New Technology Offers New Ways to Market

By Tom Inglesby, Real Estate Business Magazine, October/November 2006

So you want to be a DJ and tell your story to the world? Hook up the mic and join the pod(casting) people!

Deep in the soul of many brokers lies a dormant gene that, when released, causes a mild-mannered real estate agent to become an entertainment figure. If you've always thought of yourself as a media celebrity — lacking only the media and the celebrity — perhaps the newest craze, "podcasting," holds the answers. With a microphone and a little planning, you, too, can be a recording star.

Well, maybe not a star, but at least you can take your agency to a new level of technology leadership and join the podcasting evolution. Combining the emerging technologies of audio and video recording, tiny portable digital music devices — usually one that uses the MP3 format (led by the iPod from Apple Computer that created the term podcasting), broadcasting concepts and the Internet, podcasting has become a star in its own right, at least among certain demographics.

A new study by global market research firm Ipsos indicates that as many as one in five Americans over age 12 now own portable MP3 players and one in 20 own more than one. Total headphone-MP3 sales reached $4.23 billion in 2005, according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). These popular devices accounted for 85% of all factory-level portable audio sales last year, CEA statistics showed.