Unchained Uncovered: A Review of Bloodhounds Social Media Conference

There’s so much talk in the REnet about web2.0 this and social media that, one wonders how deeply the internet has impacted and evolved the traditional sales model let alone business model (Redfin, anyone?)

Now, I’m a relative newcomer to the REnet. It was several years ago you would have heard me preaching the good word about the power of marketing real estate online. Heck, I even created and led a “Guerrilla Real Estate Marketing Online” intensive workshop but life events steered me into the more corporate sector. But still the phone rang… friends and past Realtor clients asked for my input and advice on marketing real estate online.

Needless to say, my heart and passion lie with the entrepreneur who has put his balls and livelihood on the line to make a go of it. These folks have more fight and gumption than a roomful of corporate stooges combined.

As you may have guessed, I’m not a big fan of the corporate method of doing things. That’s why online marketing is so freakin awesome… the tools, communities, and immediacy of the medium level the playing field and really lend themselves to folks like you and I who can turn on a dime and go from 0 to 60 in nothing flat.

Frankly, that’s what Bloodhound Unchained May 2008 was truly about (kind of cool for me too, that I’ve “unchained” myself from corporate clients and am now working with proactive real estate entrepreneurs). Any Realtor can grab hold of the available online tools and quickly begin to totally dominate their market like never before possible.

Greg Swann really drove this home pointing out that you don’t really need a broker, lead vendors, or much of anything else to truly rock the market.

I’ll be highlighting in detail a number of the presentations in individual blog posts over the next few days. Even got some video planned for ya.

Here’s pretty much how the agenda ran:

Sunday (bonus day)

• Russell Shaw (russellshawrealtor.com) answered questions during an open Q&A
• Mary McKnight (rsspieces.com) presented on blog seo
• Ron Cates (constantcontact.com) on email marketing

Monday

• Greg Swann (bloodhoundrealty.com) on the evolution of real estate (and Greeks… a lot about the Greeks)
• Brian Brady (worldwidewealthplanners.com) on social hunting… how to go and get clients online
• @bradcoy & @andykaufman on Twitter (sidenote: check out the Twitter stream of the event as it happened)
• Greg Swann on social farming… how to attract clients online
• Mary McKnight reviewed several agent websites and seo improvements they could make

Tuesday

• Greg Swann (bloodhoundrealty.com) on being “findable”
• Zillow, HomeGain, 1ParkPlace and Jeff Brown on the bigger picture of online marketing
• Greg Swann vs. Briand Brady on blogging for dollars (joined by Laurie Manny and Theresa Lussier)… varying approaches to real estate blogging
• Redfin on their business model (I dug this presentation, very transparent and revealing stats)
• Zillow, Trulia and Jeff Brown on reputation management

There was a ton of information provided by the speakers and a lot left unsaid that I’ll be covering in more detail over the next few days. In the meantime, feel free to download my mindmaps from Monday’s and Tuesday’s presentations below.

To download, right-click on the links below and “save as”
Bloodhound Unchained Day 2 Mindmap PDF
Bloodhound Unchained Day 3 Mindmap PDF

Check out the Twitter stream of the event as it happened, too.

My overall impression

For being the first Bloodhound Unchained this was nothing but a success. The fact that folks flew across the country to an unproven event to see and meet folks who they’ve only known through the web… a testament to the power of what it is that we’re doing.

The flow of the event and even the presentations sometimes felt a bit dis-jointed but let’s face it, this was the first event of it’s kind and these weren’t professional platform speakers.

The time schedule we had was dictated by the event location (had to be out by 4pm). Pretty crappy, in my opinion. Considering that folks came from across the country to drink from a firehose of knowledge, I’d like to see the next Unchained have marathon sessions. With SalesDogs and Rich Dad Poor Dad we’d run from 9am until 11pm.

One major thing I did find missing was a lack of discussion on strategy. There were great tactics covered but without a strategy to unify the tactics and make sure the tactics supported the overall goal then, well, tactics don’t amount to much but busy work.

Of great benefit to all would also be breakout sessions… “You just learned how to XYZ. You’ve got 5 minutes to go online and do this for your website.”

A great companion piece to the breakout sessions would be roundtable discussions. A group of attendees at a table with an expert answering hotseat questions for 15 minutes before attendees switch to another table and another expert.

Now, the folks I met… simply incredible, awesomely approachable folks that I look forward to following and contributing to however I can.

In fact, I’ll most likely be attending REBarCamp… won’t you be there, too?

Anyway, be sure to grab the mindmap notes above and stay tuned for in-depth reviews of individual presentations.

Presentation reviews and additional insights

• Way of the Social Media Hunter

If you attended Bloodhound Unchained, what was your favorite part?

If you didn’t attend, what would an event like this need to have so that you would attend?