What I learned at RE Bar Camp in Seattle last Friday!

by Michael Fanning

It is always interesting what you are going to learn when you attend a BARcamp. Social Media was a very hot topic this year. I attended A few facebook classes and I also attended a few video blogging classes.

In the facebook class it was very obvious that agents are still a bit unsure of how to interact in this world. We are so ingrained to want to sell that we forget that Social Media doesn’t have the word sell in it. It was very clear that tools like Postlet’s auto facebook program is very frowned upon by facebook users. Just really posting listings in general is not something that anyone felt was a good idea. They went as far to even say that on Business pages it wasn’t a good idea.

If your going to use social media then here are some good things to think about.

Be relevant: Reading that you just had breakfast, or your tired, doesn’t really count
Add value in your post. If you do post a listing on the rare occasion then tell us what is great about that home or why do you find it so unique.
Be a facilitator: People everyday on face book have questions and needs. Identify them then facilitate answers or resources for those individuals.
Engage: A single sided relationship is just that. It will never be successful.
Listen to what people are saying: My dad told me we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
Use Lists to sort your friends: Facebook has a great sorting tool with creating lists. This way you can better focus your attention on the people you want to interact with daily.
Be a real Person: Remember these are your friends you are interacting with and they want the real you, not the stuffy sales person always talking business.

There is so much more I could say but this is a blog post, and I attended that class as well, and posts need to be short and to the point so there you go. Remember this quote from Seth Godin.

“Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn’t work,”