Shari Chase recently launched ChaseNation , a local social network focusing on conversations in the Tahoe/Reno area of Nevada. This was built on Ning’s social networking platform and is a great way to quick start a “social network for anything”.. Membership has risen from 239 members on April 7th to 340 members today.

This is absolutely a good way to get members of a local community to discuss the local market and it is already proving to be a thriving community. There is currently a trend and definitely a lot of talk about mashing up blogging functionality and social networking. Matt at Automattic recently hired the developer of BuddyPress to take Wordpress in this direction. That is awesome Matt! This will make Wordpress a powerhouse publishing/social platform and we can’t wait to use it for business applications.

Fred Wilson has a lively discussion on his blog talking about “Facebook vs Wordpress” and how “blogging is the social network for adults”. Pat at TransparentRE sees adding Ning functionality as the next natural step for blog networks. Current growing real estate blog networks such as Homescopes and WCRBlogs could benefit from these new tools.

For business blog networks , a hybrid approach definitely makes sense. Business blogging is about engaging prospective clients for new business by providing useful and timely information. Writing blog posts, successfully achieves the goal of providing useful and timely content, but posting great content alone does not maximize potential for engagement. You may have lots of readers and subscribers to your blog, but only a small percentage of your readers ever comment. This makes blogsites a natural place to extend these conversation opportunities. As a result of some of these trends, we’ve also been asked to develop a few real estate specific social components for upcoming blog networks and development is underway…we’re excited about these trends and can’t wait to see publishing and social networking come together to deliver a richer blogsite experience….

Popularity: 46% [?]

Have you ever wanted quick feedback on your listing or product ? For example, what do people like most about the property ? How did they find the listing ? Would they recommend it to a friend ? What about pricing feedback ? Realivent’s new listing polls can help you answer those questions. For example, you can see a listing poll example on our right sidebar here. “I want to upgrade my home, what upgrade will give me the best ROI ?”

Here are the results so far:

Of the 74 votes, 54% of the people thought that the kitchen was the best ROI compared to 28% for bathrooms followed by 9% for the master bedroom. Sure, you already knew that but it makes a difference when you can see the results changing in real time on your own site instead of reading it online elsewhere. If you have a loyal following and good readership, the numbers should provide better insight into your question. The key to getting good results is asking the right questions and framing the right answers. You have total control over your poll. Ask very specific questions and provide answers that will invoke feedback that will validate your questions. We have two types of polls:

1)Listing polls - to get feedback on specific listings , some examples are:
a. Pricing
b. Feedback after showing c. How did someone find the listing
d. Best feature

2)Standard polls - to get feedback on any question
a. General opinion
b. Trends
c. Market feedback

After you’ve created your polls and have a good representative number of votes, you can log back into your Realivent account to see your poll summaries.
You can keep track of all your polls and refine your questions to continue to refine your research.

We hope to see lots of polls created and will share new poll ideas as we see them. In the meantime, let’s get the polls started, here’s how:

1. Login to your Realivent account
2. Go to the new “My Polls” tab
3. Create your new poll
4. Get embed code
5. Paste into your blog or website, embed it everwhere
(A note on embedding - the height may have to be adjusted if you have more answers. In this case , change the height parameter to 600px. 650px, or any other value that will make the poll height fit your page)

That’s it! Sit back and watch your poll results fly in.

Popularity: 55% [?]