Why a Blog?

A key part of CRT’s mission is to help real estate industry professionals stay abreast of new technology tools that can be adapted to the needs of the industry. We explore the multitude of new applications and tools in the marketplace. Then we opt for the most effective ideas out there and bring them to you. That’s a big reason we’ve decided to transition our CRT tech newsletter to a blog. We believe that blogs hold tremendous potential for real estate—both as a marketing tool for brokerages and as a faster way to share product breakthroughs. By using blogs to communicate with our fellow real estate professionals, we make it easier to get information on new tools out to you. We’ll also help build industry familiarity with this powerful new communications option. The new blog launches August 1 and is available at: http://blog.realtors.org/crt.

While our new blog is a big focus this month, the launch represents only one of CRT’s many current projects. We’ve also been busy creating a new RETS tool—called ezRETS—that makes it easier for both brokers and non-RETS programmers to access and use information from the MLS. In addition, CRT continues its facilitator role in the real estate industry’s efforts to agree upon standards for electronic transactions.

Finally, to increase awareness of CRT and its mission, we’ve produced a new video. You can access the new video at http://minidocs.net/htm/%20FV%27s%20htm/download/CRT.html.

It will give you a quick overview of CRT’s mission and how CRT can help you meet the technology needs of your organization more effectively.

In the last decade, technology has profoundly changed how real estate professionals do business. We believe that’s just the beginning of the financial and productivity benefits you’ll see in the years ahead. Our mission is to ensure that you have the information to help your organization reap the rewards of those benefits.

Mark Lesswing

Vice President, Center for REALTOR^Ò Technology

312 329 8273                   mlesswing@realtors.org

Learn more about CRT. Watch the CRT video. This short video explains CRT's mission.

Current Solutions

The Challenge: Discovering a way to share information in real time with other tech professionals in the real estate industry.  

The CRT Solution: A blog for real estate professionals—from CRT.

A blog (short for Web log) is a Web-based publication that may comprise many threaded discussions. Blogs started out as online personal diaries that let interested visitors to the site comment on the musings of the blogger. Really good blogs can have meaningful commentary and inspire thoughtful, spirited exchanges. In fact, many blog authors intentionally make comments that allow readers to expand on a discussion. However, because of the unscripted and ad hoc nature of blog discussions, they can degenerate into the babble of a flame war. Thus, blogs are often moderated.

This notion of forming an online community around a threaded discussion is not new. Old-style bulletin boards and today’s e-mailing lists promote a similar mode of interaction. However, blog sites, unlike other options, offer the ability to interact with the content on the blog site in real-time. This immediacy helps bloggers solve problems and comment on breakthroughs more rapidly.

In addition to fostering discussion, blogs also provide a mechanism to disseminate information. Here’s where they overlap with newsletters. But unlike newsletters, where content is static, blogs provide for reader input, feedback, and expansion of the originally published ideas.

This ability to interact more closely with readers and thus to spur discussion is a key reason behind the Center for REALTOR^® Technology’s decision to shift its technology newsletter content to a blog format. The CRT blog will go live in early August.

The paradigm of interactive discussion that the new CRT blog will create reflects the rapid change of today’s technology. With the launch of its blog, CRT and its many audiences will be able cooperate more fully and help ensure that information on tech topics of interest to the real estate industry is always up to date.

Learn More: To access the new CRT blog, go to http://blog.realtors.org/crt 

Current Solutions

The Challenge: Finding ways to cultivate prospects for your company’s Web site on today’s crowded, commercial search engines.

The CRT Solution: A blog--the latest way to get your organization’s site to the top of the search engines and in front of potential customers.

A blog is the newest tool for many savvy real estate marketers. It’s a great supplement to regular metatag updates and paid search placements as a way to optimize your company’s search engine rankings. Search engine Web crawlers are attracted to the large number of key words produced by the highly relevant content level in a blog. Blogs typically include numerous links to other relevant sites--another factor search engines consider in their rankings.    

Several REALTORS^Ò  I interviewed for this article said that they had seen dramatic traffic increases on their sites since they launched their blogs Carol Williams with Top Properties Real Estate.com in Wenatchee, Wash., saw a 53 percent surge in traffic one month after launching her blog.

Blogs are also useful tools for building brand identity and customer loyalty. Williams believes her blog differentiates her from her competition and lets her potential clients get to know her. Some REALTORS^Ò  I interviewed reported that their clients are willing to supply new e-mail addresses when they move, just to stay active in the blog.

There are potential pitfalls to blogging. For one thing, it can be time consuming. Most real estate bloggers told me they spend from 15 minutes to one hour daily updating their blogs. Yet, for a blog to remain interesting and fresh, bloggers must make contributions regularly. If the content goes stale, the blog may start to lose readership quickly. Bloggers also need to be sure that they avoid writing anything that is libelous or misleading and distinguish between fact and opinion.

Learn More: For more advice on optimizing your search placements with a blog, go to http://www.blogger.com or http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html.

Marilyn Wilson, a partner at the WAV Group http://www.wavgroup.com a consulting company for the real estate industry, contribute this article. She can be reached at marilyn@wavgroup.com

Current Innovations

The Challenge: All ready to jump on the blog bandwagon, but not sure where to start?

The CRT Solution: A blogger how-to-from CRT.

So you've decided that you want to start a blog. Maybe you need a way to share your frustrations and triumphs with other real estate technology professionals. Maybe your company wants to use a blog to enhance its business presence online.   

The easiest way to launch a blog is to use a service such as LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com) or Blogger (http://blogger.com). These inexpensive, sometime free, services give you some control over the look and feel of your blog. They also make it easy for you to add new content. 

The drawback to these services is that you’re dependent on them. What happens if they change their terms of service and you can't use your blog for business?  What if you want to add some content, such as a property listing feed gathered via RETS, that just isn't possible with their software?

Because the Center for REALTOR^Ò  Technology was concerned about controlling its blog destiny, we decided to host our new blog for real estate technology professionals (link to letter) on our own servers, using WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org). WordPress is an open-source Web application for blogging.  At the time of this writing, the current version of the software is 1.5.1.3. WordPress is written in PHP (http://php.net), a widely used general purpose scripting language, and requires MySQL (http://www.mysql.com) as its database. Because both PHP and MySQL are open-source programs that run on several platforms, you should be able to run WordPress on your existing servers.  CRT has the programs deployed on Linux. 

Because WordPress is written in PHP, it’s very easy to customize. On the Web you'll also find a large collection of plug-ins to extend functionality. You’ll also see many themes that let you preselect a consistent layout. With these tools, you’ll soon be blogging your way to a more interactive future.

Learn More: In addition to the Wordpress home page, you can find a large collection of documentation on the program at http://codex.wordpress.org/

Some good sources for plug-ins to complement Wordpress include: http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/category/wordpress-themes/  http://themes.wordpress.net/theme-viewer.php

To view the new CRT blog, go to: http://blog.realtors.org/crt 

Current Solutions

The Challenge:  Empowering users to easily and rapidly transfer MLS information to other programs.

The CRT Solution: ezRETS, a new software solution that simplifies data transfer to ODBC-aware software.

ezRETS is an ODBC driver that connects to RETS servers. It uses familiar SQL syntax to search RETS-compliant MLS servers. Then it easily transfers data to widely used ODBC-aware software such as Microsoft Office or Crystal Reports. You'll no longer have to spend time creating special programs to help users transfer data. Instead easy-to-use data wizards lead users step-by-step through the query process. Using ezRETS, users can receive the latest data from a RETS server and enter it directly into spreadsheets and other documents. This save them time and you headaches.

Once users have the data into their applications, they can

• autogenerate CMAs in Excel
• autogenerate brochures in Word
• autogenerate trending information in Excel
•  provide data to listing/IDX sites using in ASP or PHP

For tech staffers, another major benefit of ezRETS is that consultants building technologies for you in other programming languages don't have to learn RETS. Instead they use ezRETS as the basis for their solutions. Consultants already know the popular tools of the trade such as SQL, Visual Basic, C#, ASP, PHP, and Access that have ODBC APIs. By having them use ezRETS as the basis of their solutions, you're paying the consultants to create solutions for you, you're not paying them to learn RETS.

Learn More: ezRETS is an open-source license and can be downloaded at http://www.crt.realtors.org/projects/rets/ezrets/. For a tutorial you can run for users on how to transfer data to Excel, click on http://www.crt.realtors.org/projects/rets/ezrets/documentation/ExcelTutorial/ .

Currently, ezRETS is available only as an installable binary for Windows. If you want to use ezRETS on Linux, you'll need to build it from source. E-mail info@crt.realtors.org for more details on this option. An installable Mac OS X build should be available from CRT by the end of 2005.

Take advantage of personalized technology consulting, courtesy of CRT. Let CRT help you find the best solution to your toughest tech challenge. If there are technology issues or products you’d like CRT to investigate or just a question you’d like answered, please e-mail info@crt.realtors.org

Let the Center for REALTOR^® Technology help you explain the business benefits of emerging technologies to your organization’s leadership. Suggest that your company’s or association’s top executives sign up for a free, quarterly CRT e-mail newsletter describing the value of new technologies in straightforward business language. Encourage them to subscribe at http://www.crt.REALTORS.org/newsletter-broker 

To unsubscribe go to http://www.crt.REALTORS.org/newsletter-tech

The CRT Report is published by

Center for REALTOR®  Technology
National Association of REALTORS®
430 N Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611

312/329 8646
info@crt.realtors.org
http://www.realtors.org/CRT