Bits & Bytes — Archival/Matt

This is a page where I house miscellaneous interviews, projects, photos and podcast recordings I’ve done over the years that don’t have a natural home anywhere else in the archives.

New York Real Estate Expo (October 2013)

I spoke on a panel about the future of real estate technology, the role of social media, and how agents should think about their investment of time when it comes to the internet. The panel was moderated by journalist Teke Wiggin, who I’d later work with at Inman News. I’d only recently come back to work following a successful battle with cancer, and this was one of the first public events I did.

Stupidly Simple Snacks: Snickerdoodle Cookies at 88 Prince Street’s Open House

Amy Cao of AmyBlogsChow.com learns a trick of the real estate trade from Corcoran Group reps Matthew Shadbolt and Darren Kearns. By baking cinnamon sugar cookies (snickerdoodle cookies), they make a new apartment smell like home.

Get the story behind Amy's snack videos and follow her food adventures in New York and beyond on http://amyblogschow.tumblr.com. Stupidly Simple Snacks is produced by NYC food writer and blogger Amy Cao (AmyBlogsChow.com) to show viewers what to cook when they can't. Joined by chefs, friends, and sometimes just by herself, Amy tackles easy recipes for everything from milkshakes to guacamole using basic kitchen equipment and ingredients you have at home.

Hanging Out with The Corcoran Group (2012)

Swanepoel Real Estate Trends Report Article (2014)

Postling.com Interview

During my time at Corcoran we experimented with all kinds of things in video. Here's the transcript of Corcoran's recent interview with Postling's Alexis Lamster, but given the animated XtraNormal treatment. XtraNormal is an online service which translates text into 3D animation, and allows the user to 'direct' the resulting scenes.

How Social Media Can Benefit Those in Real Estate

Real estate is an industry in which social media has really taken off as of late. Agents are using Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube to not only promote their listings but to build relationships and connections to the neighborhoods in which they specialize. We had the chance to chat with Matthew Shadbolt, Director of Internet Advertising at Corcoran Group, to reveal some of the ways using these social media platforms can really benefit real estate agents and brokers. For them, the Corcoran group now finds themselves experts at “localization” which has been helped greatly by their efforts with social media.

1. At what point did Corcoran decide to jump into the social media game?

It was early 2009 when we got started. The real idea behind it was to be able to interact and grow our online audience in a way that wasn’t currently possible with our website. The first thing we did was launch a Twitter account, which was a way for us to be able to reach out to people, ask and answer questions, and to just connect with people. Based on that growth and success we launched our Facebook fan page. Facebook is like a “best of” for us and features things that provide helpful information, talk about what it’s like to live in New York, real estate market advice, or are just spectacular things we want to share. Ultimately we wanted to provide interesting and insightful content.

2. Aside from being on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and Blip.tv, you also have an iPhone app. What service does this provide?

We’ve always been in the location business, and in many ways, mobile is a natural fit. It’s really built to help people understand which properties are for sale, for rent, or have open houses nearby (or in a given search area). One of the big things that differentiates us from all other real estate apps is that we populate all of our property information with what you can do nearby. When you’re looking at a certain set of results, you can bring up a fairly detailed set of information for shopping, nightlife, and restaurant recommendations. For us, social and mobile really do run parallel.

3. What specific benefits do individuals in the real estate industry have in using social media? And how do you see brokers currently using these tools?

The main benefits that we’ve been able to see are when agents really try to solidify themselves as neighborhood experts. It’s not all business, open houses, and listings. We tend to find that doesn’t do very well in terms of social media. We’re more interested in giving our users a sense that we get what it’s like to live there. The idea of expertise on the neighborhood or city level is something we’re having a lot of fun with it and find that brokers can be really successful in.

In our industry, it’s very much still about the individual agent’s network, which is an offline thing. Most of our business comes that way. For the people looking to extend that network, social media has been really helpful for them. It’s a way of growing the network of people you’re connected to.

4. Does Corcoran Group advise their brokers on how to use social media?

We provide training for our agents, which they can choose to participate in. We’re very big on agent education, which includes marketing yourself online, setting up a Facebook page, and the role of mobile in the real estate industry. The main thing we really try to communicate with our agents is that there isn’t a quick answer to something like social media. You need to invest the time to build and sustain it over a fairly long period of time to make it fruitful for you. The main way I communicate it to them is using real world examples, like it takes time to build relationships with people. Using social media is really no different than that.

5. What three tips would you give to brokers who are just getting started with social media?

Have fun, be helpful, and engage with the people you’re talking to. I recommend just listening to people. Say for example if they’re on Twitter. Start following people who you are interested in and listen to the kind of conversations that are going on. You’ll be able to slowly get a sense of how it works. Then you can start to reach out to people. Our experience is that it grows outwards from there. You find out who those people know and so on.

Matthew ‘Sash’ Lenahan: Survivor Contestant Vid Docs (2010)

This one was so much fun to work on. Corcoran agent Matthew ‘Sash’ Lenahan approached the digital marketing team at Corcoran to help him build his digital presence as an agent during his participation as a contestant on Survivor: Nicaragua. We worked closely with Sash to film video updates for his followers each week, which were tied to what was happening in the show (we didn’t know what was going to happen as Sash wasn’t allowed to tell us), and ran his Facebook fan page. Sash became a show favorite, and finished third.

REMarTech Promotional Interview (April 2010)

A brief discussion with ReMarTech’s Ryan Slack on Corcoran’s digital efforts across marketing and mobile projects. I was often on panels like these, which were frequently positioned as ‘there will be blood’ events by pitching up marketing folks from competing brokerages in the hopes that the sparks would fly as a means of driving ticket registrations. Unfortunately for the organizers, it never worked, as most of the people I ended up chatting with were lovely, and simply trying to solve the same problems as me.

Life On The Real Estate Conference Circuit (2008-2018)