It's becoming a big thing, the automated posting of blog post excerpts to social network sites. This gets your latest posts out to those following you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The question is, how effective is it at the important thing, generating business? This doesn't just mean getting you leads, but getting you leads that convert to business.

CREST, the Center for Real Estate & Social Technologies, did a survey of real estate bloggers.

It may surprise you to know that, though the bloggers who were active in the social networks got more leads, their conversion of those leads to customers was very low. Why is this?

Their conclusion was that the social network site prospect was searching much earlier in the interest curve, thus not ready to become a real estate buyer or seller. So, it would seem that the networks might prompt a question or contact, but not at a time or from a prospect who was seriously in the market at the time.

So, does this mean we shouldn't be actively working our blogging into the social networks? Not necessarily. However, try to track the time you spend in interaction with these lower conversion leads to see if you should be spending your time doing something else.