I have been working on numerous real estate projects over the past few years. Recently, I have been assigned with helping a few realtors and businesses utilize and develop a social networking strategy. Whether you are a real estate agent or not here are some simple guidelines for establishing your plan of attack.

Goals and Objectives
Decide what your business goals are and how each network you decide to use can support that goal. Also, while you are using and growing your networks you are going to want to measure against these goals to make sure your efforts are worth your time. These goals can be acquiring new clients, establishing yourself as an industry expert, marketing products, testing out marketing ideas, etc.

Develop a Plan and Strategy
Examine your target market and determine the appropriate social networks to reach them. Since managing your online presence on these sites takes time I suggest you pick just a few to start out with. Establish basic goals for each site and make sure that you regularly monitor your effort against these goals. Establish your home base on your blog and update and manage your contribution to the networks from there. One other thing to keep in mind is to not only talk about yourself and things you are doing, but to also monitor and contribute to the “conversations” going on.

Participate and Evaluate
No marketing effort is worth doing with out proper tracking and evaluation. Your social networking effort should be somewhat fluid and if something works do more of that. Also, since there is so much give and take, listen carefully to what you networks responds to and offer them more of the same.

Additional Resources:
Getting Started with Social Media in 2009 (for Real Estate)
5 Keys To Social Networking Success
How to Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

Click here for a compresensive list of social networking sites:
The Top Social Networking Sites