“Are you on Pinterest?” and “What’s this Pinterest thing?”

First, for those of you asking the latter, here’s my definition:

In December, Pinterest became one of the Web’s Top 10 social networks, according to tracking firm Hitwise. Like any new(-ish) social media tools, everyone (who knows what it is) has an opinion, and those opinions are as varied as Pinterest’s uses. Most of what I’m hearing is that it’s a time-suck and not useful for real estate. There’s even a recent blog post from Kimberly Dotseth entitled, “Why Pinterest is not for real estate.”

Here’s the deal: Pinterest can be for real estate, the same way that Facebook and Twitter can be for real estate. It depends, of course, on how you use it, and even more so, whether you enjoy using it. Some people don’t like Twitter, so they don’t use it. Using a tool badly is worse than not using it at all. Here’s how I think you can use Pinterest, if you’re interested.

So, yes, I am on Pinterest. And yes, I am using it to connect with my clients. To answer your inevitable follow-up questions:

• No, I am not measuring ROI.
• No, I do not think it’s going to transform my business.
• Yes, I’m actually doing it just because I enjoy it.

A few of parallels to real estate:

According to Read|Write|Web, “Pinterest is growing fast, and 80% of the sites users are women ages 25-44. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, the fastest growing segment of homebuyers is women. Do you see a correlation here? A large percentage of my clients are women; we connect on Facebook and, now, on Pinterest. It comes naturally for both of us. It’s not a forced relationship, as it can sometimes be with a Facebook Business Page. I’m not constantly searching for content to post; instead, I’m pinning what interests me and what reminds me of my clients, and when I pin something that catches their eye, I know it, because they tell me so.

Pinterest is being described by many as “useful for artists and designers” but not really anyone else. I beg to differ. Many of my buyers (and sellers) are interested in design and decorating, especially first-time homebuyers, as they prepare to purchase their first home. They’re handy and they don’t have a lot of disposable income, so they are looking for design trends that are affordable and that they can do themselves. They’re finding them on Pinterest. When I find those ideas first, I pin them to my own board and tag my client in the post, so they don’t just see the idea, they can also see that I was thinking about them.

CNN.com recently published an article called, “Interest, Meet Pinterest. Site Helps Users Catalog Their Passions” – this sums it up for me. My business, like that of many REALTORS®, is strongly referral based. Oftentimes, I connect with my clients about something other than real estate before we actually start talking houses. Pinterest is the perfect tool for me to connect with friends, clients, friends of clients before real estate ever comes up. This is how I sold a house to a client I met on Pinterest – we connected over kitchen ideas (she was the friend of a recent past client) and then moved into talking about her home search, and eventually ended up at the closing table.

The trend in social media is (finally) moving toward sharing being less about you and more about your audience. In other words, fewer photos of your kids and your dog, and more of what is universally interesting and compelling; in short, I want you to share something that will also appeal to me. Pinterest allows you to do just that. Share your decorating and design ideas, chances are they will appeal to someone else. If they do, they’ll get repinned and that person may check out your profile. If you’ve done your job right and set up a good profile, with your website and a bit about yourself, they may visit your website. And a beautiful relationship may begin.

If you’re not on board with the purely social aspects of Pinterest as a way of connecting, you might try a hyper-local approach. Matthew Shadbolt of The Corcoran Group does an amazing job of pinning New York City, from the style to the culture to the real estate, without making it salesy.

Does Pinterest have incredible, untapped potential for those who use it correctly? Absolutely. Is it going to save your business, transform it and make you millions of dollars? No. No single tool can do that for you. But as with any tool, I believe it can be useful to you, if you love what you’re doing and you’re doing it well.

I’ll leave you with one final thought about Pinterest, this one from Jeff Turner. This is for those used-car-salesman types, the ones who probably aren’t reading this anyway, but if you are, it’s pretty much the same advice you should follow on ANY social networking site: “Avoid self-promotion.” You know who you are.

“When the composition of a group is right – enough people with different perspectives, running into one another in unpredictable ways, the (creative) group dynamic takes care of itself.” – Jonah Lehrer: ‘GroupThink’ (The New Yorker, January 30th, 2012)

As a direct consequence of neither being associated with an MLS, nor being members of The National Association of Realtors, many of us here in the Manhattan real estate community don’t attend conferences. But as I begin to attend more of them, fueled by greater national social media participation in Twitter and Facebook, there’s something consistent I hear after every event. That the real value of attending is not only the connections you make, but the existing connections you’re able to strengthen by showing up and spending time with your peers, those people you spend time with throughout the day chatting online. That digital relationships are being validated and nurtured by in-person exchanges.

Is the value of these connections happening at the expense of attending the program itself?

As someone who often virtually attends events, living vicariously through a hashtagged stream of tweets and status updates, viewing an event through that often murky (and at times misleading) digital lens produces a striking question about one of the core purposes of such events. Namely, the ability to inspire action and creativity in the attendees. How much of this is driven by the program, and how much by the shared social interaction of the attendees simply being in the same place?

Is the need to connect, stronger than the need to be present in a speaker’s keynote?

In an era saturated with social media, the archaic topic of groups and how they work is, ironically, a particularly modern one. As marketers and brands race to the bottom of the web to organize circles, followers and lists into ever more specific ways to target people driven into a conversion funnel, conferences seem a strange but appropriate place to focus exploring the issue of inspiring group creativity. Let’s begin with the idea of teamwork.

Jonah Lehrer, writing recently in The New Yorker, describes the process by which we’re seeing fewer ‘lone geniuses’ in the modern era. Where we’d once have had Edison, Einstein or Ford, the phenomenon of the singular modern genius appears to be fast deteriorating. Perhaps our last great one, maybe the last great one, to many, was Apple’s Steve Jobs. Lehrer positions this trend as a natural symptom of progress. As problems of science and technology become more complex, they’ve forced collaboration and teamwork, with projects having naturally evolved to become larger and more difficult. As researchers are forced to become more specialized, there also has to be more of them in order to build or solve the increasingly complex issues. The aggressive expansion of human knowledge means, as Lehrer characterizes it, that people must either work together or fail alone.

This is essentially why the ideology of teamwork is rampant in modern business. The more ideas explored, the greater the ability to solve problems faster and more efficiently. True? Not so, says Lehrer. He offers the thought that, in opposition to brainstorming as a means to develop a broad range of ideas, the notion of debate, criticism and constructive dissent, organized in such a way that the conditions for discussion are being held by not only peers but new voices, ultimately produces the most creative, innovative and exceptional solutions. And not just during the sessions themselves, for a prolonged period of time afterwards as well, as the conversations are absorbed, digested and considered. This is again, something we hear a lot about in the aftermath of real estate conferences.

“Dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and reasess our own viewpoints.” - Charlan Nemeth, Professor of Psychology at The University of California at Berkley (Quoted in ‘GroupThink’, The New Yorker, January 30th 2012)

Of course, the idea of a confrontational debate is problematic for many, but proven to ultimately be a lot more productive. Disagreement facilitates solutions. It’s unpredictable and invigorating. Lehrer concludes by sharing the story of how important the location of communal, shared spaces was to Steve Jobs’ vision of building the new Pixar Headquarters in the late nineties. As described in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Jobs, it was specifically designed around a centralized lobby space, so that everyone had much more of an opportunity, every day, to run into each other.

Why? Because Jobs passionately advocated the idea that the best meetings are the accidental ones. The ones that happen in hallways, elevators and between events. That’s what I hear too when following real estate conferences online. Jobs even began to relocate specific amenities around the campus in order to facilitate making this happen more often. Mailboxes, restrooms, meeting rooms and the cafeteria were all moved to a common atrium space. It should be no surprise that the new Apple Headquarters planned for Cupertino is entirely circular and the very summit of such an approach. The strength of relationships made and grown as a result of this architectural approach is not only fostering better communication, but also incubating new ideas, new ways of working, and new solutions to problems. It’s better business.

This is what I hope for in every conference I attend. That incredible balance between an inspirational, insightful and genuinely creative program, one where the problem I want to have is not being able to write all the ideas down fast enough, and the shared passion, creativity and excellence that comes with the physical friction of attending with your peers.

I need solutions, not advice on the latest apps.

I crave hearing things from outside of our industry that have inspired customers, not the same internal data nano-discussions.

I want an inspiring glimpse into the future, not diatribes on why video drives traffic to listings.

Our industry currently faces a tremendously overwhelming volume of problems, and aggressive disintermediation is a very real concern. Only through the unpredictable, unexpected, serendipitous exchange of ideas, often held in the hallways and corners of conferences, can we, as marketing, brokerage and technology professionals, provide the solutions that our industry and its customers so desperately want. As I fly back to New York City on April 14th, I want the problem of looking over my notes filled with fresh inspiration and insight, and not knowing where to start.

I’ll see you all soon.

Ready For The Trip? by Mira Shvangiradze

We all have been guilty at some point or another of promoting our products a little more than we should.  But with the increasing popularity of social media being used in marketing, some companies have overused it to the point where it is like prostitution. Learn how to keep your promotion from turning into prostitution.

Bill Lublin shares a great infographic on social media strategy for startups and everyone else.  So, if you are just getting into social media, this is a great guide to get you started in the right direction.

2012 is still very young, but have we already seen quite possibly the worst use of social media for the year?  If it isn’t the total worst, Boners BBQ is definitely in the top 10 with only 18 days in the year gone. Read about the bonehead moves from Boners BBQ.

Thanks for reading!  One last question to answer down below:  What are you looking forward to most at RETSO this year?

Thank you Jay Thompson, Galen Ward, and Susan West for being real doers in our industry. The kind words here are just icing on our cake.

Bill Lublin‘s Real Estate  Bucket List

As 2011 Ends, Do You Still Think Twitter Is Stupid?-  I hear many talk about how stupid Twitter is and how they do not feel knowing what someone ate for lunch is valuable to their real estate business.  Here are a few powerful facts that might change your thinking on how stupid Twitter actually is for your business.

Have You Googled Yourself Lately?- Amy Chorew shares some great advice on online reputation and some tools to monitor what others are saying about you.  Just signing up for a site isn’t enough.  You need to watch what others are saying about you.  Check out the various resources she lists to help you manage your reputation online.

5 Easy Tips to Uploading Optimized Real Estate Videos to YouTube!-  Bobby over at Dakno shares 5 really easy tips to make your videos more optimized for YouTube.  With more than 3 billion videos watched daily on YouTube, this is a great place to gain exposure for your real estate business.

Ten secret killer apps to download now that are guaranteed to make your sources go viral-  Gahlord shares some excellent advice on apps, devices, and things going viral.  Does the virality of your work really measure a level of success?

Well, this wraps up RETSO report for 2011.  I’m off to enjoy plenty of football games, pork & sauerkraut & time with family.  That’s our New Year’s tradition.  What is yours?

The History of Photo Sharing-  In real estate, good quality images are crucial to our business.  Here is a great infographic that shows the history of photo sharing and how it has evolved over the past few years.

4 Web Must-Do’s for 2012- Joel shares 4 great tips that each person needs to really consider in regards to their website and how it works for consumers in the upcoming year.

“Just Do It”  Just Isn’t Enough-  Bill shares that signing up for a social network just isn’t enough anymore.  You can’t just do it anymore, you need to do it well.  If you aren’t going to do it well, you are probably better off not doing it at all.

Cheap Video Cameras Don’t Have To Have Cheap Sound-  Mike shares in this guest post that just because your video camera is inexpensive and doesn’t have the ability to connect an external microphone, it doesn’t mean your sound quality in your video must suffer.

I hope everyone has an awesome and amazing holiday!

30 Questions To Make Next Year Rock- Travis Robertson offers up a great list of questions to ask yourself as you prepare for the new year.  By answering these questions honestly, you can start planning for a very successful 2012.

Customizing The New YouTube Design- YouTube launched a new design and many are having issues with how to set things up.  One of the major problems people are facing is the ability to direct traffic to their videos instead of the feed. This quick tutorial should answer any questions as well as help you set up your new YouTube channel.

Word of Mouth- Via Twitter- Jay Thompson shares on the value to using social networks like Twitter for your business.  Is it a must have tool that everyone should use?  Probably not, but if you use it properly those that you interact with on social networks are more willing to recommend you openly.

Getting Better Analytics Of Your Site- Many times I hear people say that they are getting so many hits to their website each month.  But, they normally forget to remove their own computer from the equation to get a more accurate reading.  Here’s a quick walkthrough from Ken Cook on how to remove you from the equation.

RETSO 5.0 will be here before you know it!  This year is going to be bigger & better than any other year.  Right now there is a super special deal on tickets for the first 50 who register.  Head on over & register now for the biggest savings possible!

Is Your Site Loading Slowly?  It May Not Be Your Fault- Ken shares of a recent issue on his site with pages loading slowly.  He gives you a few different places to check your site for load speed.  If your site takes too long to load, you will not only push consumers away from reading, but also hurt your Search Engine Optimization.

Is Your Site Mobile Ready?  Here’s a simple way to test your site and see if it is ready for mobile devices.  According to Google, mobile queries have increased 4 times over the past year alone.  In fact, they believe mobile sites are so important that they recently launched HowToGoMo.com to assist businesses with their mobile site.

An Unscientific Look At The Health of Google+ vs Facebook-  Jeff Turner gives a rather unscientific discussion on the health of Google+ vs Facebook.  He shares some statistics he recorded from studying a small group and their interactions on both social network.

It’s hard to believe we are just over five months till RETSO 5.0!  This year is going to be bigger & better than any other year.  Right now there is a super special deal on tickets for the first 50 who register.  Head on over & register now for the biggest savings possible!