I wrote a post recently at AgentGenius about the need to write, even when you are afraid that you are not writing “War & Peace”. Today, in checking my recent posting history I recognized how much I’ve ignored this poor little blog.

Its actually pretty ironic since this is the place I wanted to write about the real estate industry and trends that affect it. Social media is obviously one of those trends. I thought perhaps, it might be time to write a little about what I’ve learned about social media and what social media has done to and for me.

And today I’m teaching a group of people at a CSM class in Cincinnati that they can fit blogging into their lives as easily as I finish this little post. Hope they actually try to do that when they’re ready.

Image via Wikipedia

I found this fascinating quote today:

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).John Chow, Reporter vs Expert – Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting, Jan 2009

Most bloggers report facts or quote others because its easier to do that than it is to provide important expert information. That requires  expertise that is gained from education and experience, hopefully combined with the wisdom to apply both properly.

In the real estate business, we have tremendous expertise to share, and our business shows us that building relationships is the most important piece of building a succesful career.

The article goes on to say;

Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.John Chow, Reporter vs Expert – Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting, Jan 2009

  So when you choose to blog, or twitter, or interact on Facebook, weigh the different paths you might choose. Do you want to be a commercial effort in the middle of a social enviroment? Or will you build more business opportunities by demonstrating to the world what an expert you are, so that they will be pre-disposed to do business with you?

I’ve made my choice – Good Luck with yours!

Book cover via Amazon

I’m tough to buy gifts for. It drove my wife and son nuts. But they have always racked their brains and come up with some outstanding things for birthdays or Father’s day. This year my son and daughter-in-law got off easy.

Knowing how involved I had become in Blogging and social media, they bought me three terrific books for Father’s day. The New Influencers by Paul Gillin, What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting by Ted Demopoulos, and Blogging Heroes by Michael A. Banks. I started on Blogging Heroes first.

Blogging Heroes is described as a set of interviews with “30 of the worlds’ top bloggers”. The book was fascinating to me because of the diversity of the people interviewed and the blogs they ran. I’ll spend more time talking about that another time.

One of the first interviews is with Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of the Long Tail. In it Chris says “There is no one blogosphere. There is an infinite number of blogospheres. My 220 feeds are not your 220 feeds”.

In our business blogs seem to fall into a number of categories. There are the peer to peer blogs, the vendor to Real estate professional blogs, the real estate professional to consumer blogs, and some consumer to consumer blogs. Each one of them has a different message for their reader, because each of the writers has a different ax to grind, and each set of blogs creates a different blogosphere that may not give any credence to , or even acknowledge the existence of the others.

In the peer to peer arena, there are examples like the blog you are reading, Teresa Boardman’s Real Estate Weenie, and of course the large players at AgentGenius (winner’s of Inman’s 2008 Innovators Award) and BloodhoundBlog. All of them are written by active real estate professionals, though AgentGenius and BloodhoundBlog are both written by multiple authors. Each of these blogs have unique personalities. Reading each of them would provide the reader with a different perception of the real estate industry, its key players, and the roles and motivations of real estate’s professional organizations.

With the exception of the views and opinions in this blog, all of these blogs have some bias generated by the position of the authors and their experience in the real estate industry. All of them (current author excepted) have opinions that are based on their experience in the industry, and unless you have held every position in every company and professional organization, that leads to a bias built around the limits of your experience. For example, a real estate professional may not truly understand the consumer’s point of view, and their stresses and issues if they have never bought a home. An agent who has never owned a company may not understand the challenges facing the owner of a brokerage. Some one who has not participated in a professional organization may not have any idea of the actual workings or motivation of that organization. But still they write – and pontificate in some instances about what they think is wrong, or unfair, or needs to be corrected.

There’s part of me that thinks that’s OK. Everyone has the right to an opinion, and to voice it. And they don’t even need to be right (though I prefer to be personally). However the problem comes in when the posts get read. The reader may not have the knowledge to dismiss an inaccurate statement, or to differentiate between a well supported opinion and an unfounded one. All too often something is taken as gospel because its on the Internet and therefore it must be right. And that’s where knowing who’s in your blogosphere becomes crucial.

You can choose to live in a blogosphere that is full of rhetoric and bombast, where the light shines all to infrequently. Or you can choose to live in a blogosphere where positions are supported by facts and discourse can lead you to change your mind, or you can change the minds of others if you make your point well. Me, I know where I choose to live.

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• Resources for Bloggers

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Technorati recently published their report on the “State of the Blogosphere / 2008″ , the newest version of an annual study which has been digging into trends in blogging since 2004.

I’ll actually be doing more of an analysis of their findings over at BuzzBuilderz, the social media marketing site maintained by my son Hal and me, but I did want to post some of the information that was interesting for people in real estate who are utilizing social media as part of their profession.

There is a great deal of discussion about what the “blogosphere” really consists of and how large or influential it is. Technorati defines it as ” the collective community of all blogs.” The size of the blogosphere seems to be harder to define however.

There have been several studies, and they have all yielded different results. Technorati mentions three of them in their report;

* comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
o Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
o Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
o Total internet audience 188.9 million
* eMarketer (May 2008)
o 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
o 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
* Universal McCann (March 2008)
o 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
o 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
o 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Obviously blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream, and the number of readers of blogs is constantly growing. As an aside, the impact of micro-blogging is not taken into account, and if Technorati’s definition of a blog were used “a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material ” the postings to twitter and Rejaw and Plurk, might actually need to be considered. – and then what would the size of the conversation appear to be?

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