It started with a lunch last week with Dr. Lawrence Yun, the Chief Economist of NAR and then yesterday VAR sponsored a Bloggercon at the Dulles Area Association of Realtors, in Northern Virginia. At the blogger conference we had Keith Garner, the Director of the Center for Realtor Technology attend, and he brought along Pamela Kabati, VP of Communications for NAR. It was great to see that Keith flew in from Chicago and Pamela came from D.C, to engage their members. I’ve also seen Mark Lesswig the big Technology Cheese from NAR poking about and giving great feedback and comments on various blogs.
This is all VERY encouraging to many, who for awhile, were feeling that NAR wasn’t really engaging it’s members. This is the tip of the iceberg for future connections with members to their Associations. For a long time many members have felt that they had to depend on elected Realtor Leaders (who many didn’t trust, because of the competitive nature of the industry) to contact and work with the National Association. Social Media has given many who didn’t have a voice before; one now. Frankly, I’ve found some the most ingenious ideology in the industry from the blogs that I’ve been reading and thoughts from twitter.
Although I don’t agree that there is some sort of camarilla running the Association, I do agree that we could do a better job of communicating with the various demographics of our members. The word “transparency” is occurring more and more often in the verbiage of the membership. I think this is a natural response to the consumer demanding more “transparency” from it’s Realtor.
The bottom line is that NAR is listening. Members are getting the opportunity to be heard and the Member-Leadership is not going to have much choice but to continue to engage the membership… on the member’s turf. The Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors is also working on reaching out to engage their members with a blog / forum of it’s own. I am thankful to be part of this movement to bring the practitioner back into the role of governing the Association…their Association.
I’ve heard a few non-progressive Association Executives comment that they don’t think VAR should be 
sponsoring “some blog” but instead offering support services to the local associations. This is a clue to the mentality of those individuals. They wish to continue to be the man (or woman) behind the curtain and are concerned about the fact that members will actually have a platform to communicate the need for progress and change.
A “blog” in and of itself is not worth anything. However, a communication tool that can be used to engage the members is a very powerful instrument. The liability and risk is nominal compared to the benefits that can be had. The blog is just a sign of an association’s willingness to return to being an organization of the members. If the local associations won’t meet this need, than I fully support the state’s responding to this need. (I can say this, since our local association is moving forward on this project).
The social media venue of Association communication is not the end-all-be-all to engagement. It’s the current tool of today. Tomorrow, it will be something else. The etiology of how we get there is secondary to the fact that engagement and communication is critically important.
In this ever advancing and changing industry, it’s necessary for Realtors and their representatives to keep up with that rapid change. The argument that this is a generational issue, hold little foundation. The consumer is changing and will continue to do so, we have to be able to meld the old with the new and disregard our own heterogeneity tendencies. It has nothing to do with age…it has everything to do with service.
With vision from state level AE’s like Scott Brunner, and Media Directors like Ben Martin, this is all a pre-cursor to NAR and other Associations recreating themselves to go back into the business of member advocacy on a level that the member can appreciate.
(please let me know at matthew [at] theagenttrainer.com if there are grammer and spelling errors)
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