It's for you

Today I was making a list of Trusted Business Partners for Towne & Country- the TCTP list. The purpose of this list is multi-fold: should a client request some names, these could be given. If we need a guest blogger, this would be the pool we would ask first. If we have a question, these people would be trusted to give an honest informative answer. If they want, we will let them know about new posts on the company blog. I would hope that Towne & Country is on THEIR lists.
I got the list of names from Gerry, and began the work of putting together current phone numbers and emails. Should be easy, because everyone is on the Internet. Right?
Right?
Wrong, Diane.
I understand privacy issues. I’m in real estate, and had real issues about my phone number and everything else about me being all over the place. This was until I saw an ad from a real estate agent who claimed that he answered every call within 15 minutes… 24/7. Only awake 3rd shift? No problem! Have your best ideas about marketing your home after your 10th cup of coffee, when those infomercials are on? Sure, give us a call!
Well, guess what? I don’t know if I can go the 24/7 route that this guy is, but I had better be available and responsive. If people would rather email than call, I better have my email address somewhere that you can find it.
So what is the deal with people in business who don’t? Is that extra little bit of privacy worth more than the (I would bet my life) substantial number of people who are looking for them and move right on down the line when they can’t be found?
If you are afraid of junk email, get a domain from GoDaddy, buy an email package with it, and set it up to forward to your main email account. Or keep it separate, and get in the habit of checking 2 accounts a day.
On the flip side, it was a pleasure confirming Frank DiMaria’s information. Everything is there on a clean-looking page, including an email that is short and sweet- not 70chars@100chars.com. Thanks, Frank, for making my life easier. And for making it easier to find you in a world full of attorneys, and, well, real estate agents.

And thank you, Christine, for taking the bull by the horns and sending me ALL of the email addresses. Christine, you RAWK!

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There really is no reason that I have this marquee here except for the fact that I think it is really neat.
mother real estate sales agent artist teacher blogger TwitterQueen blipper wiseguy

Who decides what is cool and what is not?

My daughter, aged 11, has recently become obsessed with the Vlog Brothers. One of these brothers is an author, gearing books at children about my daughter’s age, maybe a little older. In addition to the YouTube channel which these brothers run- which has incredible calls-to-action, they have a Ning social site- very popular.

We went to the book store the other day, and, in addition to looking for and begging for John Green (one of the brothers’) books, she insisted on printing and bringing along these papers to slide into books such as Harry Potter and those written by Maureen Johnson:

NerdFighters- another call to action

She then actually put the papers into the books!

What better advertising is there?

I saw an incredible post about guerrilla marketing circulating twitter today. Not all of it appears guerrilla in how I understand the term, but there is so much good advice on here that I am going to go through, write it down and work out a business plan from it.

The thing is: this is low-cost in money, and medium-cost in effort and thought. It can work with real estate with the correct targeting and consistency.

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Buzz means nothing without honey

So we have a new social baby. Little Buzz was born this week, making his way into a crowded loud world of online social interaction.

I am one of the dinosaurs who can remember people being petrified to engage in any online interaction. The forums were considered geeky and exclusive at best; sordid and possibly dangerous at worst. Whole TV shows were based on the predatory nature of many people trying to engage others online. Social interaction online has changed to the point where people are, I would guess, about as honest with others online as they are face-to-face.

Here are a few links if you need some help learning how to use Google Buzz: this is about Google buzz on mobile and this is the bare-bones nuts and bolts of Buzz. If you need to find out about twitter, there are thousands of articles to help you.

I am not as interested in telling you how these work- that is covered elsewhere, and experience is the best teacher, anyway. I am also not assessing these apps from a social point of view- I can handle that addiction on my own. I want to tame them for business and make that time use productive. Things like SocialTalk and HootSuite can help organize your social media family.

But the question is: will I take the time to learn how to use Buzz? Will I push myself to start from scratch rebuilding a community on a different platform when I have more than 1000 friends on Facebook and more than 4 times that many on twitter?

Do we need to go wider? I noticed a couple of things that attracted some attention amongst my online friends this week. They both had to do with taking circles of friendship and deepening the ties. One was a Facebook group started by Rob Hahn, in which I am Queen of Boston and Abbess, Sisterhood of the Twitterati (a nod to my involvement with the TwitterQueens). The group, RE.NET, has made a place for people to socialize who are already friends- formed initially online and enriched at Real Estate events. Rob has been a perfect host, making people comfortable to share and- if the truth be told- miss each other. I check in a few times a day, and that is something that I don’t do with almost any other interface.

Something else that I think is going to really take off is similar but more business oriented. I have been seeing the hashtag #rett on twitter with no real explanation. Trying to figure out what was going on with context clues led me to guess that people were coming together to discuss the business of real estate- not as competitors, but as confederates. I also saw the new RETT page on Facebook. The “About” reads:

“What if a bunch of real estate types (agents, lenders, title) sat around in an open space, working, chatting and collaborating? #rett”

Buzz, you are cute, and I may end up attached to you, but right now I am staying up nights with your sibs twitter and blip. I know you all serve different purposes, and that’s valid. But isn’t the purpose- the real, underlying purpose of all of this- to connect and offer something of value, whether that something is friendship or service?

I am at the point where I want to go deeper, not wider.

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Oh, Happy Bday, Facebook!

I get email notification when some of the blogs I read are updated. I know the smartest practice would be to set them up in a reader, but I am in the habit of constantly checking my email. Habit works as a friend, in this case anyway.

Today a nice post by ViperChill popped into my email box. Head on over and read it- you won’t hurt my feelings. The reason I have posted it here is because with social media you can only keep up with certain trends personally, if you are doing anything else at the same time, such as hoping to keep the house clean, or earning a living. I think it is less that there is a Social Media Revolution and more a Social Media Evolution because just when you think you have it-  something else happens, paradigms shift, the fabric of the Universe tears and voila! you are doing it incorrectly.

I am not even sure if Paradigms shift any more, but it’s fun to say.

So read Glen’s post, head over to your blog (or ask your virtual assistant to) and update your All_In_One and HeadSpace settings. That’s where I will be.

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Doesn't she look innocent?

The subject line of the email read: Cialis_Viagra_Ritalin__Percocet__Adderall!!! It’s as if they wanted to get my attention one way or the other.

Attention. Two of my children take medication for ADHD. I was thinking back to the days before they did, back when the kids were tiny. Bedtimes were an absolute horror show, because by then I was exhausted, and the ones with ADHD just got more active when they were tired.

I relied heavily on ritual. At one point I had three children really close together (an infant, a two year old and a six year old. OK, you probably had more and closer, but this stretched me.)

I would put the baby to sleep, put the two and 6 year old into their bunk beds after they were clean, and tell them a story. Sometimes it would be a book, but they liked the stories about themselves the best. They LOVED the stories about when they had been caught  doing some criminal action or another- they could listen to those night after night. “Do you remember when you were brushing your teeth by yourself and you stuffed every single toothbrush down the the sink drain? Do you remember when you were playing the piano and decided to color every single key a different color with your new box of crayons?”

If I was too tired to regale them with stories of their misadventures, we read something like “Goodnight, Moon” or “Where the Wild Things Are” or “I’ll Love You Forever”- the latter when they were older. After the story we had the nightly joke. “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Banana.” “Banana who?”

“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Banana.” “Banana who?”

“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Banana.” “Banana who?” [continue until point of pain]

“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?’ “Orange.” “Orange who?” “Orange you glad I didn’t say ‘Banana’?”

Now they are older. Little ones bring this constant veil of exhaustion, or at least they did for me. I look at pictures of myself from that time and feel like taking the baby for a couple of hours so that I could take a nap. But once they are older they bring a whole different skill set into play.

My twenty year old lost her license because she was driving with her friends past the state-mandated curfew and the occupants of her automobile mouthed off to the officer who stopped them. No drugs, no alcohol- just bad attitudes, a towed car and a suspended license. To get the license back she would have to take an anger management class and write a letter of apology. She refused to write the letter, and still can’t drive.

And other things similar to this happen. It’s like a switch flips when they turn 16 and they feel this burning urge to create more of those criminally-oriented bedtime stories. Where the Wild Things Are? They were living in my house until my son turned 18, and then they sailed away- probably until the 11 year old invites them back.

If I had to share any tip to getting through those years it would be this: the 20 year old daughter, when she was about 16, crawled under my bed and hid. I brought some laundry up and had put it on my bed in preparation of folding it, and she snaked both hands out and grabbed me by the ankles.

When they were little, that would have sent me through the roof, screaming along the way. My daughter was disappointed because I didn’t even flinch- not on purpose. It just wasn’t in me any more to be frightened of what hypothetically lived under the bed, when every time the car went on the road with a teenager behind the wheel my nerves began the countdown until he or she arrived home in one piece.

That’s the tip: when you get that call- and chances are you will- with a crying teenager at the other end, take a deep breath. Put the hysteria to sleep until the morning and take care of business. And realize that someday they will have children just like themselves.

Orange you glad I didn’t say “Banana”?

This child doesn't have a disrespectful bone in her body

Becca and Jenny

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I've got a secret

“Within the first six months, these [doctors] wrote six million prescriptions for more than fifty million of these happy blue pills, ” noted Alex Wipperfurth in Brand Hijack. Of  course, the happy blue pill that he was referring to was Viagra, which came out in 1998.

Shouldn’t this country be happier?

I had lunch with an agent from another office the other day. We had a nice time talking, and the sandwiches at the Longhorn were good. She said something that I thought was interesting, something I had thought about often myself. She asked if we all shouldn’t help each other out (she was referring to real estate agents) regardless of office affiliation.

Suppose your office has a recipe for success- a “secret sauce,” I guess. Should you share that with others? Will that make the entire industry stronger, or make your own (and your office’s) position weaker?

Suppose your office had a recipe for the Viagra that would counteract a flat market.

This is what I think. I think that we all need to help one another- those of us that are left. I think that my friend Maya, by teaching social media to the members of her Delaware board, will not be affecting her market share. I think when @RealtyMan presented about Facebook at REBarCamp Boston that he wasn’t giving anyone the skill sets to take him down.

So, like everyone else in RE.net, I will share my general knowledge. Specific application of that knowledge set has been promised to Towne & Country- that is the promise that I have made to the company in regards to the Central MA area. But do I think you need a blog? YES! Where can you get one? You can set up a free one on WordPress.com or blogger, or you can get one of your very own using the WordPress platform (godaddy has an easy set-up).

Should you buy into every social media or new media thing that comes along? Gerry and I are kind of spread out everywhere but that is because we have to for Towne & Country. In fact, Gerry does a lot of beta testing for real estate platforms, helping to evaluate them for the developers. As an agent, though, I think you want get involved in a few things that you can really dig deeply into and extend your personality. And I am cheap as all get out- if it is going to cost me something, I don’t do it. The cost to me is time: sweat-equity, if you prefer.

Bottom line: I want you all to succeed. I want the exceptional agents to stay in the business- you may end up sitting across the table from me as a cobroke, or in the same position with one of  the Towne & Country team, or actually being a member of our team someday. Who knows?

And the agent I spoke with the other day is dead on- we all have to have each others’ backs. That makes the industry better for the consumer, and customer service is what it is all about.

Want to have lunch and bat ideas around? I promise not to mention Viagra. diane@realtyman.com

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So sue me

As usual, I am coming in on the tail end of a controversy. This post has to do with thoughts that started off, anyway, in an Agent Genius post.

No, I take that back. It did not start there- it started maybe 2 months or more earlier in the planning stages of REBarCamp Indiana, had an apparent climax in the post by Greg Cooper, which was answered by another post by Bill Lublin, scads of comments and the controversy is still going strong. I don’t think we have seen the fallout yet, is the thing.

On the surface it would seem that the fallout is whether Greg unloaded his angst in the proper forum- was it blame or flame? Could there have been a better way to do this?  What would Cisco do?

But that’s the surface. What is under all of this is something more important.

This is Todd’s twitter profile: “Social Media Manager for the National Association of REALTORS®, and these are my personal opinions. Oh, and I’m a crummy speller. Deal with it.” He says in a comment/response to Greg Cooper’s video, “My bio is written the way it is for transparency sake. I believe in telling people where I sit before I tell them where I stand. I think it’s important for people to know who I work for. I also think it’s important to tell them that while I do work for them, this is where I intend to share my personal opinions.”

That is actually elegant- “telling people where I sit before telling them where I stand.” I love that.

As an aside- or maybe by way of meandering to the next point I had a broker once who suggested that I not be involved on Facebook because things could be taken the wrong way. At the time if he had more than suggested that, I would have told him to put a sock in it and taken my license elsewhere. How are you going to be able to reach the younger demographic without an online presence?

But even in the time that I have been involved on twitter, it has gone from being a dark smoke-and-conversation-filled room to being an outdoor cafe next to a busy street. Conversations that I wouldn’t have thought twice about putting into the stream a year ago are now reserved for Direct Message. I don’t think I have changed; the medium is more populated.

And maybe even that isn’t the point. Say I am at work and sneak onto twitter and say something that could get me in legal trouble- is my employer liable now too? If Todd answers a question about a NAR-related thing while on twitter on his personal time, who is responsible for the content of his answer? If an agent goes home after having listed the home of the client from hell and says something like, “Great. Another overpriced listing” – on his own time in his own living room into his personal twitter stream-  could his broker be sued? If someone misunderstands an issue and posts publicly about it in an agent’s forum, possibly damaging someone’s reputation- who is responsible for the lawsuit that may ensue? The broker?

If you make a video on a camera that you wrote off as a business expense on last year’s tax returns is it a business video? Where is the line drawn between personal and professional opinion?

Sherry Chris asked on our radio show today whether Maya, Lesley or I had ever gone back and erased tweets. I have had some DM fails that I probably gave me third degree burns from the friction of erasing, so yes. I know that I have had moments I would have liked to erase, without a doubt.

Frankly, real estate agents are always at work. Does this mean that their brokers are always liable if their agents mess up online? How about franchise owners?

I think this is a bigger issue than just a he said- he said problem, and I do not think we will be seeing easy answers to any of these questions, given the fluid nature of new media. One thing I am fairly sure of: if you watch the stream carefully, a good portion of those tweeting after midnight in their time zones are at least somewhat tipsy, and the distance makes it harder to bring them home and tuck them safely into bed.

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