Brooke Wolford
By Brooke Wolford
I was recently in a task force meeting for the Minneapolis YoPros. It really got me thinking about the true value of YPN and what I feel it’s all about.
To me, YPN is about bridging the generation gap. Not to stereotype my generation, (which I am not quite sure where I fall…X, Y, Z…who’s keeping track?) but typically the younger generations are more knowledgeable about technology and communications. A lot of us feel like we have ADD and we are constantly moving to the next best thing.
With that said, there is a lot that can be learned from older generations. I thought about an agent in my office. She has been around for 30 years. She knows the ins and outs of the business. She has seen the good times and the bad and she survived.
She recently got her first Facebook account. It was cute. She seemed a little iffy at first. I would constantly see her replying to someone in her status update. It would make me chuckle a bit. But believe it or not, she is workin it! She is now posting blogs, articles and other valuable content to her page. I have been really impressed by her. Continue reading »
Brooke Wolford
By Brooke Wolford
So, I have to be honest. I really didn’t get the gist of networking off the bat. I attended a couple of networking events, tweeted with some folks and simply tried to keep up. At first, it was a little much for me. I understood that maybe, if I exchanged a conversation and a business card, someone may end up using my services or asking me for advice.
The simple thing of exchanging information is not what it’s all about. It’s more about sharing, learning, and support. The dots finally connected with me recently when my business and some of my personal dreams began to sync together.
I realized how I got here. It was because of the support of people I networked with and the support I have given to them. I have huge aspirations of being a superstar agent but also being a resource for agents in my blog and my community.
My blog , on which I write my experiences as an agent, has hit home with people. I’m honest and willing to share it all. I have been getting a lot of comments about it and I think the people that read it, appreciate it.
Some of the people I have networked with have supported me professionally. Just to name a few… Continue reading »
Jonathan Osman
By Jonathan Osman
Will the handwritten note ever be replaced? I think that a personalized video message can do the trick. Here are a few tips, tricks, and examples of what not to do when sending a personalized message to a client.
Software mentioned: Eyejot and Oovoo.
Jonathan Osman is a broker and team leader of the Charlotte House Hunter Group with Keller Williams Realty in Charlotte, N.C. Connect with Jonathan via Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or his Web site CharlotteHouseHunter.com.
Stefanie Hahn
By Stefanie Hahn
Social Media policies are becoming commonplace with businesses today. Companies want to make sure their employees understand what online behaviors will not be tolerated of their charges. For many of us, these “tolerated” behaviors seem obvious, but we all know that one guy or girl who likes to share a little too much.
I think it’s important to try to post to your audience. So if Facebook is my personal space, I will post personal (but not too personal) updates, photos, etc. LinkedIn is my business network everything I post here is business-related. Twitter is my grey area, I post both work and personal updates and photos here and my connections vary from my mother to Anderson Cooper. Not that I think Anderson Cooper reads my updates, but if he ever did …
I charge you with creating your own social media policy. Figure out how you want to interact on these sites and with whom. Creating your own social media policy means understanding and implementing your social contracts within these sites. Your social contract will dictate who you connect with, how you interact with your connections and your behavior on that site. I’ve always had certain rules that I’ve stuck to with my social media sites. These are mine, yours may be very different and only you can determine what your social contracts should be for these sites.
Facebook Friends
I like to keep the social in Facebook … I post personal updates and photos here. I might post a tiny bit of business here, but it’s very minimal. I maintain a Facebook Page for my company that contains all of my necessary work updates. Typically with Facebook, if we’re not friends in real life, then I’m not accepting your friend request. There are always exceptions to this rule of course. If we don’t know each other, but you write a little note with your request, I usually accept. I’m a sucker for the little note. Continue reading »
Stefanie Hahn
By Stefanie Hahn
It’s summertime! Let’s grab our bathing suits, hit the pool and… oh yeah, check our Facebook privacy settings. Another update from Zuckerburg and crew has created the need to recheck what you are sharing on Facebook.
First things first …
If you are connected with more than 15 people on facebook and you haven’t created a few “Friend Lists” yet, stop and do this now. Setting up your lists is simple and…BONUS…they are easy to maintain.
Just as a refresher….
Click on Account
Click on Edit Friends
On the left menu, click on Friends
Click Create New List
Enter a name for your list (family, work, YPN)
Click on the faces of your friends to add them to the list
- You can have friends on more than one list
Click Create List
<Rinse, lather, repeat>
Now that you have your lists setup you can add a friend when you accept their friend invitation.
OK, where were we … oh yeah, privacy. Continue reading »
Laura Rubinchuk
By Laura Rubinchuk
Unlike the old playground version of Foursquare, when you had to keep the ball within boundaries, the online/mobile version actually encourages you to venture out and explore new areas and venues…oh, and meet new people.
Foursquare gives you points for every “check-in” you make, and gives you more points for new venues. You also can collect badges, for example: “Super User” for checking in at 50 different venues, “Local” if you check-in to the same place three times in one week, and even a “Crunked” badge for checking-in to four different venues in one night (yes, I have one…call me a social butterfly if you must).
While entertaining to keep track of your friends (i.e. stalk, let’s be honest), the real reason I got hooked on it was when I heard the founder, Dennis Crowley, at Inman Connect in New York talk about the marketing implications of check-ins. For areas that allow billboards, think of the demographic information they can collect when they want to target a certain area for a particular product – they have thousands of check-ins and user information (male/female, age, etc. etc.) to base their decisions on where to spend their marketing dollars.
So how can Foursquare help your real estate business? Continue reading »
Stefanie Hahn
By Stefanie Hahn
LinkedIn- www.LinkedIn.com: This is one social media tool that I recommend for all real estate agents. LinkedIn is your Web 2010 resume. When consumers Google your name – and they are Googling your name – you want your LinkedIn profile to show up in the results.
What is LinkedIn? In a nutshell, it’s your online resume, complete with recommendations. Spend some time setting up your LinkedIn profile and really building out your information, start connecting with your sphere of influence: former colleagues, classmates, group members, vendors, and your past clients; then work on scoring a few solid recommendations.
If you are new to social networking, LinkedIn is a nice smooth way to slide into the hot tub. You have to put the work into your profile initially and then spend some time reaching out to your connections, but after that, LinkedIn can become pretty passive. You can easily manage your profile and connections in just five minutes a day.
There are a few questions/concerns that I seem to get over and over again with regard to LinkedIn that I am addressing specifically in this post. Continue reading »
Stefanie Hahn
By Stefanie Hahn
As I was teaching a new agent class in one of our offices last week I was stopped by an agent with the following assertion…
“Social media is for single people, I don’t need it.”
Fascinated, I detour the training for a deeper look inside his mind. After all, Facebook has more than 350 million users – and I know of at least one who is married – so I have to know perhaps the message I missed along the way.
It turns out his belief is that social media is like a giant “meat market” where single people go to find love and eternal happiness, and that the only people likely to friend each other on Facebook are those who used to date, or apparently who want to date in the future. According to his belief, because he is married there is no reason for him to create the opportunity for his old girlfriends to find him online and open the door to his dating past.
While I am not about to delve into the nuances of his personal life, he does have a point that he didn’t even know. Continue reading »
Stefanie Hahn
By Stefanie Hahn
For a very long time I hated Twitter. Hated it. I hated that I felt like I was broadcasting my life to people I didn’t know. I hated the amount of DMs (direct messages) I received from porn stars, perverts and others trying to sell me SEO tricks and the like. I hated the cumbersome search to find people that I was interested in following, and I am not a fan of a “these people are cool so follow them” list. Most of all, I hated that actually using twitter.com to manage your Twitter account basically sucked.
But my part of my job is to get out there and try these tools and then advise my agents – so I gave Twitter a fair shake… I thought. By the time RE BarCamp Philadelphia rolled around last May, I had broken up with Twitter and moved back in with FriendFeed. If you ever attended a BarCamp you know – your Twitter handle is almost more important than the name on your badge. I attended a session with the TwitterQueens @LesleyLambert, @HeyAmaretto and @MayaREguru and learned more about Twitter in 45 minutes than I could have ever imagined. I felt left out afterward and I decided to give Twitter another chance. This time around, I broadcasted less and shared more. I learned the unwritten rules of the retweet, the hashtag and other Twitter tweaks and tricks.
Still, I found Twitter to be dull. A necessary evil at this point, but not something I enjoyed. I continued to teach our agents about Twitter and the various ways they could use it for their business, but I’m not sure too many of them bought it, because really, I didn’t buy it.
I can’t say exactly it happened, but something suddenly clicked into place for me and Twitter. In the last 6 months or so, I have learned to tolerate Twitter and even (shhh ….) enjoy it. Why? This part is easy – connection. I was craving connection but broadcasting instead. Once I started actually connecting with people on Twitter and building real relationships – I got it. Finally reaching out to others and putting myself out there allowed me to make real connections.
Initially, I would reach out via DM – a private “hello, how are you?” to someone, and then connect by way of the @username mention. There is nothing cooler than meeting someone in person that you have connected with online in a meaningful way. It’s like running into an old friend that you never met. Twitter has widened my business and my social circles – I have connected with agents on Twitter that I might never have met offline, real estate and technology trainers from all over the place and even made a few friends along the way. I teach my agents that want to use Twitter for their business to find and follow the locals, connect and build relationships and attend or host Tweet-ups to achieve that IRL (in real life) interaction with folks using Twitter.
And Twitter – the twitter.com, I mean – has improved along the way, too. Now I can create and follow lists, a feature I love as a list-person. I can search and even save my searches from right on the homepage. Even the Twitter spam reporting is easier now. That said, I still use TweetDeck to manage my Twitter account(s).
Twitter is not for everyone, I know that… and I’m still not in love with Twitter. But I get it now.
Stefanie Hahn is the education director for Coldwell Banker Hearthside, REALTORS® in Willow Grove, Pa. Visit her Web site: www.StefanieHahn.com.
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