While I was a Mortgage Broker could not always depend on the group of agents I worked with to feed me regular business, whether it was due to extended vacations, slow economy or market segment, a change in companies…  The reasons go on.

The point here was, I looked for avenues to feed both myself and the agents I worked with, better than qualified leads. One of the best resources for me was providing seminars and the most popular was my “First Time Home Buyer” seminar. One seminar would file my pipe line for months…

So, I know that most of you reading this are not in the Real Estate Industry, but I hope you understand my reference.

With the current market trends, the question I have for you is; What are you doing now that is or is not working for you as a lead generation tool?

For many of us Social Networking is like trying to understand something very ambiguous. Every report you read these days states and proves the necessity of Social Networking, but for myself I’m feeling I need to bring my Social Networking efforts a little closer to home.
Article – Bringing Social Networking Home – Part 1

Just a quick video for people who are trying to define their presence through their blog…

It’s short

I think the most difficult aspect to this whole process is, understanding what Social Media and Networking is.

I hope the initial post helped as I am sure the short clip enlightening… :- )

Now we cover which Social Networks to join and how to become part of the contributing network.

First, there are several Social Networks just for Real Estate Agents and before you go out and sign up please let me provide a quick overview of them so that you can jump right in running. I’ll provide direct links for each to make signing up easy. I am ranking these top to bottom, best to maybe not the best.
You know this blog post will be very large so I am breaking this up into smaller ones. You will find that I have broken everything into separate entries for each blog. Much better…

Here is the first.

Active|Rain – To Signup Click Here
Probably the best Social Network for real estate agents. Here is what Active|Rain had to say about them selves,
“ActiveRain is a Bellevue, WA based technology/media company hybrid that operates the largest and most active social network in the real estate space.

Our roots go back almost 6 years but unlike many new “real estate technology” companies we are not trying to change the business model, but rather provide the technology to augment an existing one. Over the years we’ve worked very closely with agents and companies both large and small, providing the technology to support their core business, selling homes. Our goal is to “Empower the real estate professional” and as an extension empower the consumer. We don’t believe in placing additional barriers between the consumer and the agent.

In June 2006, we launched the ActiveRain Real Estate Network, a free social network and marketing platform for real estate professionals. This network helps agents to create business relationships both within the industry and with the consumer. “

My comments: Active|Rain is by far the largest specific network for Real Estate Professionals around. Having just visited the site they have 104,072 members and while I was there they had 4,062 members online. This is pretty big stuff for any network, let a lone a niche network.

OK, Active|Rain uses a scoring system to incentivize members to participate. Points are given for, 1) filling out the details of who you are, 2) Writing a post which can go to your Blog, the main member area, any groups you belong to and your localism.com page(s), 3) Comment on peoples posts, 4) Welcome people to the network, 5) Ask people to join the Network… and so on.

So you should know, I will earn points for each person that joins using the link above. I hope you do use it. It will be interesting to see the numerical affect.

What do points do for you? Well, depending on your level of points, you could be the highlighted member of the day and be listed in the daily email that they send out to all members.

I have posted several posts to my blog and in doing so, the information becomes available in different groups (people gathering under an interest, i.e. technology) and/or you can also have your posts listed in the “localism.com” social network. Localism.com is an extension of Active|Rain and goes along with the idea of “The national land grab” generating content within the scope and control of Active|Rain gives it momentum in growth and certainly scope when people are looking for content on the Internet.

So, Signup for an Active|Rain Membership and look around at how others are using the network. I’ll place a comment to this post with some links that I found helpful.

Over the course of doing business we experiment with different advertising medias. We find a few or several that work, some better than others for our niche. And although we are continuing to define how the internet will play a role in the success of our efforts we are confronted with an unbelievable amount of information, methods, forms of communication and technology.

All YELLING at us to get our attention. The noise is deafening…  I get it…

So we are going to start breaking it all down, starting here…

Reasons to use Social Networking:

1. Like minded people find you
2. You are able to learn from one another, sharing information and tools
3. Your services become more available to others that may not have normally found you.
4. There are specific Social Networking sites for your specific profession
5. Your sphere of influence increases in size, both demographically and geographically
6. Your site becomes more popular and higher quality traffic is visiting your site
7. You become known as an expert in your field, profession or area

I am starting a series on Social Networking, this is the starting point of the discussion.

Social Media in Plain English

Starting this week we will be interviewing different products for potential JV partnerships. If you have an Internet Marketing product or service please contact us by clicking here

Boy, been busy updating all of my social network profiles and connecting them to the mybloglog.com account…

Over the course of time since my last post on this topic I have been researching the products and services of people who claim to have the solution(s) to your Internet Marketing questions and desires to obtain success.

And although there is truth to their offers, it is easy to become inundated by their offers and continual emails and frustrated by the process of finding relevant information and services.

During a 3 hour live conference call just this last Wednesday, one of the moderators said something that has remained true since I started in the Internet business (over 11 years); something we have all heard time and time again, “Content is King“.

It is also very clear that Internet Marketing has evolved into several methods and strategies, i.e. squeeze pages, email lists, membership sites…

The key is defining your strategies, staying focused, using the tools and getting feedback.