Hydrated yet? Are you overwhelmed? Do you feel like you’re being stampeded on in order to keep up with the ever changing online landscape? I can certainly understand. Â It is as if someone turned on a fire hydrant and aimed it full stream at your head- I know because I’ve seen it in the eyes of those I meet and speak with on a daily basis who still focus hard core on their paper newsletters and email drip campaigns, while I’m talking about bundled online micro-letters, and consumer-focused use of Google power.
This article was first published here on November 09, 2009.
You can’t be all things to all people
When you hear the words Twitter, Facebook and Google, do your eyes roll back in your head?  Are you feeling the pinch of the economy in lower referrals, difficult closings, and nightmare appraisals? Are you busy for a few hours daily retweeting Mashable, TechCrunch and Guy Kawasaki in an effort to look cool and in the know, all while wondering how in the world you can keep up with the stuff or implement any of what you’re retweeting in an effort to be a so-called influencer, while building a giant follower pool?
Social Media is a component of your business plan, not a silver bullet.
My advice? Â Stop.
What you can do right now to compete in this real estate game is stop all of that and focus.  This isn’t what the cool kids are doing, and those that are are most likely not in charge of putting food on your table, so just stop.  Stop spending hours a day focused on being an influencer to other professionals, and actually compete.
Getting Micro?
Are you swinging a hammer at a screw?
Competing is seeing what others are doing and coming in under the radar and doing business.  Micro-focus on who is local to you and say hello, share a link to them that might matter to their putting food on their table- you know, like how they might go about fighting property taxes on their home in a declined neighborhood?  OR maybe discussing with them the new commercial development going into the neighborhood that is zoned for alcohol and what that may mean to local property values? This is hypothetical, but you get my point that you should influence locally, not internationally and you will make real fans.
These tools are proven grassroots tools, yet I see very few agents actually building anything grassroots around anything other than everything that doesn’t focus on putting food on their table.
Finding the mute button
Focus on you, focus on your consumer, turn off the fire hydrant, and kill the noise.  There are sites related to you and your industry- mingle there, get what you need at a pace that is manageable, and focus on the goals you’ve set.  If your goal was to raise X number of followers and to follow X number of influencers this year and you’ve exceeded them, ask yourself, is it making you money?  Is your net ridiculously broad? OR are you a well oiled micro machine focused on the folks you could potentially get belly to belly with!  Should you travel to get drunk with the conference junkies, or should you attend the local Rotary club meeting this week and make a one-to-one connection?
The choice is yours. Â You can turn down the hydrant both inbound and outbound, or you can continue to drown in the sea of endless voices- it’s up to you.
Summary Please
What you can do right now to compete in the real estate game is to actually compete in the real estate game, not the social game.
