Again, you can use any of these images for anything that you would like – free and open.

(50 more pictures at Todd’s blog)

Interesting tidbits:

• NAR wants to play directly with the consumer
• Raising NAR dues gives them $100 million to play with
• NAR wants to be the consumer advocate to Washington DC

Is it just me, or does anyone really think that an organization that moves as ponderously slowly as NAR, and needs 900 people to reach consensus for any decision, really has a chance to play in the fast-moving and dynamic consumer market?

How many large organizations have been able to make a web-play that actually works? If tech giants like Microsoft can’t even buy their way into the consumer market, how realistic is it for NAR?

I might be being overly pessimistic on this. Dale did mention that they wanted to be the consumer’s advocate lobbying in DC. Okay, I can buy that. How though? How are you going to get consumers to pay attention to you online?

Dale mentioned that Realtor.com has fallen behind, but that when they catch up, they won’t fall behind again. Technically, that’s possible, I just don’t believe they can do it. There’s a lot of catch-up that will have to be done, as the Trulia’s, eppraisal.com’s and Zillow’s of the world keep innovating and winning the attention of the average American.

Every dot on the map is a search on Trulia.com across the US and each line denotes the likelihood that consumers who search here are also likely to search there. It’s sort of like Amazon Recommends for real estate.

For example, in the first city featured in the video we see that people who search in San Francisco are also likely to search in Hawaii, Miami, New York as well as within the state.

Congrats to Mary Pope-Handy of Live in Los Gatos and her mentor, Frances Flynn Thorsen, theRealtyGram! $5000 will be donated to a charity from this competition.

“Facebook is the white pages,
Your blog is the yellow pages.”

There were more thoughts on why it’s important to be a part of the online conversation. With those of us who blog, that tends to be the central node of our informal social network. We do still tend to take part in the “real” social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Active Rain though.

Dustin Luther, of Move.com, brought up the point that anytime you link to someone, you “vote” for them. This is the foundation of the informal network.

Anil Dash spoke about the reality that human behavior hasn’t changed – we’re still the same. Social networking is what humans are born to do. The sites are just revealing the types of things that we do anyway. These same behaviors are just manifesting in a new medium.

Finding Your Voice Panel

(more images on Flickr)

“It takes a while to find your voice, you have to write a little bit first before it really clicks.”
– Philip Ferrato, Editor, Curbed SF

“When someone asks a question, send them a link to a blog post that you wrote answering the question. When the next person asks the same question, the link is already there – send it to them.”
– Ardell DellaLoggia, Associate Broker, Sound Realty

“Write about what you’re passionate about and throw in your opinion. Without your opinion, your voice, I’m not interested in reading it.”
– Drew Meyers, Community Relations Specialist, Zillow

“I don’t want the same people reading me all the time, I’m an agent, I want new people calling me.”
– Ardell DellaLoggia, Associate Broker, Sound Realty

“When you’re writing about things you’re passionate about, you’re bound to offend someone sometime.”
– Marlow Harris, Realtor, Coldwell Banker Bain Associates

Monetizing Your Blog Panel

Can advertising hurt your credibility?
“Yes, in the beginning, you should be focused on growing your brand and credibility first.”
– Paul Chaney, Vice President Marketing, Blogging Systems

“No. We’re not writing for fun here, you should try and get a return on that time investment from the beginning. Especially when it’s leveraging the local connections and non-competitive partners you have (plumbers, home inspectors, etc…)”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

What about Banner ads?
“The most successful source of revenue we’ve had is from TLA. Google AdSense only works for a select few.”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

“I’ve personally cached a $65,000 check from Google, but that’s when I managed over 400 sites. It’s about volume.”
– Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, PayPerPost

“Sponsorship might be a better avenue – where someone will pay $x/month to have the link on your site regardless of how many people come to the site or click through the link. This really works well for niche sites.”
– Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, PayPerPost

Should you get paid to write a post?
“I don’t think that you should get paid to post anything in the real estate industry. Our industry has a hard enough time building credibility, so it has to be authentic.”
– Rudolph Bachraty III, Co-Founder, Sellsius°

It’s to easy for us technologists to get caught up in our technology, our blogs or our social networks. When we do, we often fail to remember that these are tools that are there to facilitate communication and build towards offline interaction, business and partnerships.

A bunch of us are converging on San Francisco in our annual pilgrimage to Real Estate Tech Mecca. It’s a fun event, where we realize the culmination of our online work throughout the year in the connections made face-to-face. Many of us will go away with partnerships and new business opportunities because of the time spent online blogging or connecting through social networking vehicles like Active Rain and Facebook.

This same lesson applies to real estate agents online. Again, it’s easy to get lost in the myriad tools and possibilities open to you online. You could spend a lot of time making sure you’ve got a couple hundred friends on Facebook, answering questions on Trulia Voices or blogging. The most important thing to remember is that you should be driving towards offline (face-to-face) meetings.

The websites and tools available online are just facilitators for your offline interaction.

Chances are, the next real estate deal you make might be instigated by something you did online. However, it will likely be finalized only after meeting face-to-face. The truth is that offline interaction is far more powerful than online.

Take the opportunity, whenever it arises to use tools that help raise your visibility online – grow your brand. But, also take the opportunity to leverage that into meetings and events that actually result in business.

I met Eric Carlsen, co-founder of Online WalkThru, at Inman’s Real Estate Connect conference in New York this January. Naturally, I couldn’t help but proselytize blogging and shortly thereafter the Voxury Populi blog was started, which focuses on the luxury real estate market.

What’s been really interesting to watch is how the team at Online WalkThru has put their own twist on blogging within real estate. They have invited a few guest bloggers, and this month they will launch a new weekly videocast called Vox One. The show is going to be the new anchor-point for their blog, and will feature interviews and insights into the lives of top producers in the luxury real estate market.

The new luxury real estate show starts on June 27th. Bookmark their blog now.

If you’d like to follow along, you can at my personal blog WhiteAfrican.com. If you care, the best blog coverage can be found at my friend Ethan Zuckerman’s blog.

I covered the basics behind blogging and social media, the reasons why it’s important to know about and start participating in the conversations, and how to get started. The attendees had some great questions that told me they were not only interested in the topic, but were going to be taking part in it soon.

So, thanks to everyone who attended, I hope to see your blog online soon (or at least see you begin commenting). A special thanks to ORRA for telling everyone about the event and supporting it through the use of their facility.

[UPDATE: I'm excited to announce the first new blogger from our session. 2 days after, Debra Horowitz has started Orlando's Avalon Real Estate blog - Congrats Debra!]