Rain City Guide

Before I explain the title, first a story…

Growing up in my family meant lots and lots of games every time the extended family got together. We often turned to either charades or scrabble, but if I was adamant enough, we’d often pull out my favorite game, Balderdash — a game where one person draws a real, but extremely obscure, word and everyone else attempts to create a “definition” that will seem plausible to everyone else. I loved playing because it involved a certain level of imagination that was often beyond the scope of the adults in the room and leveled the playing field for the kids.

I mention Balderdash because there came a time when one adult, my dad, went on a rampage and continuously won game after game much to the frustration of the rest of the family. Finally, one evening, my dad broke down and gave away his strategy. He had learned that if he used the concept of “alcohol” or “drugs” in his made-up definition (as in “XYZ is the process of fermenting a bitter beer-like drink using a special blend of traditional hops and long-grained rice”), then my family would overwhelmingly choose his answers (not sure what that says about my family?). By simply making consistent references to drugs and/or alcohol my dad had found the “secret” to Balderdash.

So how does this relate to the title?

I’ve been using Facebook a lot lately (it’s part of my research for work, of course) and have been consistently jealous of the people who can ask a question and get tons of responses from their friends. I put thought into questions like:

• What were your three most influential fiction books?

and

• Does LinkedIn etiquette suggest that you should first write a recommendation for someone before requesting a recommendation from them?

Yet, my questions were falling largely on deaf ears. If I was lucky, I might get one person to respond. Clearly, my question-asking strategy was not working!

As I hunted around for successful questions (i.e. ones with lots of answers), I noticed a clear and obvious trend. The questions that did well on Facebook all invoked sex in one form or another. Questions like “what do you wear to bed at night?” do really well in facebook and my questions had no sex-element whatsoever…

This got me thinking… How I might engage a real estate audience with a sex-theme? So, earlier today, I posted the question on Facebook “What’s your favorite source of real estate porn?”
Based on my research, I was somewhat confident that this question would get a few responses, but when I came home this evening, I was somewhat startled to find out that 13 people had responded in only a few hours! Awesome! I found success!

My takeaway… If you’re playing Balderdash, pull out the drug and alcohol definition when you need a leg-up and if you’re trying to build a community within Facebook, use a sex-theme when you need attention. And should you ever decide to organize your own community, I recommend spending most of your time early on just trying to find out what makes your community tick!