Turner's Perspective

For a long time, groups on LinkedIn have served very little purpose.

Today, LinkedIn finally added a few features that will make your LinkedIn group connections more powerful, including advanced search, but the most important of the features is Discussions. When we launched the Real Estate Shows group, this is the feature I was looking forward to the most, so I'm happy to finally be able to use it.

Check it out for yourself.

The next innovation in blogging technology will probably not come from within the Real Estate blogging community.

I'm not saying this because I don't have faith in the creative minds that occupy this real estate space. I do. But innovation is more likely to come from those who are focused on the larger blogging community outside of the RE.net.

This was true last at last years BlogWorld, where new technologies like Utterz made their debut.

This is one of the main reasons I'm happy to be speaking at REBlogWorld. Of course I'm happy to be doing my presentaion on Using And Abusing The Latest Web 2.0 tools. And I'm also looking forward to hearing the other speakers as well. But the real draw for me was that REBlogWorld is part of the larger BlogWorld experience that includes REBlogWorld on September 19th and BlogWorld on September 20 and 21.

When you register for REBlogWorld, you get all three days for one price. And the good guys (Todd Carpenter and Jason Berman) putting together REBlogWorld have worked out a 20% discount for ActiveRain members. Just enter ACVIP in the promotional box during registration, then click reply to see the new price before entering your payment information. But this $350 price goes to $450 on August 22. So,  & you have only a few days left to get the best deal.

Here's the schedule for REBlogWorld on September 19th:

Room 1

• 10:00-11:15 Master the Key Points of Web Client Conversion, From Click to Close - Mariana Wagner
• 11:30-12:45 Social Networking With Photographs - Teresa Boardman
• 12:45-1:45 Lunch
• 2:00-2:45 Getting Great Content Out of your Contributors - Dustin Luther
• 3:00-3:45 How to Win Friends & Influence People Online - Todd Carpenter
• 4:00-4:45 Getting traditional media exposure using new media tactics - Jim Duncan
• 5:00-6:00 Using & abusing the latest 2.0 tools - Jeff Turner

Room 2

• 10:00-11:15 Video Marketing tools & strategies to help your business go viral - Mike Price - Daniel Rothemal - Morgan Brown
• 11:30-12:45 How to write a blog that firmly establishes your expertise - Dan Green
  12:45-1:45 Lunch
• 1:00-2:45 Active Rain VS Word Press - Rich Jacobson and Dave Smith
• 3:00-3:45 What to do when Google doesn’t love you - Kelley Koehler
• 4:00-4:45 How to bring your 1.0 brokerage into a 2.0 world - Matt Fagioli, Pat Kitano, and Brad Coy
• 5:00-6:00 The Pitch - Mike Mueller, Jeff Corbett, Morgan Brown, Dan Green, George Favvas.

The seminars will be moderated by Pat Kitano, Kevin Boer, Ginger Wilcox, Mariana Wagner, Matt Fagioli, Jason Berman, and Jan O’Brien.

Hopefully, I'll see you there.

I have absolutely nothing to add to this post. But when I saw the little "repost" icon in the upper right hand corner. I just had to click on it and see what it did and what it looked like after it did it.

Recent stories of "profile jacking" on Twitter point out the necessity for corporations to vigorously monitor their on-line reputation.

The most notable of the recent stories is that of "Janet," an Exxon "employee" who began posting at the fake Twitter account called ExxonMobilCorp. Jeremiah Owyang has a great review of the Exxon Twitter debacle, and offers some advice to corporations and to the social mediasphere. And, of course, one of his pieces of advice is that "Companies must monitor their brand." Exxon clearly fell asleep on this one, and others have fallen asleep as well, including CNN and Seth Godin.

So why should you care?

I hear the following a great deal, "I don't have time for (fill in the name of the most recent social network or web 2.0 portal)." And people have often asked me why I join so many social networks if I'm not going to actually do anything with them. I have many valid reasons for doing so, and one of the reasons is reputation management. I don't want anyone pretending to be me. If you really want to have a conversation with me on Twitter, you can follow me at respres. But I am also JeffTurner on Twitter, even though I almost never update that name. I created the second account, and others, because I didn't want anyone else to use them. It's really that simple.

It's just too easy for someone else to pretend to be you on-line.

And this is not just true for social media. It's true for blogging as well. It's amazing and heartwarming to note that more reputation bashing is not taking place via blog comments. Debates on blogs can get downright stupid, so given the virtriolic tone of some of the 'conversations" taking place recently in the RE.net, I'm glad that what I'm about to describe hasn't appeared to have happened yet. The simple truth is that anyone who knows my email address and website URL, both of which are easily accessible from just about anywhere, could pretend to be me and comment all over the RE.net as if they were me. It would be very easy to do. And anyone could just as easily act as if they were you as well.

Imagine the damage a disgruntled seller, buyer. former co-worker or competitor could do by claiming to be you in on-line forums, social networks and blogs. As a Realtor®, your reputation is integral to your brand. You need to monitor that brand and do everything in your power to insure that YOU are in control of that brand. This includes using Google Alerts and other search methods to make sure you can respond to valid mentions of your brand, that is a given. But you should also make sure you own your brand on the prominent social networking sites.

If you don't see the value, you don't actually need to engage in a conversation on prominent social networking and social messaging sites. But you should certainly ensure that nobody else is doing it for you.