"How do you like your new gig,?" asked Lew Sichelman, perhaps America's most ardent and prolific consumer real estate columnist and my dear friend of nearly 30 years, by phone the other day. "Unbelievable!," I answered, wanting to forget that I learned that automatic response from a Tommy Hopkins sales training class I took a dozen years ago. But it's an accurate description of how it's been to join a team that is clearly among the most revered and respected professionals in real estate.

 Many self-proclaimed experts tout the importance of social media in real estate marketing as if it were a nitroglycerin prescription for someone with a heart ailment: Without it you will die. We have to remember that social media are communication channels; and, yes, their power, their ability to engage and cause immediate action indeed can be daunting. But they are still just channels and they are not the only channels you can use to reach, engage and cause your target audiences to respond.