Audrey's Adventures in Real Estate

Seems I have been green longer than I care to admit.  Ever since I was a kid, like 40, there I said it, years ago.  My mom is from Germany and they have always recycled and reused as part of their culture for years before we showed up. 

We never wasted anything, brown grocery bags, they were our trash bag, when they changed to the plastic kind, ditto. If we ever got food in those plastic containers, we reused them to save leftovers.  We always found at least a second use for everything.  Thanks Mom, who knew you were so cool??

We had those grocery bags that you took to the grocery store way back when.  However, when I went to the grocery store we would never use them back then, they weren't so cool.  None of my friends did it , you know what I am talking about.  Now it is the THE thing.

Fast forward to today, I am the recycle police in my office.  Actually, I am pretty obnoxious about it and making sure others follow the green rules as well.  Living in Montgomery County Maryland, it is pretty easy to recycle.  They provide residents with recycle bins for paper and plastic and we have free pick up once a week. 

I was showing a condo in a high rise in Bethesda and there was a representative from the county speaking to the building manager.  He was telling, actually insisting, the manager that they need to have the paper recycle bin next to the mailbox area in the lobby so the residence could automatically throw away their junk mail/paper right there in the lobby. 

If you are a business in Montgomery County, MD it is mandatory that you have recycle bins for paper and plastic.  I swear I will pull regular paper I find in the trash can and put it in the bin.  My assistant thinks I am a nut.  Too bad, I have my convictions.

I was looking for a marketing idea for a "Pop by".  If you are a Buffini student you will know what a pop by is. For those of you who are not, a pop by is when you have an item of value to drop off to your past client.  One day I had an "Aha Moment" for a great pop by idea and it was a very green one that I thought I would share with you.

I was in Whole Foodsand they had the reusable grocery bags.  You know the ones I wouldn't be caught dead with when I was younger?  Well there they were, .99cents each.  I bought 150 of them for my pop bys. 

So what I did was group the bags in twos and made a postcard that said the bags were from me. I tied them together with a ribbon with the note that said they were a way to pay it forward to our Mother Earth.  Then drove around to my past clients homes and dropped them off.  Some of my folks were home and it was fun to see them too.

I will tell you that I got the most calls and emails from those bags.  I still need to do another run to more of my clients and will because I had such a great response from the bags.

The good news is that you spend some green and everyone is happy to help Mother Earth breath a little easier.

I was asked by the Montgomery County Maryland Women's Council of REALTORS® to give a presentation about what I have learned about social networking in the last couple of years.  I was honored to be asked and so I went last Wednesday to see the members of WCR

I put my presentation together, keeping it simple for myself and for the members to not be overwhelmed by the massive amount of information that goes along with social networking.   I thought Blogs, Social Networks and Micro-blogging would be the a good place to start. I am  far from being and über geek or any kind of expert, but I have taken many classes over the last year, and still do now, to learn about this ever evolving way of doing business.

I put my presentation together, simple and what I hoped would be clear for the members to understand.  My  RE/MAX broker was great and loaned me the projector for my presentation.  I got there, set everything up, had my cup of coffee, waited for the meeting to be called to order and wouldn't you know the bulb burns out in the projector!!  Never a good thing for a presentation, let alone my nerves.  Trying to fix it, to no avail, we decide to just us my laptop, turn down the lights and press on.

My main focus of the presentation was what Social Networking was, why we should care about it, and how can someone get started.

My suggestions for the group, that have worked for me personally were:

•  ActiveRain because it is a real estate community
• RealEstatetomato because of the extensive training 
• Facebook because we all need friends and exposure
• Twitter is easy and part of my social network

I told the members that social networking was the future of real estate marketing not only for Listing and selling homes, but also for branding ourselves in our community. 

I think several understood what I was saying and asked me several questions.  I told them I was not a technical person but would find out the answers for the things I did not know.   I think one of the biggest things I had going for me was that I am not a technical computer person,  I am a REALTOR® who can explain this type of information in a way that non technical people can understand.  We speak the same language of marketing homes not html. 

I had a great time with the members and was flattered to be asked.  Funny though, I think if I am involved with these groups, I think I am pretty mainstream, but I found that it is not popular as I thought.  I hope the members found my information helpful and will become active in social networking.

I hope that the members will take some time to explore these networks that I have shared with them.  I think they will be amazed at the support that they will receive from others who are already active in Social networking, there is nothing to be intimidated about, jump in!   I hope the members of WCR will try to join one network  at a time, slowly learning how to be a participant in the paradigm shift of our industry.

Besides, I got new followers on Twitter :)