I’m always fascinated to see how and why people will join online communities… I’ve had no luck with 90% of the social networks in terms of either generating business, making friends or building up my personal brand. However, there are a few good ones out there.

For agents, I happen to think that LinkedIn is one of the most under-utilized networks. There are literally tens of thousands of well-off, educated individuals who use LinkedIn as an online resume service. However, it gets interesting for agents in that they’ve recently started promoting real estate agents, financial advisors and peole without a traditional resume who work in “service” industries (their words).

If you think this might interest you I wrote about the 7 steps you can take to get involved in LinkedIn on Rain City Guide a while back…

Other social networks with lots of opportunity are ActiveRain and Judy’s Book.

Here are my profile page on all three of those networks:

During the seminar, one of the things that I highlight is that real estate agents should not put all of their activity on any social network where they don’t control what happens with their data.  Blogs are such an interesting marketing platform because, as a blogger, you control what goes on your website and yet it is still possibly to get the benefits from a (loosely-structured) online social network.