While Speaking of Real Estate relaunched last May, today marks the completion of our migration to this fresh new look for the entire group of NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® blogs. Here’s a complete list:

• YPN Lounge – http://ypnlounge.blogs.realtor.org
• Styled, Staged & Sold – http://styledstagedsold.blogs.realtor.org/
• Appraisal Insights – http://appraisalinsight.blogs.realtor.org
• Resort Life – http://resortlife.blogs.realtor.org/
• The Weekly Book Scan – http://theweeklybookscan.blogs.realtor.org/
• The InfoCentral Blog – http://infocentral.blogs.realtor.org/
• Leadership Lab – http://leadershiplab.blogs.realtor.org/
• Voices of Real Estate – http://voicesofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/

Check ‘em out!

]]> http://speakingofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/2010/01/15/a-fresh-look-for-all-nar-blogs/feed/ 4 http://speakingofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/2009/12/29/the-most-important-social-network-to-participate-on-is-your-own/ http://speakingofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/2009/12/29/the-most-important-social-network-to-participate-on-is-your-own/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:46:52 +0000 Todd Carpenter http://speakingofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/?p=1706 By Todd Carpenter, NAR Social Media Manager

Online community building expert, Chris Brogan wrote an interesting article last week on what he would do if he was a REALTOR®. I disagree with his strategy not to talk about work, but that’s another post for another day. What I really like about his post is its focus on building online communities hosted by a REALTOR®

I’ve often been quoted from a presentation I did at SPARKt a year ago with regard to the rules of participating on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I compared them to church. Why do you go to church? Is it to play bingo? Do you go for the free crackers? Do you go so you can talk with your friends about football? What about this: Do you go to sell real estate? If you said yes to any of the above, you’re going to hell. You go to church to worship. If all that other stuff happens secondary to worshiping, great! But worshiping is why you’re there.

Online social networks are like any other social network (church, the Rotary or an Elk’s Club…). The key is to identify the rules for that network and work within them.

Consumers don’t turn to Facebook to find a new home. They might use it to find an agent. But if you did your job outside of the sales cycle, that consumer will already be connecting with you on your own social network when they’re ready to buy a home.

The most important social network to participate on is your own.

You make the rules on your own social network. You decide how many times you will ask for their business. You decide how much or little you will talk about work. On your own social network, you don’t just participate in conversations, you shape them.

Do you have your own social network? I see some people using Facebook pages as their own network. I see agents using hosted services like Active Rain and RealTown as their own network as well. But who makes the rules on those networks? Who creates and manages the TOS? Who establishes the unwritten rules? Think about it. It’s probably not you.

Building you own network online.

Blogging is the original gangster of online social networking. Yes, it takes a lot more work and expense than a Facebook page. Yes, it takes a lot more work to draw readers to an independent blog, than it does on a hosted network like Active Rain. But on your own blog, YOU make the rules. In my personal opinion, independent real estate agents using a self-hosted blogging platform to create their own social network are the ones most likely to succeed in social media marketing.

Their are several good platforms for this, but WordPress is fast becoming the standard. You can start blogging for free, easily move to a more robust self-hosted platform, and eventually integrate tools like an IDX or education.com API’s into your site. There’s no practical limit to what you can do with the platform, and most important, you make the rules. WordPress powers this blog. We used an affordable predesigned theme from Brian Gardner, who also designs WordPress real estate blog themes.

As you develop your social networking strategy, concern yourself less with the latest tools like posterous, or Facebook fan pages, and concentrate on developing a strategy where all of your efforts on other social networks eventually lead consumers to your own.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about foursquare, the new kid on the social media block. And whenever a new social network starts to take hold, the first thing many professionals want to do is measure the return on investment (ROI) involved in participating on such a network. My reaction? Meh.

foursquare is a silly game. The ROI ought to be fulfilled by the smile on your face while playing it. Silly games like these rarely result in a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That said, foursquare is a really fun silly game that also happens to represent the future of social networking, especially in the real estate industry.

Below is a copy of the slides I used for a presentation I gave to the Cyber-Professionals Group at their semi-annual meeting in San Diego last month. They’re mostly screenshots I took while playing foursquare on my iPhone and might help you follow along with my train of thought here.

foursquare is a mobile, smartphone-based social networking platform centered around the idea that people should go out at night and have fun instead of sitting in front of their TVs and watching Friends reruns. The idea is to go somewhere fun ( a restaurant, bar, movie theater, the park…) and check in. The more times and places you check in at, the more virtual currency you earn.

This virtual currency comes in three forms:

1. Straight-up points earned by checking in. These points place you on a scoreboard with local friends. They reset every week and sort of remind me of the scoreboard on the Frogger machine at the local arcade, with the glory of top placement only lasting until someone else comes along and gets a higher score, or the machine gets unplugged.

2. Badges are like Boy Scout merit badges gone wrong. For instance, you can earn the School Night badge for checking in after 3:00 a.m. on a weeknight. I earned my Crunked badge on Halloween by checking into four spots in one night. The Playa Please badge is earned by checking into a venue with three members of the opposite sex. I earned that one too.

3. Mayor-ships come by checking into one venue more times than anyone else. At the time of this writing, I’m the mayor of The Shore Club in Miami, MaryJane’s Coffee House in San Diego, and Floyd’s 99 Barbershop here in Chicago.

Does this sound like the future of social networking for real estate?

Of course not. It’s a silly game! But once you start playing the game, the leap from simple enjoyment to seeing how the same technology could (and will) be applied to the real estate industry is a short one.

First off, when you check in somewhere, all of your foursquare friends in that city are notified. In addition, these check-ins can be pushed to Twitter. This is a way of saying, “Here I am! Come by and say hi if you’re in the area.” The goal of any online social network should be to eventually extend your connections from online to face-to-face. This is an easy way to encourage that.

Second, foursquare has started to offer location-based marketing. So when you check in at a local restaurant for dinner, a small green “Special Nearby” tab might show up letting you know that the bar down the street is offering drink specials tonight. Or even better, that the Mayor drinks for free! fourssquare is an example of a GPS-enabled, location-based mobile marketing solution.

Third, foursquare is a location-based social media platform where members comment about the locations themselves. The first time foursquare really got my attention was while traveling through Midway Airport this summer. As soon as I checked in, the platform sent me this message, “Since you’re at Chicago Midway International Airport, Tyler H. says: ‘Don’t fly AirTran. They Suck.’” foursquare’s ability to solicit comments in the field means that its users can conveniently endorse a location on the road, or trash it while emotions are at their peak.

Location, Location, Location.

Think about this. With smartphone-based applications and social networks, consumers will soon have the power to walk past a property, take a picture of it, geotag and apply an address to it, check its value, find comparable listings, check crime statistics, calculate its WalkScore, find school information, review and check reviews of businesses in the neighborhood (including yours), and potentially review a property itself, right from the phone, while they are standing in front of it. I can do almost all of this today from separate apps on my iPhone. It’s only a matter of time before it can all happen on a single platform.

Are you ready for this?

It’s coming. Apps like foursquare are the future of social media. The lines between online and face-to-face are blurred. Information is immediate, and can be pushed to a client, simply based on their location. It’s a huge opportunity and a scary risk, all at the same time. If you’re evaluating foursquare based on ROI, I think you’re missing the point. REALTORS® will need to be proficient on networks like these in the future. Might as well start figuring them out by playing this silly game. Now, who wants to go out and earn a “Don’t Stop Believing” badge with me tonight?

During NAR’s 2009 Conference & Expo, I was able to grab a quick interview with Gary Rogers, a key contributor to our LinkedIn networking group. See what he had to say in this video:

Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate launched an iPhone app today. True to their brand, the app adds the flavor of the magazine by including tips on how to live green, make over a room, or tackle an entire remodel. BH&GRE also added a neat camera function to allow an end user to take pictures of homes they like, geo-code them, and send them off to one of their agents. Toss in RedFin’s more utilitarian but awesomely executed app, and both brokers and brands throughout the industry have two fine examples of how to execute a mobile application.

That’s great for big companies, but what about the little guys? Here’s a list of cool apps I’ve found that real estate pros should consider running.

WalkScore – This GPS-enabled app not only lets you determine a WalkScore on the fly for a particular address or neighborhood, but also points out where restaurants, schools, and other services are located with map-based navigation.

Everyblock – If Everyblock works in your city, this app is pretty amazing. It pulls down news, crime reports, health-code violations, and a ton of other data at the city-block level. This app also uses GPS to assign a location.

Home Value Pro – RealQuest’s AVM application gives you estimated values, plus other local data like median sales price, percent of homes in default, addresses of bank owned homes in the neighborhood, and a value map helps to show how one property’s value compares to others on the block.

Smarter Agent – This consumer-focused real estate search tool co-brands with brokers to include their IDX listings. This is an interesting option for a company that wants to offer an mobile search product without developing one themselves.

NAR 2009 - If you’re attending NAR’s Annual Conference & Expo, our app includes schedules, speaker information, a San Diego dining guide, and more.

Each of these apps can be downloaded in the AppStore for free by searching for their titles.

The world of social media, as applied to the world of real estate, is about five years old. Yet we are only now reaching a critical mass of agents who realize this is not a fad. As with mobile phones and e-mail, social networks and blogs are becoming mainstream tools for REALTORS®. If you’re ready to get started, here are three excellent resources to get the ball rolling.

1. Look at this post.

Ines Hegedus Garcia recently wrote an excellent article on getting your feet wet. Here are a few takeaways.

• Put up profiles NOW (in Twitter, Facebook and Linked In)
• Start a blog
• Change your business cards (include your social media stuff)
• Stop using 20-year-old photos for your marketing
• Drop the “fear factor”–you can’t get started if you are afraid

Read the full post here.

2. Read This Book

Better known for his Swanepoel Trends Report, Stefan’s new Social Media Report really hits the mark as a Web 2.o manual for real estate professionals. Unlike other books that authors forward me, I actually finished this one. It’s a very quick read with concise and effective advice.

3. Come To This Conference.

NAR’s 2009 Conference & Expo will host a dozen great sessions on social media and the Web. Starting with an Introduction to Social Media, and moving to topics like Expanding Your Sphere of Influence: Real World Networking, #nar09 covers social media in real estate like never before.

Tara Hunt, author of the Whuffie Factor will be there. Mariana Wagner, Technology Blog Coach at Keller Williams MAPS, will be there. Jeff Turner, Amy Chorew, Kelley Koehler , Rich Barton, and a host of other top real-estate-related social media thought leaders will be there as well. On top of all that, REBarCamp – San Diego is set to proceed the conference.

In the next 30 days, the opportunity to move from “What is this?” to “in the know” is at your fingertips. Are you ready to go REALTOR® 2.0?

I assume that everything I say on the Internet will be read by my supervisors here at NAR. While my personal Twitter page is exactly that, the blurred lines of social media, and my personal relationship with thousands of REALTORS across the country means that I know EVERYTHING I say there might be scrutinized.

There are times when the things I say lead to complaints addressed to me, or even a superior here at NAR. So, I don’t say anything on Twitter that I might have to apologize for later. That doesn’t mean I won’t offend anyone (I do). But it does mean I can back up my case when a complaint comes along.

Sound like a pressure cooker?

It’s not any worse for anyone else on Twitter. Take for instance the story of Amanda Bowen, a Chicago apartment dweller with a Twitter account that used to have a mere 22 followers. She made a comment on Twitter about here apartment’s property management company that landed her a $50,000 lawsuit. As Jeffrey Michael of Horizon Group Management LLC explained to the Chicago Sun Times:

“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.“

I don’t know who’s right or wrong in this case. My guess though, is that both parties are learning a lot about the stakes involved in taking a disagreement online.

Have I scared you away from Twitter yet?

For all the negative things that can happen online, the positives are all there to balance it out. Think about the good will you can earn by saying good things about the people you want to build relationships with. Think about how you can use an online presence to turn negatives into a positive.

Twitter has real power. Leverage it. Use it for good, and good will come to you. If you feel the need, use it for addressing a wrong. Just be ready when the other side of a disagreement reacts to the power of Twitter as well. The rules of the game have not changed. Just the stakes.

More coverage at The Phoenix Real Estate Guy and Sellsius

I’m getting a lot of these e-mails lately:

“XXXXXX became a fan of YYYYYY on Facebook and suggested you become a fan too.”

With the advent of fan pages, savvy real estate agents are adopting Facebook as a marketing tool and using these pages to promote their business. I think this is a great idea. However, asking me to become a fan of your page puts the cart before the horse.

What have you done to earn me as a fan? You asked? That’s not enough. I don’t think I’ve ever responded to one of those e-mails.

NAR has a bunch of Facebook pages, but I’m not going to ask you to be a fan. Instead, check out this post from Chief Economist Lawrence Yun about the pressures AMC’s are placing on the market. Or, did you know that our convention department is building out a Facebook page, just for the Annual Conference and Expo?

Do you see what I’m doing here? My goal was to provide you with something you might find useful, and if you do, you’ll likely know what to do next. This is earning you as a fan instead of asking for it.

If I were selling real estate, I would build pages about the communities or activities I market through instead of a page about me. I’d build pages about my market farm, pages about the little league team I sponsor, pages about local garage sales, or for my church. Pages where possible clients find more value than a page about what a great real estate agent I am. That’s earning a following, not asking for one.

Edit – Check out Real Estate Zebra, The Social Media Handyman, and Agent Genius for their followups to this post.

Both of us are right, or wrong. It depends on how you look at it. One thing I know for sure though, if he thinks I’m using Facebook in the wrong way, he’s welcome to unfriend me. That’s the beauty of social networks. If you don’t like what you see, you never have to opt-in to begin with. Personally though, I find my friend/follow rate grows the most when I keep it personal.

Lately, I’m hearing more and more about the importance trying to separate the personal from the professional on Facebook. Several people recently have floated the idea to me that one should consider creating both a professional and personal profile. I disagree. RE Connect founder Kit Mueller once said,

“Creating two profiles on Facebook or Twitter is like showing up to a cocktail party twice. Once in a suit, then again in a Hawaiian shirt.”

You are who you are. Your clients may identify with you because you have pictures of your new puppy, or mentioned the great day you spent on the golf course. Your non-clients/friends will appreciate that you sometimes provide commentary about the real estate market, just as you would have had they asked you during a backyard barbecue. Every day as an agent, your personal and professional lives crash into each other. It’s a good thing. It seems perfectly normal if you forget about social networks for a minute and just think about how you deal with people face to face.

In some cases, you may not want EVERYTHING you post on Facebook to be visible to all of your friends. One example might be pictures of your children. But that’s solved easily by creating a custom group of friends, like “family,” then setting the privacy settings for that picture (or picture album) so that only that group can see it. Overall though, be yourself. It’s a ”social” network, after all.