Notorious R.O.B.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night’s Lucky Strike Social Media Club (LSSMC) dinner featured a presentation by Phil Thomas DiGiulio (@holaphil) of Wellcomemat on “Video and Social Media”.  I thought it was an interesting topic in and of itself, and am grateful to Phil for coming by to have the conversation with us.

During the dinner — as is normal for LSSMC — a topic came up that I thought needed more elaboration and discussion.  One of the sub-themes of social media and its impact on marketing is how professional it ought to be.  Should companies, for example, have an “official” corporate Twitter handle, like @onboard?  What topics are appropriate for a corporate blog?  And so on.

Video, as it turns out, is directly implicated in this sub-theme.

Professional vs. Confessional

One of the biggest barriers to implementing video as a marketing strategy is cost.  I have priced out what it would cost to have a professional video made for my employer, and the ease with which one can spend $15K on a 3 minute video is staggering.

Video is inherently a more difficult medium for an amateur.  Video editing — even as it is made easier with technology — remains a more technical, a more difficult, and a more expensive proposition than editing text.  Simply consider the fact that you may need to buy a piece of software to edit video.  And that’s assuming that you have the visual aesthetic sense, a talent for crafting narrative using motion pictures, and skill with blending sound and image and motion — all of which are somewhat specialized skills.

Phil usually recommends that you hire a professional to do a well-crafted video, and for good reasons.

On the flipside, however, there has been a growing trend in the world of video towards a more intimate, more amateur, and more “raw” approach.  Perhaps the explosive popularity of reality TV is reprogramming our cultural expectations.  Perhaps the wide availability of cheap equipment and editing software is bringing “moviemaking” to the masses.  The popularization of sites like YouTube certainly helps to spread video works that wouldn’t have seen the light of day in earlier times.

For example, Nigahiga is one of the top subscribed channels on YouTube.  This is a typical video:

While Nigahiga videos are hilarious, with decent editing, a story, and some really funny actors, part of the appeal is its extremely amateurish production values.  The exact same script, exact same actors, exact same everything, but done professionally by a TV production crew would be horrible.  Audiences would be making fun of the terrible script, the bad acting, and the not-so-funny jokes.

Why is that?

Audience Expectations: Artifice

I think the reason is that the modern audience grew up in the era of mass media.  Few of us remember a time before movies, a time before television.  The Millenials don’t remember a time before the Internet.  Few Gen-Xers remember a time before VCR’s.

Movies and TV are a part and parcel of our culture, our memories, and even our identities to some extent.  As we grew up surrounded by filmed entertainment, our knowledge of and expectations of motion pictures have also grown.  We are no longer fascinated, as the first viewers of movies were, by grainy black and white footage of a train pulling into the station, over and over and over again.

As filmmakers advance their art, as TV producers get savvier, as actors and directors and lightning and sound engineers and editors and the rest of the production industry continue to improve their art and technology, our expectations of professionals continue to rise as well.

Just last decade, CGI was a big deal special effects wise.  We audience members oooh’ed and aahh’ed at movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.  Today, we take CGI for granted, and harshly criticize crappy CGI work.

The result of all this improvement and sophistication on the part of the audience — as a direct response to the continual improvement by industry-leaders in film and television — is that we hold professionals to a far higher standard.  We are so jaded by movies, by TV, by big explosions, by car chases, and special effects that to break through our awareness and make an impact requires something extraordinary.

For example, this Sprint ad:

From a marketer’s perspective, having worked at an ad agency, the level of execution on that video/ad is incredibly high.  The amount of thought that went into it, the CGI-work, the models, the video shoots, the ad copy, the script, the voiceover work… all of it likely required thousands upon thousands of manhours of work by some of the best and brightest in the advertising industry — namely, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the winner of the 2008 Ad Agency of the Year by AdWeek.

That is the level of skill, of art, needed to break through with professional video.

In contrast, when the audience is confronted by video that is clearly not professional, and is intended not to be professional, then the expectation changes.

Audience Expectations: Humanity

The Nigahiga video on YouTube embedded above is a perfect example of changed expectations.  The martial arts fighting sequence in the Nigahiga video is hilarious precisely because it is so amateurish, and intentionally so.  What the viewer is responding to isn’t the technical perfection of the fight scene, but the humor and the personality of the actors (and the filmmaker) as evidenced by their staged “fight scene”.

What the audience expects in an amateur production is humanity, not artifice.  They want authenticity and personality, rather than perfect execution.

In that situation, I believe that the bad lighting, the bad acting, and low production values are a bonus rather than a detriment.  They help to create authenticity.

The Nigahiga videos would not be improved by professional lighting, or a soundstage.  They would be hurt by it.  Getting professional actors to act out the skits would not make the videos more interesting or more entertaining; I rather think professional acting would make the videos less entertaining.

This is, frankly, the connection to “social media”.  Video, I think, has a unique ability to help viewers assess the honesty and authenticity of the person on camera.  Visual cues, speech patterns, the facial expression, gestures — all of these things help a viewer decide whether the person they are viewing is “keepin’ it real” or faking it.

If you understand social media properly — that is, as an expression of the Cluetrain concept of authentic human connection, rather than as a collection of technology tools — then you will implicitly grasp that video is just another tool for that expression.  Based on that, you can make decisions on whether and how to use video to maximum effect.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

There is, however, real danger with video, and one that I don’t think is well enough understood.

The danger is not the unprofessional video with shaky cameras and bad lighting.  No, the real danger is the mediocre professional video.

Because the audience expectation is so high when it comes to professional work, in order to avoid looking like an idiot, your execution must be extraordinary.  This is both prohibitively expensive and incredibly difficult.  The difficulty is easily illustrated with this video from Cyberhomes (which is a good company of good, smart people):

The cheesy stock photography, the horrible music, the “professional” voiceover, all combine to make what is a deadly boring corporate video.  This is not to say that the team at Cyberhomes didn’t do a good job — it did.  But the video is not extraordinary, and it couldn’t possibly be — it isn’t a Goodby Silverstein campaign costing millions of dollars.

Once the decision was made to go the “professional” route, Cyberhomes could not help but fall into the “crappy corporate video” hellhole, not because of anything its team or videographer or editor did, but because what they could not possibly do given the likely budget for something like this.

There is a price for artifice.  A rather significant one in the current media environment.

If you are unwilling or unable to pay that price, then your video project is doomed from the start.  It may be a better strategy to go the other way and go for an amateurish, human connection driven video play instead.

I think Jim Duncan‘s “hey, I’m talking on camera while I’m driving somewhere in my car” videos are absolutely fascinating.  Unfortunately, I can’t embed them on a WP.com blog, so go view a sample here.  An embeddable sample is from Robin Greenbaum, of Prudential Douglas Elliman, in New York:

The parts where Robin’s real voice comes through, when she’s giving her opinions and views rather than when she’s reading off some description of the Windermere, are fantastic.  She sounds like a human being, like an interesting person with strong views, with whom one might be able to have a conversation.

And that, my friends, is social media.

-rsh

I had a roommate in college who was an architecture major as an undergrad.  He was such an insufferable snob — for example, in the entire year we lived together, he never watched any movie that wasn’t by Fellini — that my view of architecture and architects may have been unfairly colored.

Thankfully, I recently learned just how fascinating architects are, especially in the post-Green era.  So I started to dig around just a bit.

And I must ask… why aren’t architects blogging more?

I asked this question on Twitter and LinkedIn and got some interesting responses, but thought to expand on them here.

Seriously Compelling Content

Blogs are, of course, for those who work with the written word.  At the same time, there’s no denying that pictures and graphics liven up what would otherwise be a wall of text.  Architecture is inherently a visual medium, but one that requires quite a bit of explanation (via words) to appreciate it fully.

For example, look at The Visionaire, a new building by the Albanese Organization, designed by Rafael Pelli.

That’s a beautiful building.  And a beautiful image.  There are more stunning images of gorgeous buildings in the world of architects.  Look at this image from Centerbrook:

Unlike artists, however, architects have to create buildings that people work in, shop in, play in, and live in.  There are layers upon layers of things going on that I had no idea even existed.

For example, solar path.  It makes perfect sense once it’s explained, but until it is, it’s one of those things that a normal person rarely (if ever) thinks about.

Architects routinely think about stuff like this, as well as all of the engineering that goes into a project.  I heard Stephan Kieran of KieranTimberlake spend a good 5 minutes talking about a wall.  With cross-section diagrams, showing heatmaps.  I rather think he could have gone on for a good half-hour just about a wall.  Maybe more.

And all of it is fascinating, because so much of it is simply a brilliant exercise of human ingenuity.  Intelligence, applied.

Plus, architects write.  Centerbrook has published a freakin’ book.  And here’s the whole list of their publications.

And last, but not least, non-architects are genuinely interested in architecture.  It is an art form, after all, and one that impacts the average person’s life in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Every New Yorker knows that a part of his identity is tied up with the skyline, the buidings, the iconic ones like Empire State, and the forgettable brownstones lining 11th street.  Every homeowner lives every day with the result of decisions made by some architect or three.  People are interested in architecture.

The whole heady mixture says to me, “Blog!”

Thankfully, some architects are starting to get into the blogosphere.

KieranTimberlake has a blog.  Unfortunately, KT seems to use it mostly as a repository for press releases, which makes it basically useless.  I learned through LinkedIn that Modative has a blog, and it’s quite good.  (I’ve linked to it in a new blogroll category.)  Most of the other architecture blogs appear to be written by critics, academics, journalists, and so on, rather than by practicing architects.  If you know of blogs by architects, please send along the link, or post it in the comments.

Effective Marketing?

Turning to the topic as a marketer, rather than a new kid-in-candy-store enthusiast, I confess that I am puzzled why more architects wouldn’t blog.  It strikes me as almost the ideal marketing vehicle for the profession.

Perhaps the bigtime developers who hire architects for the most part grow up in the industry and know all the architects they’ll ever want to know.  Maybe the plethora of design and architecture magazines makes it unnecessary for architects to market themselves.

If you’re Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, maybe blogging just isn’t something you need to do.

But what about all those who aren’t already world-famous architects?  How would a potential client know to hire you?  What does he judge you on?

I ask because I genuinely do not know, never having hired an architect, nor having been one.  But since architecture is still a services-based profession, where one’s intelligence, wisdom, judgement, aesthetics, philosophy, and temperament all come into play, it seems to me that letting people know who you are, how you think, what interests you, and what your design philosophies are would be an excellent way to let like-minded clients find you.

Sharing knowledge, sharing insight, and being a genuine, authentic person are proving to be the most important method of marketing in the post-Cluetrain world.  Architects have knowledge, have insight, and are human beings — get on the cluetrain!  Let the world know your views on things.  Talk about projects as an insider.  Let us see that you’ve put in hours of thought into just how sunlight should strike the window at a precise angle at 3PM on a Friday in April.

Let us behind the curtain.  We may have no idea what you’re talking about, but we will recognize that you do.

So architects of the world, unite in blogging and social media!  You have nothing to lose but your aura of mystery.

-rsh

The second post ever on Notorious R.O.B. was entitled, “More Silliness from Real Estate Connect” and contained this passage:

The Real Estate industry has gone tech-crazy.

Here’s a wakeup call: all that technology does is make your existing processes more efficient. If what you do is crap, it makes crap more efficient. If what you do is valuable, then it makes that more efficient. Microsoft Word is an amazing piece of technology, but it can’t write the next Great American Novel for you. You have to actually write the damn thing yourself, and if you suck as a writer, then Word isn’t going to solve that problem for you.

By the way, I would like to note that I have broken through some sort of dork continuum by quoting myself from a year ago.  The only thing I could think of that might be dorkier is singing She Bangs on American Idol.  (Click on that link at your own peril; I will take no responsibility for brain meltdown and queasy feelings.)

A couple of recent experiences reminded me that plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Evidence: Oh, Canada!

First, we get this announcement from Coldwell Banker Canada:

Coldwell Banker Canada Operations ULC today announced the launch of the brand’s customized real estate application developed for Microsoft Surface™.  The dynamic new real estate interface was unveiled during a live interactive demo at the Coldwell Banker® Canadian Broker Meeting and Awards Gala being held today in Toronto. The new Microsoft Surface home search application allows users to interact with thousands of home listings, real estate maps and other www.coldwellbanker.com features in a way that is familiar, by using simple hand gestures. Similar to the intuitive technology featured in the futuristic film, “Minority Report”, this exploration on the use of Microsoft Surface represents yet another way in which Coldwell Banker is working to harness innovative technologies to benefit home buyers and sellers.

Um.  Okay guys.

So the Canadian real estate market was down17.1% i n2008, and the Canadian Real Estate Association is predicting a 16.9% drop in 2009, but one of the largest brokerage companies in Canada is excited about Microsoft Surface?

Is this really the thing that’s going to turn things around for CB Canada?

Maybe.  But I submit that the real estate industry has gone tech-crazy if folks really believe that Surface is where dollars need to be invested.

By the way, compare what CB Canada put together with this from Perceptive Pixel, the company founded by Jeff Han who pioneered multi-touch interfaces:

If you’re going to do multi-touch, then by golly do it right.  Putting a website that we’re all familiar with on Surface and calling that a “dynamic new real estate interface” doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Evidence: Ubiquity of Social Media

I don’t hate social media.  Nor do I think it’s useless.  If anything, I believe the opposite: it’s damn useful, and quite likely groundbreaking in lots of ways.  But I do think the industry is focusing on absolutely the wrong thing as it comes to social media.

People are focusing on the technology of social media, rather than on the meaning of social media.

Past two weeks, I’ve been on the road, first at RE Tech South and then at the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Conference.  I’ve sat through hours of seminars and panel discussions and lectures on how real estate professionals and companies can survive, thrive and even improve in the current market conditions.  And it seemed that every other word being uttered was “Twitter” or “FaceBook” or “Blog”.

The emphasis on technology leads to realtors using the technology in all sorts of unsuitable ways: spamming their friends, endless twitterstreams of listing after listing, advertising after advertising, and blogs that are nothing more than digitized billboards.

All that technology does is make your existing processes more efficient.

When your existing mode of engagement is “NOW IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY OR SELL!” (And by the way, how does that work, exactly?) then the technology is just going to make you be more efficiently annoying.

To be sure, there are people like Jeff Turner who are trying to preach the meaning of social media, rather than the technology.  We need more of him, and less obsession about how to create a dozen groups on TweetDeck to keep track of all of your social networks.

It Ain’t the Technology

If I believe in nothing else, I believe that marketing post-Cluetrain is authentic, open communication between human beings.  Technology assists in the transformation, makes some of the interaction possible even, but it is not the interaction.

I firmly believe that a realtor who doesn’t know how to use a computer, but send personal, authentic, and no-bullshit handwritten notes will beat the pants off of the realtor who has thousands of Facebook Friends and barrages them with digital versions of “Just Sold” postcards.  I really do.

Because it ain’t the technology; it’s the person behind the technology.

What realtors need isn’t a newfangled technology to be a thousand times more annoying than they are today, but a transformation into the kind of trusted advisor that so many claim and so few achieve.  Companies need to be investing in technology (and processes!) that help realtors become true experts in their local market, the real estate transaction, the financial elements, and client service, rather than in gadgets that win cool points then fade away.

Show people that you care about them as people; that you will work hard for them; that you are a professional with pride in your training, knowledge, and expertise; that you won’t lie to them or bullshit them; that you will advise them to the best of your abilities for their benefit and not your own; that you are neither a huckster nor a servant; that you too are human… and people won’t care if you message them through Facebook or through smoke signals.

They will trust you.

-rsh

So I ask an innocent question recently on Twitter: “What’s the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0?”

And I got a number of interesting responses.  So of course I have to blog about it, heh.

Heather Elias (@heatherflynn) wrote: @robhahn interruption marketing versus permission marketing.  Actually, I take that back. More like broadcasting versus engagement.

Stacey Harmon (@staceyharmon): @robhahn I think Realtors should have 1.0 websites, but participate in web 2.0 communities. I don’t advise agents to create web 2.0 site …although there is an element of “dynamicism” that Realtors should use on their 1.0 websites which make them more 2.0 like…

Derek Massey (@derekmassey): @robhahn 1.0 is push, 2.0 is push and pull. 1.0 is presentation, 2.0 is discussion. 1.0 is looking big, 2.0 is acting small

And of course, @matman had the best observation: If my math serves me correctly, Web 2.0 is Web 1.0 x 2!

The profound simplicity of Matman’s formulation aside, all of these quotes suggest something without going so far as defining anything.  What is an observer — and more importantly, a practitioner — to do?

[Now, to be fair, let's be clear that the above people were responding via Twitter with its 140-character limits.  So by necessity they had to be general; therefore, none of what is below should be seen as criticism.  In fact, I rather hope they'd come and participate and expand on these thoughts.]

Imprecision Indecision

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the typical real estate agent who is discovering the wild and woolly world of online real estate.  She goes to a conference, like RE Tech South or Inman Connect or perhaps a RE Barcamp.  She hears everyone talking about Web 2.0, about social media, about leveraging the most powerful form of marketing ever invented.

She’s got herself a website from one o’ dem website vendor fellas, and she figures she needs to get with the program.  She desperately desires to join the Web 2.0 world and the rest of it.

What is she to do?

Her current site is ‘broadcast’ whereas she wants to go to ‘engagement’.  Rather than presenting stuff, she wants to discuss them.

In practical terms, what does this mean for our newbie realestista?

The picture gets cloudier still when she realizes that the sites usually brought up as exemplars of the Web 2.0 movement are sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia.  YouTube is literally broadcast for our newbie — she goes there to watch videos.  Flickr isn’t much different — she goes there to check out photos from other people.

Blogs are said to be the quintessence of “Web 2.0″, but she visits most blogs to read stuff other people have written.  Sure she can see that some folks comment and such, but hasn’t ever done it herself.  How is this different from people coming to her site to read her market reports page?

Her site allows users to search for listings, then returns results to them.  It’s all rather one-to-one in her view.  So what’s so Web 1.0 about her basic search site, and what would she have to change to make it a Web 2.0 site?  Just add a blog, or let users comment on the listing?

What does “dynamicism” mean anyhow for her?

The Disservice of Vagueness

Every time I go to a real estate conference where newcomers are introduced to the heady concepts and la revolucion sweeping their industry, I come away thinking that they all have the somewhat happy-but-dazed look of people who sat under a waterfall for a few hours.

They all go away feeling that they have to do something, and that they have heard the key to future success, but with precious few concrete action items.

The problem, I think, is the very imprecision of the terminology we throw around.  The vagueness performs a disservice to newbies.  Unfortunately, the imprecision and vagueness is built-in to the whole “Web 2.0″ meme/movement.

This seems a good place for a digression of sorts: What is Web 2.0?

In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	–>	Google AdSense
Ofoto	–>	Flickr
Akamai	–>	BitTorrent
mp3.com	–>	Napster
Britannica Online	–>	Wikipedia
personal websites	–>	blogging
evite	–>	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	–>	search engine optimization
page views	–>	cost per click
screen scraping	–>	web services
publishing	–>	participation
content management systems	–>	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	–>	tagging (“folksonomy”)
stickiness	–>	syndication

The list went on and on. But what was it that made us identify one application or approach as “Web 1.0″ and another as “Web 2.0″? (The question is particularly urgent because the Web 2.0 meme has become so widespread that companies are now pasting it on as a marketing buzzword, with no real understanding of just what it means. The question is particularly difficult because many of those buzzword-addicted startups are definitely not Web 2.0, while some of the applications we identified as Web 2.0, like Napster and BitTorrent, are not even properly web applications!)

The post by Tim O’Reilly — I suppose the father of the term “Web 2.0″ — goes on to make claims like “Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core.”  And then O’Reilly supplies us with a helpful “meme map”:

If the “gravitational core” of Web 2.0 is “The Web as Platform” then every single real estate website in existence today — including the original Realtor.com circa 1996 — is Web 2.0.  If the key to Web 2.0 is “You control your own data” then not one real estate website today is Web 2.0.  Because not one real estate website controls its own data — nor does any user of any real estate website.

Look at some of the other “core competencies” like “Harnessing the collective intelligence”.  Whatever this might mean in Web 2.0, I think it’s safe to say that few real estate websites today are Web 2.0 under this scenario.  And the ones that might be able to make that claim are all portals aggregating the “wisdom of the crowds” of thousands of individuals — Trulia Voices, Zillow Advice, ActiveRain, and the like.

In other words, NOT an individual broker or agent website.

Then look at the peripheral concepts, such as “Trust your users” and “Hackability”.  In some ways, real estate web is almost defined by not trusting your users and not being hackable.

You can (and if you’re really interested, you probably should) read the whole article by Tim O’Reilly.  But for those who want to get to the meat, the conclusion brings the juice:

Core Competencies of Web 2.0 Companies

In exploring the seven principles above, we’ve highlighted some of the principal features of Web 2.0. Each of the examples we’ve explored demonstrates one or more of those key principles, but may miss others. Let’s close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

The next time a company claims that it’s “Web 2.0,” test their features against the list above. The more points they score, the more they are worthy of the name. Remember, though, that excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven.

While Tim O’Reilly is speaking of “Web 2.0 companies” rather than “Web 2.0 websites”, if we apply the same checklist to websites especially in real estate, confusion reigns.

Based on the above list, for a savvy agent to transform her website from “Web 1.0″ to “Web 2.0″, the following would have to occur:

1. Leave the MLS and institute a proprietary listings database, with direct input from users of the website.  How else to get ‘control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer with usage”?
2. Listings without pricing — fully auctionize (is that even a word?) the real estate process.  Let buyers simply bid what they would pay for a particular house, rather than list a price for a home.  How else to “harness collective intelligence” or to “trust your users”?
3. No more “contact me” forms, but a “here’s the password to the lockbox” forms.  How else to enable “customer self-service”?

I am, of course, being just a wee bit facetious.  It would be impossible — or nearly impossible — to do any of the above, nevermind all of them.

It may be that Web 2.0 simply cannot apply to real estate sites that are of interest to the newbie realestista.  They’re not interested in starting a wholly new business model premised upon consumer self-service, wisdom of crowds, and control over proprietary data.  They’re simply interested in marketing themselves and their services (and the listings they are marketing) better.

So how do we do that?

Dispelling the Shadows: Getting Specific

First step, I think, is to get away from vague exhortations and move towards specific action items.

Rather than “engage the consumer”, perhaps the recommendation should be “Have a blog”.

Rather than “push and pull”, perhaps the recommendation should be “Put a RSS feed on your listings”.

Whatever it is, ye legions of web designers, social media experts, and Web 2.0 evangelists need to get much more specific than you have been to date.  There needs to be concrete differences between a “Real Estate 1.0″ site and a “Real Estate 2.0″ site of the sort that can be put into an actionable format.

And those concrete differences have to be meaningful and measurable in some way.  There has to be a reason to put in a blog on a website, or to incorporate user comments onto listings.  The expert who is recommending a course of action should be prepared to deliver performance metrics.

Newbie Academy

What might be a great step forward is for conference organizers to consider creating a whole separate track for newcomers to the modern real estate web.  This “Newbie Academy” track would eschew broad statements and grand gestures and focus on action items with specific things they can do.

For example, rather than telling real estate agents that they need to make their websites more engaging, the expert instructor might step through different modes of engagement:

• Professional Resume: Since the consumer is seeking a professional to provide services, you will want to engage the consumer with a clear statement of your professional qualifications, track record, and accomplishments.
  • Action Item: About Me section on the website, with a detailed professional resume, including education.
  • Action Item: A link to your LinkedIn profile which duplicates your detailed professional resume.  Do not assume that users will click over, but make it an option.
• Personality: Because real estate is an intensely personal affair, consumers will want to feel comfortable with their agent.  And you will want to feel good about working with a consumer.  Showcase your personality in various ways.
  • Action Item: Make sure that the overall design of your website, from the homepage to the font selection, matches your personality.  Do not settle for a template site you haven’t even looked over much.  Work with a designer if you must to express yourself through the design of your site.
  • Action Item: Put a list of your favorite books, or books you are reading, in the sidebar of your website.  You can use websites like WeRead or Shelfari.
  • Action Item: Put your favorite movies on your site with Flixter.
  • Action Item: Put your favorite musicians and songs on your site with iLike, or create a streaming radio station with blip.fm.
  • Action Item: Create some movies of yourself talking about yourself, your family, your hobbies, or your interests with a webcam or similar and post them on the site.
• Expertise: Consumers expect real estate agents to be experts on the whole home buying and selling process, as well as the local market.
  • Action Item: Put together a detailed market report for your market including inventory, last sold, median listed price, median sold price, price trends, and days on market.  If you can’t put it together yourself, at least get a pre-packaged tool from sites like Altos Research or Zillow.
  • Action Item: Offer consumers a detailed look into your market with both statistical data about population, median income, employment, etc.
  • Action Item: Provide consumers with information about the schools, both public and private, in your market.  [Of course, if it were me doing this Newbie Academy, I would have to mention my employer....]
  • Action item: Etc. and so on, and so forth.
• Whatever Else: Yadda, yadda, and yadda.

And so on.  In this manner, the newbie walks away with a specific action plan to improve her website from its current sad state to a modern Real Estate 2.0 website.  She doesn’t need to get confused with all the vagueries of theory about what principles constitute Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0, or whether social media encompasses video or not, or what-have-you.

Those topics are for the illuminati who already know the basics.  And typically, we just argue about them and debate them in an effort to boil down the misty wilds of imprecision to a more coherent set of understanding.

For the Illuminati

And those of us who are the Web illuminati… I think we have to get better at our craft.  We have to get better at understanding what the hell we are talking about, so that we  can put things into the sort of precise language and specific courses of action that a newbie can follow.  If we can’t speak of things in precise and specific ways, then we probably don’t understand it well enough to advise anyone else on it.

This is partially why I like to say that I have no answers, only questions.  Because Web 2.0, social media, and the like are so seriously ill-defined at times that I have nothing specific to recommend.  Categories seem arbitrary — e.g., what makes Flickr “Web 2.0″ and Ebay not?  Metrics seem invisible at times.  Evidence is always thin.

Under those circumstances, I suppose being circumspect, hedging bets and statements, and freely admitting ignorance are strategic advantages.  Something for the illuminati to consider…

-rsh

Sometimes I’ll get a really nice comment or praise from various folks who read this little blog of mine.  Like this twitter I got recently:

@robhahn haha, you always have some of the best reads. Will spend the necessary time. Keep up the forward thinking.

In those moments, because I am human and subject to the Seven Deadly Sins, I can almost feel my head swell.  And that’s when I have to go read Mark Steyn.  Or Bill Simmons.  Or Gregg Easterbrook and learn me some humility.

Here’s a passage from Mark Steyn, simply the best writer of the English language of this young century:

If you’re feeling a sudden urge to “invest” in a gallon of tequila and a couple of hookers and wake up with an almighty hangover and no pants in a rusting dumpster on a bit of abandoned scrub round the back of the freight yards, it may be because you’re one of that dwindling band of Americans foolish enough to pursue his living in what we used to call “the private sector.” You were never exactly Giant-Man, more like Average-Sized Man. But you have a vague sense that you’re gonna be a lot closer to Ant-Man by the time all this is through.

I could write for a solid week without rest and never come up with that passage.  I’m a fair writer, but not in the same class as these gents.

There is a craft to writing.  There is a different craft to blogging, I think, but that there is artistry and skill involved in putting one word next to another is indisputable.

When folks are kind to me, and tell me what a great writer I am, I go and read the really great writers and get back down to earth.

A while back, I read On Writing by Stephen King, who is a truly underappreciated talent by the East Coast Intellectual Illuminati.  I maintain that when my grandkids learn about American Literature in High School, they will be studying the works of Stephen King.  Anyhow, I found this blog with some excerpts that are worth considering.  Check them out.  For example:

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.

Writing for Blogs

At the same time, I also believe that the craft of blogging is different from the craft of writing.  As I am trying to get more people around me to blog, I’ve found myself repeating some things.  This is not a “how to blog” type of thing here; more of a, “just some things to think about” type of thing.  And do keep in mind that your scribe may actually know nothing about writing, or blogging.  You have been warned.

Read, Read, and Read Some More

James Kilpatrick, the longtime columnist who penned The Writer’s Art, once wrote that to learn how to write, one should “read everything. Read matchbox covers, read labels on cans of cleaner; read the graffiti on lavatory walls. Read for information, read for style, read for instruction, read for the sheer love of reading.”

More and more, I believe this to be true.  Reading naturally leads to an improvement in writing.  We somehow absorb cadence, style, phrasings, imagery, and language itself from others.  While it’s best to read as many great writers as possible, it is also instructive to read not-so-great writers.  At least you learn what you don’t like, and what to avoid.

I believe any serious blogger should read books, columnists, and other bloggers — in that order.

Read books, because these are the finely honed examples of the writer’s craft.  They’ve also gone through the most rigorous editing for content, pace, and style.  For what it’s worth, I average about a book a week.  (Don’t be impressed — most of them are trashy paperback novels I read on the train.)

Read opinion columnists, because blogs by their very nature lend themselves to editorializing.  The best editorial columnists are tight with language, and know how to construct a narrative that drives their point home.  That these have been edited for clarity, content, and style also helps to keep the writing tight.

And read other bloggers, especially the stronger writers.  I’m a big fan of reading Kris Berg because of her natural voice and general narrative flow.  But there are others — particularly not in real estate space — whose writings are always a pleasure to read.  Read them, and often.  The blogs are usually unedited, but that gives you a sense of how blog writing differs from other types of writing.

Don’t Censor Yourself

The most important lesson for blog writing, I think, is to avoid the temptation to censor oneself.  The biggest obstacle I see new bloggers struggle with is how long it takes for them to write something.  I have to constantly remind them, “You’re not writing for the Economist; just get it out there.”

The best feature of blog writing is the spontaneous openness of the voice.  Mistakes will be made; some sentences won’t be as elegant as possible.  Grammar mistakes may abound.  But done well, there’s a freshness to the voice and an openness that conveys authenticity.  The art is, if you will, to be artless.

Plus, the nature of the medium is that corrections are always possible, and retractions and clarifications are not only possible, but perhaps desirable.  If you write something stupid, then hopefully the audience will point that out in the comments.  Which lets you respond in the comments, clarifying things, or admitting you got it wrong.  Then you can go back and edit the original post, appending the correction right there on the original post.

Again, blogging is part of conversation — not an oratorical holding forth.  Don’t censor yourself too much; don’t edit yourself while writing.  You’ll find it easier to write, and eventually settle into a routine and a voice you are comfortable with.  Just shut up that little editorial voice inside your head.

Write A Story

While there are certainly exceptions in blogging — for example, if your post is simply a compilation of interesting posts you’ve read that week — I do believe that if you are creating original content, you need to be telling a story.

Tell a story! It’s fun!

There needs to be a beginning, a middle, and an end.  There needs to be a plot of some sort that moves the narrative along.  Character exposes are fine, but I think the best blogposts have a narrative flow that is naturalistic and effective at exposing the ideas and the voice of the blogger.

Advice blogs (like this one) usually suck because they lack that flow of narrative and often read like a bullet list of rules.  Since realtors are writing a lot of advice blogs — “How to stage a home!” or “What to look for in a REO sale” or some such — I think it’s particularly important to realestistas that they give a thought to the narrative they are presenting.

Link, Link, and Link

The advantage of the Interwebs is in its reference-ability.  If I say “unemployment is X”, you don’t have to take my word for it — you can go check the source yourself.  But only if I provide the link.

This is, in a sense, the counter-balance to the open and freewheeling nature of the Web and blogs.  We don’t have editors and factcheckers; what we have, instead, is the ability for our readers to check the source for themselves.

As a general rule of thumb, if you think it’s something you reader might want to check for himself, then provide a link.  Every single time you quote someone else, you should be providing a link.  The goal is to provide the context, the framework, around your blogpost’s own narrative.

Hit “Publish”

The final piece of advice, and perhaps the most important, is to actually publish the damn thing.  I know I have had dozens of nascent blogposts just sitting in my queue waiting to see the light of day.  Some of them never will.

All of the narrating, the writing, the linking, and all of that won’t mean a thing if you don’t actually publish it.

Keeping in mind that all blogposts can be revised, and any mistakes corrected via the comments or by editing the post, go ahead and publish that post no matter how nervous you are about it.

Chances are, you are your worst critic, and your audience will love it.  (And when they don’t, they’ll let you know, and that’s how conversations start.)

Happy blogging!

-rsh

Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard of this “social media” thing. But if pressed to define it, you — like the rest of us — would stammer out a few words about Twitter, Facebook, and blogs and then… realize that the term is more or less undefined.

Well, here’s the Wikipedia definition of “social media”:

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. (Emphasis mine)

And the entry goes on to note things like World of Warcraft is social media. Okay, then so is internet gambling.

Furthermore, the highlighted portion suggests that email is also social media. So is a fax machine. Or that cutting-edge (for the 19th century) device, the telegraph. They all “integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction.” In theory, so do messenger pigeons and smoke signals. In other words, “social media” doesn’t actually mean anything.

And yet, it does. The real meaning of “social media” may be difficult to define, but everyone knows what it is — and more importantly, knows what it is not. Stories in the New York Times is not “social media” despite being an activity that integrates technology (the printing press), telecommunications (the Associated Press wire service), and social interaction (the reporters write, the audience reads).

Some might say that “two-way communication” is the essence of social media. This too is wrong. There are blogs that don’t allow comments — yet they are very much “social media”. YouTube is considered “social media” but it’s hard to call what goes on in the comments section to be “two-way communication” in any meaningful way.

The Internet is not “social media” since mobile applications can entirely bypass the Internet and still become social media. Meetups and Tweetups often fall into “social media” categories, but it’s hard to see how people sitting in a room together talking can be conceived of as web-based simply because they arranged to meet via the Web.

So what the hell is “social media” in its essence?

Social Media Defined

My personal definition of social media is this:

Communication channels that enable the authentic and personal engagement of one human being to another.

Admittedly, my definition is heavily influenced by Cluetrain principles. While each and every one of you needs to go read the whole thing (free, online!), this passage from the Introduction speaks most eloquently to how I define social media:

The Internet became a place where people could talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction — and perhaps most significantly, without advertising. Another, noncommercial culture began forming across this out-of-the-way collection of computer networks. Long before graphical user interfaces made the scene, the scene was populated by plain old boring ASCII: green phosphor text scrolling up screens at the glacial pace afforded by early modems. So where was the attraction in that?

The attraction was in speech, however mediated. In people talking, however slowly. And mostly, the attraction lay in the kinds of things they were saying. Never in history had so many had the chance to know what so many others were thinking on such a wide range of subjects. Slowly at first, a new kind of conversation was beginning to emerge, but it would achieve global reach with astonishing speed.

For those of us grizzled old dinosaurs who got onto the pre-Netscape Internet, and were absolutely floored upon discovering IRC know the feeling. The strange combination of utter freedom and complete anonymity brought out levels of authenticity in many people — while others invented online personas with a wild variety of roleplaying.

What makes a blog a blog and not an online magazine is the authenticity of the voice, and the personal engagement of the blogger. I’m a big fan of Instapundit, where Prof. Glenn Reynolds holds court on a variety of political, kitchenware, photography, and nanotechnology topics. There are no comments on Instapundit. Yet, it is social media because Prof. Reynolds never fails to speak in his voice. He never fails to be personal.

Another great example is contrasting the National Review Online (an online magazine) with The Corner on National Review Online (a group blog). [So sue me, I read conservative websites. The point is on social media, and these came to mind.] These are two sections of the same website, yet the flavor, the tone, the feel is very different. The NRO proper has articles that have been edited, written to professional standards. What it lacks in personality and authenticity, it makes up with authority and seriousness. The Corner, in contrast, is full of the authentic voices of the bloggers — many of whom are also writers and editors of the National Review — and a personal human engagement exists there that is lacking in NRO itself.

I believe, therefore, that social media is not defined by the tools or the technology, but by the authenticity and the personalness of the engagement.

The Corruption

Trouble is, marketing departments worldwide in every major and minor corporation could not see (and in some cases, have never seen) what the big deal with the Internet was, and what is so important about Cluetrain, and about social media. To far too many marketers, “social media” was just like “any other media”, but “more social” — whatever that means.

The same strategies and the same models for putting ads on magazines were used to put ‘banner ads’ on this newfangled World Wide Web thingamajig back in the late 90′s. When Facebook became the flavor du jour, companies regarded it as just another place to have a branch office. And as Twitter starts to take off, we are finding more and more companies regarding it as something like a streaming billboard:

@XXXXXX You kin’ buy DD coffee online: http://bit.ly/4lwB65 … see drop down menu for whole bean options. Cheers!

That tweet is from @DunkinDonuts. Cheers! Sounds just like a micro-ad! Gee, thanks!

Is this social media? Or it is just a variant of email spam, TV spam, mailbox spam, and billboard spam we have to live with in our commercialized world?

And now, we apparently have a “directory of brands” on Twitter: TrackingTwitter.com. First, the Yellow Pages, then the Web (and Google), and now Twitter. Cheers?

The Fundamental Misconception: Social Media = Media, Social

The fundamental misconception about social media — held mostly by marketers — is due to that word “media”. We understand “media”. Many of us have frikkin graduate degrees in media management, public relations, and communications. We come out of advertising agencies where dealing with various forms of “media” was a settled practice. So we apply those same principles to “social media”.

“Hey, we really need to get a corporate Twitter account!” likely passes for innovative thinking inside many corporations today. “That way, we can really engage the audience with our brand message!”

Trouble is, the audience doesn’t really want some faceless, identity-less brand to ‘engage them’ with their brand message. What the audience really wants is for a human being that works at your brand to engage them in an authentic, personal way.

Once again, Cluetrain:

In the market, language grew. Became bolder, more sophisticated. Leaped and sparked from mind to mind. Incited by curiosity and rapt attention, it took astounding risks that none had ever dared to contemplate, built whole civilizations from the ground up.

Markets are conversations. Trade routes pave the storylines. Across the millennia in between, the human voice is the music we have always listened for, and still best understand.

So what went wrong? From the perspective of corporations, many of which by the twentieth century had become bigger and far more powerful than ancient city-states, nothing went wrong. But things did change.

Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, incrementally divorcing itself from the people on whom it most depends, whether workers or customers. While this change is in many ways understandable — huge factories took the place of village shops; the marketplace moved from the center of the town and came to depend on far-flung mercantile trade — the result has been to interpose a vast chasm between buyers and sellers.

I don’t want to twitter with @DunkinDonuts. I want to twitter with Amy, who works in marketing or customer service or sales or whatever for Dunkin’ Donuts, and is allowed to communicate openly, honestly, authentically, in a human voice with me.

Social media is not media; it is conversation. Theses 62 to 65 of the 95 Theses of Cluetrain Manifesto read as follows:

62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.

64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

65. We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.

I have learned so much more about what the real estate community thinks, what its needs are, its pains and joys, and so on simply by being myself on this blog, on Twitter, and in personal conversations. They are all the same to me. In some cases, individuals who have decision-making authority at clients or prospects for my employer share their issues with me, not because I’m trying to sell them something, but precisely because I’m not. I think I do a better job of marketing Onboard simply by being myself, speaking in an authentic voice, and engaging in a personal way.

Could I really do that hiding behind a @onboard persona? No, not really.

The fundamental misconception about social media is that it is media, just more “social”.

The Beginning of the End

If companies and marketers continue to treat social media as just another variant of media, then it spells the beginning of the end for social media.

What makes Twitter interesting is not that I can get bombarded with offers from Dunkin’ Donuts, but that I can have real conversations with real people thousands of miles away.

Once misguided marketers and brand chieftains start to corrupt Twitter with fake-personas, with brand twittering, and so on, it will become just like blog comment spam. People will begin to retreat further and further into smaller and smaller niches where they can be left alone to have the conversations they are craving.

And companies who do not understand social media as authentic human engagement will lose out on the opportunity to empower their people to converse with those consumers.

There lies the beginning of the end.

Real Estate & Social Media

For whatever reason, social media has been a buzzword in real estate for years. Blogs, blog networks, twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and all these social media tools have been enthusiastically embraced by our industry with varying degrees of success.

The first wave of pioneers — people like Todd Carpenter — did social media as individuals. They blogged, they emailed each other, they linked up, they facebooked, and they twittered and so on. People got to know each other as people, as authentic human beings first and foremost. This early adopter group used (and still uses) social media primarily as a platform for socializing and making connections.

The second wave saw how much fun that first wave was having, and was starting to hear various ideas being floated about how these new communication technologies might be used to drive more business, sell more homes, do more transactions, and the like — and jumped on the bandwagon. Most of these people are also having a blast networking with people, meeting new and interesting folks, and having great conversations… but they’re a little concerned that all this social media stuff isn’t throwing off much cash. Because this group looks at social media as some newfangled innovative way of marketing — predictably, for realtors, that means marketing homes, listings, and themselves.

The third wave either has arrived, or is coming. This is the “professional marketer” brigade, and the future of social media in our industry depends on what happens with this group.

If the numerous newly-minted social media directors, and the VP’s of Marketing who oversee them, overcome the fundamental misconception about social media, then we may be the industry to drive change in how people who work for companies relate to other people who want to buy from those companies. If the social media directors become, in my formulation, “Cluetrain conductors“, then we have a chance to alter the relationship between consumer and service provider in a profound way.

If, on the other hand, the third wave consists of folks who think that Twitter is just another marketing channel, that blogs are just a new way of publishing listing brochures, and that branded corporate identities (which are both opaque, and speaking in that stilted “corporatespeak” we all have learned to detect) online are the answers to the challenge of “social media”… then it’s just a matter of time until these communication technologies also become just another spam-filled cesspool of fakery.

And we all, consumers and professionals alike, will move on to our next fix.

I know which way I’d like things to come out.

Markets are conversations.

Commerce is a natural part of human life.

Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

-rsh

(Part 1, Part 2)

Petraeus on Unity

Another major lesson from counterinsurgency is the importance of coordination and synchronization:

It is also essential that we achieve unity of effort, that we coordinate and synchronize the actions of all ISAF and Afghan forces — and those of our Pakistani partners across the border — and that we do the same with the actions of our embassy and international partners, our Afghan counterparts, local governmental leaders, and international and non-governmental organizations. Working to a common purpose is essential in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations.

For the military, counterinsurgency brings all instruments of power to bear on the conflict, from the guns and bombers to diplomats to financial incentives, civil engineers, teachers and nonprofits, and everything else that could help the mission.

The obvious implication for real estate — and one that Big Brokerage already does very well — is to offer the full range of services either under the same roof or by strategic relationships.

For example, as a consumer, I may go see some properties with a real estate agent, then walk down the hall to a mortgage broker and apply, then have the agent find me the home inspector, the real estate attorney, title insurer, and escrow services.  Without my having to go research each of those and shop around.  So it’s convenient for the consumer.

There are, however, two further implications of the unity of effort doctrine for real estate that go beyond this easy, surface lesson of “full service”.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade

Todd Carpenter (@tcar on Twitter) has been named as the first ever Social Media Manager for the National Association of Realtors.

After an extensive search, we hired Todd Carpenter, a founder of RE Blogworld and of mariah.com, a network of real estate and mortgage web sites including lenderama, REMBEX, and Denver Modern Homes. Many qualified candidates, both inside and outside of the real estate industry, applied for the position, and I asked a small set of finalists to prepare assignments detailing what they would do during their first 90 days in the role and how they would handle a challenging issue leveraging the power of the RE.net and the blogosphere.

We loved Todd’s ideas, his easygoing manner, his reputation and how knowledgeable he is about social media. We also really valued his relationships with so many REALTORS® who are using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media channels to connect effectively with one another and with potential clients and customers.

As I have recommended Todd for this job way back when — albeit layered with concerns — I am of course thrilled for Todd, and wish him the best of luck.  I have also been privileged to be invited to converse with NAR leadership about their social media strategy, with an emphasis on what the NAR Social Media Manager’s role ought to be, and have given them further thoughts on that.

Here, I want to expand with three further thoughts.

1.  Yours Not to Do and Die / Yours But to Reason Why

With due apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson, I’d like to stress what this role cannot become: the voice of NAR for “social media”.

Becoming the “voice of NAR for social media” does two disservices: one to NAR, and one to you.

For NAR, it ghettoizes social media as “just another marketing channel” just like print, TV, radio, or email.  What is needed is not another “marketing channel” but a wholesale change in approach to how NAR connects with its members, with the public, and with policymakers.

For you, the disservice is that rather than becoming a change agent able to drive cultural change from within NAR, you become yet another communication channel — of which NAR has plenty.  I likened the proper role of the Social Media Manager to be something like a “cluetrain conductor“.  And I think that remains the case.

Yours is to reason why NAR does or does not speak to its constituents and the public on a particular topic, in a particular way.  And to force the organization itself to ask “Why?” or “Why not?”

2.  It is the Valley of Death

Well, perhaps “Valley of Death” is a bit dramatic — but it fit with the whole poetry theme!  Let’s rather call it the “Valley of Slowly Getting Co-Opted”.

What you know already is that the people at NAR are delightful.  They’re smart, dedicated, professional, and truly cares about the industry, about their members, about consumers.  Contrary to some of the portrayals of NAR in the media and RE.net, I have found that everyone I’ve met at NAR is just wonderful.  There isn’t a person who works at NAR that I’ve met personally who I wouldn’t want to go have a beer with, or talk policy with, or even just talk about our favorite movies with.

This is a danger to you.

Because it is far too easy to become “one of them”.  JeffX’s twitter joke is actually profound:

@JeffX: Hey TNar, i mean @tcar will the NAR allow you to maintain your Ninja rights?

It isn’t simply NAR allowing you to be the person they hired; it is also you staying the person they hired, instead of slowly transforming into “one of them”.  You can’t stop the blipstreams, now that you have this “important position” in the real estate world.  You can’t stop blogging, can’t stop Twittering as @tcar, and can’t suddenly become “respectable”.

Of course, NAR can’t try to stop you — that plainly defeats the purpose of bringing you inside the fold.

3.  Be the Virus

The remedy, then, is to internalize that one of the biggest values you are bringing to NAR is to be the “virus from without”.  Your task is to make NAR more like you: open, authentic, honest, and constantly in touch.

Just as you have been transparent to the RE community over the years, so you must “infect” the rest of NAR to become transparent.  Just as you have always been one of the most authentic human beings on RE.net over the years, so you must infect the rest of NAR, the state associations, the member organizations, and indeed the NAR members themselves to be more authentic, be more human, and be more connected.

Through those efforts, I know you can bring in the fresh voices, the new perspectives from the RE.net and realestistas everywhere to the mainstream of the industry.  And you know that you have friends and allies who support you in those efforts.

So once again, congratulations to both you and to NAR.  You have my best wishes, and my pledge to support your efforts to become the Cluetrain conductor we so desperately need.

-rsh

(PS: I posted this publicly because many of the thoughts here are applicable to any large organization that is starting up social media initiatives, and to anyone working at those organizations.  And because some of these things are worth discussing.)

In part 1 of this series, we discussed Information Operations and the importance of integrity in counterinsurgency strategy.  I took lessons from the U.S. Military, and the author of those doctrines Gen. David Petraeus, and applied them to the real estate industry.  In this installment, I’d like to take a look at another key principle of counterinsurgency and how those lessons apply to Big Real Estate: Importance of Local.

Petraeus On Local

Counterinsurgency is intensely local, and reflects lessons of Fourth Generation Warfare. Digression follows!

First generation warfare is all about formations, line and column, and massed infantry.  It is what Napoleon was a master of, and conquered half of Europe with, until he ran into better-trained British infantrymen.  [Making this digression even more of one, for a really entertaining look into first generation warfare and what that looked like, check out the Richard Sharpe series from the British historical novelist Bernard Cornwell.]

Second generation warfare emphasized massed firepower (aka, “massed artillery” and machine guns ) instead of massed manpower.  The idea was that artillery would bombard the enemy into submission, while the rifleman simply mops up the mess.  World War I was mostly a second-gen affair.

Third generation warfare emphasized speed and maneuverability (“blitzkrieg”) to neutralize the advantage of massed artillery.

All of these approaches concerned themselves with taking on an established, uniformed opposing army.  When the enemy disperses and become guerrilla forces or insurgents, then these strategies are of limited utility.

Fourth generation warfare is precisely this sort of war — insurgents, terrorism, propaganda, information operations, where the line between combatants and civilians is intentionally blurred, etc.

With all that said… here’s Gen. Petraeus:

Securing and serving the people requires that our forces be good neighbors. While it may be less culturally acceptable to live among the people in certain parts of Afghanistan than it was in Iraq, it is necessary to locate Afghan and ISAF forces where they can establish a persistent security presence. You can’t commute to work in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. Positioning outposts and patrol bases, then, requires careful thought, consultation with local leaders, and the establishment of good local relationships to be effective.

Positioning near those we and our Afghan partners are helping to secure also enables us to understand the neighborhood. A nuanced appreciation of the local situation is essential. (Emphasis added)

Conducting counterinsurgency means getting close to the local situation, having boots on the ground in the local community, providing security to the local area, and truly understanding the local neighborhood.

He may as well have been talking about real estate. Read the rest of this entry »