I was fortunate to be able to attend the Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco in July, as well as a RE BarCamp and the Property Portal Workshop the same week … Peter asked if I could give my impressions, so here are my main five takeaways from the week. 1. SOCIAL Engagement Your real estate [...]
Charlie Gunningham
Contributor
Charlie set up aussiehome.com in Perth with a uni mate during the height of the dotcom boom in 1999. He
Recent blog posts written by Charlie Gunningham
11 New Year’s resolutions for 2011
As technology moves along apace at break neck speed, you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s all just too hard. How can I keep up to date? What if I learned something new and then it becomes outdated by new technology, and so on? I’m too old to learn new tricks! Well, thinking like [...]
Posted In Soapbox
Google Places importance on Local
A few years ago Google developed something called ‘Google Local’, a subset of its listings that are devoted to local businesses. The local business owner could then verify their ‘local listing’ and enhance it with their logo, photos, comments, opening hours, etc, and the public could make comments (‘reviews’) and these would appear alongside. Most [...]
Posted In Marketing, Real Estate Agents
The Great CRM White Elephant
Legend has it there were once great white elephants, much sought after by the Southeast Asian monarch and European hunter. Their very existence entered the realm of folklore, and people spoke in hushed tones of lost safaris seeking fame and fortune. The white elephant symbolized great power, and its possession meant the kingdom had peace [...]
Posted In Software, Technology
Why can’t we measure online traffic?
Over the past decade I have investigated various methods of measuring online traffic for the different web sites I’ve managed, and no single measurement seems to bear up to scrutiny. In fact, most do a pretty good job of contradicting each other. Google Analytics? Smarter Stats? Nielsen? Hitwise? Alexa? Take your pick, and think of [...]
An 11 year real estate online business case study
Having just sold a real estate online business, almost eleven years to the day after it was founded, I thought I’d share some thoughts before they were lost to the sands of time… Start Up Starting a business is relatively easy, as it involves buying things. Buying a company name, a domain name, some IT and [...]
It’s Tribal, and it’s who we are
During the recent UK general election (American friends of mine were amazed at how quickly it was over, English friends bemoaned how it dragged on for weeks), I read a Guardian blog post which berated parties of all hues (“tribes”). The writer loathed one tribe, but was saddened how his own tribe had left him, [...]
The Billion Dollar Black Hole
Disclosure upfront – for over 10 years now I’ve been running a niche real estate portal and web development business. During that time, I’ve often pondered how much money was being collectively wasted on real estate print advertising. I believe that figure (in Australia alone) is now over $1 billion. According to IBIS World Research [...]
Posted In Marketing, Newspapers
How many friends do you have… really?
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar argues that if you count people you “maintain a stable social relationship” with then you can never have more than 150. These 150 individuals may change in personnel, but at any one time, 150 is all the ‘friends’ you’ve got. This is because our human brain can only handle around 150 [...]
Posted In Soapbox
Trend for 2010: “It’s Mobile, stoopid”
Remember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a [...]
Are Facebook Ads the most effective advertising there is?
Let me say in this my first post for Business2 (thanks for having me) I have no shares in Facebook (more’s the pity) and no real axe to grind either way in this tale. I just thought this might be of interest to anyone looking to brand and differentiate themselves effectively, potentially save some advertising dollars [...]
Posted In Facebook, Social Networking
