“I don’t bother with LinkedIn because it’s too much work.”

“LinkedIn isn’t fun. I’d rather play on Facebook. “

I hear many people complain about LinkedIn. That’s a shame because the people I hear complaining about LinkedIn are some of the finest professionals I know in the bricks-and-mortar world. In the meantime, I’m watching people I revere as thought leaders and movers and shakers succumb to mind numbing Facebook games while important corners of their social media presence remain neglected and ignored.

LinkedIn offers members a chance to write and receive Recommendations about their Connections. This is one of the most powerful features of the platform.

Imagine a prospective client or employer arrives at your LinkedIn profile page and sees a thread of Recommendations from people at all stages in your career.  Imagine the impact that event has. Imagine the confidence you can inspire with written testimony of your service.

Leverage your presence on LinkedIn using the Recommendation feature.  Writing Recommendations for others will ignite a reciprocity exchange and social adrenaline will inspire recipients to respond with Recommendations for your LinkedIn page.

1. Don’t ask people for Recommendations. Write Recommendations for other people! Making a request for a Recommendation creates social indebtedness. Writing a Recommendation places the recipient in the social capital receivables bucket.
2. Make LinkedIn Recommendation writing part of a weekly engagement plan. Write at least two recommendations for people you have worked with successfully. Thank each for a job well done and state that others can have confidence in receiving the same service.
3. Create a list of people you have worked with successfully. Connect with them on LinkedIn and put them on a schedule for written Recommendation acknowledgement. Use a memory jogger and date plan.
4. Write a Recommendation for a competitor. Example: Real estate agent or broker writes a Recommendation for an agent who recently cooperated in a successful transaction.
5. Write a Recommendation for a staffer or colleague. After following Tip #2, be certain that you are extending testimonial support to your company staffers and independent contractors.
6. Write with integrity. Do not exaggerate about someone’s service. Be honest and truthful.
7. Refrain from writing Recommendations that do not reflect your honest enthusiasm. It is better to abstain from writing a dishonest testimonial than  jeopardizing your reputation.
8. Issue written gratitude for persons who write Recommendations for you.
9. Hide from view and delete Recommendations from others when the writers are persons with whom you would not do business. Consider removing those people from your network and disengaging completely when you feel your reputation is at stake.
10. Review your written recommendations periodically. If there is deleterious change in your business relationship with someone who displays your personal Recommendation, withdraw your Recommendation.

(Are we connected on LinkedIn? Here’s my profile.)

Here is a replay of the Webinar Marcie Roggow and I presented to Realtor Association Executives this afternoon:

Watch Realtor AE: Real Estate Social Media Policies in News Online | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Drew Meyers of Zillow.com made an excellent presentation to real estate professionals earlier this week at the Virtual Real Esdtate Barcamp. Thanks for sharing, Drew.
Online Reputation Management (and Social Media Survival Skills)

This is a Webinar I presented several days ago.

Real Estate Social Media Plan Webinar Handout

Happy New Year!

Design a Social Media Business Plan for 2010 - Click here for the most popular videos

Real estate coach Joeann Fossland wonders why so many people are eager to be her friend without giving her a clue about who they are and why they are looking for friendship in her coachy quarters. She laments on Twitter this morning:

“Why do people you don’t know invite you to be friends on Facebook and have ALL their information hidden so you haven’t a clue who they are?”

I’ll bet that when Facebook was launched, members invited only people they knew personally to their inner circles of friendship. Remember. Facebook was built as a platform where members could share and collaborate. Commercial applications were hardly a twinkle in the developers’ eyes. Some people still draw their friendship circle with people they know personally and who are persons they like and trust.

Fast forward to 2009. Business people are charging social media like gold rush prospectors. Every Friend on Facebook, each Follower on Twitter, and each Connection on LinkedIn is tallied like a gold nugget and squirreled away until someone figures out what to do with all those little nuggets and convert them to negotiable currency.

Shallow Engagement Waters

Making a friend on Faceboo…k is the first step in building a relationship with that person here. Don’t take it too lightly.

Wham-bam-click-this-link-and-be-my-Facebook-friend is the most common approach among real estate agents and brokers. Lenny Lonesome surveys a list of a friend’s friends and starts to click links. He only clicks the Send Request link, and a plain vanilla friend invitation appears on that person’s Home Page.

Wham-bam-click-this-link-and-I’ll-accept-this-friend is most people’s response to a friend invitation. No words are exchanged beyond a solitary click.

Add a personal message to accept an invitation to become a Facebook Friend.

Differentiators Dive Into Deeper Waters 

Here are options for more meaningful introductions on Facebook.

1. Know some background about the person you are selecting as a friend. Why do people friend people if they don’t know who they are, what they do, or if there is a reason to engage in a relationship.
2. Write a personal note with the invitation to be friends. It could be simple as, “I saw your thoughtful comment about foreclosures on the Women’s Council of Realtors Region 4 Fan Page. I would be honored to connect with you.”
3. Write a personal note to someone who asks you to be a friend. Review the information available at the name link and consider the request. Sometimes it may be scarce … look for a point of commonality and respond accordingly. If this is a person you want in your inner circle of friends, accept the request. If this is a business contact, consider inviting that person to your Fan Page instead of your personal account.

One of my favorite friend requests came to my attention during a social media class this summer with a group of real estate brokers and I had an opportunity to demonstrate this lesson live. A real estate agent located in a distant state wanted to be a friend but her profile information was very scant. There was a note about her interests and pole dancing figured as a major point of attraction.

The class laughed. (Guess they did not consider that point of commonality with the lady at the keyboard.)

I responded with a note:

“Thank you for connecting with me on Facebook. It seems we share a love of dance. Sadly, I confess, I am the only middle-age Polish woman in the world who cannot Polka. Have a great day!”

Measure your engagement at the start of your friendship and Go Deep!

(Frances Flynn Thorsen will speak at the Social Media Mastermind Live Conference in Sedona January 15-16, 2009.)

I am a firm believer that real estate agents designing a peer-centric social media presence are making a strategic mistake in terms of business development. Feedback following yesterday’s post, 10 Ways Real Estate Agents Create Deeper Engagement on Facebook, is mixed relative to this question. Agents are concerned that Unfriending will lead to a perception that they are unfriendly.

The following steps assure an easy transition from Friend to Unfriend.

1. Isolate the list of real estate professionals on your Facebook Friends list and select the people you want to Unfriend.
2. Send a note to each (create this in Notepad and copy to Facebook e-mail): “I cherish your friendship in real life and on Facebook. I am working with a new social media strategy and I am taking a new direction. I am going to make my Facebook Wall a place for family and friends. I am going to disconnect myself from other real estate professionals as part of my new plan. I look forward to engaging with you elsewhere on Facebook and in other social media platforms. Here is my LinkedIn profile [insert LinkedIn profile], let’s connect there first!”
3. Go to the other agent’s page, bottom left, click “Remove from Friends.”

Engage with other agents at Realtown, ActiveRain, and other peer-to-peer platforms where consumer engagement is not the primary focus.

I always wonder if what I post on Facebook is interesting and useful to others. I know that much, not all, of what I read is not useful and interesting.

Real estate agents using Facebook make that observation often. Assess your social media presence. Consider everything you do on Facebook part of an overall engagement strategy. What makes engagement useful and interesting? Remind yourself that what works for you on other people’s pages are good indicators for what will work for your friends and fans on your Facebook pages.

Here are 10 tips for real estate agent Facebook engagement success:

1. Go deep, not wide with your social media presence. Recent studies report deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance. Real estate agents new to social media often make the mistake of setting up profiles at every social media platform they read about or hear about in technology classes. There are three platforms that real estate agents can use in tandem to maximize their exposure: Facebook, LinkedIn and one or more consumer-facing real estate social sites – Trulia Voices, Zillow Discussions, and Yahoo! Answers. Add additional platforms as time permits.
2. Define your Facebook niche. If you are using Facebook to build your business, Unfriend all of the Realtors on your profile page and concentrate your personal engagement strategy on your friends and family and start a Facebook Fan Page. Invite your sphere of influence, past clients and customers, and perhaps some Realtors from out of the area who may be a good source of referral business. Find fan pages and groups where there is good, solid engagement among real estate professionals and visit those pages regularly. If you don’t want to Unfriend all your fellow Realtors, learn to live with the fact that your Facebook time is not dollar productive and have fun in the social media sandbox. There may be educational value that outweighs income needs.
3. Work with a strategy and specific engagement plan. Time block social media engagement. Work without distractions. See the following as an example of a one-hour daily engagement plan.
Real Estate Social Media Business Planning and Time Blocking
View more presentations from Frances Flynn Thorsen.
4. Make your blog your social media center of gravity. If you have a blog, use the links in Facebook. Develop a blog business plan and consider your content carefully. Ask your readers and peers for feedback.
5. Resist the urge to automate your posts. Content aggregation tools are the fashion du jour at Facebook. Automatic posts from Twitter leave pages with small, 140-character-or-less messages. Frequent users of Twitter display a boring list of text with no visual appeal.
6. Use quotations sparingly. Some Facebook pages look like Quotation City. Original thought trumps quotations. Occasional insight by masters may offer food for contemplative thought, but turning over six inches of prime social media real estate to the combined talent and wisdom of Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and Ronald Regan is sheer overkill and very shallow engagement. There are exceptions to every rule. There is a real estate agent in Sierra Vista, AZ, who quotes Law of Attraction entity Abraham in a thoughtful, consistent, and inspirational manner … I am drawn to her page regularly. It is the short, staccato, mishmash of quotations I urge agents to avoid.
7. Make your Fan Page reader-centric. Are you selling a product or service? Writing a book? How many of your posts are ads and how many reflect serious needs, interests, and concern of the people who are reading the page? How do you relate to a page that is 100% advertising? This type of engagement is very shallow and highly gratuitous.
8. Study the pages you like. What works for you when you travel pages on Facebook? When something works, take a closer look and consider why the page works. Is it what the author says? Does the author share information that helps you grow? Is there a measure of inspiration on the page?
9. Mix content liberally. Learn how to use simple video links and share music. Share links from articles and blog posts you like. Use the “Share” link liberally to post other people’s useful or inspirational content on your own page … and thank them for sharing in the comment section under their post. Do NOT share your branded content on other people’s pages.
10. Make at least two connections on other people’s pages for each measure of engagement on your page. Reciprocal engagement invites more visitors to your pages. Visit your friends’ pages and leave comments, click the Like link, and leave some tracks. Let your friends know you were there!

Engage often.

Engage thoughtfully.

Egage authentically.

Social media connective jargon establishes relationships between community members who opt to share personal and information, status updates, and other engagement venues. Facebook calls these people Friends, LinkedIn lets members establish Connections, and Twitter members collect Followers.

Facebook has additional tiers of relationships: Members can opt-in and join Groups, and they can become Fans on Facebook Fan Pages.

What is a Facebook Friend? Facebook members share contact and profile information, status updates, photos, videos, and links. Facebook Terms of Service discourage business dealings on profile pages, preferring to see members establish Fan Pages to create a professional presence.

What happens when a Facebook Friend is a person’s friend in the bricks and mortar world and something goes awry with the relationship?  In the offline world, it’s an easy matter to shut off the communication spigot. Friends stop making telephone calls, stop sharing e-mail, and they pass on opportunities to share meals and attend parties together.

In the social media space, the party goes on.  Discussion threads between mutual friends seed and nurture engagement about business and personal milestones and other events.  The same people who   no longer break bread together find themselves in the same “rooms” on mutual friends’ Walls, at Fan Pages, in Groups, and at the same Events.
At times, the word Friend becomes disingenuous. People dissolve their Facebook friendships with a single click of a link, Remove from Friends.  It is simple and easy. No lawyer needed. No papers. No muss, no fuss.

“NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – “Unfriend” has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent. Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook …”

Unfriending is a useful tool to eliminate toxic thoughts and energy. I take it one step further, using the “Block” tool in Privacy Settings for more egregious offenders.

I’ve Unfriended several people and people have Unfriended me. These are some reasons I Unfriend people on Facebook and they Unfriend me:

1. People post their advertising links or messages on my wall. It is very poor form to post commercial messages on other people’s Walls. Sometimes it is easy to simply delete the offending post and alert the poster about our-of-bounds behavior. My Unfriending follows a couple of network marketing travel representatives posting their links on my Wall. I don’t like the cheesy multi-level marketing (MLM) flavor and persistent posting on my Wall annoys me.  Unfriending is a simple solution to filter unwanted MLM advertising. Color this brand of Unfriending good business.
2. I Unfriend people I do not like.  I do not Unfriend people when we have differing views about politics and issues of the day. I love engagement among people of different political persuasions. What I do not like is scheming and underhanded behavior that pits people against each other and advances personal agendas I find bothersome. I Unfriend for this reason about six times a year. If I find someone particularly toxic I will use the Block User privacy setting that makes the person invisible to me. In that case, the person’s comments and name do not appear in common discussion threads with mutual friends and our profiles and information are not searchable by each other.  I presently have five people on my Block User list. I cannot see them and they cannot see me and this suits me just fine. Color this brand of Unfriending personal and proactive soul cleanse.
3. I Unfriend people when I need personal space. Sometimes there are personal issues between people in the offline world … hurt feelings, betrayal of confidence, and other matters make it common sense to create a distance online and offline. Sometimes personal dynamics heal and Unfriended persons decide to click the Friend button again. Color this brand of Unfriend necessary, sad, and disappointing.
4. I’ve been Unfriended and Blocked by major industry influencers following a series of blog posts I wrote earlier this year and about foreclosures and predatory marketers in the real estate industry, and a “Foreclosure Hall of Shame” television show taping targeting these same companies.  I have been dropped from groups and shunned in social networks because I identify predatory marketing campaigns by name and design. My efforts to establish a line of communication in those quarters are unsuccessful. For a time I was sad, but I have arrived at the other side of disappointment. Instead,I am learning to wear this Unfriend badge with honor. Color this brand of Unfriend proud.

Friendship is a precious commodity. I worry that social media jargon trivializes a word that seeds inspiration for poetry and song.

Friendship is a word I used very sparingly over the years, and applied it to select persons in my life who make my world a richer place.

Perhaps I am too selective.

Is a friend a prize rose, nurtured and pruned, magnificent among all others?

Or is a friend a wildflower, sharing the space in a heart with thousands just like it, lending its perfume and beauty to the world on its own terms?

I know what it means for me to be a friend … I am an imperfect person and I am sorry for fractures and fissions of my own design. I know a thing or two about unconditional love … but I struggle mightily with broken trust.

I love my friends and I am thankful for their presence in my life.

I love select Unfriends and I am thankful for their presence in my life and their contribution to my personal development.

Joeann Fossland, MCC, once told me, “Bewilderment is a growing place to be.” If that is true, I must be growing by leaps and bounds these days. Color me bewildered.