Don’t touch my blog!!!

I posted this article yesterday on Active Rain a social real estate blogging site. So far there are 89 comments on the post. My first post back in June on the topic had 129 comments on it. So you can tell Blogging or anything to do with curtailing it is a hot topic for many agents.I love blogging and I was very interested, when this past May blogging was brought up at my National Association of REALTORS Professional Standards committee meeting in DC. My ears perked up and I watched and listened closely wondering where this was going. I was relieved when the topic was referred back to sub-committee for further study. This Nov 14th my committee meets again in Vegas and I’m sure the sub committee report will be interesting.

My article as it appeared on Active Rain yesterday….

NAR Looking at Blogs part 2

Back in June I wrote a post about NAR Looking at Blogs the post was featured and had 129 comments.

I knew I hit a hot spot by the comments it generated. At the time I personally was very worried that NAR and or Big Broker would indeed look at blogging and the liability it generated.

I sit on NAR’s Professional Standards Committee and I know that this issue is slated to come back up in November. I can’t help but wonder in what form.

This week I’ve seen 2 posts referencing concern about big brother (NAR) looking at Blogs. One was Bryant Tutus Ride the Blogging Wave and the other Brain Brady’s Blogger be afraid of Big Bad Broker or (Bank). Both of these posts were featured as they should have been.

This is a pretty important issue for Bloggers and next month I think we’ll see some sort of policy come forth from NAR.

Guidelines, that I think on one hand is much needed. Just take a look around here on AR and out in Blogosphere…plagiarism galore, bad mouthing left and right. I’ve seen fair housing violations, inappropriate commission rate discussions and so forth.

The web and blogoshpere is sort of like the wild wild west…anything goes attitude no matter who or what gets hurt. Problem is we’re hurting ourselves.

What will you say if Your broker tells you to stop blogging? Have you thought about it? Maybe you should.

It’s a matter of time before Big Brother steps in to “protect” us.

I’m not at all happy about that prospect.

In June I summarized the professional standards meeting and what was decided about Article 12. Read for yourself the amount of times the word “Blog” is mentioned.

I think its coming!

“Then we tabled the Internet-related issues…blogs to name a few until November. The subcommittee will be looking at Article 12 to see if we need a broader more encompassing ethical direction guiding all forms of communication. They will also be looking at

1. A clearer definition of communications

2. REALTOR making anonymous comments on other REALTORS Blogs

3. REALTORS responsibility for monitoring/editing their own Blogs

4. REALTORS responsibility for Blogs run by licensees affiliated with them

5. Disclosure of time lag (hours or days) in posting comments to Blogs. Must the fact that a Blog is not run in “live time” be disclosed?

6. Posting unfavorable/unflattering (but truthful) comments to Blogs

I can’t wait till November to see what the subcommittee comes back with. It should be very interesting and being a blogger I have very mixed feelings about some of this.

One thing I learned while in DC is that there are many-many people who have no clue what blogging is and surprisingly people in important positions who do not see any merit in blogging and will not encourage their sales associates to blog!”