We ended up arriving to this session late, but here are some key points from the session titled “Actionable Social Media” that we heard:

• Create blog widgets to promote your branding as an alternative to banner or content ads.
• Emphasize voting and other forms of community participation on your site.
• You can’t go into any social network to self-promote and expect to get good results. Learn to participate for fun and then the connections you make through them will help you achieve your marketing goals without trying.
• You should think very strategically about which social networks to opt into; which networks are most likely to cater to the demographic you are trying to capture? An extreme example: you wouldn’t want to post articles on needlepoint using Technorati because no one there will care.
• Find out what social bookmarking sites other bloggers in your industry are targeting and finding success with. It will help you limit wasted effort.
• Make sure to set up your profile completely when you sign up for a message board so that people who like your posts can find you (along with your site).
• Be careful if you engage people who post bad feedback or comments about you online. If they are showing up in the search engine results on the first page, as the thread continues while you defend your position against someone (or multiple people) who dislike you, the more you respond to the posts, the harder it may become to ever get it off the first page because it becomes more popular in the search engine’s eyes.
• There’s nothing wrong with asking someone who gives you a testimonial to share that on a blog - they will likely help you out since they like your product/service anyways.

These are some great things to keep in mind when you run your real estate blog, and use social networks like Facebook, Myspace, other blogs, forums, and social bookmarking sites to connect with people who may be interested in what you offer. So we give all these recommendations a big thumbs up.