Real estate agents in Australia are facing a new wave of online innovation in which consumers use the internet to rate agents and read the ratings that other consumers have posted. In a sad attempt at a surfing analogy, let’s say that agents can either catch this wave or let it dump them.

A few days ago I attended an event at which Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital, (photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald) spoke to about 250 real estate agents (and me and some other folks from realestate.com.au) about the online trends affecting their industry.*

One of the critical issues Peter talked about is agents’ loss of control over their reputations to consumers online. US real estate blogger Joel Burslem called this “online reputation management” in our interview last week. He thinks it’s one of the most important issues agents face.
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Let’s hear about real estate marketing and the Internet from an overseas perspective.

In particular, I’m thinking of a country where the housing market seems to be in meltdown, there is a fierce political campaign under way and there are some true online real estate innovators in action.

Yes, I’m thinking of the USA.

I’ve interviewed Joel Burslem about all these topics (except the political campaign). Before you read his words of wisdom, there are three things you should know about Joel: (more…)