Whew, what a year. Despite everything we all endured together in 2020, Union Street Media grew, again, for the 21st year in a row. In April 2020, we never thought that would be possible. Thank you to all who helped make that a reality! We are truly humbled and so grateful to have the client, employee, partner, and industry relationships we do.

We’re especially proud of our team, which also grew this year. We added 13 talented new team members, spanning all areas of the business from sales to engineering.

Union Street Media employees brought a new level of creativity, perseverance, and compassion to their work this year. And we saw our clients do the same. This year has been so hard. Every single one of our lives have changed. And yet we’ve continued on, one step in front of the other, because we know others needed, and still need, our help. We needed our help. And that commitment to others, that belief that a stronger community lifts us all, is what we’re so incredibly proud of. As we’ve long said, real estate agents are the future, and we believe finding a safe and comfortable home has never mattered more than it does today. Similarly, having someone you trust alongside you to guide the way is equally as important as ever.

Though there are many, some things we’re particularly proud of that happened in 2020 include:

• When the pandemic hit, we called every single one of our clients to understand what you needed and how we could help. We came up with creative ways to accomplish your goals, often with and for less, and best of all, we got to hear how that helped you when things started to reopen. In a sea of new technology adoption this year, our favorite technology is still the phone (though video may be a close second!).
• We helped our clients go independent, join forces with other companies, and reinvent themselves under a new brand.
• We doubled down on strategies to put you first in local searches. From building the most user and search engine friendly map search out there, to expanding our custom advertising strategies, to continuing to provide the core SEO and content creation services we’re known for, this year has been marked by a return to our roots. Helping you be more local than ever online, and replace the connections you weren’t able to foster as much in person this year, is something we’re incredibly proud of.
• We published playbooks on topics like marketing during COVID, held webinars, interviewed industry leaders, and shared all of our insights so we could all benefit from each others’ expertise.
• We introduced new designs, custom widgets, and pushed the envelope of real estate web development, all while strengthening our platform’s foundation – things like ADA, mobile usability, and technical SEO were key focus areas.
• In October, we learned we had won more REAL Trends Website Rankings Awards than any other company. 
• We were recognized as providing best-in-class solutions by T3 Sixty, who awarded several of our market-leading products, including our enterprise websites and custom digital marketing services, with their Tech 500 badge.
• We launched a massive giveaway to award winners over $30k in prizes in total.

Personally, we enjoyed the continued growth of digital audio (check out our blog on programmatic audio to learn more about this), and of course, the emphasis on video. As our remote team members have known for years, having amazing content to listen to and watch while we worked from home made the adjustment that much easier. We kicked off two new series – a Future of Real Estate series and a Female Founders series – spotlighting inspiring leaders and amplifying female voices in the industry. We just started rolling those out, so subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified when new interviews are available! Here are some of our favorite videos and podcasts from 2020.

There’s so much more we could say about 2020 and it seems fitting to end by looking forward. We are so happy you’re here, 2021. We believe this year will continue to be different than what we’ve experienced in the past and we’re ready to make the most of it, together. Let’s go!

p.s. for other 2021 predictions from a well known group of contributors, check out Drew Meyers’ post on Geek Estate, the real estate tech think tank.