Blog.AAROnline.com » Dru Bloomfield

Blogging and Social Media: Really, It’s Never Too Late to Get Started

Dru Bloomfield — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:47:21 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

REALTOR® with Realty ONE Group, blogging AtHomeInScottsdale. A wanna be photographer, with a Twitter profile that describes me as: Creative, connected, collaborative, strategic, effective. Energetic, healthy, happy. Tad irreverent. Focused. Fun.

Photo by Dru Bloomfield

I had one of those life-changing, potentially hair-graying experiences a couple weeks ago.

You see, I thought I deleted my blog. Four years of love, attention, trial & error, sweat.

Worse than deleting the content, I thought I’d overwritten it with a very old copy.

I stood in front of my computer, staring at the screen, pumping my hands at my side, in a state of total disbelief and high anxiety.

Knowing that there was really nothing I could do, watching the little hour glass dance on the screen in a procedure that I couldn’t cancel out of, and knowing it would be at least half an hour before I could see the extent of the damage and my knee-jerk response to resolve it.

_____

It was early evening. There wasn’t anything positive that I could think to do, except get on my bike and ride. Clear my head. Relax. And see what I found when I returned.

Within ten minutes, I was a new person. Definitely more light-hearted. Feeling the breeze ruffle the hair on my arms. Enjoying the cooler air that comes as the sun is setting. Breathing more evenly.

I realized that this “catastrophe” was not the end of my life, or my real estate career.

In fact, within seconds, I had this “whoosh” of relief. A total realization of how I felt my blog owned me, controlled me, and that in some sense, I was a bit obsessed with keeping it happy. Odd thoughts. That felt really good.

I realized that if I did have to totally start over with my blog, I would do it differently. It would be simpler, more video-oriented. Have a more Zen-like quality to it. Peaceful, informative, a destination to be enjoyed.

Amazingly liberating thoughts, when I’d been in a state of sheer panic earlier.

At that point, my conscious mind took over and started going though all the ways I might be able to recover my blog data. I had a Plan A, B and C to implement by the time I got back to my desk.

_____

With a calm resolve, I returned home and to my desk. My first step was to bring my blog up and see what condition it was in, so I’d know where to start.

Wonder of all wonders, my blog was back; everything was there. Nothing for me to do, or recover.

I was surprised, but not really. I’ve discovered that if I can back out of my negative thinking, get more neutral, that solutions can appear ever so quickly. And this resolution was just another example for me.

_____

My next thought: “Now what?”

And so over the past days, I’ve played with ideas of how I can incorporate my “ah-ha” of a new web design, with what I have. Sharing content that I find more pleasure in publishing. Thinking about how I can incorporate my joy of photography even more. It’s been a quiet, creative time for me.

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Part two of the lesson came to me at the SAAR Expo, when I was speaking with one of my favorite social media people, Bill Risser. Bill does a lot of social media training, and we were discussing Facebook pages. The conversation evolved to something about how hard some people think it is to get started with blogging and creating content for a Facebook business page. Plus, there is a perception that it’s probably too late to get started anyway.

As I pondered this conversation later on, I realized that I really don’t think it’s ever too late to start anything. Not if it’s something you want to do, and you feel is a right fit for you.

Think about it. We are in the real estate business, and our clients move into new neighborhoods every day. How do they make friends?

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Blogging and social media are nothing more than new neighborhoods.

What do people do when they want to meet their neighbors? They reach out. They see what they have in common. How they might help each other.

Social networks are exactly the same. Really.

People come and people go.

Look at the rapid rise of Google+. It’s kind of like the new “hot” ZIP code.

Some people have abandoned Twitter, while others are just joining in.

Facebook is growing. LinkedIn gains more credibility every day.

Blogs will come and blogs will go. Just like your favorite and not-so-favorite neighbors.

Photo by Dru Bloomfield

My advice: Find a place you like, be it a blog or a social network. Spend some time there. Make it feel like home. Be yourself. Have a good time. And know, without a doubt, that it’s never too late to get started.

Easy & Cheap: Backing Up Your Text Messages on a Droid

Dru Bloomfield — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 04:21:54 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

View of Backup Folders

Here’s one of the very best tips I got at RE BarCamp last week:

“Backup to Gmail” is a Droid application that you can download immediately from the Marketplace.

This is a MUST HAVE type of app for any REALTOR®.

Download and install it, and then your call log, multi-media messages and simple text messages are backed up to your Gmail account in folders called “Call Log”, “MMS” and “SMS.”

It’s easy, simple AND cheap.

Cost: $1.99

With this app, or something similar like Backup SMS+,you will have a history of your conversations with clients, office and servicers, which is searchable. And, as we become more and more reliant on texting as a way of communicating in our business, it’s absolutely critical to be able to document and track our conversations, easily and effectively.

Sample Text Backup

Facebook Landing Pages: What’s the Big Deal?

Dru Bloomfield — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:40:33 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

RE BarCamp Phoenix was incredible this year. Smaller than usual. But much more potent. Lot of connecting. Huge amounts of sharing and learning.

As the day started, I snagged Mike Mueller, who spends a lot of time helping agents with their Facebook pages. I’ve been exploring the concept of a Facebook landing page, which is the equivalent of a home page on a blog. I planned to pick Mike’s brain while he was in town and caught him first thing in the morning. As he started talking, I asked if I could record the conversation, so I could go back and listen again, plus I thought there might a few others (like you!) who might want to hear what he said.

Microsoft Outlook Social Connector: Try it, you’ll like it!

Dru Bloomfield — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:13:05 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

If you use Microsoft Outlook for you email, and you haven’t discovered the Outlook Social Connectoradd-in yet, now is the time. That is, if you want to expand your on-line social network, keep up with what your friends, family, colleagues, and clients are doing on Facebook, LinkedIn and a couple other networking sites.

Here’s an example of what I see when I click on Nick Bastian’s name while I’m in Outlook. Recent emails, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn updates. Almost instantly, I know what Nick has been up to.

Last week, I was responding to an email from an agent who wanted to show one of my short sale listings. When I clicked on Reply, the lower part of my screen brought up our most recent correspondence, and I was instantly reminded that this agent had submitted an offer on an REO listings last year, and that she’d shown yet another traditional listing a couple years before that. I loved making the connection in my mind, as I crafted my response to her.

The Outlook Social Connector is easy to install and works with Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010. Installation instructions can be found here.

Let me know how it goes for you.

Sharing your community–photos tell a story

Dru Bloomfield — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:47:55 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

I’ll be heading up to Prescott for the Arizona Association of REALTOR’s Winter Conference next week, and am really looking forward to it. And of course, I’ll have a camera or two or three. (Funny how every piece of technology now has a camera, isn’t it?)

When I go to an event in my community or off to a conference, I often share my photos a couple different ways. Three of the easiest ways that I’ve found are with Twitpic, Facebook, and Flickr.

Twitpic

With Twitpic, I take a photo with my phone and then email it to a special email address that was assigned to me with I created my account. The text I type into the subject line, along with the photo, are posted to both Twitpic and Twitter almost immediately.

The Tweet looks like this:

And, the link goes to this:

Facebook

While you can post to Facebook from your phone, I prefer to upload photos from my computer. It gives me a chance to edit and improve the photos first. With the longer shelf life, I like to have a higher quality picture available.

With Facebook, I can upload a single picture to my wall:

Or, upload many photos to an album:

Either way, the photos give me the opportunity to tell a story, share an insight, and connect with my Facebook friends.

One very important note about photographs published on Facebook, from their Terms of Service, most recently updated on 10/4/10:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”).

Another important point about photographs on your personal Facebook page:

You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

Use your Facebook business page for sharing your real estate related information.

Flickr

Flicker is a social networking site that attracts amateur, budding, and serious photographers. You can upload and license your photographs in a number of variations, from All Rights Reserved to Creative Commons with no restrictions.

I found Flickr as a solution for finding Creative Commons work that I could use on my blog. Over time, I started taking my own photographs and uploading them. I found that by tagging each photo, other bloggers from around the world were using my photos and giving me credit for the work by linking back to my Flickr account. Flickr has an internal messaging system and an active social group too. Flickr’s terms of service do restrict commercial use of the site ( i.e. Don’t use Flickr to sell), but do have Best Practices for how businesses can use Flickr to showcase their work.

I put some of my better photographs on Flickr, and group them by subject, and locate them geographically on the Flickr map. Over time, these photos on Flickr really begin to tell a story about the community I live in.

The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” really is true. Use your photos to tell a story of your life, your work, and your community.

Look for photo updates from next week’s AAR Winter Conference. I plan to post in all three locations. I do hope you can join us.

And please, share here with us, by commenting below. Tell us the web sites you post your photos to, and please contact me directly with links to your AAR Winter Conference photos, so I can share them here next week.

The Fastest Way I’ve Found to Digest the New Contract Changes

Dru Bloomfield — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:04:38 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

Sean Wohland at First Arizona Title emailed some really helpful links to the pending contract revisions. I’d reviewed the new contract, but his links led me to two versions of the new contract I hadn’t seen. One showed the language that was added in yellow highlight, and the other showed the wording that was deleted from our current version of the residential resale contract.

I’m getting invitations to contract training classes on a daily basis, but until I attend a class, I’ve used these two edited copies of the contract to get up to speed quickly. AAR posted these links on their Overview of 2011 Form Changes info page, but somehow I’d overlooked them.

Sample Contract – with Additions Highlighted in Yellow

Sample Contract – with Deletions Noted in Red

Hopefully, you’ll find these two documents as helpful as I did.

A sample version of the new and improved contract is here: Residential Resale Real Estate Purchase Contract

P.S. Thanks to all those who donated their time, energy, expertise and experience in updating the contract.

Photo Tips: Capturing a Room’s Size

Dru Bloomfield — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:21:27 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

Photo courtesy of Dru Bloomfield

Did you catch the article “8 Camera Tips to Capture a Room’s Size” in the July/August 2010 issue of REALTOR® Magazine?

Because buyers will often decide whether they will look at a house based on the online photographs, it’s important to take photos that really do convey the best of the property.

Several of the tips in this article work best with homes that are furnished, such as:

Remove area rugs to make rooms look larger.
Get creative with furniture by removing pieces in a crowded room.
Remove clutter to keep eyes focused on the room’s features.

Other tips are more focused on using your camera smartly:

Use a wide-angle camera because it captures more of the room’s space.
Use mirrors to your advantage, possibly to catch a portion of the room that you can’t get any other way.
Shoot at an angle, capturing the longest visual line into the room.

And probably the most important tip for any house, in any situation, is to get as much light into the room as possible, but not shoot into the light source.

For more rationale on the tips above (plus Tip #8), you can read the full article here.

Getting Started with Social Media

Dru Bloomfield — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:20:38 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

Image courtesy of Real Estate Trends

Lately, I’ve being inundated with emails offering social media training. As someone who’s been fairly pretty active with social media for the past three years, I know I’ve tried some social media avenues that worked and discovered some that didn’t. I feel like I have a pretty good sense of what is needed to get started and stay committed to a business plan that includes social media as a major component.

When I downloaded the free copy of Stefan Swanepoel’s “Social Media 10 Day Action Plan”, an extract from the Swanepoel Social Media Report 2010, I was delighted to see a well-thought-out and comprehensive step-by-step plan. This 16-page how-to is a must-read for any REALTOR® contemplating or struggling with incorporating a social media strategy into their business. I would even recommend it for social media veterans. There’s always something new to learn!

From Stefan’s preface:

Why do I take the time to use social media like Twitter and Facebook? Because after spending considerable time learning and using social media, I can safely say that we should expect our lives to radically and exponentially be changed by social media and social networks over the next few years. Many traditional forms of media that we have been using for decades are being eclipsed with a growth in membership numbers and adoption rates that we have never experienced before.

He goes on to say that social media is a new way to “initiate conversations, respond to feedback and maintain an active dialogue with customers.” From my experience, I have connected with many, many more people that I could have “In Real Life” (IRL). The number of people who know I’m in real estate has grown exponentially through my use of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn. Plus, the demographics of social media users is changing dramatically. (For example, my 81-year-old mother just invited me over for dinner via Facebook!)

The trick to being successful with social media, in my opinion (IMO), is to have a plan, be yourself and stay committed. Be willing to experiment and expand. Know that you can pick one or more social media avenues to focus on. For example, Jay Thompson uses his blog as his social media focus, D. Patrick Lewis prefers Twitter, Jonathan Dalton spends a fair share of time on Facebook and Phil Sexton does a lot of video. Me, I do a little bit of everything.

Take a look at the Social Media 10 Day Action Plan and get a feel for how you can get started to create, or refine, your own online presence with the checklists that are the core of this document. It will take time, but in the long run, you have a social media base that will carry you forward as you create and grow your own personal strategy.

Social Media Usage Increases Dramatically Among Older Adults

Dru Bloomfield — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:03:21 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

photo credit: Spencer E Holtaway

Did you catch this article, “Social Media and Older Adults“, that was included in the weekly email from the National Association of REALTORS® last week? The article referenced was actually posted on the Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES) website and included some interesting statistics, such as:

Social media usage by those over 50 has almost doubled over the past year, from 22% to 42%.
Almost half of Internet users ages 50-65 use social media sites. About one quarter of the Internet users over 65 have used social media.
Usage by both of these age groups increased dramatically from 2009 to 2010, ranging between 88 and 100%.

While the majority of social media users do tend to be younger, you can see that times are changing. The article goes on to document the growth of Facebook and Twitter usage for the older crowd, as well as providing stats for email usage and online news gathering. And while email is still used extensively by older adults, the trend towards social media is notable, and not to be ignored.

You can read the full article here: “Social Media and Older Adults“

The Fine Art of Procrastination, or Getting Over Your Social Media Fears

Dru Bloomfield — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:17:15 +0000

Posts by "Dru Bloomfield" http://athomeinscottsdale.com/

Confession: I was asked to start contributing to the AAR blog many months ago.

Reality: I’ve started and stopped several posts, and there’s no evidence that I’ve done anything.

Sound familiar?

Yesterday, I was on a home tour bus lamenting to Janine Brown, major league association volunteer, about how I was experiencing a severe case of writer’s block, and maybe I should just write about procrastination. She thought it was a great idea.

So, here goes…

We all have busy lives, with commitment to family, work, community, friends, ourselves. It seems like an overwhelming list sometimes. And that’s really what procrastination is all about, being overwhelmed. It’s not a lack of commitment. It’s not a lack of inspiration. It’s an internal conflict with what you want and what think you should do!

I started blogging three years ago. This week I went back and looked at my first post, and had to laugh. It was about road closures for the upcoming weekend. Nothing earth shattering. Just a simple little post. But that was all it took for me to get started.

And with this guest blogging opportunity at AAR, I started thinking about all the IMPORTANT or COOL or INSIGHTFUL things I could share, and I got STUCK! I wanted to be helpful, but really I like to write about things that stir my soul. Sometimes, readers will connect with them and other times not. And that is the reality of blogging.

Social media is a many-faceted “beast.” It’s a great way for people (e.g. REALTORS®) to connect to others and the way the world of communications is going. At the same time, it can be daunting for many agents to get started or stay involved.

The options are amazing. You can jump onto Twitter if you like a little chaos in your life, or Facebook if you prefer a more connected conversation, or create your own blog to create “online capital” for years to come. If you prefer photos or video, Flickr or YouTube are mainstream options. Foursquare is yet another way to stay connected and share about your community.

For a glimpse into a few more of my thoughts on Social Media in Real Estate, I’ll share this recent interview, created by Stephen Murphey for a communications class project at ASU.

The key point, I’m really trying to make here is that getting started is only as hard as you make it. Be brave, be bold, be you. Focus on your community. Get to know your audience. Offer value. And what you will find, are connections, ideas, and friendship… and a whole new way of doing business.