Socialebb Strategies and Solutions

I attended last week's Real Estate BarCamp in Houston for a full day of discussion about blogging, technology, and social media.

Paul Chaney, author of Realty Blogging, returned to the real estate industry and delivered the keynote address. Paul gave advice to attendees about developing a social media business plan that includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Trulia, Zillow, and ActiveRain. Later, Paul conducted a more in-depth discussion about blogging and we had a spirited discussion about SEO (search engine optimization). Personally, I think that spending a lot of time concentrating on SEO and speaking to "spiders" distracts bloggers from a more important audience -- real live people! I promise that we will explore this issue in future blog posts. I addressed the matter  several months ago on another blog.

Meeting cyber friends in person and reconnecting with older friends in an informal educational setting sets a tone for lots of sharing and brainstorming.

It was great to meet Trulia Voices Stephanie Edwards-Musa  (Houston), Jason Crouch(Austin), Russell Lewis  (Austin), Erion Shehaj  (Houston), Lisa Heindel  (New Orleans), Ken Brand  (The Woodlands, Houston), Amanda Hall  (Fort Worth), James Wheelock  (Houston), Jill Wente  (Spring, TX), Rick Ratchford  (Spring, TX), Kimberly Fowler  (Waco, TX), Diana Hurt  (Austin), and Teresa Kennedy  (The Woodlands, Houston).






Jeff Turner of Real Estate Shows is known in the Twitosphere as @ResPres. He is shown at left downstreaming live video of the BarCamp event via his iPHONE and Qik.

We shared lots of valuable tidbits, including the fact that there is a name for one of my favorite twitteration pastimes:

• A twoosh is a full 140-character twitter.
  
  I twooshed as soon as I got online this morning and it set a positive tone for the rest of the day!

Shortly after that, a BarCamp buddy noticed my twoosh. She counted my characters and twittered back! This is the first time in my life someone has acknowledged my twoosh online and I was very touched, notwithstanding her spelling error. Imagine someone taking time early on a Sunday morning to count characters in quest of a twoosh! I responded with another twoosh correcting her spelling, of course!

More Digital Memories of the Houston RE BarCamp Confab










ActiveRain's Community Evangelist Brad Andersohn captures Paul Chaney's remarks on digital celluloid.
































Organizer Mike Price (below) offers opening remarks.

is coming to Houston Wednesday, October 22. Trulia is proud to be a sponsor of this event following the July REBarCamp genesis in San Francisco. I can't wait to be there and have a chance to connect with Houston REALTORS!

I am especially excited to meet up with Trulia Voices and Trulia Bloggers! In-person connection is fun and exciting!

Houston Assn. of REALTORS is very progressive. HAR was the first MLS in the country to upload its listings to Google .. it has the most impressive consumer facing REALTOR web site in the country ... and HAR's Bob Hale was declared Inman Innovator of the Year this summer at the Inman Connect Conference in San Francisco. What a GREAT place for a Real Estate BarCamp!

This is a full-day educational event that is FREE for attendees. All costs are borne by the sponsors and there will be an impressive roster of experts coming from all areas of the country.

"BarCampis an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants.  “RE BarCamp takes the traditional conference model usually focusing on early-stage , and related technologies, social , and open , and focusing in on real estate technology and trends."

If you haven't signed up yet, do it today!!!