StepRep Blog

Check out 1000 Watt’s real estate Mind map.  MyFrontSteps is there with our StepRep product.

NoMoreDoorKnocking is Changing! However it will remain the name of our blog for StepRep, the Homes Services side our new Company – MyFront Steps. Confused yet? Let me explainIn this post I will attempt to answer the questions: What is MyFrontSteps? What is StepRep, and how does it fit into MyFrontSteps?

So what is MyFrontSteps? Well, MyFrontSteps connects people over any social network allowing them to control the sharing of their home with friends, family and the world – from their front steps in. It allows them to leverage the collective experiences of their social graph – people they know and trust – to find inspiration and local service providers to improve home and lifestyle.

We have put together a video in the Creative Craft style to describe what we do.

We believe MyFrontSteps will have millions of homeowners sharing their home and home experiences on their social network of choice.

We intend to help people and companies in the real estate and home services industry to connect with these consumers via our StepRep product.

So what is StepRep and how will it work for you? Well, StepRep is going help you in at least three ways:

StepRep will help you track and monitor your online Reputation and Identity

There are lots of reasons why your online Identity and Reputation are important. Today you can monitor what people are saying about you on websites and blogs with lots of tools like Google Alerts or RSS feeds. Tomorrow, StepRep will automate that process and help you to monitor the right things. More than that, however, we will help you to monitor what people may be saying about you in places you might not even know about. Anywhere the conversation is occurring such as; Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Flickr, YouTube, Plaxo, Friend Feed, Twitter, Plurk , or any of the emerging platforms and services. Services that you won’t be forced to join.

It will help you manage and even build your online Reputation

Today it is a technical and time consuming chore to mange and build your online Reputation. Websites, blogs, news releases, social network profiles; the list and the work involved, is immense. We aren’t going to give you all the details just yet, but we promise to make managing and building your online reputation an order of magnitude easier.

Most importantly, StepRep will let you leverage your Reputation, via past and current customers, to gain trusted access to all the people in their social graph (people who know and trust them), on all the different social networks.

In our past lives we learned something that all technology providers should know. Real Estate professionals don’t use technology for the sake of technology; they use it to make their lives, and their customers’ lives, better. Put another way, technology doesn’t change “what” people do, it just changes “how” they do it.

We also noted phenomena in technology adoption and usage. It goes something like this. An Agent or Broker has no business so they embrace technology to attract new business. They attract new business, impress their new customers, and their new customers refer more new business. They then become so busy they cannot keep up with the use of the technology tools so they quit using them.

The key thing to note is that satisfied customers refer business – lots of it. What if you could get your customers to advertise to all their friends that they choose you as their professional of choice?

With StepRep and MyFrontSteps you will be able to do just that. StepRep will allow you to connect with your past customers as friends on the social networks where they hang out. You will be able to connect with them as “friends” on all the social networks without having to join all these networks. In short you will be able to leverage your great reputation, built by the great work you have done for past clients.

Your customers’ friends friends will see you in the context of whatever social network they happen to be on. This gives your customers a chance to connect with you as friends and hold you up to their friends as their professional of choice.

This is important, because we all know, as much as your customer may like you or your work, they aren’t going to be recommending you in every conversation. That said, today, more and more conversations are happening on Social Networks. Connecting with customers as their friend, and provider of choice, helps make you a part of the conversation when and where it occurs.

If Joining Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, Orkut, building a website, writing and maintaining a blog sounds and feels like too much work then StepRep is for you. In fact, as your satisfied customers participate in the social networks of their choice they do the work of recommending you.

Identity. Portable Identity, Reputation, Presence. Google footprint, Google profile. Social Graph. Social Networks. These are the buzzwords of a Web 2.0 business online. These catchphrases and buzzwords are heralding the beginning of an era of transparency and efficiency.

StepRep is a small part of a much bigger solution that will ultimately allow professionals of all kinds to leverage their social graph (people they know and trust) to bring them business and referrals.

In order for any person or business to have an effective online presence they need to establish, monitor and maintain their Identity and Reputation. To this end we have put together a short video explaining Identity and Reputation.

We have been working hard on some very interesting things. Stay tuned.

Did you ever notice that people are very slow to change their behaviour, even when they know that behaviour change will be good for them? Examples of hard to change behaviour could include everything from stopping smoking to real estate agents only taking one picture of a home. However in these examples of behaviour change it is easy to understand that change will be a good thing.  

Imagine, trying to convince people to make a behaviour change when it is not apparent that the results of that behaviour change will be positive. This is exactly the challenge that many Web2.0 companies are faced with when they try and embrace the real estate community. Free available and repurposable data, Agent Ratings, public comments on listings; these are a few of the things that the industry resists. They resist it not only because it is a change in behaviour, but because they can not see the benefits. To see the benefits requires a “change of their state of mind” and from time to time a paradigm shift does occur. Do you know what happens when there is a paradigm shift? Everyone starts over, and they start over from the same point.

I guess what I am saying as that sometimes it is not always obvious what is good for the real estate industry. And, from time to time, something happens that resets the playing field and everyone starts from the same place.

If you haven’t read the post on “social reputation” I think you should. The reputation paradigm is shifting. Google yourself, Google your competition. The playing field is zeroed. How do you rank so far?

Even given overwhelming evidence people will be slow to change. Sometime they just have to believe.

Think Different.

This is an example of the “Mpemba effect”  Where hot water can freeze faster than cold water.  You have to stretch your mind to believe.

So what is your “social reputation” and why is it important? 

First lets start out by defining what Identity or Social Reputation actually is. In my view  your “Identity/Social Reputation” is simply the social standing that others hold you in.  More simply put we could say that:

Identity/Social Reputation = what you say about yourself + what others say about you.

In the past (pre – Internet) your identity reputation would typically come from what others said about you.  Word of mouth so to speak.  One way to carry around what other said about you would be via endorsements and memberships in organizations or other such designations.  In the past this information was tough to discover. It existed in public records etc.  One way people use this information is via designations after their name which they display on their cards, business signs or in their conversations with people.  For instance, PhD, Esq, CMA, BSc, MD, Realtor, GRI, ABR you get the idea. 

Fast forward to today.  Google has become a verb.  I can “Google” almost anyone and find out far more about them than they may think.  The Internet has opened the door to instant access to data. It matters not whether the data is accurate or relevant.  It simply is.

Is this important to the real estate industry?  You better believe it is. Until very recently the real estate industry has chosen to stick it’s head in the sand and hope it would all go away. It won’t.  To that end I will attempt to illustrate the importance of Identity in the context of the real estate industry and the agent/consumer relationship.  It is one of the biggest issues facing the web today. It is affecting many industries and particularly those where the Internet is making an impact and changing consumer relationships and conversations from the offline world ( belly to belly conversations ) to the online world.  In order to understand the “Identity/Social Reputation Problem” I want to take you back through a bit of Real Estate / Internet history as I see it.  I believe that the key to predicting the future lies in understanding the past.      
   
Imagine back in time to the early 90’s.  Computers were becoming ubiquitous but the Internet was a small network of Universities, Military servers, big companies and geeks, the world wide web was in it’s infancy, growing up fast, but to be sure still in it’s infancy.  Computers were changing  the practice of Real Estate.  Listings were being emailed, listings data was improving and brochures were being created but as of yet the Internet had not made an impact.  If consumers were thinking about entering the market they had few choices.  Look in the paper, visit open homes or builder showcases.  Ultimately, though, because of the limited options consumers had a much shorter “pre-research” and “research” phase.  They were forced to “call a realtor” even if they weren’t quite sure they wanted to enter the market. I personally feel that this created a situation where Realtors were put in position where they were seen as trying to “sell” a consumer that wasn’t yet ready to enter the market.  I also feel that this is, in part, why consumers have such a low public opinion of Realtors (see NAR survey results).  The good realtor would have to spend hours doing a number of things:  Educating the consumer on the market, helping the consumer to decide even if they want to enter the market (without being pushy). And finally helping the buying consumer find a house that fits their lifestyle, budget,  and neighborhoods preferences, satisfied home inspections,  helping to negotiate, etc. Helping the selling consumer to set price, stage home, advertise, etc.   In short doing all the things good Realtors do that add a ton of value.       
      
The Internet has changed – it is now ubiquitous – and has changed many industries with it.  For example the travel and investment industries will never be the same.  Real Estate however hasn’t really changed all the much, or has it?   The best way to assess this, in my opinion, is to look at the consumer.  Today’s consumer has expectations that are slowly but surely changing. A consumer that wants to enter the market today has one more choice then his 1990 counterpart.  He has the Internet and he is choosing to use it.  Calling a realtor or any other live person to help him decide whether or not to enter the market is a decidedly unsavory second choice.   
 
The Internet has provided an alternative that has exposed what has really been happening since cavemen began considering looking to move caves.  Consumers can browse homes, look at prices, research neighborhoods and decide whether or not they want to enter the market.  This stage of research is decidedly longer than a realtor is used to. It can be up to 24 months or longer. Until the consumer is committed to entering the market  he doesn’t need a realtor because he doesn’t need what a realtor has to offer:  specific advice, negotiation, legal and administrative help, professional marketing and consulting, local service recommendations and the host of other things a good Realtor will do.      

So you you might ask yourself, what the heck does this have to do with identity and social reputation?  Lots I believe.  In the past (pre-Internet) consumers had to contact a realtor for access to information. In  order to choose which real estate professionals to contact they would learn about the Realtor’s Identity and Social Reputation.  Back then a “good” Realtor would have a “Social Reputation” that would be passed on by word of mouth from past clients and friends.  He would advertise his “slogan” along with his designations, his franchise association and maybe even his sales volumes etc.  He would say things like “#1 agent in xxx market” .  His reputation amongst past clients and colleagues and his advertising became his social reputation.  In the past, reputation changed slowly, it took much longer to create or to destroy.

The Internet has accelerated the discovery of ones reputation.  I only have to “Google” someone to find out what he is saying about himself, what others are saying and have said about him. Reputations can be created and destroyed in hours and days rather than months and years.   This is particularly important to Realtors as more and more people are selecting them based on their online social reputation. In the past where a person would pick up the phone and call a friend they knew had just bought or sold a home they now can simply and easily look to their social graph to see who their friends (people they know and trust)  are recommending.  They can, and already are, doing this through, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Hi5  and a whole host of other ”social networks”.   

Smart real estate professionals know exactly what their “online footprint” or “social reputation” is.  They are building it by blogging as subject matter experts and connecting to consumers in a multitude of ways including social networks.  In short they are participating in an online conversation with the rest of the world.    

Are you?