UPDATED: Podcast: Paul Chaney Discusses His Upcoming Social Media Book, The Digital Handshake

In the latest episode of Mike's Mic, Paul Chaney takes time to discuss his forthcoming book, The Digital Handshake. The book covers proven strategies geared toward small businesses interested in exploring how social media can be used productively and proactively. With the shelves stuffed full of tomes on how to become an expert in the still nascent world of social media, I asked Paul why his would stand out. If the book stands up to his answers, I think it will do very well. As always, I will be doing a follow up book report once the final version is released. If you're a real estate professional or small business person just entering into a social media strategy, or if you want to find out about the best tools for the job - mark September 22nd on your calendar. That's the date the book is scheduled to start shipping.

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Update 08/21/09. Want a chance to win a signed copy of "The Digital Handshake"? Just subscribe to the podcast and listen to Paul's interview. Leave a comment or a question here regarding the episode and you'll be entered into a drawing to receive one of the first copies of the book personally signed by Paul (there will be two winners). How cool is that?

How To Be A Clueless Twit and Social Media Failure

When I was a kid and I did something dumb my Dad would call me a Twit. Usually, in a somewhat loving way, He was trying to tell me that I should have given more thought to my actions. These days I seem to be running into a whole new breed of Twit. Yesterday I was having a good time making people chuckle on Twitter. It was Halloween and the din of the political vitriol was starting to really bug me. I thought I would lighten things up and make people laugh. As a result I started picking up a following that trended up more than the usual conversation flow that takes place on Twitter. Nothing earth shattering, but right in the middle of it someone that had just started following me posted this "Tweet".


It appears that someone was trying to interlope my conversation flow. Do I love the "Brand X*" baby carrier? WTH? I didn't say anything about baby carriers. You have a store? So what? My kids are grown, I bought my last baby carrier a long time ago. These days a baby carrier to me is the parent that walked into the house with the baby in the first place. Toys and candy I will do all day long. I'm not buying any more "equipment". I don't even think the conversation I was having had much to do with babies at all until I remembered I told someone earlier that my Grand Son was about to be born any day. Then it dawned on me that either through some slick automation or just plain Twitter stalking, someone jumped in with the full intention of trying to sell me and those in my sphere some over priced baby crap. FAIL! I immediately "unfollowed" the "person" and blocked them from being able to enter into the conversational flow that was taking place.

The sad fact? More and more people are completely missing the point of social media and trying to immediately sell into the spaces they are INVADING. It doesn't work that way. Never has, never will. I confirmed a real estate professional on Facebook the other day. He immediately answered with a post that tried to sell me on his secrets of short selling. The only thing short about it was how long it took to hit the delete key and block him. Do yourself a favor and look at Paul Chaney's power point deck that he presented to the attendees of the recent Real Estate BarCamp. Do your homework on what Social Media and Conversational Marketing is.

If you're the type of RE professional that looks for an immediate return on every investment you make, be it in time, or cash. Don't bother with social media or blogging. It's not for you. If you're the type of professional that understands that these tools are a means of establishing your brand, defining your niche and creating a long term ROI, rock on. There's really no such thing as a "social media butterfly" and the definition of Twit hasn't changed since the first time my old man slapped me on the back of the head 40 some odd years ago.

I'm not Dear Abby. I can't tell you how to act at a party or at Church. Use some common sense. If you wouldn't walk up to everyone in the receiving line after services and slap a business card in their hand and tell them you want to help them with "all of their real estate needs", don't do it online either. If you are the kind to do something like that, you're running the risk of someone writing a snippy blog post about or "Tweet" about. They may not be kind enough to do the following:

*Twitter Handle Removed To Protect The Clueless.
**Name of Lame Baby Carrier Brand Removed to Prevent The Brand From Getting Any Google Juice From The Clueless.

Podcast: Social Media and The Real Estate Pro, Bill and Hal Lublin talk about BuzzBuilderz.Com

I met Bill Lublin in person last summer at Inman Connect. His first comment after shaking my hand was to ask why I had not hired his son Hal to work for MLBroadcast as a voice over talent. We added Hal to the rotation of talent the minute I got back home. Since that time I've had a chance to get to know Bill and his illustrious history in the Real Estate profession. I've also had to the chance to see that Hal's experience with marketing, pr and entertainment go much further than his exceptional ability to record the spoken word.

The father and son duo have joined forces to create a new social media consultancy they call BuzzBuilderz.Com. It's a service designed to help real estate professionals from the ground up with a strategy for crafting and maintaining a sphere of influence using hand picked social media platforms and tools.

Bill and Hal discuss why they built the practice, the services they will be providing and give us some of their insight into what the future holds for the networked real estate professional. Enjoy. If you have an idea for future podcasts, please leave a comment below. Let me know who you would like to hear from and what topics interest you the most.

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Scouts of The New Frontier: Social Stewards & Custodians of Community

The new frontier......social media. The full impact and role it will play in the future of business may not be clear for some time but it's a forgone conclusion that, at some point, you're going to need a strategy. You may even find yourself in need of a person dedicated to the effort of implementing and maintaining that strategy. Still not convinced? It's pretty easy to tell when something new is eventually going to take a mainstream role in business. It always starts with the consultants. It's hard to imagine how many shingles are hung (or changed) every day that say "Social Media Consultant". What's more intriguing are the number of positions within companies that are dedicated to the effort of being the bridge between companies and the people who speak about them in the "Socnets". The titles are just as creative as the people that fill the roles. Social Media Guru and Social Media Ninja are the monikers given to just two of the people I know in these positions. Whether you're an individual or a corporation, I can imagine how hard it would be justify a dedicated effort that, on the surface, seems like no more than talking to people online and at conferences. Opportunity exists at so many levels within communities and social networks that, given the proper skill set, this liaison could well become as critical as any c-suite exec.

I'm actually a lot like many old school business decision makers when it comes to Web 2.0 style tools that are supposed to be the next big thing. I'm pretty good at spotting opportunity that exists outside the fringes of conventional wisdom. I love looking at things that are disruptive as a means of improving or creating new things. The old school part kicks in because I look at everything with a skeptical eye when I first see it. I will openly admit that it took me longer than it should have to snap to the broader potential that exists with Twitter because I couldn't get past the thought of wondering why anyone would give a crap what I was eating for dinner. The tasks of keeping up with community and social media trends and platforms can be pretty daunting. Every day introduces something new to the realm of social media and community building and finding someone with the skills to separate the lemons from the lemonade should be on the mind of anyone with plans to grow a business into the future. Here are just a few of the things this person is going to need to be familiar with.

SMO - Social Media Optimization
Essentially this is a process that is dedicated to making sure the company is receiving as much exposure as possible through the Socnets including social bookmarking sites, video sharing destinations, wiki's, RSS aggregation sites, Digg and other social news sites, the wider blog community and more.

Social Media Metrics
Measuring the impact and return on investment in Social media efforts will eventually become an integral part of an overall web strategy.

Reputation Management
Spotting potentially harmful trends or spotlighting successes with regard to a corporate image. Dealing with them quickly and transparently is critical to success.

I've spent over 2 years entrenched in the world of community and social spaces. Some of that time was spent scratching my head and asking myself what the hell I was doing wasting my time. In the end I have found it pays to investigate it all and run it through a filter until your social media mix is optimized to generate results.

So who are some of the people having an impact in their role as a community or social media manager? You've probably seen most of them at one point or another. Whether you're an individual struggling to find your sweet spot within social media or a business that is interested in expanding your horizons, here are few people that you can follow :

Rudolph D. "Rudy" Bachraty III - Trulia
One of the smartest moves Pete Flint made last year was to hire Rudy as their "Social Media Guru". Rudy comes to Trulia with a built in following from the RE.net blogosphere. I think it's a safe bet that Trulia sees their investment in Rudy as a crucial means of connecting to the agent and broker base.
Twitter: @Trulia
Facebook

David Gibbons & Drew Meyers - Zillow
Greg Swann aptly coined WWDGD, "What Would David Gibbons Do?" because he was so impressed with the way David handles himself when faced with the prospect of defending a Zillow position or diffusing an issue within the RE.net. One of David's roles within Zillow is to be the guy that bridges the gap between perception and reality with regard to their products. He does it very, very well. If you engage David for any period of time it becomes apparent that he is passionate and believes in his product, without reservation or trepidation of any kind. Drew has a similar role in making sure the development and tech community are aware of Zillow. It's important to Zillow that the developer community within the RE.net be exposed to opportnutiies to integrate Zillow's offerings. By maintaining efforts like the GeekEstate Blog and The Carnival of Real Estate, Drew is doing a tremendous job of social stewardship.
David Facebook
Drew
Twitter: @drewmeyers
Facebook

Daniel Rothamel - Community Manager - Inman News
One of the things you have to admire about Brad Inman is his ability to use his resources to surround himself with young, top notch talent. Daniel is another blogger who has created a high profile for himself through quality blogging. His personality is perfectly suited to the role and he demonstrated his talents well during the recent REBarcamp and Inman events by using Social media to help make sure that attendees were able to get the most out of their investments in the conferences.
Twitter: @realestatezebra
Facebook

I would have mentioned Jeff Turner , but his ubiquity is borderline scary :). The guy is everywhere and though he has become a great friend over the last year or so, I'm still not quite certain he is a human yet. Research continues.

My company, MLBroadcast is pretty small. I'm the guy handles the social and community interaction. Even as we grow I will most likely maintain the role because I enjoy it so much. It helps me stay focused on the segment of our market that is most advanced. I can also filter ideas that I might think are the next big things through a group of people who are smarter than me and will tell me without reservation if I'm all wet. ( O.K. that's not really the truth. There's only room for one RE.net rock star and I am sick of Jeff getting more attention than me. :) All kidding aside, we've been able to build a strong branding effort through social media and community efforts. I certainly haven't done it alone and it has been a lot of work, but we can take pride in the fact that the strategy has paid off for us in more than one way.

There is a great deal more genuine interest in Web 2.0 tools at the Broker level recently, especially with Broker based, multi-author blogging. I think it's critical to find someone suited to the role to establish a strategy for social media and community that have tangible and varied goals attached to the effort. Those goals could be recruiting, retention, increased listings, competitive analysis, market anaylsis, .... you name it. Keep an open mind during the process. Realize that the results may take a while for portions of your efforts. Others not so much. Of the last 4 podcast interviews I have done, 2 of the companies profiled have already garnered new prospects and/or business from the exposure - exposure that cost them nothing more than about a half hour's time and a long distance phone call. I would characterize that as a pretty strong ROI.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think it's time to pay more attention to community and social media? Should you create a strategy for it or should you wait to see if it gets legs and play catch up later on? Maybe the LA Times killing their real estate section is just an isolated event.

*photo credit of me having fun with the Re.net crowd in S.F.: Jay Thompson

Podcast Interview - CREST - Center For Real Estate and Social Technology

Ben Martin, the communications and new media director for the Virginia Association of Realtors recently contacted me regarding a new initiative being backed by VAR. It's called CREST, The Center for Real Estate and Social Technology. The center is being billed as a research effort designed to help real estate professionals enter into or improve upon their efforts in blogging and social media. (CREST's efforts are not limited to the Virginia area.)

The first effort is a 14 question survey on blogging. The results will be announced at REBarcamp on 7/22. I had the opportunity to do a podcast call with Ben and Danilo Bogdanovic, a blogger in Virginia that is helping with the launch of the Center.

I think the idea behind CREST could go a long way toward helping real estate professionals create the best mix of social media and blogging tools and look forward to the results of their data mining efforts. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey and help CREST meet their goal of 100+ responses to their first effort.

< Click To Liten To The CREST Podcast Interview.


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New Roundtable Discussion With Dustin Luther of 4Realz.Net

Last week I had the honor of participating in a roundtable discussion hosted by Dustin Luther of 4Realz regarding the DOJ/NAR, data display policies and more. It was a great hour of opinion and ideas.

Dustin has invited me to join in on another round table discussion tomorrow. This week we are going to take on the topic of Social Networking in the real estate profession. We will be discussing newcomers to the space like RealSeekr, Plurk, and MyDealBoook as well as stalwart applications such as Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation today at 4 PM PST.

Book Report: Citizen Marketers

Citizen Marketers, When People Are the Message
Ben McConnel & Jackie Huba

The authors of this book have pinpointed an exact date of when they think Web 2.0 actually started. November 2004. That's the month a couple of things happened that turned seemingly ordinary folk into marketing powerhouses with the same reach and effectiveness of a Fortune 500 company.

"November 2004, that the very idea of media itself was evolving into a two-way, three-way and multiple-way ecosystem of gossip, ideas, news and collaboration. Everyday people could be publishers and broadcasters and audience members."

Citizen Marketers was written to explain the phenomena of how the availability of web 2.0 tools is motivating people to become evangelists, sales people, customer service reps, public relations advisers and more to companies that don't even have them on the payroll and in some cases, don't even know they exist. Just reading the introduction is a fascinating portrayal of examples in social media. If you don't do anything else, pick up a copy of the book and read page 10 of the introduction. It gives a very succinct definition of how blogs, podasts, photo/video sharing sites and other social media tools are being used as the "new, new media".

This book is good primer for any agent or broker that wants to have a better understanding of the power of social media and new media marketing tools. I highly recommend it. Click here to visit the Citizen Marketer blog. Next book report, Search, by John Battelle, How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.


Previous Book Reports:
The Power of Place
The Long Tail
An Army of Davids
Mavericks At Work
Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?