Remember when your parents lectured you saying your driver's license was a privilege and not a right? Well, the same holds true when it comes to interacting with blogs. Social media is a great way to get the message out, but there are rules for blog etiquette.

If only there was a way to take away a user's keys when they misuse blogs, we could probably clean up a lot of unnecessary clutter. The following are the 5 biggest ways I see agents misusing blogs:

5. Don't use video, podcasting, etc if you don't have quality content.

Only use video or audio in the following situations:

a) words won't do the story justice (video about proper home staging)

b) it saves you time (an interview where transcribing it would take too long)

Always remember to stay on topic; editing is your best friend. If you think of multiple topics, instead of cramming them in all together, break them out into separate stories. If the video or audio is going too long, leave them wanting more and split it into multiple parts.

4. Reposting stories that are from CNN, Inman, TechCrunch, etc.

Remember that a blog is there to represent you and your opinions. If you are reposting stories and not giving your take on the situation, you are doing your readers an injustice. Summarize the story, link to the full story and give your opinion or thoughts about how it affects you or others.

3. Stories that are just glorified personal advertisements.

It's great that you think that you are wonderful, but rather than telling us how great you are, show us you are great by teaching us to better ourselves.

2. Forcing a post about a property that you have just listed where it doesn't belong.

Sharing a property on social media is cool. Posting a property to someone's Facebook or tweeting about a new listing is perfectly acceptable. There are tons of sites where you can push your listings out to on the Internet, but before you do, take a moment and ask yourself: Given the culture of this site, would people find this post interesting? If you give the answer that everyone is excited about new homes for sale, you will get your keys taken away.

1. Dropping links back to your site as a comment to an article.

Getting links back to your site is one dimension of getting your site to the top of the search engines, and comments are the easiest way to put links back to you from someone else's site. But with great power comes great responsibility. Does the link that you are about to put in this comment add to the discussion, or are you forcing it? Forcing links into comments makes you look unprofessional. If you really want quality links back from that site, ask the blog owner if you can write a guest post.

Your online presence is just as valuable to you as any marketing or branding that you would do. With the majority of home searches starting online, think about how you can put your best foot forward, and not leave behind a trail of bad habits. And remember: think before you link.

Mark Tepper, HomeFinder.com VP of Business Development and Sales, was recently added to Frogpond's list of Industry Visionaries, joining notable profiles including Harley E. Rouda, Jr. (CEO/Managing Partner of Real Living), Victor Lund (Co-Founding Partner of the WAV Group) and Steve H. Murray, Editor of REAL Trends & Lore Magazine, among others.

FrogPond, provider of unique 'Communications Solutions' enabling corporations, associations and small businesses nationwide to effectively reach customers, employees and members with ahead of the curve industry information, is headed by Susie Hale.

Below is an excerpt of Mark's Industry Visionary profile. Check out the full interview on Frogpond. Many thanks to Susie and the Frogpond team!

As an "industry visionary", what do you see as the major changes occurring in the real estate industry?

You don't have to be a 'visionary' to recognize the two areas that are challenging the status quo, social media and agent ratings.

Social media phenomena like Facebook and Twitter are changing the way agents and brokers market themselves and their properties. For a very long time, there was nothing new in Real Estate Marketing/Advertising. Social media has taken the local cocktail party and put it online. The great news is this can be leveraged to help grow your business very quickly, especially for new agents. The bad news is, if you're an established agent that doesn't use social media, you may lose the next generation of buyers and sellers.

Lastly, agent ratings could change the way we choose a Realtor. There are a few sites out there that are experimenting with agent ratings, HAR, RedFin and HomeThinking are the few that come to mind. Relatively speaking, it's not that difficult to become a licensed agent, however, it is difficult to stay in the business and be successful. The easier it is for consumers to differentiate agents, the harder it will be for many at the lower end of the skill/experience spectrum to stay in the game.

Who are the "individual trendsetters" that are shaping the future real estate industry?

In 2006, Time Magazine's person of the year was 'You.' It was the year of the individual with the advent of YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. I think this still holds true in 2009. It could be the agent that has a large following on Twitter or Facebook, the blogger on ActiveRain that gets referrals from other agents or the Broker that embraces online advertising that drives email and phone leads to their brokerage for a positive ROI.

What are the expectations of the emerging real estate consumer?

Consumers want to work with trustworthy Realtors and Brokerages that can sell their home quickly with the least amount of aggravation at the right price. That hasn't changed. But what has is that they are increasingly demanding proof of the capacity to deliver on this promise rather than the unsubstantiated claims that characterized a lot of old-style marketing.

What changes should a Brokerage implement to ensure profitability in the future?

Reduce your overhead, office space, unnecessary expenses and Advertising that doesn't have a positive ROI. Don't be afraid of hoteling in your office space to give the agents maximum flexibility and decreased overhead. Plus, you need to invest in your agents. There may be more expenses in the short term but if you invest in the success of your agents, they will pay you back tenfold.

Ok, I will promise one thing: once you understand the basics of how a search engine orders results, mastering the parts that a search engine cares about is pretty easy. I am going to start with a basic story of how a search engine works, and then in future articles do a deeper dive for each element that a search engine uses to determine your ranking position.

The Spider Bot

Any search engine (Yahoo!, Google, Bing, etc) uses something called a search engine bot that spiders the web looking at different sites.

Translation:

Search engine bot = Automated program that never stops running.

Spiders the web = Clicks on links.

The bot starts on a specific page of a single Web site, clicks all the links on that page, visits all those pages, clicks all the links on those pages, and visits all of those pages. The little guy repeats this process, endlessly churning through all the interconnected pages of the Internet.

Historically, the usual starting point for the search engine bots is a place called dmoz. This place is nothing but a Yellow Pages directory-style site with different categories and lists of sites under those categories. From there, the little guy just goes and goes through as many sites as it can.

The first step in getting a site recognized is getting a link to it from a site that the search engine already knows about. So, if you have a new site, I would recommend doing all of the following to ensure that you get picked up by the bots as soon as possible:

1) Submit your site to either DMoz or Google.

2) Get a link back from a friend's site that has already been visited by the search engine bot. An easy way to tell is if you do a search for your friend's site and they come up (this indicated they have been visited by the search engine bot).

3) Do a search for yourself, and if any of your Facebook, Linkedin, or Myspace profiles come up, put a link to your new site on your profile.

OK, now that we have the basics of how a search engine gets to your site. Next week we will cover the parts of your site that the engine cares most about when crawling your site.

Ok, I know that the witching hour is over, and we are now down to slowly working our way through two metric tons of left over candy. Evan though it is a few days late, I thought I would finish up the Homes Near Halloween Movies countdown. So, without further ado...

#3 - The Birds

This movie not only being one of the best Hitchcock movies, this is one of the best movies of all time. What is more freakier than birds going nuts? Nothing. Birds are always staring at you, taunting you with their ability to fly. You know if they were people they would be the Bodhi of the people world, but who would be our Johnny Utah?

Reference:

#2 - The Exorcist

You know you are in trouble when you need a young priest and a old priest. Much like Child's Play killed the cabbage patch market, The Exorcist was the death blow to pea soup.

#1 - The Shining

Theme of the movie: You can't mess with Jack. For anyone that only knows Jack Nicholson as the old dude that sits on the sidelines at Laker's games, they need to watch this movie.

Plot Summary

Jack Nicholson is hired to be a caretaker for a resort in the wilderness of Colorado. Out of money because he is behind writing his new book, Jack takes the job to support his family. What Jack doesn't know is how the resort is haunted by spirits of the former caretaker that went crazy and murdered his family. On top of that, once it snows a couple of times, you can't get more than a few feet without freezing. Yes, but how are the health benefits?

Although Nicholson pulls of an amazing slow transition into madness, if you have ever known an professional author, I would say that this movie succeeds more as an accurate documentary of the writing process that happens to take place in a haunted hotel.

The Birds takes place in San Francisco, CA.

The Exorcist takes place in Georgetown, DC

Although The Shining was completely show in England, it was modeled after lodges found in Puget Sound, OR

Best San Francisco homes for sale

2275 41st Ave.

$649,900 | 2 Bed | 1 Bath

Perfect outer sunset starter home w/ dramatic ocean and marin headland views from all levels of this reverse plan beauty. Two bedrooms and remodeled bathroom upstairs. Two rooms with bathroom down (not warranted). Hardwood floors up. Decorative fireplace. Full ocean view windows in living room and dining room make this home very special. Original eat-in kitchen w/ skylight. Low maintainance deck with plexiglass wall for total comfort to enjoy the views. Lovely period details. Washer/dryer included.

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Best Georgetown homes for sale

4606 Laverock Pl. N.W.

$1,275,000 | 5 Bed | 3 Bath

Beautiful 1996 colonial in canal view. Open, light-filled floor plan (approx. 5,000 sf+) ideal for entertaining and family room with tall ceilings and doors, family room with fireplace and glass wall adjoins a large eat-in kitchen, generous bedrooms with closet space galore, lower level in law suite, walkout recreation room. An expansive desk overlooks a deep yard. One of the largest lots in the private community.

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Best Tacoma homes for sale

41651 S 86th St

$225,000 | 3 Bed | 2 1/2 Bath

This family home has new flooring throughout. New paint throughout. There is a year waranty on the home. Granite counters and open floor plan. Family neighborhood near schools as well as Military bases and hospital.

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Anyone that tells you that running a Web site is easy is lying to you. Well, actually that's a lie too, since running a bad Web site is very easy and running a good site is what requires some work. My buddy Jim spent the sunny summer months trying to make the coolest real estate Web site ever. At a great cost to his social life, he finally learned the horrible truth that he would never be a master of the Internet--and about 98% of his customers could care less about the things that he was doing online.

How involved you get with a site depends on two things: Your interest and your clients.

Your Interest:

If you have a high desire to learn all the ins and outs of technology, then you should spend some free time looking into what the web can do for you. On the other hand, if you never stopped your VCR from flashing 12:00, then you should probably learn the high level stuff and have someone else build a site that meets your needs.

You Clients:

Is your average client more apt to be online than answer their phone, or do you live in an area like Seattle where if you don't have a nice Web site you might as well be chiseling on stone tablets? My buddy Jim said with all the cool stuff he added, what he should have done was make a simple site that was nothing more than a good looking welcome mat. Something that gives people a good sense of who you are and what you have to offer.

Now the hard part, how do you get people to even see your welcome mat?

Next week's we will start on the basics of search.