By Linda Davis with Bob Carney

Social Networking has been around awhile but it seems in 2007 it all got kind of crazy. Invitations arrived in my inbox at a hectic pass and my Catholic upbringing took over.  I felt guilty if I didn’t accept someone’s invitation; I wasn’t raised to be rude or hurt someone’s feelings.  Then the Facebook crowd started throwing sheep and poking and writing on my fun wall.  I had a fun wall?? 

My friend, Bob Carney from Frederick, MD experienced the same social networking stress and decided to do something about it:

"I have been totally overwhelmed by the amount of the social network invites that I received lately. There is no way you can actively participate on all of these networks, be effective and actually get work outside of the internet done. I have never had the time to really just work one and create an actual plan to make it effective. It seems that I have just been following the flock to the next new network. So, as part of my 2008 New Year’s resolution…manage the social networks, before they get the better part of me."

Read more about Bob’s idea to tame the social networking beast in his blog post Social Network Tips and Networking Plan.   

Bob Carney is a very smart real estate agent in Frederick, MD. You can find more of him at Focus on Frederick and at Bob’s Brain Dump.  I’ve asked Bob to stop by and dump on us periodically. 

By Linda Davis

I’ve been a member of the Cyberprofessionals since 1995.  The group originally met chatting on the old RE/MAX Compuserve forum and had an idea; meet in person and share tools, systems, marketing ideas and technology.  Only 9 agents attended that first meeting in Stamford, CT and we arrived by car, plane and train.  Each of the attendess presented a topic they felt would benefit other members of the group.  I remember being wowed by a presentation on Microsoft Publisher; another member spoke on representating buyers, long before buyer agency was commonly practiced. I talked about farming, a topic I am still passionate about.