Social Media Week Real Estate Summit

We’re at Ceili’s pub in Vancouver for the Social Media Week Real Estate Summit. Still almost 20 minutes to go and it looks like we’re going to have a full house. Realtors LOVE this social media stuff…at least, the smart ones do.

You can participate remotely via Twitter, as I’ll be using CoverItLive and pulling in the #SMWVan hashtag, so if you want your remarks recorded, remember to use that tag over the next hour and a bit.

Here is our agenda:

The Real Estate Summit

Thursday, September 22 at 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Ceilis Irish Pub and Restaurant

Real Estate Summit Agenda:

1:00pm – Introduction / Welcome (Steve Jagger)

1:15pm – 1:35pm – Tom Everitt – Online Video For Your Real Estate Business

1:40pm – 2:00pm – Debra Trappen - Managing/Harnessing Your Online Reputation and Recommendations Strategy

2:05pm – 2:25pm – Kye Grace – Tracking Your Online Efforts with Google Analytics

2:30pm – 2:50pm – Scott Dawson – Using Social Media To Build Relationships and Get Deals

2:55pm – 3:15pm - Bocar Dia of HootSuite – Using Hootsuite.com For Your Real Estate Business

3:20pm – 3:40pm - Cliff Stevenson - Virtualization of his Real Estate Business (outsourcing, wikis)

3:45pm – 4:00pm – Q&A With All Of The Speakers

4:30pm – After Party On The Upstairs Patio of Ceilis

 

Now to get the CoverItLive embedded. It’ll be pulling in tweets from all of Social Media Week in Vancouver, so you may see some stuff that isn’t real estate related, but bear with it. Social media is noisy, yo!

There.

Steve Jagger is starting up. Social Media Week is happening in 12 cities. We’ve done Enterprise, Legal, Social Good, lots of different things. Today is Real Estate. Teri Conrad and I are putting the real estate side together. Six quick speakers of twenty minutes each, the bar is open, the kitchen is open, and it’s great that Ceili’s opened specifically for us!

ThinkTomDotCom‘s Tom Everitt talks about online marketing for real estate. This man talks so fast I don’t know if I can keep up. WOW.

Real estate marketing is the total comprehension of effective personal promotion. Tom has been 100% commission based for 12 years. I’m as old skool as anybody but doing the marketing on social media means it’s out there working for you on their own. You are a secret. How many people had never heard of me before today…so on the one hand I got asked to speak here, so yay, but on the other hand, lots of people don’t know who I am so I’ve failed.

The resume is dead. Employers will google you. The business of real estate is people. Your product is real estate but the business is people. How many people can you connect with? How many can you do a good job for?

Video: can help you establish yourself as an expert extremely well. I got coverage in 24 because of one of my videos. We all need to find our niche. Maybe you don’t want to wear a Wayne’s World wig, but I am who I am. The best part about being a realtor is you get to establish who you are.

Who read seth godin’s blog yesterday? Anybody know the title of his new book? We Are All Weird! What are you going to do with your own weirdness. Mass is dead: you need to find your niche. Professional apathy is a relic of a dead era and, as Seth teaches brilliantly , a mentality you cling to at great peril” Chris Taylor.

IT’S OVER.

You don’t get to knock off at 3 and go golfing. You don’t get to put your feet up. Competition is crazy. You’d better be able to take these tools and use them to the best of your ability. Maybe you never do video. But you need to be able to get outside of your shell and approach anybody at any time and ask for the business. If you are not totally comfortable 100% in your skin and your grey hair, well, I don’t care. I am who I am. I just interviewed Peter Legge and noticed I phased out at one point and oh well, I’ve just gotta go move on. It’s not gonna kill me and I’m not gonna lose my mind over it. Just keep rolling along.

A good video is a virtual handshake. [and now Tom goes and shakes John's hand] We are not strangers anymore. Video helps people meet you, know you, trust you. A good video is a virtual handshake.

Trust is the new ROI. If you can get that trust, you’re in. It doesn’t matter what your competition is, if the clients trust you, you’re in. Even if nobody sees it, your clients know you’re online putting yourself out there. That’s just as good as a pageview.

Those fries look really good….

Have a video. Not everyone is going to love video. Here’s a video I did that’s had thousands of views. People get who we are. I think everybody should have something like that. It’s an amazing way for people to GET you. People wanna deal with YOU. They don’t even care which company you work for. How fast can they get to know you.

1. You want to leave them wanting more. Shorter the message, the more urgency.
2. Shorter = sense of urgency
3. research shows shorter=better response
4. FB= excellent response
5. Mobile out of home 93% on the go 89%

JOIN TOASTMASTERS [seriously, join it]

And he turns to the camera and just does a video blurb. You need to be able to do that any time, any where, you need to be completely out of your shell. There should be absolutely no barrier between you and them. You can do ANYTHING.  Toastmasters gets rid of weasel words and helps you concentrate on getting your message out and nail it any time any where.

Celebrate your weirdness. That book comes out today, so try and pick it up.

Make sure the camera is up high, otherwise the skinniest person in the world gets a double chin. 30 seconds or a minute, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Use TubeMogul that uploads it to ten different video sites and just go for it!

Here’s what Social Media Week Vancouver looks like so far, from Cathy Browne, a legally blind photographer and PR.

Scott Dawson, mortgage broker, is up next.

I’m a big twitter guy. I love it, the only problem is, my name is SDD and it sounds like STD so oh well.

Using social media to build relationships and build deals. It takes at least a year to get results. The #1 goal is build relationships; forget the deals. Meet as many people as you can. On social media, the deals will come.

Why Social Media?

I had no money when I started. So, what do most people do when they start? Why did you start on social media? To market your business and save money. It’s expensive to buy paid advertising. My competition is every bank, and I can’t compete with the marketing dollars of a bank. You can use Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, and each has a different style. Twitter moves fast, FB is more “friends” and LinkedIn professionally is great. You have to choose a platform and focus on it if you like it. If you spread yourself too thin, it shows.

Be strategic about who you follow. Have a plan. Don’t waste your time following celebrities. Is Kim Kardashian going to need a mortgage from me? Probably not. Follow your industry, watch other realtors and see what they’re doing. See what the competition is doing. Twitter turns commonality into collegiality.

Follow as many valuable people, and LISTEN. Don’t just start blasting out open houses. NOBODY CARES. You want to get to know the person, so be personal. Listen as long as you can, eventually you’ll have something to say to them as a person, and that’s where the connection lies.

After youv’e made some friends online, you’re going to want to engage them. Answer questions on Twitter; you don’t even have to be following them, just do a search and answer their questions.

Be an expert in your industry. Become a content creator. Make a post yourself on some issue and then you become the expert. Don’t send your following away from you.

Provide value, which is related to the earlier point. My goal is to be the mortgage broker on social media.

Don’t sell. We’re in this for business, and I want to make money. The less you sell on social media, the less successful you’ll be. 80/20 rule. There’s ways to sell without coming across as sales-y. There are ways to get across what you do for a living without ramming it down people’s throats for a living.

Take online offline. The goal in Twitter…if you’re strategic and connect with the right people, is to connect offline. The end goal on Twitter should be “let’s go for coffee”. It’ s so easy to find people online who need your services.

Try and meet one person a week. Everyone likes to go for coffee!

Questions: How do you measure ROI?

Takes a long time. It takes an investment. If I were to send out one flyer once to 300 people it won’t work. If you’re consistent, it’ll pay off.

Q: Do you recommend connecting all your social media platforms?

No! It’s not appropriate or effective. Take pictures and put it on Facebook, Twitter moves a lot faster . You need to find your social media sweet spot.

Q: do you have a different Twitter account for personal reasons?

No. I’m Scott, that’s who I am. It’s personal, but it is a personal business. Followers will know what I’m like. It makes it that much easier to connect. I find it easier just to have one.

Q how do you keep track?

LISTS! The best list on Twitter is People I’ve Met In Person, and keep the list private. So you can keep on top of what they’re saying. That’s a much bigger connection.

Now Debra Trappen is setting up, having come up from Seattle. Managing your Online Reputation and Recommendation Strategies. How many of you have heard of these terms? [ I think I'm the only one who put up my hand].

Great. It looks like there will be a lot in this for learning today! This is something that’s so important. The more people get online, the more important this becomes. When things go online they stay online forever. One of the things that’s really shifted in social media is the privacy settings.

Who has actually googled themselves. EVERYONE. [this comes as a surprise to Debra, but not to anyone here; Vancouver's the most FB'd city and third most Twittered city on Earth, and god knows, we're all self-absorbed]

Use quotes around your name when you google themselves. Who has an inappropriate Google Twin? I do, a burlesque photographer. Who has a FirstnameLastname.com site? Lots of people. Are you connected to a brokerage or individuals? Wow, impressive. Everyone but one or two has a website? I can’t believe that [I can; Vancouver is totally all over social media, even if we don't know what we're doing].

Grab your baby’s name immediately! Even if you don’t have one yet, if you’ve got a baby name picked out, register it.

Have you used Namechk.com? It’ll tell you what social media networks it’s available on. Does everyone here use Google? Are you a red pin? Does everyone know what that means? Make sure you’re claiming your Google profile. If you’re not claming your online profile on all these sites, it’s going to be important as you build your online reputation because you want to be as consistent as possible.

1 Track and Monitor

Setting up alerts to tell you what is going on, what’s being said about you, what pictures of you are being posted, etc. Socialmention.com is a good site. Google Alerts is a popular one Google.com/alerts or if you have a Gmail account it’s easy to get them delivered into their own folder. Search your name, your business, your email address, etc. TweetBeep.com awesome for Twitter. Technorati.com searching blogs, and they’re doing alot of beta testing on other stuff. Blogpulse similar to Technorati. Find the tool that fits you.  Tagbulb, same basic idea, this tracks tags [sadly, it appears to be offline today].

The #1 thing real estate agents don’t do. We hear Content Content Content but we’re not paying attention to what’s being said about us because we’re too busy making content.

2 Evaluate and Interpret

Positive:

Is it positive about you?

Negative?

Easy to tell.

Is it about your brand as opposed to your person?

That’s harder to call, but this is important. Categorize that on its own.

Industry related?

Is someone just including you in a rant about the industry, categorize that separately. It’s not about YOU.

Me? Is it straight-up about me? And how awesome I am?

That’s critical. Evangelists are amazing.

3 Act and Engage

Get a plan of action for each of those areas, plan in advance. USE EVERNOTE, the application that will change your life. You can do anything in there. Make sure you’ve got a category and plan of action for each of those categories.

Be proactive. If you see a trend, like they’re talking really negatively about the industry, write posts about that. And write the positive side. Bring in white papers and ebooks and any other resource you can provide for the customer’s education.

If you see what people are talking about online, you can answer their questions and become who they are talking about.

Do press releases, including a press release about  how you attended social media week.

Reactive: be careful not to engage with trolls. I’m very serious. The only way you can Not engage with them is if you have a policy. How many ppl have a comment policy? It allows that when the trolls come, you can say “we have a policy, and it violates it.” It’s an easy out and a great way to save face. You do want to engage with people, but you don’t want to provide  aplatform for trolls.

Business Search and Review Sites

Do you Yelp? LinkedIn? Yes there’s a ton of Canadians on LinkedIn, which is crazy! You guys really rock with social media up here. You guys just kick our butts, it’s awesome. We can totally rock this Search and Review space. We can harness this.

Does everyone know 90% of the consumers couln’t care less about you. Nearly 90% don’t believe “commercials” but what they do care about is what other people say about you. You can take it to the next level. Who uses client video testimonials, because people love them. Where are you gonna have people talking about you, etc? People love watching people talk about you. Focus on LinkedIn and Yelp for Real Estate. The thing with LinkedIn: it’s not a social network, it’s a business network. It’s not about quantity on that site, it’s about quality. These are people you’re putting your rep on the line when you’re connecting with. So you should be able to recommend each of them, and vice versa. You may have to do some spring cleaning. It’s free, and you can create an entire section that’s about recommendations. Think and start with two or three recommendations a week. Don’t blast all your friends at once, because they’ll ask for one back, and you have to keep up with that. People look for the recommendations there. I guarantee if you’re an authentic individual, people will get a really good picture of you.

You can ask your clients to rate you on Yelp. Create your own brand on Yelp. We have a great team in Seattle DivaRealEstate.com and check their profile on LinkedIn and it rocks, and they get a ton of business. There’s a couple of other ways of using Yelp…Build your own recommendations, ie recommend other people. Make a team, each recommend one another, and then you get the word out. It’s easy to link Yelp and LinkedIn profiles in your email signatures. Link back to your website, online business cards like About.me etc. Link it everywhere! You’re going to get some juice from that. Eventually you’re gonna get a bad one eventually, but you’re filling your stream with good ones now. “The bad ones make the good ones appear real. ” If they’re all cupcakes and rainbows, it casts doubt on all of them, so a bad troll highlights the valid ones.

Ask for reciprocal links from your referral base. Make sure you’re doing that.

Ask for referrals and recommendations after the trade. And send it twice. Don’t attack them 3,4,7 times, but twice is fair. And be sure you say thanks, because that solidifies the relationship.

Q: Is there any SEO benefit to getting those backlinks?

If you’re using WordPress, yes. SEO isn’t our focus. It’s not what we DO: we create relationships and lift each other up, that’s the key point of reciprocal links.

Kye Grace…paging Kye Grace…get your ass up here!

Intermission, and this is what we look like:

Kye Grace is going to talk about using Google Analytics.

Kye had a brief standup comedy career, so this should be interesting.

In a nutshell, you can see this mishmash of graphs and numbers and it’s pretty overwhelming. But at the end of the day you’re probably making a bunch of assumptions and what you want is to figure out what matters to you that’s inside here. Most of it probably doesn’t matter. What will generate Value And Growth for you. THose are the key factors.

Value is what adds to your bottom line, what puts money in your pocket. Fat stacks, yo.

Value is what each visit to your site is actually worth. It can be anything that adds value to your business. The chance to speak to you today brings value to my business. How do we determine that value? It’s doable. Revenue divided by visitors = average Value per Visitor.

What is Growth?

Growth only happens when you bring new visitors and increase return visitors. It can only happen if you bring in new visitors AND your site solves their problem, engages them, provides them what they need. The source and quality of visits are the core of growth.

Determining your Goals.

The vast majority don’t have goals for their sites. You should have goals with MailChimp, Rep management, Twitter, etc. For a website: building newsletter signups, more people completing forms, blogging regularly, having people read more than one post. If you blog regularly, your bounce rate is going to be higher, because they’re familiar with you already. The don’t need to explore. These are all things you can set up inside your Analytics.

Setting up goals in Google Analytics. It’s simple, there are some help docs on Google, but you can pretty much wing it. You need to be able to send them to another page, eg Thank You Page after completing a form. Time on Site, Pageviews, etc. For most realtors, a good goal is 3minutes per site, and if you can get 25% of readers to do that, that’s a good goal.

Conversion rates:

The first contact someone makes with you on social media: they’re now a prospect. A comment, a response, whatever. Then you fire back and give them a new piece of information and the ball’s back in their court. if they respond, now they’re a lead, and now it’s your job to convert them to a face to face meeting, phonecall, etc. The number of leads Divided by prospects is your conversion rate.

That takes a lot of the pressure off the people contacting you.

Visitors to conversion rate. That’s pretty obvious. For the bulk of people in this room, anything pushing 1%, I’d be pretty happy with. Don’t beat yourself up too much. If you’re talking about 2000 visitors a month and getting 24 conversions a year, most people would be pretty happy with that.

The subjective side:

You can’t always pinpoint where they connected with you, but go on and ask. You can use a specific phone number and track that. There’s different services that will grant you a phone number, there’s even an iPhone app for that. And you get stats. At the end of the day, though, you’re guesstimating a bit.

Calculating value.

20 ends came as a result of your site. Your average end is $7 less your costs, you had 24k visitors, so your value per visit is $5.88. So spending up to that to gain a visit would be your break even point. Don’t forget to include your time and trouble in this.

What growth looks like in Google Analytics:

Here’s what I care about: where they come from, what they saw, what they don’t view, prestty simple. We’re not math nerds, we have better things to do.

Sources of traffic:

Keywords and referring sites. Keywords are words people were searching for that bring them to your site. They will let you know what problems people want solved. You can see trends, and ask yourself if you answered their questions. If not, you may want to write a new post. Is it worth updating the existing page, or is it worth writing a new one? Subjective, but hey, you’re always looking for something to write about.

Popular topics can be spun off to videos, posts, anything.

EG: The Riots…you may get some trendy visitors, but chances are they’re not coming specifically for real estate. Welcome those visitors, but don’t cater to them and blog more at the expense of your business. The effort to take these people and comnvince them they need real estate services is monumental if not impossible.

Referring sites:

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Other Sites. You can decide, once you have the numbers, if you want to cater to those people or if they’re not really customers.

Do they spend enough times on the page to read the content, watch the video, etc? How does that compare to your site averages? More time is more valuable, obviously. If lots of people are coming to that page but they’re not spending time there, you need to add something to the page so it is stickier.

Bounce rate: people who land and leave. Compare with the average. Popular pacges can have a high bounce rate, that’s okay, luckily you can do something about that: add internal links, related posts, ensure it’s easy to get to other pages. Social Media referrals give a higher bounce rate, and that’s okay. [Sometimes they're just looking to see if it's retweetable] Sometimes your numbers will tell you people are looking for things totally not in your purview, and just let them go. You aren’t going to convert them.

Check your referrals and if some site is sending you valuable traffic, think about what you can provide for that site in terms of valuable content, etc.

Analytics is not a simple topic, but the beauty of it is… Ian Lurie has a great guide The Fat Free Guide to Analytics, It’s on sale for like ten bucks, and it’s well worth it. Go grab that. http://www.portent.com/books/fat-free-guide-analytics

Next Up: Cliff Stevenson from Calgary, to share how he works in a virtual world.

I run a team of agents out of Calgary, and the biggest change is the virtualization of our business, getting a virtual assistant. I have internal and external tools: internal is thinks like Yammer, a wiki, etc. External is Twitter, Facebook, etc. I just thought I’d share my favorite day on Twitter.

5 Vancouverites involved, three here today: Kye, Teri Lynn, and Steve. June 17, 2010 the day my daughter was born. To be honest I didn’t get involved with social media for business. My wife was being induced and Twitter was the vehicle to have some fun.

There’s a chance it’ll hurt me more than her. Slight chance, but a chance.

“Hmm that’s funny, some jokes aren’t funny to a woman in labour.”

“Curious as to how many Followers I’d lose if I posted pictures of the birth. Judging from previous response, all of them.”

And I’m standing here today because of Twitter. Flying to the Phillipines because of Twitter. Kye is doing my website because of Twitter. If you’re not involved in social media, go get a shot, go try something, but make it about YOU. Don’t hammer out your listings.

When I got involved with Steve, Ian Watt had a virtual assistant and I was interested in how that helped him and he suggested I just get one. Initially I thought, I don’t have 40 hours a week of work to give him. The cost means putting money on the table. I had fears and objections, and Ian said he’d give me tips. Transcribe your videos, post your listings…but now there’s so much more he can do for us. Here’s what I use him for. If you’re looking for help for your business, it’s difficult to find the skill set they employ over here at a cost-effective number. It’s probably $70-80,000 in Canadian salaries. He’s made our websites, created content, manage our online profile, makes sure we understand where to post our blog articles, does our marketing, and on and on.

The communication method was one of my objections: we get in skype chats and email and yammer. It’s like a shared FB page but more intimate and easily controlled. He’s an integral part of my business. THe aspect of social media I refuse to give up is posting.

There are a lot of companies who will post for you, autoposting, creating content, etc, and for people who don’t know what to do, they go there. I don’t. I can’t. It’s gotta be YOU. It’s gotta be everything about you! I have a friend who has an autopost but I referenced one of his posts and he didn’t know what I was talking about. I’ve outsourced all my admin, but not my client interaction. We spend the time doing our own social media. It’s authentic. That’s all us. There’s no way anybody could live-tweet my child’s birth for me. Outsource the rest.

The wiki is another social tool for us. It’s building out your process bible for all intents and purposes, and everyone collaborates on that, and that makes it more efficient. We’re big proponents of these tools.

Lots of people have thought about using a virtual assistant. We really need to be focused on increasing our value proposition. We knew we couldn’t do all the marketing we wanted to do without a virtual assistant. Steve’s operation…well, I hear it’s good, I’m going to find out on Saturday. I’m online everywhere, and I’m happy to answer your questions. You aren’t even my market, so I’m happy to share with you!

Now Bocar is up!

How to use Hootsuite for a Real Estate Agent.

I figured there’d be a black curtain behind me, so I wore a white shirt. I’m looking for a place, so if you know anyone who can help me with this, let me know!

I wanted to talk about using social media for real estate and a lot of what I’ll be talking about will echo earlier speakers, but I’ll speak from a Tools perspective.

People have always been buying homes, and that’s not going to change. What does change is how they do it.  Five years ago we were focused on SEO, prior to that it was print ads. I saw your pictures on the bus stop this morning!

As a homebuyer today…when it was time to ask for advice, one of the first things I did was ask friends and family. Nowadays why would I spend time getting ahold of them individually? I have them all on FB and Twitter. I update my FB wall, and ask a question on Twitter. What that means if you’re listening (and they let you search for terms around certain questions and connect with those people) is you can connect with people who have questions you can answer, problems you can solve. You can even target your search by geographical area on Twitter.

Taking advice from strangers is what’s done now. It’s natural to ask a question on social media and expect answers from strangers. When you find a question, look at their profile and posts and learn about them a bit and that helps you understand who that person is so you can engage with them more meaningfully. You can use Facebook Subscribe and look at specific people without Friending them.

It sounds very tedious and time-consuming, but there are a lot of things you can automate: you can automatically post right from Hootsuite to all your social media platforms. That reduced the time you need to spend pushing the content out to social media. Let’s talk about social media from an investment perspective. You go from you to your friends to their friends…and you can have a reach of hundreds of thousands. Think not about the strength of your voice, but the strength of your network’s voice.

Use geographic tagging and let people know where you are when you’re showing a house. If I’m Following you, I might just show up at your open house. We’re already connected, and you’ll know me when I come in. You can already know what people like. If they have a dog. There are a lot of ways to measure the value of a tweet and determine the ROI, like Kye’s talk about Google Analytics. You can track it and get your ROI from this.

The more you know about your prospects, the more you’re in a position to help them. Your happiest customers are the best sources of referrals, and social media is a source of referral on steroids. You can keep in touch with them on Twitter, Facebook, wherever. You can share tips on their neighborhoods, introduce them to teachers, establish yourself as a resource in that community. When their friends are looking for a place, you’re going to be the expert in the community and you will get the referral. Brand yourself with an unlimited amount of good word of mouth. There IS no upper limit.

Social Flow: Inputs: Listen and Engage ->Builds: Word of Mouth and Community -> ROI: Sales -> Inputs: Listen and Engage -> etc, etc.

If you’re not active on social media today, get started YESTERDAY. There are a lot of tools out there to use. I work for Hootsuite, but since I’m in a room full of sales people I promised myself I would not say Hootsuite too often, and so I will NOT say Hootsuite so often. I’ll repeat that.

Smweekhoots is a discount code for a month’s free pro version of Hootsuite and an infosheet for Real Estate Agents.

Questions:

For Cliff: for a single realtor, under 30 transactions per year, would you still recommend a Virtual Assistant? YES absolutely. What could you do if you had help? Congrats, you’re doing fantastic, but you can’t get to the next level on your own. The future of real estate is teams. TEAMS. If you’re looking to blow up, you need help. This is cost effective and easy.

Questions:

The bounce rate? Re-explain it.

It’s when somone arrives on a page at your site and leaves from that page. If you use Hootsuite and tweet about your recent blog site, they’re gonna pop in, read it and leave because they’ve already seen the rest of your site. As a whole you want bounce rate to be … there’s no right number. You want search engines to have a low bounce rate on posts that relate to your business. A good rate will vary depending on your site: if you have six pages, there’s not a lot to do. If your blog posts and they’re all fully on the main page, the main page is still only one page and only counts once even though they may spend more time reading.

Q assuming there are subjects you’re passionate about, is it beneficial to have a series 1 2 3 in a row, will that assist?

Scott says: to be honest, I wouldn’t worry about it. Forget about SEO, just blog it. If it’s flowing, get it out there.

Q: “Follow other realtors” Where do you draw the line? How local should you stay? Where does it harm you or am I overanalyzing it?

Scott: I follow probably every realtor in Vancouver just cuz I want to see what they’re doing. Lists are critical. You’ll find really quickly the people who add value to your business and concentrate on them. Drill down and find the ones you’re engaged with and then you can start to split them off. Locally I’ll follow anybody. Across Canada you’ll find realtors providing really good value. Spread yourself out. Look for it.

Bocar: on Twitter you don’t need to Follow the person. You can use a search stream as opposed to personally connect with them if that’s not something you want to do. Is there any list of real estate agents that’s active and publicly available. Boards can provide that, and Scott hosts a weekly real estate hashtag Tuesday #YVRREChat. #YVRRE, etc, are hashtags on Twitter that you can see and follow and find people.

Q What is the MOST important social network that you use, and it can’t be FB!

Debra: you have to know what you’re trying to accomplish, that tells you where you need to go. If you want to connect to people you don’t already know, Twitter is great. If you want to connect with people you’ve worked with, try LinkedIn. But you can’t ask that and say NOT FB. There are eight hundred million people there.

Audience: there are so many changes there! You might be wasting your time in some areas, because nobody knows how to use the newest stuff.

Scott says the tools could go away tomorrow. See Myspace. But if you’ve built a relationship, it continues. If Twitter disappeared tomorrow, I would still know Steve.

Bocar: FB is an interesting network, and I can relate to the constant change. Those changes are for consumers, not businesses. It’s important to realize it doesn’t matter what changes they make to stay competitive. It’s about providing you a way to connect with people. It’s just about working your way to find the right approach to connect with people. It’s really about what you’re trying to accomplish with that specific network. Facebook is a great place to post pictures. To save time, it’s really about knowing what the network is about and doing only that in that platform.

Now Teri is saying thanks to Steve and talking about his monthly meetup.

And. We’re. Spent.