According to Agent Genius, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that only 10% of  its members blog;  and sometimes I wonder why that 100,000 or so of us bother to blog at all.

I am often frustrated over topics for this blog.  I mean, how many stories can you write about the dismal real estate market?  Or real estate consumer posts, like those “5 things to look out for…..” stories, that seem to appear over an over?  Other than an occasional rant about something that irritates me professionally, like buyers who waste a lot of my time, only to stray away and buy a FSBO, or  sellers who have had their house on the market for 318 days  turning down a showing, and, of course, the mandatory monthly market report, there really isn’t a lot to write about real estate that is engaging to the public in general.

Just take a look over at real estate networking portal Active Rain.  Popular bloggers there get lots of comments – from their peers.  If real estate blogging is done with some round about intention of generating income through building affinity with those in the audience, I am not really excited about my competitors colleagues in the business being the audience. I would much rather have an audience of motivated real estate buyers and sellers or people from the general public who might be interested in what’s going on in the world or real estate.

It has been my theory for the past few years that most many realtors who adopt social media, including blogging, are not looking for engagement as much as they are at continuing their 20th century push marketing techniques.  Sure Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are great tools for broadcasting listings and shameless boasting about your sales prowess.  They are great for selling your sure-fire get rich in real estate “system”  to struggling agents too.  And with the market we have had the past few years, there has been plenty of time to figure out how to manipulate the new media to push out the message, whether you connect with anyone or not.  After all, it’s free!

So, if you are reading this post, please take just a minute to comment and let me know if you are a real estate pro, a real estate consumer, or other interested party, AND what you expect from a local real estate blog.  I am always open to content suggestions, even if they include suggesting I spend more time working on my much more popular personal blog.

Joe Spake is a Memphis, Tennessee based Consultant, Real Estate Broker, and Blogger. Call 901.214.5563 for a consultation or click to make a social connection.
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If you use Google+, I have just started a brand new business page. Visit it HERE.

As you may have noticed on my other blog, http://joespakeblog.com, I attended an intense conference on  real estate technology last week in Atlanta, Real Estate Tech South.  Those of us actually out there selling real estate for a living are constantly bombarded with calls and emails offering us first page placement on Google, free webinars as bait to sell us sure fire cure-alls for lagging sales,  online courses to teach us everything we need to know about social media marketing, etc., etc.  A lot of my colleagues must be buying into this stuff, as the pitches are at the highest level of intensity I have seen in years.   I have posted about magic bullets before, and even though there is no such thing, many of us are willing to buy into that hope.

Real estate technology is a lot more today than buying a computer, a cell phone, and a digital camera.  Real Estate 2.0 is a way of doing business – a comprehensive strategy that includes online marketing and social media, in addition to some more traditional sales and marketing techniques.   You can’t go to a class and learn Real Estate 2.0, or social media for that matter.  You learn by doing it, by immersion and by interacting with live people who are doing it, not just listening instructors who have added Web 2.0 topics to their tired 20 year old cirriculum to make a few extra bucks.

So conferences, like RE Tech South are usually attended by people who realize the importance of a hands on approach and respect the wisdom and experience of the Real Estate 2.0 presenters, and their peer attendees who are working hard to make RE 2.0 work for themselves.

The next conference near the Memphis area is a BarCamp (follow the link if you have never heard of BarCamp), an REBarCamp to be more accurate in Nashville on April 28, 2010.  This will be the first Real Estate Bar Camp in Tennessee.  The event will give attendees a chance to learn and share about the many facets of Real Estate 2.o – go to REBarcamp Nashville for details.

Joe Spake is a Memphis, Tennessee based Consultant, Real Estate Broker, and Blogger. Call 901.214.5563 for a consultation or click to make a social connection.
If you enjoy this blog, please subscribe to the RSS Feed. 

If you use Google+, I have just started a brand new business page. Visit it HERE.

National real Estate site, Roost, has posted an interview  with me that was done during the NAR convention in San Diego last month.  Derek Overbey, Senior Director of Marketing and Social Media at Roost conducted the interview.  Thanks to Derek and all the good folks at Roost.

“In the Nest” Episode 5 – Special Guest: Joe Spake, The Leading Web 2.0 REALTOR in Memphis, TN

Joe Spake is a Memphis, Tennessee based Consultant, Real Estate Broker, and Blogger. Call 901.214.5563 for a consultation or click to make a social connection.
If you enjoy this blog, please subscribe to the RSS Feed. 

If you use Google+, I have just started a brand new business page. Visit it HERE.

A few days ago I posted Does Social Media encourage Realtor Spammers? on Active Rain, a large real estate related forum for Realtors and the public.    It seems that many Realtors are willing to jump the protocols, ethics, and etiquette of social media in order to draw in a few new clients. I know I am overwhelmed with listing pitches, realtor agendas, and “success” updates (“just wrote 3 contracts and had 6 listing appointments today”), both in my Facebook news stream and on Twitter

Of the scores of comments to the post, the one that hit home with me was from Realtor Gene Riemenschneider, of Brentwood California:

“I am afraid the loudest and most intrusive will when.  It is a numbers game with them.  They do not care about the 1,000,000 they might put off, it is about the 10 that they do not.”

I followed up with a post on the Facebook Hide button, which allows you to keep your friends but hide their updates.

How do you feel about blatant push marketing on Facebook, Twitter and the other social media?  Is over the top marketing and hard-sell advertising a large part of the future of social media?  Will we become more and more selective of who we friend and follow? Will the push (interruption) marketers win in the long run?

I did not have any editorial input, but I thought this was a pretty good piece.