You are closing business.

Yes I understand that you are communicating with vast amounts of people, building relationships and adding to your center of influence, but the real test, the proof will show up in your bank account.

If you are spending the time and energy online for business, good business dictates that you be paid for your efforts. Have you listed a property, sold a house, or received a referral from an online source? Congratulations! Your efforts are paying off. Or do you spend many hours a day online with nothing to show but a lot of new friends? It’s time to seriously reevaluate your online business plan.

At the end of the day your online success is not measured by the amount of people you know, or the number of people you follow or the number of people who visit your website or blog. From a business standpoint your success is measured by the dollars earned.

In order to change your results you will need to change your approach. You should consider:

· Spending less time engaging other real estate agents and more time finding people in your area to get to know by listening, commenting and discussing topics that are important to them.
· Changing your message. Are you spending the majority of your time discussing with others ways to build a better mousetrap? The buying or selling real estate customer are more concerned with local area information, home prices, and available inventory than they are about fixing NAR.
· Asking for business. I know, you were told social networking is like a cocktail party and you would never walk up to someone and hound them about business. Instead of a cocktail party, you may want to think of your social marketing efforts as attending a chamber of commerce or business networking lunch. You can still enjoy good light-hearted conversation but when the time is right, you should never be afraid of telling people who you are and what you do.

If the Internet and social marketing are one of the tools you are using to generate business, then it better being doing just that.