Austin Real Estate Company Uses Social Media

An article in today’s Austin American-Statesman relates how Benn Rosales and Lani Anglin-Rosales, members  of SMC Austin, use social media in their real estate company. Their Agent Genius blog-magazine, which features 37 contributors from across the nation, won an award from real estate news agency Inman News for most innovative blog.

SMC Austin co-founder Connie Reece and program chair, David Neff, were also interviewed for the article. David took the unusual step of making a Facebook page for his house, which Benn and Lani are helping him sell through social media efforts.

Read the complete story: Social media help Austin agents sell homes.

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Using Social Media for Good Causes

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Social Media RoundUp

I put a request out on Twitter earlier today asking for recommendations of the ‘must read’ articles that have been penned over the last week that focused on the use of Social Media tools.

You fine folks answered with the following:

• 5 ways to use Social Media to reach people who don’t use Social Media: by Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web 
• 50 ways to take your blog to the next level: by Chris Brogan
• Are you conversationally tone deaf: by Connie Reece
• Disruption of cascading conversation: by Jay Deragon
• Growing use of Social Media Technologies in Businesses: by peopleperhour.com
• How Barack Obama Is Using Web 2.0 to Run for President, by Daniel Nations at About.com
• How to Use Yahoo Answers for your Social Media Campaign, by Vine at primaryeffect.com
  
• IBM’s Beehive social networking community: by Toby at Communitelligence
• Limiting, and watching, what children watch: by Lisa Guernsey at New York Times
• Twits on Twitter: by Rob Sellen
• Using Twitter for business: by John Jantsch
  
• You can do your job without Twitter: by Chris Brogan
  

Interesting tool found: flibfarb

Other: Collection of live streams by loremcast

Thank you to everyone who submitted an article to share with the community. We greatly appreciate your input and will start collecting these regularly to help spread the word about interesting conversations happening around the world.

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Social Media Now 8.20.08

Here’s a bit of what’s going on in Social Media of late. Feel free to add your own links in the comments section, or send us you suggestions for the next issue of Social Media Now.

• Mike Sansone’s mantra is Reach with Intention, and he provides some great questions to ask yourself when considering the use of Social Media tools in your Marketing strategy. 
  
• Patrick Williams writes a nice article on How to write a Strategic Communications Plan. Having written a few of these in my lifetime, his 13-step  model feels pretty dead on.
• Mashable reports an interesting story this morning on a possible break in Gmail’s security if you use this service on a public hotspot. Thankfully, it is easily corrected by clicking on ‘Settings’, go to the ‘General’ tab and select ‘always use https‘ when accessing Gmail. Might run a wee bit slower for you then, but at least your data will be secure.
• Michelle Lamar just completed the White Trash Mom Handbook. Great use of her site to give me snippets of the content and dig into her blog to learn more. Thinking I know what to get my girlfriends for  Christmas now…
• Pandora is in trouble as the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is looking to almost triple the licensing fees for web radio sites. Note that under the new plan Internet radio stations would jump to 2.91 cents per hour per listener, satellite radio stations would pay 1.6 cents per hour per listener and traditional radio stations would pay…nothing. Everyone agrees royalties are due, it just seems to me there should be a more fair and balanced fee structure. More info, and how you can help here.
• via @ciaoenrico, Arizona Highways is having a photo contest to capture images of their great state. Smart way to engage visitors and locals alike and keep them coming back for more.

Bright Shiny Objects
Ok, these are not really so bright and shiny, but they are three services I find I cannot live without.

• Dopplr -For the folks who travel a bit. Easy to use interface with a great social element to help you connect with your community while on the road.  Dopplr is a free service.
• iContact - If you send mass email communications (i.e. newsletters and such) this is a great service to help you manage your contact database. Disclosure: We were users, and believers, long before they became a Social Media Club Small Business Member. You can try them out with a 10-day free trial.
• Survey Monkey. There are a lot of polling systems out there, but I find Survey Monkey is the one I go back to time and time again. They do offer a free version that would work for many.

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Social Media Club NY Meeting, 12/11/07

Last night, Business Wire hosted SMC New York for a panel on “What Worked and What Didn’t in Social Media in 2007.”

I moderated a panel with Jack Myers, Founder and CEO of Myers Publishing, Joel Smernoff, President and COO of Paltalk, and Peter Himler, Founder and principal of Flatiron Communications LLC. Being moderator, I couldn’t really take too many notes, but thankfully2 intrepid bloggers captured some of the action.

Jenny Ambrozek posted in “Social Media Club Gathering 20071211: A Gorilla on YouTube” a thought from panelist Jack Myers:

“Jack proposed a potential outcome of the current writers strike is fundamentally changing the traditional television broadcasting industry. Given the impact of digital technology on transforming the recording industry, an entirely reasonable prediction.”

Les Blatt wrote some comments about the other Gorilla in Social Media, Facebook:

“There was a long discussion of Facebook’s Beacon conflict. Did Facebook hurt itself with Beacon? Possibly, although they do seem to be trying to fix it – the move from opt-out to opt-in, while perhaps not handled as smoothly as it should have been, is at least a move in the right direction.”

I know that the intrepid Steve Eisenberg, who helped organize the meeting, has recorded audio and we’ll link to it when it’s posted.

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