This is for all of you young whipper snappers out there who think that anyone over 50 is going to eat your dust because you do social networking!

I'm going to tell you a story with one of those "Respect Your Elders" messages - you can learn from them!  Um, from us!

There was an amazing agent at my old company who had social networking down!

She was a geezer agent.  Her obituary said that she was 79 when she died.  But she had to have been at least 90.  She was a pretty woman who wore Chanel suits to the poshest office in Washington, and she was clueless about how to use a copying machine, let alone a computer, digital camera or any bit of technology other than her very basic cell phone (and all it did was allow her to make and receive calls - no text messages or Email).  And she sold about $50million a year in real estate, because she totally got social networking.

At an office meeting, she gave what was my first training session on social networking.  She went to parties.  Lots of parties.  And she networked.  She was the queen of schmooze, and she would follow up the next day and the next week and the next month, calling people back (she preferred a regular old phone to her primitive cell) and putting together amazing transactions. 

The night before she died, she had ratified a contract on an $8 million dollar property, and I understand she was on both sides of the transaction.

Now, all I'm saying is that we didn't invent social networking.  It didn't begin with Active Rain, Facebook, or Twitter.  And what this lovely old lady  agent taught me was that the most important element of social networking is the social part of it. Oh, and she also taught everyone who watched her about how important it is to follow up.  She, of course, used a telephone rather than Tweets, email or text messages.  I like to use a combination of the three.

It's important to supplement Active Rain, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever else you use with all kinds of social network contact with other human beings, at church, at neighborhood or PTA meetings, the Lions Club, RE Bar Camps, at parties and anyplace else where people who might want to buy or sell houses might hang out - or agents who can refer them to you.  You need to use every bit of the new technology at your fingertips, as well as the old fashioned telephone.

And never ever forget that real estate is a contact sport!  You need to get them off your computer screen, out of your virtual space, and into your automobile.