We’re developing social media training systems together with association / corporate marketing groups and consultants who add their training content to the platform. For example, we’re working with a wine consultancy developing a national social media marketing business using the platform for “basic training” and reference for their client base.

Register for a peek at http://domusu.com/admin/first-time-users. We welcome discussion on this unique idea.

From my slideshow “Build a Dynamic Community News Resource on Twitter in One Hour”, a question came up as to why you would want to become a “news aggregator”, as if the term implied that it’s akin to being a bot. Here are the reasons why a local business person would want to “curate” news for their community:

1. “News aggregation” and “curating” are very similar terms. You need to have the epiphany that your position in the community can be just as powerful as the local newspaper (a “news aggregator”) because your social network trusts you (see slideshow Be the Media!). If you provide a community news resource with the best local Twitter feeds that your local newspaper is not providing, then your community will honor that. If you are in real estate, you will want to curate news more specific to real estate and the local markets for readers who you want to attract as clients. You make a community impact!

2. “News aggregation” is being the media! Do you like being recognized by the media? Everybody does. By creating Lists of local Twitterers, you are honoring them. They find out who you are in the community by virtue of your community media resource, and you develop an “instant” network of appreciative fans. They will follow/friend you. Isn’t that what “branding” is about?

3. News aggregation is blathering about the standard weather reports, crime news and boring 11:00 newscast stuff that local TV reports. Curating is fine tuning what you broadcast to your community by finding the best examples of good local content that is interesting to your target reader.

4. Finally, you need to maintain a personal touch to curating the news. Show that you’re in the stream by tweeting local interest topics yourself and linking to your blog posts, etc. That kind of maintenance is similar to how you approach any marketing or blogging activity.

As I mentioned before, it only takes one hour to develop a community news resource on Twitter. It’s good will community service; it’s not going to be looked upon skeptically so it won’t hurt you. I posit: why not? Just try it…

If you build a local breaking news Twitter site from this slideshow tutorial, let us know @pkitano and we’ll LIST it!

I asked on Twitter and Facebook for help (tx James & Kevin for help!). Usually this works.

Upon Googling the above code, I find out the problem is a “MySQL Injection Attack” on Wordpress blogs. Mashable documented it on September 5, but Wordpress and Feedburner forums make no mention of this.

I found the solution to the problem at this link from Andy Sowards: http://bit.ly/2Pkje9. I deleted two posts checking for a solution, and just re-uploaded them now.

This is one way social media has changed the sales process.

Traditional corporate sales forces are hired for their industry expertise. A product or service that targets the hospitality industry will seek account executives with that background. But suppose the company realizes that its service is a better fit for the financial industry. The problem is the domain expertise and social networks of hospitality industry AEs won’t transition to banks. That, in essence, is why corporations can’t react swiftly. Shifting sales and marketing focus is a common problem for companies big and small, especially internet companies. And the key to transaction execution is the direct channel between the AE and the client.

Social media has changed the sales process so that the key to the transaction may not reside in the AE / client channel, it’s finding the special intermediaries who can facilitate the transaction. Before social media, those intermediaries were hidden inside industry tubes that outsiders couldn’t penetrate. Social media (think LinkedIn and Twitter) opened these tubes. Moreover, the ideal intermediary can put together the deal more efficiently, collect a fee, and continue with their day job. They will have the domain expertise to know what they are doing, and they don’t necessarily need to be trained extensively. And most important, they will do this because the recession changed their mindset towards being more entrepreneurial to seek these kinds of opportunities.

So, what’s more profitable? A national company that has 100 full time sales staff, or a few founders working together with 100 affiliates who are found and contracted to complete the transaction for a fee? Figure in the HR costs of hiring.

What’s the moral to this observation? The recession together with social media has created a multi-tasking worker who is independent and looking to leverage themselves in as many profitable ways as possible. That’s why we see all these affiliate marketers out there plugging various teeth whitening and insurance products, but they are doing it wrong. Why? True affiliate marketing entails a highly pinpointed strategy to create transaction opportunities; very few will meet qualifications based on very specific domain expertise. Most of today’s affiliate marketers are unqualified so they spam out MLM systems that try to hook in the masses.

Affiliate marketing, although a dirty word now, is evolving online together with social media to create a new and profound business development paradigm that can be applied to enterprises. At Domus Consulting Group, we have developed operating examples of this new business model that work, and they have nothing in common with spamming or MLM.

I originally intended this slideshow for local business people who wanted a blog for marketing purposes, but didn’t have the inclination to start a blog due to writing and time commitments. After posting the slideshow, I received feedback that Posterous was a great method to create new “blogs” on a variety of topics and interests that were parallel to the principal blog. One mentioned how fast Posterous blogs were indexed by Google.

Twitter lists will change how people network themselves into groups and geographies. Although the first lists will develop around social media (top 100s, etc.), they will eventually develop around organizations / civic groups, enterprises and geographies / neighborhoods. Once this happens, Twitter will evolve into a hyperlocal communication network or, a better term, media.

In categorical searches like finding the best Twitterers who cover the San Francisco food scene, Twitter Lists are far more powerful than using Twitter Search because the Lists filter Twitter feeds, and searches don’t.

Twitter is the only social networking application that facilitates individuals into building adhoc lists. LinkedIn and Facebook have their groups and fan pages but they require their participants to sign in. It takes an individual an hour to build a 200-person Twitter List in comparison to the days / weeks it takes to attain a 200-fan FB page. This will make Twitter Lists the prolific standard for organizing the social graph.

Although in beta testing now to a limited group, Twitter Lists will need three improved functions ( there a lot more minor ones) to become standard usage:

• Search function across lists.
• Ability to build lists by search across following/followers and automatic list creation. For example, I could build an instant list of Berkeley real estate agents by searching “Berkeley real estate” across my following, and clicking a presumed button called “Automatic List”.
• Ability to follow all those on other people’s lists like one can do on TweepML.com.

(Note: as of October 20, only a subset of Twitter users can see Twitter Lists)

Real estate brokers and agents are an identifiable categorical group in the social media, everybody recognizes their presence talking shop or chatting up the local community. The industry’s relationship with the Internet has historically been mercenary; the principal reason for online presence, whether with a website in 2001, a blog in 2007 or a Facebook page in 2009, is lead generation.

Examine the broker/agent’s marketing mindset. Their commercial mission is to stay “top of mind” to literally tens of thousands of people in their focus community on the off-chance one of them makes the decision to buy or sell a home. Pre-Internet, they did this with post cards; pre-social media, they drip email marketed their community to death, and always asked for referrals. The business has always been perceived as a numbers game based on how wide that network net was cast.

No wonder the real estate industry leads all other businesses (except tech and porn) in the adoption of new ways to expand online presence. The early adopters in real estate are hyper-practical and they figure out what works long before the social media pundits can see the utility. Every real estate social media conference I’ve attended has much richer content than the talking heads at typical tech conferences. Most of my colleagues in real estate will concur.

The paradox is everybody believes the real estate industry are slow adopters, and always describe it metaphorically as the classic aircraft carrier. This is also true. Most real estate agents are slow adopters (say, 95%) because they believe that their job is selling, not wasting time chatting online. They ask questions like “give me one example where somebody got a lead from Twitter”.

Real estate agents are slow to react because they are conservative, only acting on the fear of losing competitive advantage. With literally hundreds of competitors in a zip code, they need that advantage. So the aircraft carrier analogy is apt because the agent community will all react at once. When agents see their competition on Twitter and Facebook, they are obliged to follow until eventually the tipping point is reached when the paradigm of using social media as a marketing tool becomes the norm.

At today’s REBarCamp Silicon Valley, one of many social media barcamp venues focusing on real estate, the majority of the attendees were new to the BarCamp concept. Previous REBarCamps from even last spring were collegial affairs, with all the early adopters knowing each other intimately. Today, the newcomers were there… and that signals the tipping point has been reached. It also signals a kinder industry who are using (and being trained to use) social media to attract clients as opposed to spamming them with unwanted emails and new listings.

Programming motivational speaker Tony Robbins at the 140 | Twitter conference was a stroke of genius. Not only did it inject spirit into the staid normality of a tech conference, but Tony presented how he’s integrated Twitter into the Robbins’ philosophy.

Simply put, Robbins laid out the Maslow-like six human needs and demonstrated how Twitter fits into fulfilling each of them:

• Certainty – Twitter enhances communication, like a chat IM, that protects against unwanted surprises.
• Uncertainty / Variety – Twitter is a micromedia channel that explores all topics.
• Significance – Twitter expands your sphere of influence and broadcast your personal mission.
• Love & Connection – Twitter forms relationships.
• Growth – Twitter expands the scope of knowledge.
• Contribution – Twitter facilitates your ability to add value to your network.

Tony finishes up: ” Twitter is the crack of social networking…”