5.  30 Must Have Mobile Apps Live – 2,740 Views – We all at this point have heard someone say that mobile is huge. The hour video I did on the top 30 mobile apps for real estate proves that there is a thirst for practical apps that will help a Realtor be more productive. I also gave a similar presentation around the country for Inman News which tells me that when you leverage your online content in the offline space it drives traffic back to learn more/digest. I felt like this was one of my most interactive classes to date and came off more like a web TV show that was interactive than a webinar. If you missed it you can of course watch it now.

4.  How To Back Link and Why It’s Done – 2,948 Views – This visual how to by Suzanne got more comments than nearly any post all year. Why? It taught 1000′s of Realtors why comments were important from an SEO perspective. Before reading this post my guess is that many real estate agents had heard the term back link, but had no idea how it could help their site or why it was worth their time to incorporate. Usually the tech teachers do not speak slowly enough for the average non techie. Suzanne not only made it all make sense, the visuals she used and by explaining the how AND why was the key to this posts success.

3.  The 5 Best Ways To Use QR Codes For Real Estate – 5,453 Views – Oh QR codes. Weren’t they just all the hype this year. If any technology is deserving of the shiny object of the year award it is certainly QR Codes. While many posts were written about whether or not they were a fad, I decided to write a post focused on the best uses for our industry. Can they be leveraged to make the home buying process more enjoyable? Absolutely. Will we still be writing about them this time next year? Time will tell. By sharing the strategy behind the shiny object and not just that they exist but how you as a Realtor should be using them this post had legs. Also helped that it was featured on the cover of the Arizona Association of Realtors Magazine and by a few other small media outlets.

2.  Facebook Shuts Down Page With 47,000 Fans – 6,953 Views – I think we could all agree that Facebook dominated the headlines this year. When I saw that my friend Jonathan Rivera who had one of the largest real estate related pages on Facebook had it taken away without warning I knew it was going to be a big story. The shut down was due to the use of the word Realtor in the domain name which was a violation. Instead of allowing Jon to make a change the page was instead shut down. With privacy and who actually owns the content in Facebook being such hot topics in the national media this story took off like crazy. Ironically Twitter is where it went viral thanks to tweets from likes of Robert Scoble and Mari Smith. Fear sells and this story sold. It was even featured on the front page of The Orlando Sentinel and Jon was interviewed dozens of times in the following weeks. I also intentionally did not use the words real estate in the title because I thought that would limit the buzz and I was right in that regard. Amidst the buzz Jon got his page back with a new URL, oddly enough that follow up post received a fraction of the views as the original. Lead with blood I suppose.

1.  How To Add Contact Forms In Real Estate Facebook Fan Pages – 8,257 Views – Another gem by Suzanne (congrats to her btw for having the top post of the year). Real estate agents are spending a lot of time on social networking sites and not seeing a lot of ROI, social not-working if you will. This step by step how to video and visual post showed an easy and free method of adding lead generation forms to Facebook Business Pages. Within hours of publishing we had feedback from several Realtors that they had received leads that were legitimate. If there is one thing I have learned about this industry it is unless you can show or prove that something works it will not be openly adopted by the masses. Our model from day one has been to provide practical information that is easy to execute. This post did that brilliantly. Once we started getting testimonials from agents that they were seeing a return and quickly we shared that information when we re-syndicated and it went viral.

So what can we all learn from this list? I have a few takeaways for myself:

1. 3 of the 5 top posts were video. I have been preaching that video will be king and for those of us who have adopted early it already is.

2. Numbers in post titles do well. 3 of the top 5 posts had numbers in their title. Do that more.

3. Suzanne is possibly the most under the radar blogger in the industry. 2 of the top 5 posts were hers even though I write 85% of the content.

4. Mobile is indeed huge. 2 of the top 5 posts were about mobile and I only see that trend increasing in 2011.

5. How To was in 2 of the 5 titles. People are browsing the web to learn and showing them how to do things is works. 4 of the 5 posts were educational, theory is not as important anymore.

6. Facebook is King. The top 2 posts were about Facebook and had Facebook in the title. When your audience is largely engaging with you there it makes sense to create content about that platform.

Hope you were all able to learn a thing or two from us this year. I know I learned a lot from engaging with all of you!

Photo Credit Flickr

Do that online and you will be fine.

I want to accept this on behalf of our fans and followers who were able to mobilize quickly and help us take home the “hardware”.  By keeping the focus on user generated content and genuine interaction we sure have found some passionate, tech savvy agents!  They won this award for us and would never have done so if it wasn’t so obvious we truly love what we do each and every day.  Thanks again to everyone who voted and who has helped us achieve this humbling honor…

In no particular order here they are…

1. Realtors will figure out that NO ONE except other Realtors and MAYBE past clients will really want to be a “Fan” of theirs on Facebook. Friends maybe, but not a Fan. In fact 77% of all Fan pages have less than 1,000 Fans and those that do are typically an established large company or a celebrity. Fan pages that are information focused, think “Local Market Real Estate Trends”, and aren’t attached to the name of a salesperson(were talking about you BTW) will be the ones that will grow, bear the best ROI and thus will be worth your valuable time maintaining.

2. Realtors who are looking to “figure out” Twitter will learn that tweeting “we service the blah blah blah area, call us today if you are looking to buy or sell” will lead to exactly ZERO paychecks in 2010 and beyond. Even if you did it all day everyday, it isn’t going to work with today’s Tech Savvy consumers.  In our experience most Twitter users are above the curve on tech savviness and will not respond to these pleas for business.

3.  Twitter will begin to transform into a way to aggregate information quickly and learn from others using clients like TweetDeck.  Lists, columns and trends will continue to grow in popularity as tools that help to facilitate and organize the massive stream of information available.  Realtors will “Tweet” less and learn more by doing so.

4. LinkedIn will become more popular with agents as their format is looking more like Facebook everyday. Trouble is, most Realtors will sign up, log in once, fill out their profile and then wonder a few months later why they “didn’t get anything out of it”.  Great tool for generating business from the millions of Doctor’s, Lawyers and fellow business owners on the site,  but not if you aren’t engaging regularly, self promoting when you do and never offering anything of value.  Anyone have a Doctor or Dentist friend whose status updates include the root canal or surgery they just performed?  Probably not(thanks Nathan Bangs)!

5.  Direct mail and offline marketing such as business cards will start to mention that there is a page for their community on Facebook.  This approach will actually work compared to the God awful typical response agents get through the mail.  You are not asking them to become a Fan of yours, just a Fan of their community or neighborhood.  You know they are on Facebook, so create a Fan page for your farming areas and link up with them that way!

6.  MySpace will go bankrupt and Facebook will be flooded with teenagers and musicians all looking to be famous and none of whom are looking for a Realtor.  If we see customizable skins and mp3′s that play while you look at someones profile we know that the end is near!

7.  Share buttons and sharing content via Facebook, Twitter, etc will continue to grow in popularity. It will be the main resource for getting news headlines, local stories, referral business, movie reviews, etc…by the majority of consumers.  It will also be a way for agents to gain more business and keep their name top of mind, as long as they aren’t just sharing Real Estate related content(be a real person once in a while).  By our estimate only about 50% of Realtors are currently comfortable/know how to share content and the training wheels will come off in 2010!

8.  More Realtors than ever will learn the value of back linking their blog posts through sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc…Syndication of content, inbound as well as outbound links and search engine optimization will be better understood by an industry that is typically a bit behind the curve when it comes to tech(just being honest).

9.  Every agent will finally have a blog and WordPress will overtake ActiveRain as the platform of choice! Problem is, less than 10% of Realtors will use it properly, tie it together with their social networking sites using badges or ever generate a single lead from it.  Those who run the blogosphere will generate all of the buyer and seller leads from the web and will push out the non tech savvy agents who are already wondering if they should have renewed their license this year.

10.  YouTubeand HD multimedia will be the primary focus for Tech Savvy Agents who figured out the previous 9 in 2009(congrats all 3-5% of you)!  The majority of blog entries, status updates and agent websites will involve video and YouTube will be the em bedder of choice.

So there’s our list and we would love to know what your thoughts are.  Did we miss anything?  Please feel free to comment below and here’s to a great and productive year!