Every year the Virginia Association of Realtors (VAR) holds an annual convention and the 2010 event was held last week-end at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, a sleek modern facility which fortunately understands the value of comfortable chair seats for those who are going to be attending seminars held in 2 hour modules, i.e., the mind can only absorb what the derriere can endure. Since Virginia Beach is less than an hour from Virginia’s Eastern Shore it was an easy trip, a piece of cake really, and I slid into my first seminar with 10 minutes to spare. The convention is an annual opportunity for Virginia Realtors to network and to attend seminars on a variety of topics presented by top experts in their field brought in by VAR from around the country. This year I agents selected six seminars, each about using “Social Media”.
So for nearly 12 hours over two days, I immersed myself in Internet social media ideas and questions. Starting with a seminar entitled “Beyond Blogging” given by Jeff Davis from California (who apparently is one of the top 5 experts in the US on Word Press which happens to be the platform this blog is written on) to tips on “Risk Management in Social Media” also presented by another Californian, Ginger Wilcox and finishing with “Agent 2.0” offered by Brian Copeland, a funny, funny guy from Nashville, Tennessee, my derriere endured and my mind was stretcheeeeeed. I loved Brian’s witty aphorism, you can be smart or you can be pretty but this afternoon let’s try to be smart. ( Brian himself is both smart and pretty ! ) All three speakers were terrific, the rooms were fairly crackling with ideas and info, mostly new to me. I definitely was trying to be smart but I think I probably was mostly pretty. Yep, I know I was mostly pretty.
Brian Copeland...Smart and Pretty
Anyway, from “Engagement is the New Metric” and Dunbar’s Number (150) to websites with names like Cademus, TweetBeep and Ping, various rooms full of mostly middle age plus Realtors ( in my case, plus plus) grappled with new names, terms and concepts. We learned how to create an interactive web poll, we learned the program for doing voice-over on videos of our listings and we were urged to “move our off-line to on-line and our on-line to off-line” . My husband likes to call learning all this new technology “Coming out of the Cave.” ( For the record, I should note that he selected seminars on familiar subjects like ” Floating In A Sea of Short Sales” and “Understanding the Glue to Real Estate Agreements” and was not out there trying to understand the security issues of being or not being on Foursquare ! ) However, step by step, I do think I am coming out of the Cave but it is hard — the Cave feels safe and is so familiar. Also, much as I hate to admit it, I’m a person who looks back very nostalgically on the days when a cell phone was simply a device for placing and receiving phone calls. So, we’ll see if by this time next year I’m tweeting Tweets and friending on Facebook. The proof will be in the pudding, time will tell, not taking any bets just yet, etc., etc.
Tags: blogging, Eastern Shore Virginia real estate, Real Estate, social media