Notorious R.O.B.

What do you mean these Fireside Chats aren't enough? Fireside Tweets is undignified man!

Back when Todd Carpenter was applying for the position of Social Media Manager at the National Association of REALTORS, I endorsed him with reservations. Those reservations had nothing to do with Todd, as he was (and is) perhaps the most qualified person to head up social media strategy for NAR.  When he got the position, I was extremely happy for him personally, but concerned about a few implications of what “going corporate” would mean for Todd and for NAR.  I wrote about those here, and made a couple of recommendations.

Fast forward to last week, when an absolute blogstorm erupted over the issue of NAR endorsement of a local MLS rule forcing members to block Google from indexing IDX listings on their websites.  Some of the responses of people on that thread were extraordinarily interesting from a social media strategy standpoint.  The substance of the issue in that post is addressed there and elsewhere.  The focus of this post is on the process of deploying social media strategies for large organizations, particularly when the organization brings in a well-known figure in the wider community.

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