This morning I was quickly scrolling through the CCIM Technologies* news feed looking for stories to share when I stumbled across this little gem. The National Association of Realtors® posted a link to a blog article recapping a virtual town hall meeting presented by NAR President Ron Phipps to thousands of NAR members.

Understandably, this organization is scared. Things are changing rapidly on a political front and some systems, like real estate, are scrambling to protect themselves from local and national governments looking to fill empty coffers. I get it. Phipps response to this, however, has caused a severe backlash from NAR members who feel like they don’t have a choice to support the NAR’s political agenda or not. How do I know this? The answer is Facebook, obviously, and the NAR better deal with it soon.

17 hours ago from when I am writing this blog, the NAR posted a link on their Facebook page to their official blog article covering the townhall meeting. The intent, based on their verbiage, was to rally support for their agenda amongst NAR members. They are offering a toll free number for agents to call and “voice” their approval, disapproval, whatever. Their biggest mistake was posting something as controversial as this in a space like Facebook and then not monitoring it closely for the next 12 hours to see where it goes. The result? Basically a flame war is erupting against the NAR from their own members who have no problems voicing their dissent publicly… where anyone can see it and chime in with their opinion. If anyone thought democracy was dead, they are not paying attention to Facebook comments and their power.

So what does this mean for the NAR? What should they do? They should sure as hell not ignore it. One way to let things get really out of hand, is to completely ignore a social media thread like this. David Meerman Scott once sited a similar situation in his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR with one of the largest photography company’s in the world. They managed to avert their customer care crisis by responding.

Damage is already being done to the NAR’s agenda by their own, but they can help curb the negativity by wading into their own social media space and lending their voice. It would not be smart at this point for them to kill the thread, because then their members would feel even more threatened, like their own organization is looking to silence them. Below is the full thread as I saw it this morning. Check it out. I had to take it in segments, so my apologies if the sizes vary.

*The opinions expressed on this blog are my own, and do not reflect those of CCIM or CCIMTECH. Capisce?