Ahead of the curve

I attended a property management conference this weekend and I have come to the conclusion that real estate conferences need a face lift.

A number of us held our own break out sessions by the pool bar and learnt more at these networking sessions.

Basic day to day processes should not be part of conference discussions, what should be discussed is how do we get businesses to stay ahead of the curve.

Those who are attending have committed time and money and I would hope want to be stretched in their learning.

What I found interesting was that out of a room of 200 delegates only 10 businesses had a facebook page, 5 had a twitter account and 2 had a blog site.

Real estate is a people business, our transactions are based in building relationships and engaging our clients. Social networking sites are an emerging platform for us to engage with our clients.

So sit up and take notice real estate world, your clients are using these platforms, in fact the biggest users of twitter are between the ages of 35 and 55 in Australia.

What are you doing in this space? Can you use a platform like twitter to say report maintenance into your office? Anything is possible its just a matter of how really!

Note to conference organisers do your attendees a favour and start adding in topics and speakers who will stretch and challenge your attendees and show them how to stay ahead of the curve.