Four months ago Lori Bowers, a broker with The Lori Bowers Group Desert Properties in Quinta, Calif., didn’t even have a PDA. “Not only did I not have a PDA, but when you would search our company name on Google, we would show up as the seventh entry on the first page, now you can find my name on at least the first ten pages,” she says.

Bowers never doubted that technology could help her business, but she strongly believed (and still does) that real estate is a people business and personal contact was most important. In addition, many of her customers were older snowbirds who aren’t connected via Facebook. “We still do what we always do, we just added to it,” she says. For each e-mail she sends, Bowers will make a personal phone call or send a personal message. “Our market has gone down 50 to 70 percent and what used to sell for $1 million is now selling for $500,000. We needed something positive. Social networking really helps build positive energy in our office.”

Here’s how Bowers worked technology into her business without sacrificing personal contact.

1.    Find a specialist. When Bowers decided to make the commitment to blogging and social networking, she decided to hire someone who could handle the work for her. To get sales associates up to speed on social networking, her social networking specialist works individually with each agent for about an hour each week. She also handles sales associates’ questions, blogs and gets the team set up on Facebook, Twitter, Active Rain, Linkedin and more.

2.    Get a coach. Bowers had an epiphany while attending a Tom Ferry coaching seminar several months ago. “There were 400 people in the room and only four of us didn’t have a PDA. I was one of them, and I felt so out of touch with the real estate market at that point,” she says. She now works with Tom Ferry as well as with Point2Technologies and Superlative. “We get a lot of leads through that,” she says.

3.    Post it online. “We have a lot listed for lease and vacation rentals that we post to Craigslist,” she says. Bowers’ team posts at least 20 listings a day on the site. She also has sales associates video all the properties with a FLIP camera and posts them to her own channel on YouTube.com.

4.    Role-play. “It’s very important to change with the times, which is why we started incorporating more technology into our marketing,” says Bowers. One of the keys to her success is role-playing. From listing presentations to difficult situations getting offers accepted and how to handle social networking, each week the team of 15 acts out the situations so they’re prepared to handle the real situation. “We support each other, so everyone offers suggestions for handling problems, ideas for blog posts and more,” she says.

Overall, says Bowers, she’s thrilled with the implementation process and the success she’s already had. “Social networking has developed a fun environment for our sales associates. We laugh and have a lot of fun making videos. It’s really a social, positive thing for our office, not to mention that we’ve already gotten phone calls from people who may not have called had they not seen our name on a blog or social networking site,” she says.

However, she warns, “You can’t stop business to social network. You must continue to do the things you always did and add to it,” says Bowers.