Musings For A Darkened Room

Early last month the new social  bookmarking site Dwellicious began it’s beta testing and I have been fortunate enough to take part in it.  The site, which gained a lot of buzz at this years NAR Convention, is yet another step in the advancement of online real estate.  With the recent successes of larger real estate portals like Trulia and Zillow, the online real estate experience is drastically changing.  Dwellicious continues this advancement by providing a service unlike anything I have seen in online real estate.

Dwellicious allows users to organize, share, and discuss real estate listings using a similar format to that of del.icio.us.  Users can save listings  to their bookmark page either from the page itself or by using a bookmarklet in their preferred browser.  Though you have the ability to bookmark listings from any real estate site, Dwellicious has upped the ante by providing a list of 14 preferred real estate portals, including Homes.com, Realtor.com, Trulia.com, and Zillow.com.

The preferred portals provide the advantage of having your bookmarks automatically updated by Dwellicious to reflect changes to the listing, be it pricing, availability, or anything else updated about the property.  Unfortunately any listings that are not bookmarked from a preferred site do not have the ability to be updated, but will still be stored for your convenience.

Once bookmarked your listing is tapped into a number of additional features available on the bookmark details page.  Dwellicious has done a great job at integrating some of the prime features from other websites right into your bookmark details page.  Here you can view maps, discuss the listing, share the listing, get a valuation, see recent home sales in the area, learn more about the area demographics, get information on local schools, get the walk score and find out what’s nearby, view images of the home and the area, and view the properties update history.

As you can see Dwellicious provides some incredible features all in one place for all of your favorite listings.  This service is great for the serious home buyer and gives you a one stop place to find all your favorite listings from all of your favorite real estate sites.

From a realtor stand point you have a couple advantages here.  First your listings can easily be discussed and shared with other users.  In addition Dwellicious links do not appear to be nofollowed, so your site and listings do have the ability to build links from Dwellicious user profiles.

Those of you who follow me on Plurk or Twitter probably saw my rants recently about the corporate decision to block Plurk.com on our network at the office.  While nothing was officially passed down, I am sure they felt it would help those of us who use it be “more productive” with our day.  The irony of this change is that the decision to block Plurk came shortly after the return of (The Gypsy) David Harry’s SEO Plurkshop; a clique which I frequently reference and pass on links from at the office.  I can understand blocking social sites like Plurk from departments that don’t NEED social media, but does it make sense to block something like Plurk from website marketers?

I get that social media isn’t always a business venture, and I know that those of us in the office that were using Plurk were not doing so on a strictly business basis.  I’ll be the first to admit that my use of Plurk was not always for the harvesting SEO information and news.  However, the time spent on Plurk outside of those tasks was used to develop relationships with others in the industry.  Relationships that have often provided me with useful and relevant information related to my work here in the office.

I think the problem is that most people still don’t understand social media and the value in it.  Sure there is A LOT of random banter and back and forth on social networks, but those interactions are what build relationships.  And out of those relationships you build a network of people who share their knowledge, their information, and their thoughts on subjects that in many cases may inspire your work or even give you a new idea or concept you might have never considered.

When the threat of a plurkless office was brought up a few months back I quickly tried to show the value in social media by openly passing on links and information from social sites that I felt would benefit my colleagues and our clients that I found on sites like Plurk and Twitter.  I would share links 2, 3, sometimes even 4 times a day with information that was relevant to the work we do.  These articles and ideas all came from social media and I would not have been aware of them had it not been for these sites.  There is always someone else out there who follows different people, reads different blogs, or has their own SEO experiences to share, many of which will never show up in your reader or during your personal research.

I feel that social media and website marketing go hand in hand.  I am a strong believer that social media can change the way businesses interact with the general public and other businesses in ways never imagined.  I also believe that the diversity of ideas, points of view, and information provided on social networks is a great way to help businesses and marketers alike stay on top of their industry and build a network of resources often lost in the sea of information on the internet.  Sure, social media might take a few minutes away from client work off and on throughout the day, but I think that the overall rewards outweigh those few minutes of “productivity” that are lost.  By blocking sites like Plurk in a marketing environment you are separating yourself from another avenue of valuable information that might not only benefit your employees, but often your clients.

First off, let me start out by saying I am in no way an expert at reputation management; nor have I spent hours researching the subject. With that said, there’s a chance that perhaps what I am about to say has been said before; if it has, then kudos to those whom blazed the trail before me. I am writing this based off of personal experience and observation. I’m not saying I’m right or wrong, just acknowledging what I’ve observed. If you feel the need to hear the gospel of reputation management from an expert, this is probably where you leave. For the rest of you, I hope you find some value in this as I know that I have.

When I think of reputation management the first thing that comes to mind is what others are saying about a person or their business. What clients are saying, what competitors are saying, and what other media sources are saying. But what most people probably don’t consider, is what it is they are saying about themselves online.

If you have friended or followed me on any of the various social profiles I manage, you probably know that I am a very candid person. I’m not sugar coated, I’m not filtered, and I don’t mind cracking jokes; even if they are at someone else’s expense. The fact of the matter is, I am who I am. I do this because even though I want people to see me as a professional, I also want them to see who I am as a person.

With social media becoming such a vital part of small business it’s important to properly represent yourself. You never know who may be looking at your business or profile; potential clients, potential partnerships, perhaps potential employees. If you portray yourself in your various social outlets as the serious sophisticated corporate type, yet you run your business in a casual mom and pop fashion you are already starting off your online relationships on the wrong foot. You are giving people a false sense of who it is they are dealing with. You would never market yourself as an orange salesman if you were selling apples, so why pretend to be what you’re not? Sure by showing your true colors you may scare off some of the higher end prospects, but in doing so you are capturing those who are most interested in what it is that you actually have to offer.

The value in this is that you in turn capture those who will work best with your business model and your personality. In my personal experience this has lead to some incredible collaborative efforts between me and my clients. Furthermore, it makes the overall process more comfortable for both parties. Your business relationships are much like your personal relationships, and if you can’t start out on a common ground there’s bound to be some bumps in the road.

In the end the most valuable take away from being yourself is that you know that the people you are interacting with are doing so because of who you are, not because of who you are pretending to be. By faking it you risk others seeing through your fake personality, and if you fall victim to your own faults, you risk tarnishing your online reputation and your business. Even more harmful would be exposing you’re a fraud in your face to face interactions. I know that I have developed opinions and ideas about certain people I interact with on social sites, and I know that I would be disappointed if at some point I met them in person and their online personality turned out to be nothing more than a façade.

One final thing to realize is that while being yourself you still need to keep a sense of professionalism. A lot of us use social media both professionally and personally, so there will be times when the two may cross paths and sometimes may even cross the line of appropriate. Rest assured this probably isn’t the end of the world. I have dropped my share of F-bombs and bad jokes on Twitter and Plurk and have still managed to maintain what online presence I do have. But it is still always something you need to be aware of.

Managing your reputation is an important aspect of running your business, but no one can destroy your reputation more than yourself. It doesn’t matter if all of your clients have given you high marks on their blogs and websites. If you misrepresent yourself their words are useless. People will take their personal experiences and opinions into consideration long before the ideas and opinions of others.

This week I decided to take a different approach with the Social Media Moment. Up to this point the posts I showcased have been funny moments. This week I decided to take a plurk from Anna Bourland that I thought had some really good subject matter and some solid feedback from other Plurk users. Anna discusses an article that she read offline about Social Media and how businesses should monitor it’s use.

Social media involvement has to be monitored to make sure your company goals are the focus.

I think this was a great post, and though ‘Audrey the Quotable’ again was in the running for this plurk. I wanted to go in a different direction this week. This weeks Social Media Moment has a great topic and I think any added feedback or thoughts you would like to share on this plurk would add to it’s value.

Finally, I remind you that you can alway feel free to contact me on Plurk or Twitter and let me know about something funny or interesting that you feel should be featured. I can only see so much, other users can be a great outside set of eyes.

One of the biggest muses of the social networking site Plurk is karma. Karma is obtained by using various aspects of the service, be it inviting friends, regular plurking, or leaving comments on other people’s plurks. The use of karma, which I assume is a way for the service to keep users active, is both a blessing and a curse. While higher karma graces you with various perks from the service, it also results in a timeline full of karma related plurks from other users.

“…been losing karma”, “…thinks my karma is stalled”, and “…getting close to going over 70 karma points” were all plurks that graced my timeline at various points today, all of which resulted in numerous responses about other people’s karma and their disappointment or excitement about it. But in the end what dose karma actually provide us? Sure you get some perks, but how many of those actually add value to the user experience.

Perhaps the most useful karma reward is achieved at 10 karma points. At 10 points you have the ability to personalize your timeline title. From a personalization aspect I think this is valuable, much like adding your age, location, etc., it gives you the ability to give other users an idea of who you are.

At 25 points you are rewarded additional emoticons, while these can add some fun visualization to the plurk timeline I really don’t think it adds any real value to the service. Furthermore the dancing banana was only funny the first 5 times.

The emoticon perks repeat again at 50 and again if you invite 10 of your friends to join. Again these simply add more flare to your posts and in some cases infect your timeline just as much as karma plurks do.

But perhaps the most useless, and in my opinion the one perk that could negatively affect your Plurk experience is achieved at 40 karma points. At 40 karma points you are given the ability to change your plurk display name. To me this is the most baffling concept to come out of a social site. You establish yourself as a specific individual with a specific display name for the first 40 karma points, and then can suddenly change your identity on a whim.

How might this hurt you? For starters anyone who friends you after you’ve changed your display name probably only knows you by that name. Because of this they are probably unaware that you were once JoePlurk, since your current display name is MightyJoePlurk. In turn they may use @MightyJoePlurk when they reference you, which sadly does not link back to your profile. Which brings us to another problem. Let’s say that someone wants to visit your profile, and they only remember you by the name MightyJoePlurk. If they use that in the profile URL they will be sent to a friendly screen featuring our friends in the A-Team.

Sure it’s amusing, but not when you are trying to find someone.

Clearly there is room for Plurk to rethink their karma rewards and provide something that can potentially enhance the user experience. First and foremost if you are going to allow people to choose a alternate display name, then at least make it so that if someone uses @displayname it links to the persons profile, the same should apply to the user URL.

Some additional ideas that stemmed from a plurk posted by bloggeries asking what people would want to see as added perks after 50 karma points included adding additional qualifiers to choose from, customizable qualifiers, and the ability to share karma with friends.

I think of these perhaps the most valuable from a user standpoint would be the additional, or customizable qualifiers. The qualifiers always make it easier to fit what you have to say in 140 characters by saving you a few characters at the beginning. In addition it allows you to express yourself in more ways. I think the ability to share karma, though a friendly gesture, would add to the karma whoring that already plagues people’s timelines.

I think the current perks provided to Plurk users add to the experience of plurking, but the value in them lacks. Especially when you look at the shortcomings of things like changing your display name.