Austin Texas Real Estate Blog

I heard the quote in the title above recently from a friend of mine over dinner, and it surprised me.

As someone who loves this stuff, I was intrigued by this statement, and I asked my friend, “Why is that?”

His answer was simple.  He said that he didn’t care about keeping up with people from high school on Facebook, or about what’s going on in their lives.  He mentioned that it seemed false to him.

This response made it abundantly clear that he didn’t understand what social media really encompasses.  Sadly, this is a not uncommon reaction to this still-somewhat-fledgling method of marketing and promotion.

So, what is social media, anyway?

Is it Facebook?  Twitter?  Blogging?  Posterous?  ActiveRain?  YouTube?

Sure it is.  It’s all of these platforms and many more.

Here’s a quick definition that I developed for my own use:

Social media means using online video, photo, and writing tools (most of which are free) to develop new relationships and strengthen existing ones.  This can be used for purely social purposes, or to promote yourself or your brand.  As a result, almost anything that you can do in the world of face-to-face networking can now be accomplished online.  The operative word there is “almost”.  

Every business can benefit from the proper use and implementation of social media tools.  Yes, EVERY business.  Even B2B sales are conducted by….people.

If you’re doing things right, you can give your prospects a 3-dimensional view of yourself and/or your business.  What sets you apart?  What stories can you share?  I am amazed at which of my blog posts have brought me real-world dollars over the years.  Sometimes, it’s a post about funny things my kids said.  Once, it was a post about my church.

I’m not so naive that I assume that all consumers want to hear my life story, but those who are active in social media just might.

We’ve probably all heard this sage advice at some point:  “Go where your customers are.”  With over 500 million users on Facebook (1/2 of whom log on daily), and 300 million registered on Twitter now, clearly there are a few customers there, huh?

YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google.  You might have known that already, but did you know that more and more people are spending time online watching videos rather than watching actual television sets?

I think it’s easy to discount those things we don’t understand. Social media seems to fall into this category pretty often.

Traditional thinking would dictate that if a marketing method is free, it probably won’t work.  Traditional thinking probably would have kept us from going to the moon in 1969, or from developing vaccines, or starting the internet in the first place.  I promise you that you don’t want to be thinking like the crowd if you want to make an impact on the world.

The “you get what you pay for” maxim doesn’t apply here.  However, you do need to invest your time to make it work.

I’m still exploring the world of social media, which is ever-changing.  As a word of advice, don’t hate or disparage things that you don’t understand.  No progress and few successes were ever accomplished as the result of having a closed mind.

I realize that if you’re reading this, you are likely already a “convert” to the social media realm.  Either way, I thought this was a topic worth discussing.

What are you thoughts?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2191404675/

Originally posted at 210 Consulting blog.

When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents' house.  They lived nearby, and I later realized what a blessing this was for me, since I really got to know them.  When I was over there, I had a different set of friends from my own house.  They were a little rougher around the edges than the kids in my own neighborhood, frankly. 

Rather than delving into stories about them (and believe me, there are stories), I wanted to talk a bit about one of our favorite activities when I was 10-12 years old: Exploring the Creek.

Believe me, it was even less sophisticated than it sounds.  In fact, we didn't even name it.  We just spent a good portion of the day walking along the creek as far as we dared to venture before turning around and heading home.  Sometimes, the creek was quite full, and we would dread returning home with mud up to our waists.  Other days, it was more dry and we would go to the pond part and skip rocks.  I am still a champion rock skipper, in case you were curious.  It's an acquired skill.  :)

Rarely did we encounter anything truly dangerous during our excursions, and these memories are almost all happy ones for me, except for the time my friend Marc Newman shot me with a BB gun in the leg for no apparent reason.

Where am I headed with this? 

Well, my own social media journey started right here on ActiveRain in 2007.  Since then, I have developed an almost academic interest in this topic.  My friends here have led me to lots of other sites, each of which has been productive to varying degrees.  Some of them are certainly more "social" than "media", I suppose, but that's okay.  Some "gurus" will tell you to concentrate on finding and befriending others in your industry or your local area, which is sound advice, but I don't think there's any reason to limit yourself.  In my business, everyone has the ability to refer a buyer or seller to me, right? 

If you are just finding your blogging legs, so to speak, I applaud you for making the jump into an unfamiliar landscape.  If you are a seasoned veteran, this post may not speak to you as much. 

I would encourage you to "explore the creek" from time to time when it comes to social media.  There are a lot of different paths, and most of them will provide some measure of fun and learning.  You will find your own favorite spots as you dive in.  You can stick to the well-worn path, of course, but I assure you that a bit of courage will go a long way. 

After all, you probably won't even end up covered in mud, unless you choose to do so.

Thanks for reading!

 Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91393778@N00/3050548670/

I don't profess to be a technology or social media guru, but I will say that I have been immersed in this stuff for a couple of years, so I certainly have developed my own set of opinions on what works and what doesn't.  That being said, one of the worst pieces of advice that I have witnessed is something along these lines:

"Don't blog about your personal life."

or

"Don't tweet about your boring day.  No one cares!"

And so on.

I utterly disagree with those statements above.  If people care about YOU, then they will likely care about what is going on in your life and during the course of your day.

The title of this post refers to something I recently discussed with a friend of mine at lunch.  If you allow others to tell you what to write about, this is tantamount to attending a party with a script in hand.  Don't allow anyone else to direct your networking activities to this degree.  It's fine to get tips and understand protocol, but let your content show your unique personality.

On our radio show (Social Media Edge), we once had a guest who told us about his "formula" for Twitter, with specific percentages for each type of tweet (something like 20% personal, 20% business, 40% information, and 20% unwanted advice). 

I disagreed with him on the air, and I still disagree today. 

The essence of social media is that it's SOCIAL.  When you are talking with friends in person over dinner, do you ever think, "Wow - I need to work in about 8% more talk about business, then I can mention that cool movie I saw yesterday."  NO!  No one does that in real life - why would you do it online?

Be yourself, and reap the benefits.  If you relate to others and engage them, it can lead to some great friendships, some of which may turn into business for you (just like offline, right?).

I have been asked "But what should I blog about?" at least 250 times over the past year.  The quickest answer that I can give, when blogging, tweeting, or spending time on Facebook, is this:

Anything that you are comfortable writing about is fair game.  Period.

Thanks for reading!

Photo above by _MaO_ from Flickr.

 My RSS feed is http://activerain.com/jasoncrouch/rss.

Yesterday afternoon, I taught my very first social media class in person.  I have taught others about this stuff via webinars and on our weekly radio show "Twitter Tuesday", but this was the first time I have spoken to a group in a classroom setting.

I LOVED IT!

More importantly, the students seemed to really enjoy it, too.  We were at Gracy Title, and my friend Allison Craig, who is a marketing rep for the company, thinks that the other 12 marketing reps will likely want to schedule us to speak for their clients, too.  My friend, Ben Finklea, who is the CEO of Volacci Search Marketing, spoke for an hour about SEO techniques before my segment.  We charged separately for the classes, with a package price if people wanted to attend both of them.

I also got a chance to meet Dorie Dillard, who is someone I have enjoyed reading here on AR and who focuses on northwest Austin and the Canyon Creek area.  It's always fun to connect in person with people for the first time. 

As we discussed during the class, social media can help to leverage our time really well, and it makes it far easier to grow our sphere of influence.  My personal sphere is both way larger and more far-reaching than I could have conceived two years ago.  After all, without the benefit of the internet, how long would it have taken me to develop an sphere of thousands?  Since I have three (almost four!) kids now, I clearly don't get a chance to attend a lot of cocktail parties these days.  Instead, I have a bunch of online tools that make it feel that way!

Yesterday's session focused on blogging basics, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, with a brief reference to Friendfeed.  Since I wasn't sure how long it would take to cover everything and I had a good number of questions, I didn't get a chance to cover every single subtopic, but I thought it went really well.  Several people said that I had helped to demystify Twitter for them, so that was a good feeling.

I'm looking forward to the next one!

Last week, I realized that I have managed to attract agents to our company from each of my personal top three social networking sites (AR, Twitter, and Facebook).  I have found that agents who are already embracing social media have some of the best potential around. 

SO, HOW DID I FIND THEM?

I guess the quickest answer is to say that most of them found me.  Two of my current agents, Christi Baylor and Marisa Ladd, came from my blog right here on ActiveRain.  They were already AR members before we met, which made our "in person" connection that much faster/better.  I think both of them have the potential to be stellar agents in 2009 and beyond.  They are certainly ahead of the curve in my opinion, based on my own experience running a brokerage for 4+ years.

Since I am a very active member here (pun completely intended), this first section of the post may not come as much of a surprise, but I bet the next part may.  If not, then I'm sorry to have disappointed you.  Okay, you got me.  I'm not really sorry.

TWITTER

Considering the sheer number of people I have encountered who:

• Haven't started using Twitter
• Use Twitter for spam purposes, OR
• Don't see the value of Twitter,

I am guessing that you may be shocked to hear that I have recruited TWO very solid agents there in the past few weeks, both of whom have new home sales experience.  Since their licenses are not yet transferred, I am not at liberty to publish their names here yet, but I will share the quick story of each here briefly.

I was chatting with one local Austin guy on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, then a mutual friend of ours (also an AR member) noticed and mentioned that the guy was looking for a broker.  A few days later, we had a great lunch and he plans to start working with us in the next couple of weeks after he gets back from vacation.  Pretty cool stuff, huh?  Well, it actually gets even better...

I received an email a few days ago from an agent who wanted to meet with me.  I am generally always available to meet with agents who are looking for a good place to work, so I set up an appointment with her.  It turns out that her boyfriend is Mike Chapman, co-founder of the Austin Social Media Club, and he strongly suggested that she meet with me, since he had read my blog and he follows me on Twitter.  He said something along these lines, "Jason has this stuff wired.  You HAVE to talk to him!".  Cool!  After a solid and long interview the other day, she has already sent her license sponsorship change form to the Texas Real Estate Commission, and she intends to start with us in April. 

But wait!  There's even more!

FACEBOOK

Facebook is where I first began to realize that "friend" can often have a different meaning online.  My best statement on this topic is to state that I have over 2600 friends on Facebook, each of whom is extremely close to me and will probably name their first child after me.  :-)  Truthfully, I probably actually know about 20-25% of my friends there, but all of them have the potential to send me business at some point (this has proven to be the case a handful of times). 

Let's get back to the recruiting story...

Recently, I had connected to a bunch of people from my high school.  After all, I needed to give them a chance to reject my friendship again 20 years later, right?  Well, I was catching up on reading about some of them, and it turns out that the little sister of a girl in my class is in the process of getting her real estate license here in Austin!  We are planning to meet soon to discuss her options over coffee or lunch.

_________________________________________________________

I guess I just wanted to point out that ANY of these sites and/or tools can be beneficial, and you never really know where the next lead or good contact will come from.  Soon, I will write a post about how many newspapers and magazines have found me over the past year because of my blogging.  Since I am starting to teach classes on this stuff, that is yet another opportunity. 

My personal keyword for 2009 is "UNAFRAID".  I am meeting people, teaching classes, and in general doing things that I never would have imagined possible two years ago.  I look forward to what this year will bring.

Thanks for reading!   

Follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/jasoncrouch.

As part of my ongoing effort to push myself outside of my comfort zone, I will be teaching a class on "Social Media 101" at Gracy Title's Spicewood Springs office on February 18th from 2-3pm.  I arranged for an SEO class to be taught just before mine by Ben Finklea, CEO of Volacci Search Marketing.  (I stole the header above from my friend's email invite for the event.)

The cost to attend will be $25 for one class, or $35 for both.  If things go well, I may work toward getting a class approved for MCE credit (perhaps "Online Real Estate Marketing" or something similar).  Since my company is already MCE-approved to teach courses on short sales, adding another class shouldn't be that difficult to achieve.

Ben and I have also discussed the possibility of hosting a full-day seminar on social media and SEO, although that is still in the formative stages. 

Since the audience at Gracy Title will primarily be made up of other local Realtors, I will focus on ActiveRain as a primary blogging platform, and we will discuss Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  I don't think I will have time to cover more than that, and depending on how it goes, we may expand it to two hours for future classes.  I intend to give plenty of tips on blogging and building an online audience during my presentation.  Also, I hope to keep it interesting!

My good friend, Allison Craig, is a marketing rep for Gracy Title, and she thinks that this will lead to additional teaching opportunities once the other reps at her company find out about it. 

I have recently been asked to host a roundtable for another local title company, although that is not on the calendar as of yet. 

If you had told me a couple of years ago that I would be known locally as a social media "expert" and sought after to teach this subject, I'm not sure that I would have believed you.  In fact, if you mentioned social media to me back then, I am not certain that I would have understood the term!  I look forward to getting started down this new and exciting path, and I am open to the opportunities that come my way. 

A few weeks ago, I was even nominated in the Texas Social Media Awards, which is being hosted by the Austin American-Statesman!  If you would like to leave a comment there to support me, they are taking all comments into consideration: http://budurl.com/jasoncrouch.

If you are interested in attending either or both of these classes, please RSVP to Allison Craig - allison@gracytitle.com or 512-423-9419.

I don't consider myself to be a social marketing guru (yet), but I do spend a little time each week on all of the top social media sites that I know about.  Sometimes, it's just a few minutes per week.  Obviously, I spend the majority of my online time right here on ActiveRain, but I have become more active on Twitter lately - both are highly addictive, in my humble opinion.  Facebook also seems to have some interesting potential as a business tool, if used properly.

I just wanted to take a minute to share some of my experiences with the other two sites.  Clearly, I have written a good number of posts about sales and referrals that have come from ActiveRain already.  My primary advice on AR is to be yourself and write about stuff that actually interests you, rather than simply focusing on real estate all the time.

FACEBOOK

When I was first invited to Facebook by Jennifer Bukaty last fall, I knew a very small handful of people on there at the time.  I would get random email messages like this:

• You have been SUPER-POKED by Rob
• Mary hurled a ghost at you!
• Tom set you up on a date with Monica Lewinsky
• Sue wants to dirty dance with you in front of your kids!

What the heck is all of this stuff, anyway?  Clearly, this site must be worthless for business, right?  Actually, that's not true.  At this point, if you are not a member of Facebook, the jokes above make zero sense to you, more than likely.  If you ARE a member, you are probably still laughing (at least I hope you are). At any rate, I kind of avoided the site for awhile, then decided to re-evaluate it later, and I'm glad that I did.

Despite all of the silliness and random applications, and Scrabble games, and videos, Facebook has also brought me a handful of leads.  As a bonus, my AR blog has developed a strong following among my Facebook friends (over 1700 now), and sometimes they comment directly on Facebook.  But how?  Well, I learned how to "feed" my AR blog posts to Facebook awhile back, and this gets me additional exposure in a group of non-AR members.

I have had a handful of decent leads from Facebook so far, all of which came (so far) from people which I did not previously know, but who have seen some of my posts and know that I am a real estate broker in Austin.  I am still pleasantly surprised when I realize that one of my "real life" friends found my blog via Facebook.

TWITTER

Using the ActiveRain feature to automatically send links to your public posts straight to Twitter is very cool indeed, but I would recommend also actually hanging out there sometimes, rather than just sending the occasional link.  When you develop relationships, it will begin to pay off and they will read your stuff IF they get to know you.  Otherwise, it seems a bit random in the middle of all of the conversations going on and no one will pay attention.  I was guilty of this before, but I have changed my ways now. 

As with Facebook, I have developed a healthy readership on Twitter, with about 425 "followers" there.  I got a lead today from a guy that I only knew tangentially - awesome!  So far, I have received about five leads from my relationships there, as well as solidifying some friendships and contacts that I already knew from ActiveRain.  In case you didn't realize this, there is a large contingent of AR members on Twitter, which makes it even more fun.

For specific instuctions on how to achieve this, please check out my post here:

How to Feed Your ActiveRain Blog Directly to Facebook and Twitter - Get More Exposure for the Same Effort!  

If you have questions, I would be happy to help, time permitting.  Thanks for reading!

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jasoncrouch