Great post. Here is a fun trivia fact that fits well with your story – I launched a real estate social network about 3 years ago with a friend as an answer to the myspace mess. At that time, there were only about 1.5 million page results in a Google search for the term “Real Estate Networking.” Now, it has grown to over 1 Billion.

The evolution our site has gone through to keep up with the pace of RE Tech in just three short years is crazy. But, it has come full circle back to a simple blog.

@Kevin

“I’m bullish on blogging, especially now that a fair amount of peeps have cut back on the blogging and ramped up the chit chat on Twitter.”

That is my exact game plan.

BTW – Posterous is awesome, especially if you integrate it with Google Reader, Hootsuite, Friendfeed, Tumblr and a custom Facebook page. It has actually replaced most of my social bookmarking activities. All Posterous needs now is the ability to post from an RSS feed.

@Jim

“But I have seen far too many example of “successful” real estate blogs – successful in that they lead to transactions – with some of the worst writing imaginable.”

Yep, me too. It all starts with great SEO. However, I’m still on a quest to achieve the perfect mix of excellent writing, top placement and a well designed / purposed site layout.

Easy there.

If you didn’t want a backlink to your site here, you could of left that off the form and used only your name.

Why on earth would ANYONE want a backlink to their site with the anchor text being their name?

Unless they were running for public office.

Anyone in the know about SEO never bothers me about this sound practice.

Either the message is SPAM or it isn’t.

Just because the numbers are huge and everyone wants to talk about it doesn’t mean much.

I’ve got no twitter, facebook or linkd in accounts, though the latter is at least a good idea.

Managing my email inbox every day is enough for me.

I do enjoy blogging and have learned a heck of a lot while doing it.

Ask yourself this: if facebook and twitter diasppeared tomorrow, how would this really impact you, other than freeing up a lot of your time?

RM

You said it all here… almost. “If adapting to change is just a matter of working hard, of learning, then there’s no reason for a real pro to freak out. If, on the other hand, you know in your gut you were only marginally equipped to perform your job with excellence before things started changing, you’re freaking now because, well, you’re S.O.L.”

Here’s my 2 keys with social media in real estate: 1) you must have a plan and 2) only in small doses.

If you start any new initiative without a plan, it’s destined for failure. So, if you decide to use Twitter, FB, etc…it’s important to develop a stragety and commit to it.

As for #2, I think we could probably count on one hand the number of real estate agents nationally that have truly built a successful real estate business off of social media. (I agree with the spice vs. meal analogy in your previous comment).

I have personally seen direct benefits from social media…but definitely not enough to warrant a full-time commitment. In my opinion, it’s a nice accent to other proven networking strategies.

Let’s face it, SM applications like Twitter are a lot easier than hardcore networking, farming, and cold calling. So, it’s easy to get caught up in the ‘get rich quick’ dream that you can generate tons of business with 140 strokes of the keyboard.

In the end, social media is a great introduction and contact tool…not a closing tool.