Who would have ever thunk there were so many “Social Media Experts?”

So many coaches, speakers and motivators and they all want Followed and do Follow back but never read a thing just post self promoting stuff.

Tired of people not Following me Back. (I am a good guy I swear)

Also tired of people who say they are involved in Social Media, and they are just not social.

I still think for the most part it is 2 million people speaking out-loud and hoping someone is listening. Please notice I said for the most part.

As others have mentioned it is difficult to measure the ROI of expanding visibility and expanding your social network but I don't think anyone can deny that these are important parts of succeeding in the Real Estate industry and basic relationship building. Personally, I don't think you can put a monetary value or an ROI on building relationships. Outside of just being advantageous from a business perspective, to me personally, developing relationships is what life is all about.

Basically, it's a semi fun past time for a small segment of agents who are a bit socialaholic and require a little ego boost and acceptance from the world after spending all day dealing with blood sucking consumers.

It's the equivalent of happy hour in your favorite bar. And honestly man, who gives a crap whether agents spend time on Twitter or sitting at home watching CNN?

The reality is, out of this whole industry, it's a handful who do this. Sure it's silly. But silly isn't bad. Or damaging. Just silly.

The damaging part is when someone decides they are now an expert in this silliness and decides to unleash their expertise on the rest of the industry, publish reports and manuals, teach classes on it at conventions and sell their coaching services to brokerages who then offer their agents like Abraham did with Issac on the social media alter.

Meanwhile all over the worlds tens of millions of people join and tweet with nary a lesson. To me, that is what I am missing.

How much time do I spend on Twitter?

Why can't I use Twitter to talk to prospective and past clients?

All the clients I've gained from Twitter are a result of using Twitter as a tool to meet people in real life. As in face-to-face shake their hand real life.

It's fabulous for getting to know people on-line first, and then organizing or discovering real life “Tweetups” to finally meet them in real life.

I don't think many use it this way.

I also don't spend nearly as much time on Twitter as people assume I do. It's “parallel processing”, multi-tasking, background, whatever you want to call it. TweetDeck runs on one monitor while I work on the other monitor. And really, how much time does it take to type 140 characters?

I constantly hear “It's great for networking with other agents”. Yep, it is. But it's also GREAT for networking with LOCAL non-agent people. You know, the ones that actually but and sell homes.

ROI? “Repeatable”? Who the heck knows. Find me someone who can quote the ROI and repeatability of their Rotary meeting, volunteering for some organization or any other “social thing” agents claim to get business from. Some things can't be measured.

Like enjoyment. How do you put a value on that?

For God's sake, not every waking moment has to be spent obsessing over business, lead generation, ROI and repeatability.

But yes, Twitter really can increase your sales. If you don't hard sell, push listings, spew automated tweets, claim to be the NUMBER ONE AGENT ON THE PLANET and other such abuses.

Be real, share, reach out, engage, meet others.

That increases sales whatever the tool / platform is.