25 SOCIAL NETWORKING

SITES FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS

By: Tina MerrittWolkia

www.wolkia.com

FACEBOOK

276% Growth in 35-54 Year old users

194% Growth 55+ Year old users

101% Growth 25-34 Year old users

66.3% of users are over 21

HOW TO MAKE IT WORK?

The key to success here is simple. If you want social networking to work for you, keep it fun, keep it real and stop selling.

It's not like TV where you've got 30 seconds to slam them with whatever product or idea you may have.

Your internet presence is not a brochure either.

An active profile is something much greater and potentially more powerful. It's a living testimonial that places you as a professional in a social context.

NOW WHAT?•Engage your audience by starting a group for "fans" ie: your mom and childhood friends who want to see you succeed. Get people to join you in a real estate related game.

•Join existing groups that interest you. If you join one of the big real estate groups, engage your collegues by opening a discussion.

•Start at least one fire on the message boards by asking an intelligent real estate question that people are compelled to answer.

•Don't blow hot air, post notes that clearly show your expertise.

•Include links to your blog and website

•Check your profile settings and make sure your profile can be indexed by search engines

TWITTER

ACTIVE RAIN

145,000 members

Free or low cost blogs w/ great Google-juice

International networking

Great place to “brainstorm”

LOCALISM!

LINKEDIN

Linkedin is more of a BUSINESS network than a SOCIAL network.

Linkedin Groups

Linkedin is for Person A connecting Person B to Person C

Participate in discussions

YOU TUBE

Yes, this is a social network – really!

Consumers love video – especially raw video.

Google loves video.

Video is the future of real estate.

Every agent can have their own “Channel” for free!

FLICKR

Wildly popular photo sharing, photo search and social networking site.

It's owned by Yahoo! and so will be around for a while.

Flickr can be an extremely valuable (and dirt-cheap or free) tool for building relationships with people who are interested in your focus area, and for enabling them to find you and ultimately do business with you.

Flickr albums frequently surface very high in Google search results.

MYSPACE

Myspace, at it’s best, is a fantastic communication tool that can assist people interact on just about any subject.

Think of the younger brother or sister communicating with their older sibling in college, across the country or across the world.

ZILLOW

The new Zillow API Network turns member sites into mini real estate portals.

Search results list, Zestimate® home valuations, home valuation charts, comparable houses, and market trend charts.

Zillow Discussions allow Agents to engage with the consumer through questions/answers.

TRULIA

Trulia Voices is a place for you to ask questions about real estate and share what you know with locals, agents, brokers and experts.

FRIENDFEED

FriendFeed is a service that makes it easy to share with friends online. It offers a fun and interactive way to discover and discuss information among friends.

You get a customized feed made up of the content that your friends shared—from photos to interesting links and videos to messages just for you.

And your friends get their customized feeds, full of the cool stuff that you've shared.

BEBO

Lifestream Platform delivers real-time, chronological updates from all of your friends. Lifestream updates are available from your friends from Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Delicious, with many more to come.

Bebo allows you to share your life—past, present and future with everyone you care about through Lifestory. The Lifestory provides you with an interactive display of life events in chronological order in an intuitive and easy to use timeline.

Lifestories are made up photos, videos, stories and special events that you want to record or schedule. The Lifestory is updated automatically each time you add important content to your Bebo profile or manually add a new event.

FRIENDSTER

With more than 100 million members worldwide, Friendster is a leading global online social network.

Friendster is focused on helping people stay in touch with friends and discover new people and things that are important to them. Online adults, 18 and up, choose Friendster to connect with friends, family, school, social groups, activities and interests.

HI5

Launched in 2003, hi5 is now one of the world's largest social networks and a top 20 website globally — with 80+ million registered members in over 200 nations. hi5 Networks, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

PERFSPOT

ZORPIA

Zorpia was founded in 2003 with a goal of bringing people together from all over the world and allowing them to share their ideas and interests.

Primary features are photo album, online journal, social networking, customized homepage, comment system and discussion forum.

The headquarters are located in Hong Kong, China.

ORKUT

MEETUP

XING

STUMBLEUPON

StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites.

As you click Stumble!, it delivers pages matched to your personal preferences.

These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 6 million+ other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.

CLASSMATES

VODPOD

STREETADVISOR

DIGG

Digg is a social news website. All editorial control belongs to the Digg community members. This concept runs counter to traditional media outlets where stories are chosen by a small handful of editors. With Digg, all stories are submitted and voted on by the community members. If a story becomes popular enough, it gets promoted to the front page.

ZOLVE

BEATYOUTHERE

A social network that allows users to interact with each other and provide user ratings and reviews based upon past interactions.

“Review a Property”, which allows you to write a comment on a property that you see while browsing listings.

You can also show off “Your Crib”, which will allow you to display pictures and videos of your house, just like the popular MTV show “Cribs”, we all are celebrities in our own mind.