Brokers, owners and managers - it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. The coffee of social media.
While many in our industry were early risers and grabbed their cups first, much of the industry chose to sleep in, not awakening to the power of blogging, podcasts, social networking, micro-blogging – just some of the tools of Web 2.0 that make up the genre of social media – until the aroma became nearly overpowering. Now it seems, those of us that hit the snooze button are getting to the pot after the coffee has lingered on the burner a while. And that overpowering smell has awakened a large number of real estate professionals.
Thousands of agents are currently blogging, but tens of thousands more will be participating in coming months, posting their blogs on hundreds of sites. Even more will be creating profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo and LinkedIn. Legions of real estate professionals will be posting on Twitter, placing photos on sites like Flickr, or offering their audio commentary on anything and everything on Utterz. Our associates seem to be grasping the new Web 2.0 order of business and hoisting their coffee mugs. Are we in the brokerage ownership and management arenas going to be the last ones to the coffee pot?
It’s time we understand these new tools and what they can do for our business. How, if used effectively, they can expand our marketing reach, increase our speed of communication and further our brand. We need to understand how they can reduce expenses and attract new customers. And we certainly need to become a resource for our associates to turn to for advice on using these tools.
But we also have to understand what these tools can do to our business if not monitored or managed. Left unchecked, unmanaged, or unmonitored, these tools can offer certain elements of risk – read liability – that could hold disastrous results for our business. We need to develop policies and procedures (with the involvement of our associates, legal counsel and management team) to address and manage these tools proactively. Without a proactive strategy on managing these tools, we’re likely to become another industry headline.
And that headline won’t have anything to do with coffee.
Future posts planned: effective social media strategies in real estate; developing policies and procedures to address social media use in your office; applying consistent branding practices in social networking.
For further information, please visit www.TheRealEstateNetwork.ning.com, a free social networking site for those in the real estate industry.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
We agree that embracing technology is essential in a successful business plan. Our blog on Active Rain has gotten us great attention in the second home market which we specialize in. In addition, we are constantly in the top rankings of search engines because of our frequent posts. It is not difficult, but you must like to write. Robert "Wags" Wagner of www.ABEandWAGS.com.
Yes, Blogs now a days are brewing like a coffee. It became an effective tool to tell the people what you want them to know, specially in real states, isn't great?
'cheers'
Kathy
panama real estate
In preparing the chapter for the Broker's Policy and Procedures Manual on social networking, I am really concerned that this is FRESH soil and there aren't any 'rules and regulations' in place! In researching, even the NAR says it's a 'as we go' approach. The new revisions to the Code of Ethics regarding Domain names and also the 'true picture' in advertising will take up yet another chapter in the policy manual. In surveying brokers I am finding that the brokers haven't put into place a means by which to supervise the 'social networking' activities of their agents!
Marcie Roggow of www.marcieroggow.com
Nice post on emerging trends.
Boise real estate
Post a Comment