Notorious R.O.B. – Conversations on Marketing, Technology, Real Estate

I love this new post by Brian Boero over at 1000watt blog.  Go read it in its entirety, right now.  I’ll still be here.

Back?  Okay, I don’t have a lot of time today to do one of my traditional 9,000 word essay, but this post raises such a set of good points that I had to address them briefly.

Brian writes:

First, technology is – in the real estate broker’s world – thoroughly paradoxical. That which offers brokers a promise of liberation (from legacy systems, from antique business practices, from burdensome costs) often ensnares them in a Web of confusion, dependency and waste.

That’s too often true.  But then Brian continues:

These words are relevant for any broker trying to reclaim brand equity with consumers and deliver long-term value to agents.

…

If you can pull it off, though, and once you determine who your target customer is and what it is you know that is most likely to engage them, then – and only then – think about the technology you’ll need to make that happen. (Emphasis mine)

This is where Brian — and the brokers who are trying to get un-confused — need to take it one step further.  The primary source of strategic confusion in real estate comes from not knowing who your customer is.

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This is a quick note.

I found something recently that bears directly on my post on Employer Liability for Employee Social Media, and I’m somewhat hopeful that we’ll see more clarity on this topic.

Michael Yon is an independent journalist who reports from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world where the U.S. military (and its allies) are fighting.  I happen to love his work, and believe it points to the future of journalism, but that’s a different story.

He recently posted a report on Facebook about two soldiers who were killed by Taliban attacks.  That in and of itself is not unusual. He does this all the time, doing the job that the national media rarely does.

What is unusual is that in the comments to this report on Facebook, a Mike Garcia attacked Yon for releasing the names of the soldiers before the DoD got around to it.  Scroll down in Michael’s fan page to find this thread, as I couldn’t find a way to link directly to his post and to the comments.

Turns out that Yon had followed all guidelines, directives, and had cleared the release with Army commanders on the ground in Afghanistan.  What followed is where things get interesting for us.

We see that Mike Garcia says that the FB comment is is personal opinion, that he is not representing the US Army or speak in any official capacity, even though he is a Public Affairs Officer.

Michael Yon is having none of it.  He believes that the fact that Mike Garcia is a Public Affairs Officer of the US Army means that he represents the Army even on a Facebook comment.  Which means that Yon believes he can now sue the Army for defamation and libel.

Now while it’s highly unlikely that Yon would actually sue the Army for defamation, I sorta hope he would so we’d get a case directly on point as to when the employer is and is not responsible for the social media actions of an employee, and what the relevant factors might be.  In this case, Major Garcia is a Public Affairs Officer — something close to a PR person — and posting on Facebook is likely in the sphere of his employment.  Respondeat superior ought to follow.

But at a minimum, we might see the Army promulgate specific directives clarifying when a soldier (an employee of the Army) is and is not speaking for the Army when engaging in social media.  That would be helpful for additional clarity.

-rsh

Buried within last week’s firestorm ignited by a couple of posts over at AgentGenius was an actually important issue that all social media practitioners and companies thinking about social media need to think about.

When is a company or an organization responsible for the social media actions of its employees?

Now, while I have gone to law school, and am a member of the Bar, I am not a lawyer, and what follows should not be construed as legal advice or any such thing.  Consult your own attorneys for their take on the issue.

From where I stand, I believe the answer will depend largely on three factors: (a) the employee’s “day job” responsibilities, (b) the “social media act” at issue, and (c) employer’s level of knowledge.  But this is a first stab, and I would love thoughts/comments from the readers, especially from those who are practicing attorneys.

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Get yer popcorn here! Fresh piping hot popcorn!

Earlier today, we had a bit of a brouhaha among the Twitterati of the real estate set.  The genesis was this video blog by Greg Cooper in which he blasted Todd Carpenter, attacked him personally, and laid the heavy artillery on to NAR.  Which then brought responses from various members of the RE.net, some friendly to Todd and others hostile to him, and resulted in this post by Bill Lublin.

Periodically, it seems we get one of these little kerfuffles in the RE.net; I personally think it’s pretty healthy.  As far as the specifics of the Todd vs. Greg deal and all of that, the whole thing is likely blown way out of proportion, and others will address the “personal vs. corporate” burdens on someone using his personal channels.  I hear Jay Thompson is working on a post.  Suffice to say that Todd is a great guy, and if any “embarrassment” resulted, I’m 100% positive he did not intend it.  So count me in Team @Tcar as far as that goes.

But the real issue I’d like to discuss is actually from a comment by Ines Hegedus-Garcia to Bill’s post which goes:

But again, that’s not the point – it’s not about Todd, it’s about the flaming of an individual on a public forum that totally crosses the line. (And the fact that is Todd makes it all the worse)

And via Twitter, there are a number of folks who thought Greg’s post was over the top, unfair, and illegitimate.  Criticism, it goes, should be “constructive and thoughtful” of else, not worth the time at all.

This is where I part company with polite society.

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This post by Marty Neumeier on @Issue (from which the above graphic cometh) might be the most interesting branding-related insight I’ve read in quite some time.  Go now and read the whole thing.  I’ll wait.

Let’s assume that he can back up the assertion via survey data, focus group data, and actual market results.  The conclusions are very cool and very interesting indeed.

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Let me tell you who my sponsors are...

While I’m recuperating from Rebarcamp NY and Inman Connect, and working on the next chapter of the RPR reviews, I thought I’d post something that crossed my virtual desk because, well, I feel like it.

I’ve heard from a couple of people during Inman week that some of the more prominent voices (and honestly, it doesn’t matter who, so don’t ask me) in the real estate space are paid to mention specific companies and products in their public speaking and public blogging activities.  Again, since I’m interested in discussing the principles here, names and identities are wholly unimportant.

In some cases, there isn’t a direct payment of cash, but there may be other sorts of compensation — revenue share on the back-end, cross-marketing arrangements, and the like.

Question is, should these arrangements be disclosed, and if so, how much disclosure of what sorts of relationships is appropriate?

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Had a great time at Virtual REBC (kudos to Jim Cronin), and thought I’d put up my presentation in case anyone is interested.

7DS on Social Media

Thanks to everyone who came, and again, apologies for the audio cutting out.

-rsh

I have a 4BR/3BA Colonial... I'd like you to list it for me.

An incredibly busy week of planning and preparation for REBarCamp NY as well as actual paying work piling up prevented me from getting to this Part 2 earlier.  Sorry!

But in Part 1 of this series, I asked real estate agents who they would use to sell their own homes if they could not do it themselves for some reason.  The answers were interesting, but so were some of the emails and DM’s I got in response.

Now, here’s why I asked the question, after my late-night discussion with Kelley Koehler, and what I think this question ultimately means.

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Today, we will cover Twitter techniques of the 21st century Europe

One of the most interesting threads of 2009 sort of blew up this past week over at Marc Davison’s place when he posted a heartfelt mea culpa about his past cynicism about social media.  Various heavy-hitter commenters came by and a full blown debate erupted.  Oh, it’s good stuff!

But there was one topic within those dozens of comments that I think deserves a bit more examination, and as I don’t want to hijack Marc’s thread, I thought I’d talk about it here on Notorious.

I’ll admit to starting it, since I asked in the comments:

I’m extremely torn on this “reason to provide courses and education” on Social Media… since the core essence of social media is to be yourself. You need lessons for that?

And Bill Lublin of SMMI (who incidentally personifies the word mensch) responded:

@Rob: People can always benefit from training that teaches them how to more clearly communicate – too many messages don’t have the intended impact or result – and that’s part of what our training does. We spend a really long time on some theory because we believe that while McLuhan was right about the medium being the message, the medium is not the purpose – the message is, and working on how to deliver the message better is important. You’re an amazingly articulate man, and perhaps from that perspective its hard to realize how much goes unsaid, or is misspoken by well intentioned people. Because of the differences in the “psychological bandwidth” of the various SM tools, it gets even a little more complicated and frankly there are a huge number of people that create unintended consequences. I agree with you that a lot of SM information is not applicable to every situation but that doesn’t dismiss the need for people to reach a level of ‘conscious competency’ in their SM interactions so that the response they actually engender is the response they intended. But so far, our students have responded really well to the course material and presentation – and as I said earlier in this too lengthy response, I think it makes them better at communicating outside SM as well. [Emphasis mine]

Bill always makes me think, which may be a dangerous thing actually…, but it’s a good thing. And here’s where my thinking leads me.

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There's An App for That

In my latest Inman column (link is for subscribers only, unless you made it in before the paywall dropped), I took issue with mobile for real estate, and called it the “eternal next big thing” for real estate.  I didn’t have the space really to address what I do think is the future of mobile in real estate, as I was already pushing my word count limit, so I thought I’d talk about it here.

I wrote in my column that:

Mobile is the eternal Next Big Thing is real estate – a tantalizing mirage promising untold riches that appear to be right over the next sand dune… until you get there and… oh, it’s right over there over that hill.  iPhone appears to me to be just the latest in the mirages built up about how consumers will use their mobile handheld computing devices to look for real estate.  The next one may be the Droid, or the Apple Tablet, or the Kindle, or… whatever is next.

But, what I was and am really skeptical about is consumer-facing mobile, the B2C applications:

I am skeptical about the impact of mobile on real estate, at least as far as a consumer application goes, because mobile has been the Next Big Thing for about as long as I can remember

What I did not have space to talk about is mobile as the future in the B2B market in real estate.  Let’s dive in, shall we?

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