The Social Media Handyman

The first blogger I ever met in person is long-time friend and colleague Toby Bloomberg. We met in Atlanta at a marketing seminar and ended up sharing a drink in a biker bar. But that's another story. Let me leave it at this -- so far as online marketing, blogs and social media are concerned, Toby and I are joined at the hip. 

Toby has invited me to participate in a new show she's doing at Blog Talk Radio entitled Diva Marketing Talks. The show takes place tomorrow evening (Tuesday) at 6:30 p.m. eastern time. (Somebody please help me remember that's 5:30 my time...please!)

The show is titled The Verticals Get It - Using Social Media in B2B, and I'd like to invite you to call in. Here are the details...

Time: 6:30 - 7:00 p.m. eastern

Call-in number: (718) 508-9924

You can also access the call via the Internet at Toby's BTR host page. 

Toby promises the show will be "business edgy, informative, sometimes controversial and always fun."

I'm sharing the stage with Christine B. (CB) Whittemore, director of in-store innovation for Solutia's Wear-Dated carpet fiber, who blogs about improving the customer experience, especially as it pertains to flooring. (Solutia was formerly known as Monsanto btw.)

The whole point of the show is to showcase how blogs and social media can be used effectively inside verticals. In my case it's real estate. In Christine's, it's flooring.

If you'd like to be reminded about the show, you can have an email reminder sent. Go to Toby's host page to do so.

I'm expecting you to be there!

Think being nice doesn't matter? It does. How about conducting yourself in an ethical manner? That too. Why? Aside from obvious reasons, the fact is, thanks to the Internet, each of us, to one degree or another, now has an online reputation we've got to worry about.

What do I mean? Do a search for Paul Chaney on Google (substitute your name).

There it is for everyone to see -- current and prospective customers, employers, business colleagues, you name it. Now, everyone who has an interest can find out something about you by reading your blog posts, comments on blogs, forum posts, watching your YouTube videos, etc. Perhaps even more importantly, they can read what others have said about you!

Online reputation management has been a topic of great concern for some time, but I came across a few blog posts recently that got me thinking about it again. (Here, here, here and here)

The second "here" link is an Inman post that talks about how the CEO of Whole Foods has been masquerading on forums (blogs too maybe) using the moniker "rehodeb." Hiding behind that facade he's been quite critical of competitors. He's also been outted!

You know the old adage, "What goes around comes around." How you treat people is an indication of your character.

The Bible has a verse that says, "What is done in secret will be shouted from the rooftops." With advent of the Internet, especially the Web 2.0, the "rooftop" has become a much more lofty plain, one which has the potential to severely exacerbate the impact of what we say and how we treat others on how we are perceived. Add to that the fact that, once it's been published it lives on in perpetuity to haunt you. Sure, you can delete the offensive blog post, but thanks to RSS, it has the potential to live on.  

I don't mean to sound like your mother, but the next time you're feeling a bit snarky and want to pull a "Tony Soprano" on somebody via a blog post, comment, or some other online venue, best to think twice. It may come back to bite you. I'm just sayin'.

I receive RIS Media's daily email newsletter. It often contains good articles to keep a real estate neophyte like me informed on issues pertaining to the industry.

This morning's feature story really took me by surprise. It was Imprev's CEO, Renwick Congdon, saying that, according to NAR, "only 39% of agents considered e-mail as the primary tool used to stay in touch with active clients."

The actual stats broke out like this:

• 48% use the phone (the phone is good)
• 38% use mailings (the kind that require stamps)
  
• 24% use market updates
  
• 16% use e-newsletters 
• 6% use email as a correspondence tool

OK, please, somebody help me out. Remind me, what century are we in again? This is shades of 1999. Even the article's title is archaic, "Using High Tech to Achieve High Touch." Hey, I was a big fan of MegaTrends too, when it was written in...1988.

The article touts the use of permission-based email marketing, which, if you think about it, is anachronistic. I mean, in this era of blogs, instant messaging, SMS, and social media, most Realtors aren't even using email as a marketing tool?! 

If you've yet to start marketing via email, it may be too late. Some credible voices are prophesying the death of email and the birth of RSS as the new means of content syndication. (Dare I even use that term? Was it even around in 1999? Actually, yes, it was.)

For years I fought the notion that email was on its last legs and I'm not ready to preach its eulogy just yet. (Consider the fact that the very reason I'm writing this post is due to something I received via email.) However, I will say it's ailing. And, yes, any content that changes on a regular basis better have an RSS feed tied to it with options for Google Reader, MyYahoo, NewsGator, and any other popular newsreader.   

I'm sure Renwick has his finger on the pulse of the real estate industry much better than I. He's probably right to be pushing permission-based email marketing as the next big thing. Still, having read the article, I can't help feel we've just taken a step back in time.

Anybody got a copy of Microsoft Frontpage I can borrow? I need to design a website. :-)

(Just in case email marketing is something you're considering, let me suggest a great resource, Permission Marketing, by Seth Godin. It was written in, you got it, 1999!) 

You know how Active Rain uses a word anytime you leave a comment on a blog post? It's called a Captcha code and it's designed to keep spam bots from invading. The term actually stands for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, and was trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University. 

Anyway, Active Rain's use of the technology is very readable and straightforward as in this example:

This is unlike, say, MySpace's code:

Though this is legible, what is not obvious, and only after umpteen attempts did I finally read it, but in the small print it says not to put a space between the two words. Sometimes, there is more than one space as well. It's also a bit tricky trying to figure out if a letter is supposed to be uppercase or lower.

Of course, my all-time favorite is Facebook's code:

Somebody want to tell me what that character is following the 'V'?! It looks like a letter that's gotten smudged. And this is not the most illegible I've come across.

I recommend that all these other sites take a cue from Active Rain and simplify what shouldn't be complicated in the first place. 

If you've got a favorite or not-so-favorite captcha code of your own, feel free to leave a comment, even an image of the code itself.

Oh, btw, I heard from a trusted source that the new words AR is using for its captcha code are actually different varieties of marijuana. :-) OK, bad joke, but I've been dying to say it! If someone does know the etymology of these new words, please let the rest of us know. Otherwise, I'm sticking with the marijuana story! 

Blogging has long had its list of celebrities. The tech bloggers have theirs. Marketing/PR bloggers have theirs. Real estate blogging has its own list of blog celebs as well.

UK-based cartoonist/blogger, Hugh MacLeod, yesterday rang the death knell of the A-list as we know it. He indicates that the rise of social networks like Facebook and Twitter (let me add Active Rain to the list) have circumvented the need for A-list bloggers to act as "hubs."

In the past, if you wanted to gain a following for your blog, getting the attention of one of this head of the class bloggers was a vital component. With the advent of social networking, that's no longer the case.

Take AR for example. I've been blogging here only a few months and on any given post, I'll receive X times the number of reads and comments I would on any of my past blogs. Why is that? Because I'm a great blogger who provides a wealth of information? Hardly, though I do try to hold up my end. It's because I'm part of a vibrant, dynamic group of real estate blog enthusiasts who've been kind enough to include me in their list of associates or subscribe to my RSS feed. It is the power of the network at work.

I love what Robert Scoble said: "A number of my blogging friends have seen their traffic go down lately. They assume that their readers are off in social networks. I think they are absolutely right."

Of course, there is a bit of irony here. Scoble, for example, is transferring his celebrity status from blogs to social media. He's been on Facebook about a month and has thousands for friends already...same for his presence on Twitter, and that's becoming the case on Pownce, which itself has only been around a very short time.

Still, social media, networks, and online communities do give those of us with less than star status a fighting chance. It's difficult if not nigh impossible to do that anymore via the blogosphere alone. I mean there are now 88 million of them and at least two added every second of every day. Mawh!!! The good news is, with the advent of social media, we don't have to rely on the blogosphere.

PS: Hugh MacLeod is the keynote speaker for the upcoming Inman Connect conference. I suspect we have no clue what he has in store for us! Hugh is also a fabled member of the A-list.