Dustin was touching on the real, tangible benefits of social networking, as in what it can do for your business. I can personally attest to a 'smarter not harder' result over the past year and a half since I really discovered what social networking is all about. In 2006 I gained absolutely no (zero) new clients as a result of my online presence, but 2007 was much different. Almost 20% of my new clients in 2007 found me directly through my social networking sites, such as ActiveRain, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and my own Edmond real estate website (Yes, I built new client relationships as a direct result of each one of these sites in the last year). This year is on track to produce an even higher percentage.

The real benefit, though, has been the added exposure that my clients' homes get as a result of my diverse approach to the internet. When I list a client's home, I promote it on about 35 different websites. Many of those 35 websites then feed that information out to other partner sites, so in essence my listings end up on an untold number of places on the vast WWW. This equates to more eyeballs seeing my listings, which then equates to more showings, quicker sales, and ultimately higher sales prices.

Think of it this way; If you were searching online for information about homes for sale in Long Beach, CA, where would you start? Would you search Google, Yahoo, Realtor.com, Remax.com, Ask.com, Trulia, Zillow, or one of the other thousands of real estate websites out there? Good question right? YOU might start with Realtor.com, but your neighbor might start with Zillow. Which one's better? Who knows... doesn't really matter. Fact is, over 80% of home buyers start their search online, and each of them start in different places.

So, the question then is, do you want an agent who puts your home on the MLS and on one or two websites... or do you want an agent who gets your home into every possible corner of the internet. Do you want to attract only buyers who start their search on Zillow, or do you want to attract buyers from everywhere?

I would think you'd want the agent who covers it all, so that no matter where a buyer begins searching for Edmond homes, they'll see yours!

So anyway, back to this social networking thing; it's nice to be recognized and all, but what this really does is drives even more traffic to my websites, which translates into more relationship building (with both peers and consumers), which then turns into better results for my clients.

By the way, I've also noticed a new flow of traffic from RSShugger.com lately, where my Edmond Real Estate blog is currently listed in the top 50.