I am happy to report that our industry can now (sort of) claim that Google is following our lead, as it adds visual search results to its site.  This is something we in the real estate industry have been doing for years. It will be interesting to see how this search will succeed in the mainstream. Stay tuned…

This week, we received new insight into the ever-important echo-boomer generation or the Gen Y’s. A study of prestige brand rankings showed that this group interacts with brands online, via social networking sites and is signing up for email newsletters. This gives us a better idea of how we can be marketing to this group successfully. But regardless of how you market, the first and most important step, according to an article in Technorati, is to establish trust with the consumer. We all need to think about ways to build trust that will encourage positive word-of-mouth around our services. Let us know your ideas!

Now for some more fun tools…If you have a lot of consumers asking about the market, Cha Cha allows anyone to set up profile pages to answer questions directly from fans and others on social networking sites and mobile devices. What an interesting way to interact during this very confusing real estate market! Another site, HootSuite, has added new features for companies engaged in Facebook and Twitter campaigns, including assigning and sharing tasks so multiple people can work on a campaign at once. A great way to stay organized! But, for those on Twitter, remember the site is not without its bugs. Also this week, piggybacking on all of the “like” (and “unlike”) Facebook news, FourSquare has added its own “like” buttons. Just one more marketing channel!

And finally, have any fun trips planned this summer? If you’re going far from home, and don’t know the native language, Google Goggles may be a cool tool to help you sound like a local! Have fun!