Researching Santa Cruz Neighborhoods On-Line
April 05, 2008
Many (most?) of the visitors to my web site are folks who don’t actually live in Santa Cruz. Some of them have been to the area once or twice, some of them vacation regularly here. Some of them have children who are going to attend UC Santa Cruz, and some are considering Santa Cruz as a place to spend their retirement years. Whatever draws them here, a common interest is to research the various cities and the neighborhoods that make up Santa Cruz County.
Fortunately, there are a lot of tools these days for checking out Santa Cruz on-line. Although the only way to truly get to know a neighborhood is to come and spend some time in it, if that’s not very practical for you, there are alternatives.
Yelp.com: this is a very cool site. This is a site full of user-generated content about the various things to see and do in any area, including Santa Cruz. It has categories like Arts & Entertainment, Health and Medical, Nightlife, etc. I suggest you type in an address in an area you’re interested in and start here.
Flickr Map: You know about Flickr.com, right? They also have a handy map tool, so you can search for photos tagged as being taken from a certain area, like for example Santa Cruz. If you want to see what an area looks like, this is a great way to do it.
Yahoo Neighborhoods: Yahoo has a pretty interesting neighborhoods tool, which is closely coupled to their real estate section. It gives an overview of a city: population, demographics, weather, jobs, education, etc. It also gives you information on schools, restaurants, and shopping. It doesn’t actually break down various neighborhoods, alas.
Ask City: Venerable ask.com keeps trying to stay relevant, and has a bit of success with it’s Ask City tool. The Ask City tool is pretty cool - you can draw a shape on a map of a given area and ask to find businesses, events, movies, etc. that fall just in that area - good for researching neighborhoods.
Trulia.com: Trulia is far from venerable - they’re one of the new kids on the block. However, they put together a pretty impressive offering. They do focus mostly on real estate, but they have information on schools, for example. They also have an interesting housing price heat map for Santa Cruz county.
Google Maps: Google Maps is a fantastic tool, and they have now built into it a system for reviewing the businesses and other points of interest that you can find on the map. Also worth checking out, perhaps, is the Google Directory. Also, searching Google Images for Santa Cruz can yield some interesting information.
YouTube: This doesn’t really tell you much about neighborhoods, but you might find some interesting nuggets here, as always!
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 7:33am
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I’m a twit(ter)(er)
February 20, 2008
Social networking. Social marketing. That’s the ticket. If you have children, you’ve probably heard of MySpace. If you’re a grown up, you’ve probably heard of Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like. There’s no shortage of Realtor Magazine articles telling Realtors that “social marketing” is the ticket - win tons of business through your Facebook page, etc. Well, I have s Facebook page, but about the only thing I get from it is “friend requests” from other Realtors, mortgage brokers, and folks in related industries who want to network with me.
I’ll be honest. I don’t send a whole lot of referrals to Raleigh-Durham. And when it comes to working with a lender, I prefer to refer my clients to someone who they can actually go and have a coffee with, sit down, and discuss face-to-face while looking at the same piece of paper how all the numbers work.
There’s a new kid on the Social Networking block, and it’s called Twitter. Have you heard of it? It’s all the rage in certain circles. It’s kind of like instant messaging, a bit, except that instead of talking to just one person, you’re talking to everyone who is following your “twitter feed.” The idea is that you send out “tweets” telling folks what you are up to. I use a Macintosh (don’t you?), and I have this cool notification plug-in called “Growl” which sends up these little, evanescent floating windows with twitter notifications from other people I’m following.
For example, tech legend Guy Kawasaki has a twitter feed, and he posts to it dozens of times a day. A lot of what he does is direct traffic back to his new web venture, Alltop (which is kind of cool, check it out). Guy has thousands of people who subscribe to his twitter feed, and they all get these little messages, all day long.
I know, “Stick with the real estate!”. So here’s an interesting thing I found on Twitter: there’s some kind of (ro)bot that sends out notifications every time there’s a new rental in Santa Cruz. Here’s a link to the Santa Cruz Rental Twitter Feed. This is pretty cool, if you are looking to find a rental in Santa Cruz - a pretty good example of what this technology might do for you.
What do I use it for? Well, for example, I just sent out a tweet: “Writing a blog entry about how I use twitter. Check it out in a few minutes.” And I gave the URL for my blog here. Hopefully, that’ll drive some traffic to my site, and maybe I’ll pick up a new blog subscriber or two. I also send out notifications when I write blog entries (usually), and also when there’s some breaking Santa Cruz news that I want everyone to be aware of.
I think twitter might be just a passing fad. Or it could be the genesis of something great - who knows what it might evolve into, one day? But for now, I enjoy seeing everyone’s tweets and posting some of my own. We’ll see what comes of it.
Meanwhile, check out my Twitter feed.
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 9:44am
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