And on today’s show I like to bring a few vendors in and some interesting people that you would like to hear from. So in this first segment we are going to jump right into it. We are going to be talking with Danny Frank. Now he is the Houston Association of Realtors Secretary/Treasurer and also incoming technology advisory group chairman.
He also happens to be a Realtor with Keller-Williams Realty out of Pearland. We are going to talk to him about some of the new technology, some of the things like social media and stuff that people are using. If you want to join us, if you have got a question about any of the things we are covering on the program, of course we always love to hear from you.
But without further adieu let’s welcome Danny Frank to the program. Good afternoon, Danny. Thank you so much for being with me today.
DANNY: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It is hot. I was out showing houses today down in League City. They were foreclosure houses with no power, no air conditioner. And it does make you sweat being this hot today.
CHRIS X: Well, first and foremost as we get started, tell me a little bit about what you do with HAR, Houston Association of Realtors, HAR.com and as the secretary and of course looks like you are going to be the incoming technology advisory group chairman. Tell me a little bit about what you do.
DANNY: Oh, I am secretary/treasurer for HAR—that’s on the executive committee on the board of directors. What it entails is I am the secretary/treasurer for HAR and take care of—help take care of the financing, financial matters and everything that has to do with HAR.com and all that would entail being on the board. As the incoming technology advisory group vice-chair this year and incoming chairman, we sit on this committee and it’s basically just a roundtable, a think tank of what and how we can do our job better. How we can get the information out to the consumer, and what do we do to make it easier for the consumer to get that information.
CHRIS X: Well, it’s important that the consumers do have that information ‘cause you guys first and foremost have a lot of it, and you’ve got a lot of great information. The website—I had a couple of guys on and we talked about the different aspects and new things that you guys have done with HAR.com, and so the website is just a phenomenal piece of work. And I know—I don’t think a lot of people realize how good we have it here in Houston with such a fantastic website.
DANNY: They don’t. It’s an important factor not only for consumers but for the Realtors as well. Now, you think about if you go to even a major metropolitan city like Dallas, they don’t have a public facing website. People leave Houston, they go to Dallas try to buy a home, and they ask a Realtor where’s HAR.com, they can’t find it.
CHRIS X: It’s in Houston. We know there’s a lot of different sites and things out there, but I really and honestly don’t believe there’s one that rivals, first of all, the amount of traffic that you guys get with HAR.com and also rivals the—I guess the different perks that HAR.com has. And we talked about that on a previous show. You can go check that out at Lifestyles Unlimited dot com and pull it up. And you know what, we may be running a “best of” next Friday for the holiday weekend I might play it again. If you missed those, tune in next Friday and you can hear that.
Now, speaking of the internet, that is—obviously the internet it’s no longer something new, it’s been around for a while now. But now with the different sort of, I guess, social applications like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, there’s blogs. All of these things are the rage now. Everybody is all over Twitter or Facebook or they’re LinkedIn. The social media applications, they are not only the present but it looks like it’s got to be the future as well. I don’t see this stuff going away, and this is going for everyone and their business. How are Realtors starting to use social media, I guess, with their business applications?
DANNY: Well, you know, Chris, it’s real easy. It puts you in front of the consumer on a daily minute-by-minute basis. It lets the consumer get to know you the Realtor on a basis they may not get to know. And by using Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and that kind of thing, you are able to meet that consumer more often than you would if you were say just doing a direct mail campaign or stopping by and seeing them once a month or every six weeks. It just puts you in front of them so they can have access to you on a regular basis and get to know you as a person.
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