Anybody writing a blog, participating on Twitter, upload to YouTube or using one of the thousands of social media applications can divide their activity into three categories:

Before Twitter and micro-blogging, we waited for mass media to post breaking news and then waited for the masses to Digg it up to see what caught the public fancy. With micro-blogging applications like Twitter reporting from all corners of the world in breaking news sound bytes, the speed of media hastens.

The newest online paradigm is to be the “breaking news” source. Those sites that can position themselves as breaking news sources within verticals – markets (CNBC), celebrity, real estate, etc. – are rewarded with loyal traffic. Soon, sites will be able to incorporate breaking news feeds to attract a constituency. Twitter has proved sound bites can make for compelling watching (see Election.Twitter.com).

Popacular lists the top Delicious bookmarks over the last hour or day

Tweetburner lists the top URLs being Twittered. Also tracks how many clickthroughs your Twitter links are getting.

Alltop has compiled a list of web/blog sites that provide interesting breaking news at Goodtweet.Alltop.com

Real estate brokerages need to provide more information about the housing markets to attract a loyal following of local readers. Just providing the latest listings is old hat. Real estate blogging has proven effective, but very few agents do it due to the challenges of writing and maintaining a blog.

Simply put, brokerages can now leverage their agents into reporting on their markets in real time without blogging. The social media, particularly micro-blogging tools like Twitter and bookmarking applications like Delicious, have advanced to a tipping point where agents can “broadcast” updates in sound bite format. Brokerage sites then aggregate all their agent updates and comments into a stream of compelling news feeds – new listings, info on recent sales, multioffer stories (118 on a house in San Jose recently!) neighborhood changes, new deals – that is displayed on the home page. The analogy: Think of providing a housing update ticker tape, anybody interested in real estate is compelled to subscribe to it and watch it on a daily basis, just like CNBC.

Example: Chase International

Chase International has been a pioneer in providing the Web 2.0 interface between their agents and the consumer, starting with their social network Chase Nation. ChaseNation’s expressed mission is to provide a wealth of commentary on the Northern Nevada and California High Sierra housing markets and create consumer loyalty, even inviting them into the Chase Nation social network. The key to ChaseNation’s success in execution has been their agent involvement to provide that commentary. We’ve recently begun working with Chase agents through our Social Media Marketing Workshops on the mechanics of “broadcasting” that commentary across the web via a variety of social media applications. By doing so, agents directly benefit from positioning themselves as experts in their market. This translates into increased online exposure that generate leads without blogging.

Want to know more about the mechanics?

We invite broker/owners, agents and others interested in the broadcast social media to free webinars this week that will detail how to develop this new brokerage website that “broadcasts” real time information to your customers. Best of all – the system is also free to implement! We’re scheduling the one hour webinars this Thursday from 10:30-11:30 and Friday from 10:30-11:30. Please click here to register.

Testimonials

You can find commentary and testimonials on our Social Media Marketing Workshops at this Twitter based group (called #smmw) where participating agents communicate during our webinar sessions. If you’re an agent interested in learning more about our Social Media Marketing Workshops, we are starting a new 12-week session on Mondays from 10:30-11:30 Pacific time, starting November 10. You can register at this link.

Related articles:

The Social Broadcasting System
Slideshow: Website 2.0, Creating the Conversational Web

LinkedIn raised $22.7 million and their new investors include enterprise systems company SAP and publisher McGraw-Hill.

Strategic reasons? (just guessing)

An enterprise system company like SAP can port LinkedIn’s personal profile data, networks and network communications within the enterprise system. This automates the user experience so they may continue to work on LinkedIn, and have SAP capture this work. That’s only the first step; SAP and other enterprise systems will likely find ways to port bookmarking applications like Delicious and micro-blogging applications like Twitter or Yammer. They would use feed-based aggregation to port these data into their systems until they start looking like “Enterprise Facebook or Friendfeed“.

A publishing company like McGrawHill could leverage LinkedIn profile information to provide context to their articles in their magazines like Business Week. For example, LinkedIn could provide a “opt-in” on user profiles that allows publishers like Business Week to link quoted personage to their LinkedIn profile. Example: Pat Kitano says “blah blah”… LinkedIn would become the online Who’s Who, as well as a Who knows Who.

We’ve just updated our Domus Consulting Group site to clarify one of our initiatives we introduced at BlogWorld:

Domus Consulting Group is the leader in the development of a new social media platform we simply call the “Social Media System“. This system enables companies, organizations and groups to create powerful effective social networks WITHOUT REQUIRING THEIR PARTICIPANTS TO BLOG. Using various popular applications like Twitter and Friendfeed, and bookmarking tools like del.icio.us, our Social Media System facilitates real time news wires. We developed the System because blogging can be challenging, but participating in the various social media is easy and fun.

For example, the System can be easily incorporated into a typical real estate brokerage site. Real estate agents broadcast market news through Twitter and other micro-blogging applications. The effect is that of a local news wire reporting updated Twitter feeds by a corps of agents. One agent may Twitter “this San Francisco 3BR condo just went for $200k over asking… in this market? Click here – http://tinyurllink.com“. Readers will click and subscribe to real time news offered by that agent because it keeps them up to date on the markets they are interested in. More importantly, the Twittering agent develops a following and builds a lead network that will benefit from his/her insights into the market. You can see more details of the System at our slide presentation Website 2.0 – Creating the Conversational Web.

Contact us for a demo.