Our ever-inspiring editor in chief at REALTOR® Magazine, Stacey Moncrieff, brought an interesting experiment to my attention earlier this month, and I’d love to get your thoughts on it. I admit, I’m a little conflicted on it myself.
Credit: Michele Ahin, licenced under the Creative Commons cc-by-sa 2.0 (generic) licence.
Chris Brogan, bestselling author and CEO/president of Human Business Works, has a proposition: Read three books—and only three—over one year. The point of the exercise is to move from quantity to quality, spending more time absorbing and implementing the lessons books have to teach us and less time collecting books in our “read” pile.
Here are his rules and suggestions:
- Choose 3 books to read from November 1, 2012 until November 1, 2013.
- They can be new to you or old favorites. Any genre. Any kind.
- Read these books for an entire year. Over and over. At least twice.
- Implement what you can.
- Pick books that represent different facets of your life (Brogan is choosing one for each of these three categories: body, spirit, and business).
- You have until November 1 to choose, but after you start, you have only one week to change your mind on only one title, so after that, you’re locked in.
- Students have permission to read outside of the 3 books, but only for school.
You have to admit, it’s an intriguing dare. But I don’t know if I could commit. Continue reading »
The following excerpt is from the book “Social Media 101 : Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online” (Wiley 2010) by Chris Brogan. The book gives insight on effective use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, and how to utilize them to grow your business.
Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate
Disclaimer right up front: I’m not in the real estate biz, so I’ll write this from the perspective of what I’ve observed and what might be useful. Some real real estate pro can come and fix this on his or her own blog, and it’ll likely be better. Why would I ever let a simple thing like inexperience get in the way of sharing my opinion?
SHOW ME THE HOUSE The first and most obvious thing I think the real estate world can (and should) be doing is buying video cameras and shooting their own walk-throughs. You don’t have to be a pro. You do have to know how not to make something look horrible, but that comes with trial and error.
PICK UP A VIDEO CAMERA If you don’t yet own a video camera, here are a few thoughts: Most still cameras have a video feature, and that’s nearly good enough. The Flip camera is the easiest and often the least expensive video camera to use. Kodak’s new Zi8 (and related) models have more flexibility than the Flip, but are a bit more complicated as a trade-off. Continue reading »
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the book “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust” (Wiley, 2009) by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Looking for insight on how to build a good online reputation through social networks that helps boost your brand? This book offers answers on how a business can gain positive influence (and profit) online.
How Humans Shape the Web
Although the general public’s level of mistrust is at an all-time high, there are individuals and companies who do successfully use the Internet to establish levels of trust in the communities where they operate. In the technology sector, a person such as Robert Scoble (circa Microsoft days) stands out as someone who, by the nature of how he communicated about his formerly faceless company, developed a strong level of trust among his online community. In the United Kingdom, JP Rangaswami is managing director of BT Design for BT Group. His blog, Confused of Calcutta, is often about cricket, music, food, and many things not related to a major telecommunications company; yet, because of his stories and conversational writing tone, we trust Rangaswami and have a positive opinion about BT.
Those who are most familiar with the digital space—we refer to them as ‘‘digital natives’’—have become accustomed to a new level of transparency. They operate under the assumption that everything they do will eventually be known online. Realizing they are unable to hide anything, they choose not to try. Instead, they leverage the way the Web connects us and ties our information together to help turn transparency into an asset for doing business. Continue reading »
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