Final Post - Internship Conclusion

This summer I worked as an intern for a RE/MAX franchise with 10 different offices in my hometown. Through this internship I gained a lot new knowledge about the real estate industry, a better understanding of an entrepreneurial organization, work experience and references to keep on my resume, and more.

I got my internship while looking for a summer job toward the end of the spring semester of my sophomore year. The insurance company I worked at last summer didn't need extra help this year so I needed somewhere new to work. I've always been interested in the real estate industry and have even toyed with the idea of maybe becoming a Realtor. Thus, I thought it would be a good idea to look for some summer work in the industry to gain some experience. I sent out about 15 letters of interest to different agencies in my area and got a call back from two places. I interviewed with RE/MAX 440/Central and they told me that they were interested in having a young person come in who was familiar with social networks to set them up on various sites. Finally all my hours wasted on facebook came in handy...and I was able to explain to them my experience with different social networking sites and even show them my jewelry business fan page .

They hired me for the summer and we set it up as an intern position. I started work the week after I got home from school by training how to do reception work, which I did when I was in between projects or when they needed someone to fill in. I was trained on how to answer the phone, schedule showings and inspections, do work for the agents, etc. I also learned all about RE/MAX 440/Central which started off as one office in Quakertown, PA. Tom Skiffington was an agent in the office and went to the owner with an expansion plan. Tom expanded the business to 9 more offices in nearby cities, and the business now has over 200 agents, as well as a full staff of receptionists, bookkeepers, a title and mortgage company, and more. The success of RE/MAX 440/Central was inspiring to me as an entrepreneurship major to see how Tom could take one small office and turn it into the RE/MAX agency that brings in the most revenue in all of Pennsylvania and Delaware!

The work I did at RE/MAX varied. I was given free-reign to set up facebook and twitter accounts for the company to my liking, and was assigned various other projects from Tom throughout the summer. I did it all: copied paperwork, scanned files, researched software, liaisoned between new companies we did business deals with, and more. I

will outline the most import projects I worked on in the next few paragraphs.

My biggest project was creating and updating a facebook page for RE/MAX. We currently have 107 fans and a steady stream of interaction from the fans. I've posted a variety of different items: open house schedules, articles, helpful videos, pictures of our offices, interviews and pictures with agents, magazine articles our owner Tom was in, community events RE/MAX participated in, interesting statistics about RE/MAX, and more. I've also just started an advertising campaign on facebook as well. I made this ad to target first time home buyers and set it up to only show on people's pages who live in a 25 mile radius of our Quakertown office and who are between the ages of 22-39, common ages to be buying your first home. We are only charged when someone clicks on the ad. So far it has shown up on 17,375 pages and has been clicked 3 times.

I've also set up a twitter account for RE/MAX. I've posted mostly articles and information about RE/MAX here, as well as new listings. We've been trying to find a program that will automatically tweet our new listings as they come into our MLS provider, and are currently working on getting that to happen through our partnership with RISMedia.

Speaking of RISMedia...as I mentioned in previous posts RE/MAX recently partnered a deal with RISMedia and Tom didn't have a lot of time to devote to getting the new partnership set up. Thus Tom had me come in and work on getting everything set up including sending in company profiles, agreement documents, and starting to utilize the new benefits of the agreement: daily newsletters for our agents, customized press releases I sent out to the press, articles and videos I posted to our sites, and more. Through this partnership with RISMedia we also partnered with Mobile Real Estate ID, a company that is giving us the ability to attach sign riders to our listings where interested home buyers can text in a specific code for a house and immediately be texted back info and pictures on the house, all the while recording the person's number so the agent can use it as a new lead. I've also been helping to set this deal up, liasoning between Tom and Mobile Real Estate, and assigning codes to listings, and getting the signs ready to go out.

From all of the reception work, side projects, and social network projects I have worked on I've learned a lot. I've learned about the real estate industry; how fast paced it is and how agents must constantly be available to their clients. If you can acquire and sell a lot of listings you will earn a nice chunk of change with each commission, but if you are not selling any houses you don't have any normal paychecks coming it. I've also learned how to work for a difficult boss...Tom normally likes things a very specific way and can be blunt and particular about how everything is done, so I've gained experience working with that type of person and accepting fault for things that were not my fault to keep all parties happy... I've also expanded on my work ethic because when I wasn't doing reception work I had pretty much free-reign to work on my projects as I wished. There was no outline a things for me to do so I used my own knowledge and creativity to produce results instead of taking instructions from someone else.

While I've gained a lot of work experience and knowledge...I've also gained something else...a job! RE/MAX decided to keep me on to update our social networking pages and work on a few other projects (such as a youtube page we just started working on this week) from a far. And I really will be far away because I'll be studying abroad in France! But, all I need is an internet connection which I will have at the house I am staying so I'm going to dedicate about 5 hours a week for RE/MAX work. This eliminates the problem of me having to train someone else to take over what I have been doing, and also gives me some spending money for while I'm abroad!

Overall I think my internship has been successful. I've gained a great item to put on my resume with some great new references, learned a lot from a real life entrepreneur, and now have a continuous job I can keep doing even when I am away from school.

Good News!

I just found out today that RE/MAX wants to keep me on working for them to continually update our pages and work on other social networking things even though I'm going back to school! They're going to pay me for about 5 hrs/week of work. I'm super excited because I like the company and can keep doing what I have been from where ever I want! Which is good because I'm studying abroad in France this semester....kinda far from their main office. But, I'll have internet access and that's all I need!

Now I don't have to worry about training anyone to replace me because I'll still be working here :)

I'd say this has been a successful internship.

Last Projects

The last couple things I plan on working on while I'm here at RE/MAX are as follows:

-Making sure Tom knows how to utilize all the features of our RISMedia partnership I've helped get rolling (specifically how to personalize the daily newsletters they send out to agents)

-Getting a final answer from Tom on whether or not he wants to get set up with a Twitter program to tweet our new listings

-I proposed RE/MAX try advertising on facebook, and am going to put together a possible add that we can use and target to people in the area

-Figure out who will continue on with what I have done, and train them!

I will hopefully be meeting with Tom soon to iron out these last few details. I will then write up my final internship post. Let me know if I need to to anything else to meet the internship requirements!

Texting Sign Riders

The latest thing I have been working on is really trying to get our texting program off the ground and running. We've been working with a company called Mobile Card Cast that is setting us up with this program. After everything works, a buyer will be able to see a house for sale that has a sign similar to this picture to the left. They will be able to text a code to a number, and will immediately get a text back with information about the property, pictures, and the agent's contact information. The agent then gets this information as a lead that they can follow up on.

So far our biggest problem has been getting all the information needed for this program to work set up correctly. We have ten different offices who have listings from two different MLS providers: Trend and Lehigh Valley MLS. We have had to get both of these companies agree to share their information with Mobile Card Cast so they can have the information on all of our listings. Mobile Card Cast is a newer company, however, and so it was taking some time for Trend and Lehigh Valley MLS to allow them access to that information. They have finally allowed access though and everything is being set up now. I have started going into our admin page for the texting site and assigning text codes to some of Tom Skiffington's (the broker) listings. I've also been pasting the codes on the signs to be attached to the houses's for sale sign, and as soon as the program is fully working we'll be able to go out and put the signs up, and hopefully get some houses sold faster!

Facebook/Twitter Update

Just an update on how my pages are doing:

Facebook page almost has 100 fans! Only six more to go. I've been posting a variety of content: open house schedules, pictures of a magazine that has featured us in it, interviews with different real estate agents, events for a community day RE/MAX participated in, and more.

Twitter: trying to get it set up to automatically tweet our new listings for us. TweetLister is a company that does this (it pulls our listings off our MLS provider website and creates a unique tweet for each one) but cost about 20 dollars a month. Trying to get permission from the boss about this, but it's still in the works.

RISMedia

Another thing I have been delegated to work on here at RE/MAX is to aid in the set up our new partnership with RISMedia.. RISMedia is the known "as the residential real estate industry's definitive source for news and information for real estate's most profitable and productive professionals–and all those looking to gain a competitive edge." or, at least that's what they claim on their website.

Through this new partnership we get daily and monthly newsletters to send to our agents, customized press releases to send out, a section on our own website with real estate news, a mobile version of our website, the ability to set up texting for house listings, and more. Learn more about this cool feature here.

Getting RE/MAX situated with this company has been a long process though. I've been the main contact between RISMedia and RE/MAX and have been the one turning things in and making sure we do what we need to on time. This has included writing a company referral and service profile, coordinating the interview with Tom Skiffington (owner) and RISMedia for an article in Real Estate Magazine, uploading all of the agents information to RISMedia so they can get situated on the texting feature, sending press releases to newspapers, customizing newsletters, etc. Lots of start-up work, but hopefully soon we will get everything set into place!