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Realtors all a-twitter over social media's possibilities

Mary Ellen Podmolik | Chicago Homes: Local Scene

February 20, 2009

Who doesn't poke around online when shopping for a new house or sizing up the competition down the street? But do you twitter with real estate agents?

Do you follow their blog posts? Are you a friend on their Facebook pages?

If you're unfamiliar with the intersection of social media and real estate, just wait.

Sensing a low-cost marketing opportunity, and with time on their hands during the industry's downturn, real estate professionals are taking a fresh look at their computers as a way to establish new relationships and drum up business.

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More than 200 west suburban real estate agents gathered in a banquet hall earlier this month for a "social media training camp." Others are asking techie colleagues to hold their hands as they navigate new waters. And still others are staring at their computers during the wee hours of the night, figuring out how to profit from online relationships.

What real estate agents are finding is that the best connections are made when they put themselves out there first, rather than just their listings. That makes sense and benefits consumers, who can get a head start on finding an agent whose personality meshes with their own. It's easier to make the single biggest investment of your lifetime if you like the person helping you make that decision.

One of the descriptions on Chicago real estate agent Eric Rojas' blog is "truly local Chicago real estate information and analysis from a top-producing Realtor you'd like to have a drink with." Rojas does feature some properties on his blog, but he realizes it's about building relationships first and then sales. Recent posts talked about neighborhoods he works in and the Chicago Cubs, with a picture of him outside Wrigley Field.

"It's the epicenter of all my networking," said Rojas, an agent with Rubloff Residential Properties' Lincoln Park office. "It's the platform for so much. It's so much fun."

It's not just fun; it's profitable. Rojas attributes more than $3 million of his sales transactions last year to clients he met through his social media efforts. Now his blog is listed on his business card and he's frequently up at 1 a.m. tinkering with his Facebook page and blog or posting comments on other's blogs.

Ginger Wilcox, a Marin County, Calif.-based real estate agent who schools other realty professionals nationally on social media, finds she no longer has to tell potential clients about herself anymore. They've already checked out her and her non-real estate interests online, and she likes it. "It makes it easier for real estate agents," she said. "You attract a like kind."

What's also interesting about social media is it's a two-way street.

Social networking allows Scott Gerami, broker-owner of Real Time Realty in Naperville, to find out more information about potential clients before he meets them. If someone finds Gerami and his Facebook page or blog and then e-mails him, Gerami looks for information on that person online so he can get to know the person before the first handshake. It makes the initial one-on-one meeting easier.

"It's been great," Gerami said. "Some of the people, when I come in contact with them, I don't know anything about them. But using these tools, LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace, I learn about them [before] I get that first appointment."

However, that link of personal and professional interests — especially when it's really for professional gain, has to be made carefully. It's one thing for a real estate agent to say he's the guy you want to have a drink with; it would be something else entirely if every picture and most of the posts had references to drinking, for instance.

Margery Shinners, deputy chief executive of the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors, sees the real estate industry approaching social media with the same enthusiasm it first took to Web tools 10 years ago but this time, there's a catch.

"The transparency of your personal self is the connection between people, it is you being you," Shinners said. "But, of course, you need to be very attentive to what stuff about yourself you're putting out there. If it's inappropriate to bring something up at a cocktail party, it's inappropriate to be putting up [online]."

mepodmolik@tribune.com