Real estate agents are flocking to social networking and social media sites to build their online presence and increase their personal networks. Social sites like Facebook allow agents the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and make new connections easier than ever before. Social media sites like Blogger, WordPress and Active Rain give realtors an opportunity to share market information and advice and to build online information resources for their existing clients and hopefully attract new ones.
Social networking and social media sites allow agents to create their own online content, express their personal opinions, share their personality and demonstrate their abilities. Agents now have a massive amount of online opportunity and power available to them and most of it is absolutely free. The marketing potential of online social networking and social media is very powerful indeed but with great power comes great responsibility!
The information you post online today has a very great possibility of becoming permanent. What you publish online may never go away and can be circulated endlessly. You can’t take your online words back. Online social networks are not private; they are public forums with massive audiences. It is estimated that the average Facebook member has approximately 125 friends. Posting something that has the potential of being read by at least 125 people is the farthest thing from private. Don’t let the fact that you can choose who you allow to be your friend fool you into perceiving this new medium as private. Anything that you post can be forwarded on to all of your friends personal networks and so on and so on.
As a general rule don’t publish anything to the internet that you would not want your mother to read or would not like to see appear on the front page of the Free Press with your name in big bold letters below it. Realtors must be extra careful to make sure that each and every piece of information that they post does not violate any of the laws or rules that govern their real estate license including the Occupational Code / State License Law, Fair Housing, and the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics.
The fact that the majority of agents use their company name and logo on their online profiles makes this not only a personal reputation challenge but a company reputation challenge. Anything that an agent posts to any online forum, network, personal blog etc. with a personal profile that includes the name or logo of the company that they represent is a direct reflection on the agent and their company.
If used properly, this new medium offers our industry a great opportunity to reach an unprecedented number of people with our own personal message. Let’s try to make sure that the messages that we are sending are focused on increasing our professional reputation with the public. If our voice has a chance of becoming permanent online, let’s make that permanent message one that we can all be proud of.
What you post online today, could quite possibly be searchable on Google tomorrow!
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