I’m back, and full of interesting news for the week. Thanksgiving wasn’t typical but it was nice nonetheless. There were copious amounts of food and drink consumed and a great deal of time spent lounging in my house coat enjoying snuggles with my kids. A nice refuel to help set up for a productive week, which kicked off with an installment of Homefiniti and Beyond, where I got to interview our youngest coworker, check it out! I started this week’s edit out with about 30 tabs open on my browser from various articles that looked interesting. I’ve narrowed it to 4.
HOUSING
Starting off with a ray of sunshine and good news from my gloomy and rainy Baltimore kitchen counter, the housing market is looking bright for 2021. Rejoice and give thanks! Danielle Hale from Realtor.com indicated that it won’t be quite the boon that 2020 was, but the demand should remain strong and prices will continue to rise. There were several other tidbits I read along the way, indicating the mortgage amounts continue to increase and new home sales remain strong as well. What are your home sales goals for 2021?
CRM
This news was everywhere this week. I first heard it on the radio, then it was the highlight of more than one newsletter in my inbox; Salesforce is buying Slack. Both are competitors to Microsoft, but on different fronts. The combination will certainly make them more powerful and it actually makes total sense to combine the two to provide a holistic system to its user base for customer management and communications. There are lots of CRM platforms out there trying to compete with Salesforce and this addition will surely make them more attractive to potential customers. What CRM platform are you using?
The Google’s always up to something and this week is no different. This week they rolled out the December Core update. Core updates usually come out several times a year, the last one in 2020 was on May 4th. What is a core update and what does it mean for you? Google says this:
“Several times a year, we make significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems. We refer to these as “core updates.” They’re designed to ensure that overall, we’re delivering on our mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers.”
In other Google news, they’re taking on Facebook again this time through Google Maps. They’ve added a newsfeed. And the content of this feed is coming from Google My Business, our favorite digital tool of 2020. Now when people open maps and see what’s nearby there’s a tab for the newsfeed so people can search for interesting news and information from the surrounding area. I see this as useful for builders when people are using Google Maps to plan a day of open house tours, they open the map and click on the newsfeed to see the latest post from a local builder mentioning a new quick move-in home or other noteworthy piece of content that they’ve shared on their Google My Business account. Do you use GMB?
Thus concludes this week’s highlights. Each piece this week can be factored into your 2021 marketing plans. Perhaps you’re not using GMB or are thinking about a new CRM. Maybe you want to improve your SEO, the good news is that with the housing forecast, your budget should be bigger than ever so there’s room for all of it! Enjoy your weekend. My family and I are going to a tree farm for the first time ever to cut down our Christmas tree, wish us luck. I hope we don’t come home with any praying mantis egg pods, like this Instagram Influencer that I follow. 🤮
