I have noticed a trend of late, that brings me back to 1984. I am a young teen in a small New England town and I have discovered punk, new wave and alternative music. I have fallen in love with this movement and have created a one woman punk rock support group in my little town. Focal to my music selection was Depeche Mode.
Most of my peers thought my appearance (spiked hair, steps, dyed rat tail, copious eyeliner, safety pin earrings and fishnets) was odd enough, but if they paused to ask what I was playing in my “Walkman” (yes the original cassette type) and stayed long enough to listen, they were convinced of my oddity. Almost no one liked Depeche Mode. This very Lynard Skynard crowd was not ready to progress, they didn’t want synthesizers and beat boxes, it was strange and new and foreign. I was there early, I was first and I felt very cool.
Fast forward to about 1986 or so and suddenly they are all sporting parachute pants, edgy haircuts and {GASP} listening to Depeche Mode. Well that was it for me. I was pissed.
Depeche Mode was MY music darnit and they had hated it. I had been a fan for years and they mocked me. These weren’t real fans; they couldn’t appreciate Depeche Mode properly and I was over it. I gave serious consideration to divorcing Depeche Mode…I was not like these new comers, I was cooler.
Luckily, I came to my senses and Depeche Mode and I remain close
Believe it or not, I have a real estate point to make in sharing this story about my musical past.
A few weeks ago many of my real estate friends and peers attended NAR. I couldn’t go, so I watched their online postings carefully to try to learn from them and see what I had missed.
Was I ever surprised to see that many of them came home feeling like I did when everyone else started listening to Depeche Mode. I saw messages that they think social media has been co-opted or is over and they are disappointed to the point of leaving the social media space. HUH?
Many of the people who were talking smack about social media were people who earn their living FROM social media.
Depeche Mode much?
Seriously, I smell sour grapes. The cool kids don’t get to be the “in the know” crowd if the normal vendors learn our voodoo and hawk their wares on the lanes of real estate conferences.
They want to be the only ones and if these other vendors show up speaking of social media then it must be quackery….snake oil, I tell you, snake oil. Even more amusing to me is the fact that they haven’t seen this coming. Social media is being embraced by everyone and is totally mainstream. Your mom is probably on Facebook and Depeche Mode is heard on muzak in the grocery store. Does that lower the “coolness” quotient? Perhaps, but it opens the doors to lots more exposure, too.
Now I agree with my fellow AG author, Herman Chan, when he gets upset with the vendors who are trying capitalize on non-tech agent’s naivete by putting the words social media into products and services that are not, in fact, social media. That IS crap. But to all the others that are just bent out of shape because social media has gone mainstream and is popular, I say you just don’t get it.
I was not at NAR, but I know one thing to be true in real estate marketing: you will do what works for you. If cold calling works, you will use it and you will prosper. For me, and many others, the thing that works is social media.
It isn’t snake oil if it works, folks.
I am a REALTOR who has seen success by utilizing social media tools and I say it is good for us that social media is going mainstream. This means our clients will better understand the power of what we are working on and the buyers will be more likely to find our efforts online.
Social media use is growing at an unbelievable pace and for the young home buyers of today social media is like oxygen, it has just always been there. This isn’t over folks, far from it and leaving the space because someone else found it, too, is just silly. Don’t let yourself be Depeche Mode-ed.
You see, Depeche Mode would not have had so many songs make it to the top of the charts if the mainstream public didn’t eventually embrace their music. The cool kids of social media should get over themselves a little bit and recognize that while we were the early adopters, we can’t own the internet any better than I could own Depeche Mode.
