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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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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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Posted by Nicolai Kolding

In trying to decide how to respond to the Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and AIG debacles, I’ve concluded that the best answer is to remind all of us to focus locally, where real estate really matters.  This isn’t to say that the news isn’t important but (a) this shall pass, and (b) I believe the men and women who are on the front lines each and every day are better served focusing on the forces that they have some control over.

The basic question that everyone is asking is, “Where is the market headed?”  Any broker or agent who tries to answer that one had better know his or her market inside and out.  And if you believe that real estate is cyclical, then understanding what phase of the cycle you’re in is critical.

There are a number of different takes on this, but here is one version of the phases of a typical real estate cycle:

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In the pre-launch days of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, we were very limited in how we could communicate with the industry at large and what we could say. This blog became one way to let people know who we are and what we think about things.  It didn’t take long to figure out the important role social networking and social media in general is playing within business, and how it will become even more powerful in the future.

A Fad That Will Pass?
Some people would say that social networking is simply a group of people talking to each other.  That is partially true - there is a large group of us on Facebook all connected to the same “friends,” and the same goes for LinkedIn. Ditto for Twitter, and some might say the same for Active Rain and even YouTube.

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Posted by Wendy Forsythe

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon of rest and relaxation until the blinking red light of the Blackberry caught my eye from across the room. I couldn’t resist. After skimming through about dozen messages, I came across a direct Twitter message from Seth Godin. What was this? A mysterious message instructing me to visit a website for more information on an exclusive group Seth was inviting me to join. Well, forget rest and relaxation, I couldn’t power up my laptop fast enough.

The gist of the campaign is that Seth reached out via Twitter to people who are following him (I admit, I’m a follower and a big fan) and then, through his website, invites you to join his “exclusive” Triiibes social media forum. If you believe that only a limited number of special people like myself (LOL) got this invitation then the only barrier to entry was to supply a receipt showing you pre-purchased his new book due out in October, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

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Posted by Jason Steele

Over the past month I have been searching for the first addition to my staff. We posted the position internally and on all of the major job boards, monster, craigslist, Yahoo!, etc.. The position requires about 3-5 years experience and would most likely attract someone in their 20s. I had a hypothesis going into the process and it was to see how well my application of social media would shape each candidates interview process.

Before joining BH&G Real Estate I would go into an interview blind as Googling the company and prospective Executive leadership could only get you so far. When I was interviewing for the VP of Interactive Marketing position here it was a whole different story. I was on our Industry blog, read press releases on Realogy’s web site, investigated Sherry, Nicolai & Wendy’sbackgrounds on Linkedin, searched for any viral video on YouTube and lastly took a shot in the dark that they maintained Facebook pages (which they all do). I got to know each and every one of them personally and professionally via those sources before I even walked in the door. I was able to evaluate whether or not my vision for the brand and professional goals were shared amongst my prospective boss and peers. I assume you know what the answer was as you are reading my post on the brand’s blog right now.

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Some of you might know that part of our launch strategy involves Twitter. We have partnered with Joel Burslem and his team to Twitter at Inman Connect. I admit that, at first, I didn’t fully understand how Twitter worked and what the benefits were going to be. I became even more confused when suddenly a bunch of people sent me e-mails to let me know they were “following me” on Twitter. “How did that happen?” I asked myself.

When I went on the site, all of my followers had invited me to follow them, so I clicked on the “yes” button. I was following around 40 people. I knew a bunch of them, but not all. They started sending me messages saying things like “thanks for the follow.” Twitter has its own underground language, just like everything else.

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Posted by Kevin Doell

We had dinner with the guys from Domus Consulting the other night. Kevin Boer and Pat Kitano dropped in from California to talk shop on social media. Smart guys. They were talking social media and Twitter, the social media micro-blogging tool that has been the rage of late. Many people are beginning to tinker on how to make it work for themselves. Even news media such as Reuters and the BBC are exploring ways to incorporate the tool into their news gathering activities.

For my part, I realize I have to get my “twitter fingers” on. It’s not that simple and there’s a learning curve involved. But so far so good. I’m set up on Twitter at “kvdoell.” And I even set it up to drive the “tweets” automatically to a page on our blog. Watching it work was pretty cool! I felt 10 years younger. Maybe twenty. Ok, 25.

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