Chris Smith’s Must-Have Mobile Apps

By Molly on October 26th, 2011

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Good afternoon readers! Today we’re blogging live from Inman News’ Agent Reboot at Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The day kicked off with Inman’s Chief Evangelist, Chris Smith, talking about the evolution of technology. He began by sharing his own personal, technology timeline which he confessed all began when he got his first Nintendo! He then went out to share some general thoughts about social media for real estate. Some of the best sound bites:

“It’s never been more important to have great content on the internet, but it’s never been harder to get people to pay attention”
“Facebook is the biggest opportunity that has arrived for our industry. We can know target very specific demographics like never before.”
“If you think Twitter is stupid, and I use Twitter every day in my life, you probably aren’t the person I want working with me on my home purchase.”
“Why is Google so successful? They are adapting, they are innovating and they aren’t afraid.”
“If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevancy even less.”

He then transitioned into his formal presentation “20 Mobile Tools That Will Make You Stand Out.” Chris began by saying there are more people in the world with cell phones than tooth brushes. In his opinion, the iPhone is the premier mobile device. He asked, “Don’t you want the device where the company makes the phone AND the operating system?”

Chris talked about the importance of optimizing your email messages for mobile. He stressed that your email subject line, the first sentence of the message and general brevity are key in getting people to open your emails.

The rest of his presentation focused on the mobile apps you must explore and he recommends as tools for expanding your capabilities, your lead generation and customer service abilities. Here are a few he highlighted which we completely agree are must-haves:

Localmind – Download this app, open it and ask a real-time question to anyone checked in at a location on the map.
Qwiki – Chris described this app as Wikipedia and YouTube’s love child. Qwiki pulls up visually appealing information, photos and videos for any key word.
Houzz – We were first introduced to this home design app at Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco in July. We are obsessed with this for design and renovation inspiration.
Prezi – This is a free, presentation building tool that Chris recommended for listing presentations. It has incredible movement capabilities as you transition from slide to slide.
Realtor.com – The app for Realtor.com allows you to change home search criteria to a specific set of blocks. How cool is that? Perfect for the picky homebuyer.
Quicklytics – On the train? Wondering how your website traffic is doing? Quicklytics will tell you.
Evernote – Real estate professionals are always raving about Evernote. It’s easy to use and it syncs to all your devices and platforms. Chris informed us that the CEO of Evernote will be speaking at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in New York City in January. We’ll be there, so we’ll be sure to cover it for you!
Magic Plan – This may be the coolest thing I’ve seen so far today. Point your phone at the corners of a room, tell it where the doors are and it draws up a floor plan for you! That is magic!
Glympse – Want to give a buyer a glympse of their new neighborhood? Open up this app and let your mobile device give a tour!