Understanding the real estate web ecosystem
The flavor of the day is what dictates coverage by print, television and online magazines and inevitably by conference speakers. This cycle is driven by the economy of interest of our reader consumers without much regard for the bigger picture, hence the topic of Twitter, Facebook, and Google remaining popular subjects on and offline. Focusing exclusively on any of these neighborhoods as a business is problematic because we must look at the total picture in order to understand each network property in it’s proper context to the whole of the equation.
Wireframing (example illustrated below) is not a concept limited to web developers and designers, it can also be used by individuals who need to conceptualize parts of their business, and because there are so many moving pieces to a Realtor’s business, wireframing can be an effective tool to visualize the moving pieces and how they should work in tandem or individually, or how detrimental it would be to isolate a moving part of the real estate ecosystem.
The real estate web ecosystem
In this pencil graphic we’ve laid out the obvious parts of the equation leaving room for your own unique additions, but below are the primary pieces of your online ecosystem. By visualizing this, you can see how ignoring individual parts could severely limit your effectiveness, and how focusing too intently on any single part could also cause other essential parts to dry up. In other words, placing all of your eggs in say the Facebook basket or not having a proper flow throughout your ecosystem could starve other entities.
We suggest creating your own pencil graphic in order to truly understand how you can use and benefit from each of the moving pieces of your online real estate ecosystem to feed other parts, thus creating and maintaining a healthy and growing network. By using the wireframe below or your own version, you can galvanize a plan that makes good long term sense rather than impractically throwing darts at the dartboard from one day to another.
Click to enlarge.
Eric Holmes
June 7, 2011 at 10:55 am
Mindnode is an iPad app that I've used for this type of wire framing (mind mapping) and your message is spot on. I'm a visual person so this type of brainstorming and process organization is teed up for me. And frankly, having a visual representation of your marketing plan to hand to a seller at a listing presentation is going to go a lot further than some generic checklist in my opinion.
Ken Brand
June 7, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Physically connecting the dots is a wise exercise. Nice share. Thanks.
Mike Woods
June 7, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Obtaining business through the search engines, websites and blogs has been easy. I've yet to figure out how to generate a significant amount of leads from Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter.