REBlogWorld will take place October 15th at the Las Vegas Convention Center. With BlogWorld’s merger with New Media Expo, the event will be bigger than ever. Mark your calendars!

Social Media Training Camp launches this morning. We’ll be in New York at RE BarCamp and Inman Connect to launch it. I’ve teemed up with Mariana Wagner, Kelley Koehler, and Ginger Wilcox to put together a training bootcamp for sales and marketing professionals who want to adopt this medium.

The long term goal for me is to use these camps to better prepare blogging newbies for REBlogWorld. This is the sort of content we half expect REBlogWorld attendees to already know. We’ll continue to strive to make REBlogWorld the geekiest, most advanced, social media event in Real Estate.

Here we go! Check out the REBlogWorld Live update page to see twitter updates from attendees throughout the show. We”ll have digital handouts posted to this blog post thoughout the show.

You can find Teresa Boardman’s presentation here.

We wanted a clear winner, but we couldn’t pick just one. So in a twist, we named two and are calling it a tie!

Todd’s pick,

My choice is “Gambling at the Foreclosure Auction: High Stakes” from Jim Watkins at Bigger Pockets. It’s a great story, and the perfect pitch for a blog post. Some people blog like they’re writing a white paper, but I think frank conversations are more effective. Great job Jim!

Jason’s pick,

My choice is “Real Estate Secret Decoder Ring” by Jay Thompson at Phoenix Real Estate Guy. After reading dozens of entries I appreciated this post that mixed in a little humor with some solid advice. Great lead-in, great message, great content. Well done Jay!

Honorable mention to Drew Meyers for his Geek Estate post “You Now Have the Ability to Add Free School Data to Your Web Site or Blog“. Helping the readership build better blogs by alerting them to new features is a great strategy. This one in particular is a great find for RE Bloggers everywhere.

Thanks to everyone who participated. We had a lot of fun!

Todd & Jason

I’m not entirely sure how much help this will provide you as you prepare to pack (c’mon, it’s only three days away!!) but here is what to expect to see at the convention center on Thursday:

• Jeff Turner will be unimaginatively donning Tshirt and jeans. He has no fancy pants.
• Mariana Wagner has promised a unitard with a collage of all the REBW speakers sewn on it. Her other suggestions for clothing…ask her yourself. She frightens me.
• Kevin Boer will be “resplendent in..rich purple African love robes.” And I have seen a picture of them. They are indeed resplendent.
• Jeff Corbett will be in his usual Vegas attire, boxers. Not sure if that is directly related to his presentation.
• Morgan Brown is saving all his snark for Vegas and is wearing a suit and tie. Feel free to heckle him for overdressing.
• Brad Coy is planning on wearing a TeeFury t-shirt and a denim miniskirt with a holster for his water pistol (if we are lucky).
• Rich Jacobson is going to wear his kilt, and in the ’spirit of debate’ will do his Mel Gibson “Braveheart” impression, and moon David Smith. Plan to arrive early for that session, as I’m sure the seats will fill up quickly.
• Todd Carpenter gave no other guidelines beyond “it’s supposed to be sunny in Vegas and I don’t like tan lines.” You are free to interpret that however you like.
• Mike Price? He only says “casual.”
• Teresa Boardman has promised to wear a smile. Outside of that? Who knows??

Please also keep in mind that September 19th is also Talk Like a Pirate Day, so if you would like to go with a more swashbuckling look, that will be appropriate as well.

Anyone else coming want to fill us in on your choice of attire?

See you Friday!

Heather

(who is packing eyepatch, water pistol, and a camera…)

We have the patio reserved. Weather forecast is ‘beautiful’. Patio seats 50-60. No sponsor, cash bar. Just a bunch of friends, new and old, getting together for drinks, appetizers, and a meal on a beautiful fall evening in Las Vegas, NV.

Meet the speakers, attendees, and organizers of REBlogWorld. If you aren’t going to the event but still want to network, show up. We’d love to meet you too.

Please spread the news and stop by Upcoming and let us know if you will be attending.

Hat-Tip to John Novak for finding a great location and working out the details.

Also, Rich Jacobson from ActiveRain will be arriving around 6:00pm and has offered to pick up the 1st round of drinks & appetizers. He may be soliciting support for his big debate with David Smith on Friday; I think he’s a smart man. Thanks Rich and everybody at ActiveRain for making REBlogWorld even better!

Potential Sponsors: Do you want your own link love from a very influential group? Reach out via twitter @reblogworld or @jbinfrisco to discuss options. ~ Jason B.

Then we nailed down an awesome cast of speakers.

Then we ordered squirt guns for peat’s sake.

But beyond all that.

Are you kidding me?

Can we really be this lucky?

September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day!

In Vegas!

You are out of reasons not to come.

Buzz- The latest blog posts, announcements, and Twitter comments are the first things you see when you open the Guide.

Network- The Network page lets attendees add themselves to the guide and link to their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. You can add yourself through the phone app, or just go here.

Agenda - The Agenda page is your quick reference to sessions. Look here for titles, descriptions, times, rooms, and speaker names. All of REBlogWorld’s sessions are included.

First off, we’re hosting the Carnival of Real Estate this week. More details are here.

Next, I just ordered a big box of squirt guns to bring to Vegas. Details coming. We are not bailing you out of jail though, so play at your own risk.

Finally, some parties are taking shape. Possibly Thursday night at Ellis Island for $1 Microbrews, or maybe Gordon Biersch. Friday is Tech Set at Bare and another party in the works. Saturday is the big Blog World party. And if all else fails, it’s Vegas, I’m sure you can find something to do.

“Traffic, Readers, and Customers…

They’re not the same thing”

In our vertical, it’s so true. Driving 1,000, 2,000, or more visitors to your blog everyday doesn’t really matter if those visitors are not potential future clients. Real estate and mortgage bloggers do not build blogs to sell advertising. They build them to sell themselves.

Measuring the total traffic to your blog does not present the total picture for an RE Blogger. You don’t just need to know how many people visit your blog, you need to know why they are there, and how serious they are about doing business with you.

Traffic statistics can tell you much about your visitors/readers/customers, but you need to know what to look for. This is what Liz Struass, John Pozadzides, and  Lorelle VanFossen will be speaking to in their session on The Stats of High Performance Content & Marketing, Sunday the 21st at Blog World & New Media Expo.

John is the creator of Woopra, one of the coolest web analytics programs on Earth. Lorelle’s blog is widely considered to be required reading for bloggers who use WordPress. And Liz? Well, as my friend Jeff Brown says, “Liz is probably the smartest person in any room”.

This is the sort of content that every real estate and mortgage professional motivated to market in a web 2.0 world needs to know. This is the sort of content that real estate and mortgage professionals will only get by coming to REBlogworld.

September 19th is just two weeks away. There’s still time to register, but not much. What are you waiting for?

Just how connected is “DavidG” to the the pulse of the blogosphere? Well, I double dog dare you to say something bad about Zillow on your blog. You’ll find out in short order.

The Pitch is really going to be cool. You’ll just have to be there to find out what it’s all about, but we’re confident in saying that anyone interested in originating mortgages online in an ever more transparent world will have never seen so many new Mortgage 2.0options all assembled in one place. It’s gonna be cool.

This luncheon is exclusive for the Executive & Entrepreneur conference attendees of BlogWorld. However, BlogWorld has extended the session for our attendees.

If you are interested in attending or have questions, please contact Jason Berman at 970.455.4131 or send a Direct Message on Twitter @REBlogWorld. We will then get in touch to make arrangements for your reservation. Cost is $45. Deadline is September 12th, 2008.

We’re no experts on cloning, so we’re doing the next best thing. We’re having Turn Here film all of our sessions on Friday!

Who is Turn Here? From their web site:

TurnHere^® is a full-service Internet video solutions provider. We provide video production and distribution services, produce high quality low-cost Internet videos and develop and execute plans to distribute those videos across the Internet to the right audience. Our video production platform makes online video affordable to businesses of all sizes - from local small businesses to major brands seeking to leverage the power of video as part of their online marketing strategy. Video production and distribution is our specialty.

These recordings will be made available online to all of our attendees over the next few months. So, if you’re trying to choose between seeing Dan Green, or Teresa Boardman, you’ll have a chance to catch the other in video down the line!

This will also be a great refresher for the classes you do attend. I guarantee you, by the end of Sunday, your brain is going to be so crammed full of great ideas, that some of what you learn on Friday will be fading.

These videos will NOT be available if you don’t register!

All attendees will be able to view and download these movies on a password-secure web site at no extra charge. All non-attendees will really wish they had come to REBlogWorld. We won’t be selling them on their own. Mostly because a one camera recording from the back of the room is not the same as being there. And because we want our attendees to experience the full three day Blog World event. We relish the idea that the most important connections you may make could happen at lunch, in the halls, or hey, maybe even at the craps table at Ceasars.

For us, the point of doing this is to add value to the folks who are already coming. We have Turn Here to thank for making it all possible. If you were waiting for one more reason to get off the fence, here it is. Hotels are filing up. It’s time to register for the most unique real estate focused conference you have ever attended.

Historically speaking, I know that Facebook groups get joined, and are then never visited again. I’m guilty as charged. But there are some cool tools in there for connecting with other attendees. Morgan posted a video in there, and we encourage you all to do the same.

Like many in the RE community, I’m a relative blog newbie. Despite organizing a Blogging conference, I am far from a Blogging Expert. I’m am a conference junkie. So like many, I’m attending in 2008 to learn. To Soak It Up. I’m on the same path as many others that I’ve met recently; to build a better blog. Here are a few tips on how to get maximum value from this conference (or any conference).

• Bring your laptop. It’s a tech-oriented conference. Free wifi. Enough said.

• Bring a capture device. Inspiration, quotes, advice, & information flow freely at these events. Laptops, Cameras, Voice Recorders, Flip’s will all be useful for archiving ideas and presentations that you want to review at a later time. The old standby, notebook & pencil will be seen just about everywhere. Make sure you pack all of your capture devices and bring good battery backup.

• Bring your laptop.

• Get an account with Twitter. Attendees will be using the #REBW & #REBlogWorld standard on twitter to track happenings and connect with each other. Definitely check out REBW attendee NikNik’s Twitter post over at MyTechOpinion for more advice on twitter. We are @reblogworld on twitter.

• Get an account with Delicious - At virtually every session at REBlogWorld you will hear URL’s being cited. These URL’s are the secret sauce. If you have a laptop, be ready to bookmark URL’s as you go. Delicious is my favorite bookmarking site. When you hear a speaker or attendee cite a website, visit immediately and ‘tag it’ with a special tag like “reblogworld” and “toreadlater”. Then when you return home you will have your review ‘tag’ ready and you can jump right into your business planning workflow. Very productive.

• Don’t horde information. Success in the new information economy is built upon sharing. Give freely of your knowledge and thoughts and you will gain as much if not more. There are so few Real Estate folks actually getting online right now that if you are even at this conference, you should be thinking of everyone else as your traveling horde of fellow conquerors. Rummaging thru cyberspace grabbing market share. Those who are online are smiling right now. They know what I’m talking about. Play as a team and the journey is twice as enjoyable.

• Know who you want to meet. Stick around after presentations, exchange cards, say hello. Part of the success of conventions is just showing up. You’d be amazed at how interested a speaker is when he/she finds out people are interested in them. Show up. Be on-time. Stay late. Learn. Absorb. This environment is all about soaking it up.

• Give yourself a reasonable expectation for success - The measurement of success (return) needs to be benchmarked by new standards. You won’t go home and build a fantastic blog in two days. It will take effort, it will take time. Don’t expect it to pay your bills in 30 days. What it will do is begin to position you more effectively, efficiently, & timely with your customers and your potential customers. We have agents that are getting most of their business from their blog. They are speaking.The blog works 24/7. It breaks the law of diminishing returns. Consistent and purposeful effort is a long-term strategy. Results improve over time. Remember: The blog should be THE communication nerve-center for your business.

If you are on the fence and want to dip your toe in the water, I’m willing to bet that you’ll walk away from this three day event with more energy and ideas than when you started. Implement 20% of the ideas you capture and there should be no problem rationalizing the expense. I’ll share my LinkedIn BlogWorld story tomorrow.

It’s Year 1 of a Real Estate BlogWorld. Get dialed in. Join us.

What I take away from both videos is that there’s a fundamental shift in they way we learn, market, and connect that’s methodically tearing down walls through the power of networks and technology.

Every first time home buyer you work with is more likely to have a FaceBook or MySpace page than the last one. Every one of them becomes more and more savvy about avoiding information walls that protect access to the MLS, or wholesale mortgage rates.

Web enabled information is the great equalizer. That’s ok, because it equalizes your opportunity to market yourself in competition with larger entities. But this is the kind of marketing that you really can’t pay someone to do for you. Forget brandishing a unique selling proposition, you need an authentic one.

Your ability to market anything in the future is now tied directly to your ability market it online.

Of the few people who’ve told me they want to make it to REBlogWorld, but that there are just to many other conferences happening this fall, I get it. But really, what is going to a big real estate or mortgage conference REALLY going to teach you that you don’t already know? Do you think the people putting on these conferences really understand what the future holds? Is the trade show floor occupied by the latest tools and technology providers to help you market online? Or someone wanting to sell you laser engraved CutCo knives?

There is only one conference involving the real estate industry that is focused on preparing you to adapt to the world ahead. Only one that marries the smartest minds in RE.net with the smartest minds in Web2.0.

If you’re motivations to attend a conference involve seeing old friends, getting motivated by a ra-ra speech, or figuring out how to turn a family trip to Disney World into a tax right off, then REBlogWorld might not be the best choice. But shift happens, and  Vegas has rollercoasters. It’s time to make a change in what you’re perspective of what a real estate or mortgage conference is all about.