A large part of social networking is the grouping of individuals into a particular group of interest.  People join websites like Facebook and MySpace to find people of similar interests.  All social networking websites allow users to connect to each other via buttons and groups.  The more friends you have on these websites, the bigger your network is. 

I finished an experiment a few months ago which proved beneficial to my real estate business. My first goal was to make over 100 friends a week.  The concept here was the more friends I had the bigger my network and the more people would hear about my real estate services.  But the reverse happened. Even though I was adding many friends, none of those friends got any personal attention. After several more experiments, I found the perfect number.  If you use 4 different social networking sites to make 12 friends per week (in your target market), by contacting each friend at least 3 times your sphere of influence will increase dramatically.  Each friend is getting enough personal attention to be interested in you and your real estate knowledge.  But, the benefit doesn't stop there.  Those friends will tell their friends and so on and so forth.  In essence, you gave the perfect amount of people a small bit of attention, enough for them to be interested in you.  The next time they think about real estate, they will think about you.

Give it a try for one month, it takes a bit of persistence but it works.

Michael Volkin is a social networking expert and President of Area Pro Realty, a new innovative real estate franchise.

"Brokers, there are many real estate franchises available, choose wisely becuase real estate has changed and many companies have not. Sometimes, the best real estate franchise is one that you haven't considered."