Give me your feedback in the Comments!
- What mortgage centric communities and forums do like and what do you like about them?
- What communities or trends do you not like and what don’t you like about them?
- What would make an awesome community? What features, formats and things are you looking for or wish existed?
Sorry about the repetition in the second half of the video, a little tired. 
Also: If you haven’t read any of Clarion Mortgage CEO, David Marr’s posts, they are worth a read. In this article he talks about Mortgage Broker Survival, the importance of maintaining loan locks and what it will take to keeps banks afloat: Mortgage Broker Survival
Real Estate RSS Icons – We’ve also cleaned up our original BrokerScience Real Estate RSS Icons and put them in a single zip file, so check them out!
I’d like to see some more data and statistics being analyzed, forecsts and predictions and that kind of thing. Most of the posts here are either opinion and/or news based. I read and enjoy Robert Ashby’s posts, but everyone else’s posts are one big blur, to be honest.
Trace – Excellent idea to ask the mortgage community what they want. It proves that you are actually willing to listen to your members instead of telling them what they need.
Based on our conversations, I know how passionate you are about filling that leadership void that the mortgage Web 2.0 industry needs.
I hope you know that I support you, but here are my thoughts:
Charge Money
I like your idea of having free blogs for brokers, which I know will be well received based on past projects that I’ve developed. However, please don’t give it all away for free.
Education, high traffic sites, lead capture tools, blogging strategies… these things should be reserved for the originators who are serious about implementing social media into their daily business routines.
I know the argument is that this info is already out there on the web for free. But, it is “Out There” on the web mixed in with 95% of BS noise that generally leads loan officers chasing some rabbit down a magic hole of misguided social media information.
As a Web2.0 fanatic, I love your vision. As a loan officer with a future business plan solely based on search engine marketing, your community scares me.
Real estate agents can openly network and share valuable Internet marketing strategies because they get their clients in contract at the beginning. Plus, since agents work together on transactions, local online networking doesn’t necessarily conflict with their marketing model. Actually, it probably strengthens their business.
However, mortgage bloggers are in fierce competition for those top 10 spots on Google. We can lose a client the day before a signing if they happen to find better rates online. With the challenges we’re already facing in lender guidelines, underwriting turn times, and a limited pool of qualified borrowers, it concerns me that you would give loan officers a competitive edge for free.
Not to sound like a social media guru hater, but the last thing we need is more loan officers encouraged to puke their rates all over twitter.
Obviously, service, expertise, communication, branding… all play a role in developing loyal clients and referral partners. Either way, we’re fighting for every inch right now.
So basically, if you charge for a premium membership to join your mortgage community, people will at least have to put a little skin in the game. It will also give you the amount of capital you need to effectively run a real social network. Trust me, it sucks running stuff for free.
If you have a premium membership service it will also keep out the spam and create more value for the people within your community.
With that being said, I think a mortgage specific forum or a micro-blogging platform like the Hotlist would be cool. A dead forum is worse than no forum at all. As long as you’re moderating the spam and keeping the conversations alive, they are powerful ways of building a community.
Maybe require a certain amount of posts before you allow signature links to be DoFollow.
Pricing engines – it might work. There are a few companies that are doing that pretty well already. I’m sure integrating them into your platform would make the most sense.
Either way, if you don’t do this, somebody eventually will in the near future. I do agree with you though, there is a need for this.
Look forward to your feedback. Let me know how I can help.
Ling: Thank you! Good stuff and makes sense. I love Robert’s posts as well.
I think that this type of info is a no brainer. While there are excellent pay sources such as Mortgage Market Guide, there is definitely a lot of key indicators and market data that should be free, just as they are in the world of equities / stocks / bonds.
This is on the radar. My hope is to strike a partnership with a data provider to provide a win / win scenario in giving this type of info.
Thank you for your feedback, it’s pretty clear though that this topic isn’t as popular as my last post about social media! Just one more reminder of how hard getting traction is truly going to be! I’m definitely up for the challenge though.
I agree, I would like to see more stats and data analyized. It would be great to also have a forum community where we can trade ideas, pass business information, and more.
What a great idea-it would be nice to see stats, like the others said.
Feel free to comment on any specific stats / data you would like… I’m going to be looking at the different sources out there and will likely put together a dashboard type of concept, to give key indicators that are quick and easy to understand. There have to be a handful of people already doing this, but I’m not finding them… apart from paid sites that is…..
Any specific services / data sources out there anybody really likes?
Well we’re taking babysteps at this point (data in upper right hand corner http://leadpress.com/campus/ ), but will be writing a post and talking with industry leaders about what indicators they use, how and why…
Ling: Thank you! Good stuff and makes sense. I love Robert's posts as well.
I think that this type of info is a no brainer. While there are excellent pay sources such as Mortgage Market Guide, there is definitely a lot of key indicators and market data that should be free, just as they are in the world of equities / stocks / bonds.
This is on the radar. My hope is to strike a partnership with a data provider to provide a win / win scenario in giving this type of info.
Thank you for your feedback, it's pretty clear though that this topic isn't as popular as my last post about social media! Just one more reminder of how hard getting traction is truly going to be! I'm definitely up for the challenge though.
Interesting post. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.