Social Networking

Social networking becomes less complicated when you break it into simple steps. Last week, I presented this concept at NAR to a predominately broker owner audience. As promised, I am sharing an edited version of the presentation right here.

Click here for a larger version of this slideshow.

The four categories, as we see them are:

Social Media Profiles… or more simply put, personal profiles on the various sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace. Building your profile is the first step.

Text Platforms… blogging, microbloging.  The second step is creating a platform to speak from and collaborate. WordPress and TypePad provide blogging platforms. Twitter is great for microblogging.

Visual and Imagery Platforms… add videos and photos to make your message more engaging. You Tube and Flickr bring your networking and your story to life.

Use Listening and Sharing Tools. Listen to what’s going on and spread the word. RSS, Digg are two of many tools that accomplish this.

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Each year that I attend the National Association of REALTORS® conference, I come away with some new buzz.  The conference is a great way to tune into buzz-worthy people, topics and catch phrases.

Here are my top 5 buzz-worthy take aways from this year’s conference.

Number 5:  www.tinyurl.com will convert long urls into tiny ones. Great for those hosted virtual tours, slide shows or web commercials that have dozens of letters in the url. Just go to this website and change the url to the street address or something else more meaningful. (For example: http://tinyurl.com/NARBuzz)

Number 4:  www.ping.fm will update your status on multiple social networking sites. Talk about one stop shopping!

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The entire election process has fascinated me. When you think about it, a long time has passed since it all started. I remember being at an early fundraiser in The Hamptons almost a year and a half ago.  There are a lot of firsts in this election. Of course there are the obvious ones: the potential first African American president, the potential first female vice president, and the potentially oldest president to take office.

There are some humorous firsts – this is the first election where the Saturday Night Live actors looked so incredibly like several of the candidates. This is the first election where a vice presidential candidate was punked by a Canadian radio station.

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Another Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate exclusive!  Can we outdo our Crossword Challenge?  You be the judge!

To get started, input the answers to the clues below into their appropriate boxes (for example, if the answer to the first clue is “8″, you should place the number “8″ into both e9 and a8).  Filling in the numbers from all the clues will be enough to allow you to finish the rest of the puzzle in traditional Sudoku fashion.  Since it has a five-star difficulty rating, there are a couple additional clues to help you if you’re stuck.

The first person to email or fax (973.407.8801) a correctly completed puzzle gets massive adulation, a measure of pride, and a one-year subscription to Better Homes and Gardens® magazine compliments of us.

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So here’s another argument for social media…

In this year’s Edelman’s trust barometer results, they stated that, globally, trust in a “person like me” is 58%, where as only 20% of respondents trust corporate or product advertising. (ouch!)

Well, can you think of a faster way to connect to “people like me” than Facebook? Or MySpace? Or LinkedIn? Etc., etc., and so forth?

The Edelman report goes on to talk about how social media is on the rise. As expected, it is also more highly used and trusted by 25-to-34-year-old “opinion elites.” The very same generation that constitutes the echo boomers that will have to buy homes (like it or not) to house those families they will soon be making. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple weeks ago, my colleague Jason Steele wrote an article describing the odyssey he and his wife had survived in selling their home.  For me, that article began a series of misunderstandings that could only happen in our socially-networked age as a number of friends (and some family) falsely believed that I had suddenly been forced to sell my house due to the difficult economy.  Since my parents and two of my three brothers live in various corners of Europe, this seemed entirely plausible; as serious as things are for many, they seem to somehow be getting an over dramatized version of the news.  For all they’ve heard and read, our entire economy has screeched to a complete and utter standstill.

How did this misunderstanding happen?

As part of a conscious effort to “spread the word”, many of us at BH&G RE link our social networking sites to this blog.  For example, when a new blog article posts it is automatically populated onto our “News Feeds” on Facebook.  This is one way to reach a broader audience.  The update only shows the title of the post (without indicating who the actual author is).  If someone wants to read more, they simply click on the hyperlink and follow the story.

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In real estate 101 training I was taught that you tell everyone you know what you are doing and then remind them every time you see them that you are selling real estate. One of my first lessons was to write down the names of everyone I  knew and then contact them to let them know I was now selling real estate. For many new agents today that is done instantly via their Facebook profile.

Now that real estate 101 and Facebook 101 have met, there are amazing opportunities. I admit, it took me a while to figure this out, but recently it dawned as me as I was watching the updates of my selling agent friends on Facebook. They’ve been posting their new listings as newsfeeds and sharing status updates on their latest work-related activities. Facebook has become the Web 2.0 delivery vehicle for just listed and just sold cards. Cool!

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Posted by Sherry Chris

At the upcoming NAR conference in November, I will be speaking about the power of networking and how it can have a profound impact on your business. One of the masters of networking is author and professional speaker Keith Ferrazzi who wrote the bestseller Never Eat Alone. Not only has Keith turned his natural networking ability into a very successful business, but he has managed to stay ahead of the curve by using social networking. If you check him out on Facebook he has thousands of friends and he just launched his own social networking site. Go take a look. We are fortunate to have Keith as a member of our advisory board. His wisdom and insight is invaluable.

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