I think Daniel is right when he tells his fellow REALTORS that the fate of their business ten years (or less) from now depends on their answer to this question:
Are You on Facebook?
Click the link above to read his whole post, which is quite thoughtful. Also, check out his take on how internet marketing is going to change the real estate industry.
Daniel’s posts indicate that he’s thinking about this in the right way: instead of bemoaning how technology is undermining your current business model, it’s much more productive to look for ways to use those technologies to add value for your customers.
By abandoning its TimesSelect pay model for a portion of its content, the New York Times showed that it is understanding this reality.
In the customary SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, it’s easy to fall into focusing on the T’s. But if you don’t take advantage of the O’s, that itself will be a long-term T for your business, because your competitors will find the opportunities presented by social media tools.
Given what so many businesses spend on advertising, why would you not take advantage of the free stuff?
Granted, it takes your time for interaction and engagement with your customers and prospects, but isn’t that what you do right now by phone and in person?
Technorati: REALTORS, Facebook, Daniel Rothamel, New York Times
Facebook and ultimately many social networking websites are great means of propaganda (in the positive connotation of the word). Nowadays, the way a person is seen online, with as many connections as possible, with as many “small details” of professionalism present and so on and so forth, is at least 90% of the way they WILL be looked at in real life. It’s a bit scary, but it keeps us all in an alert state of mind. 😉
Great point, and I like how you reclaimed the positive sense of “propaganda.” It’s a message that is propagated, and nothing can propagate about an individual more pervasively than a social networking profile. It’s just part of the new reality, like it or not.