Social Media by Molly Castelazo | October 3, 2009
I’ve been on Twitter for a couple months now, and some fishy things have finally started to make sense:
Fishy thing #1: People would “un-follow” me and then “follow” me back a few days later. Did they hate my tweets one day and love them the next?
Fishy thing #2: Really weird Tweets, some from really weird profiles – for example:

And some really weird tweets from legitimate sounding folks I thought I might like to network with – like the female real estate agent in New Hampshire who tweeted about – um, “male enlargement” pills.
Fishy thing #3: Well, not so fishy, really – since Ponzi devised his first scheme, people have been looking to game the system. So “Get Thousands of Twitter Followers a Day – Just $55” services shouldn’t be a big surprise.
Does a Large Twitter Following Equate to Success?
What I’ve begun to realize is that many people mistakenly believe that having thousands of Twitter followers equals success. Some fellow Twitterers and I had a discussion a few weeks back on this topic. About game-the-system techniques like auto follow/unfollow and auto tweeting, one Twitterer asked, “Does it really work?”
Read the full article → Social Media by Christian Russell | September 29, 2009You’ve been told that as a real estate professional you have no business ignoring social media. It’s the wave of the future. You’ve been told it’s a great way to earn business and make money. You’ve even been told it’s mandatory. But I’m going to give it to you straight. You don’t need a Facebook profile. You really don’t. In fact, you don’t NEED to use social media at all.
Facebook is a Tool, Only a Tool
Good tools can make your work more effective and efficient. But they do not do the work for you. Facebook, Twitter, etc…these are merely tools. I do internet marketing consultation with many real estate professionals, and one popular concern that people have expressed to me is how to “get social media set up” or how to “get this social media thing knocked out”. I’ve been offered jobs to set up a bunch of social media profiles for brokers, because they don’t have the time to do it themselves.
The response I offer is “I appreciate the job, but if you’re too busy to even set up the profile, there’s probably not a lot of point in you having it!” Social media is not something to “set and forget”. You can’t “knock it out” or “get it taken care of”. A social media profile is only a tool. It’s an awesome tool, but it’s just a tool.
Read the full article →
Your Reputation is at Stake. Will You Trust the Lowest Bidder?
by Joshua Dorkin | August 23, 2009Using assistants to help you with your business is an incredible idea. Instead of putting your efforts into the mundane, day to day tasks, you can spend your time on the important things. Many of the gurus are promoting using virtual assistants for everything in real estate these days, but before doing so, proceed carefully.
Virtual Assistants and Social Media Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven or Hell?
Of course you want to know why, right?
I was just clicking around the BiggerPockets forums and came upon a few posts from a well known national speaker, who is generally well respected. Of course, I was interested in seeing what they had to say, so I read through their contributions. What I read were posts that were poorly composed and full of grammatical errors. These posts added no value to the discussion, and in fact, were merely a distraction.