David Meerman Scott will be keynoting the NAR convention this November in Orlando, FL. He is the best-selling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, which has sold like a bajillion copies (approximately), the author of the very cool WebInkNow blog and a guy with three names. Let’s face it, that alone makes him sound pretty damn important.

After hearing his interview on Real Estate Radio USA last week, and learning he actually lives in the area, I did what I always do when I find out someone interesting with a real estate tie-in lives nearby, I stalked him gently.

Sent him an e-mail, sent him a video reply to one of his YouTube videos, connected with him on LinkedIn, followed him on Twitter, I think I even shot him a quick old fashioned hand written note with an actual stamp and everything. Just some innocent, gentle, harmless stalking in the interest of securing a lunch appointment to do some brain picking.

I’m a firm believer in surrounding myself with people way smarter and more successful than myself in the hopes of getting dragged up a bit through osmosis. Needless to say, I was thrilled to get a quick reply and an invitation to meet at Starbucks. He had taken a look at my videos and the links I sent him and actually asked ME if I would be interested in being included in his new book. Ummm…..let me think about it for a second….uummmm……Well, Hell Yeah!

He’s a super-nice guy, an Apple-user and surprisingly way more approachable than his triple nomenclature might suggest (a very understandable SEO explanation of why he uses three names is here.) He offers some great FREE e-books on his website, has some great thoughts on viral marketing (his “word of mouse” tagline is brilliant) and in my opinion will be just the shake up keynote that NAR needs.

He spent most of the limited time we had interviewing me for his new book, but we also got to talk about travel, spending time on the Cape, competitive swimming, commercial condos in the area and generally shooting the shite. He also asked for permission to use my story in his NAR keynote speech. Again…..ummmm…..YES! PLEASE!

So believe it or not, the point of this post isn’t all about me name dropping or bragging because I got two free copies of his books, The New Rules of PR and Marketing and the brand new one, Tuned In (which has a nice little section about our beloved fellow RE.netter, Russell Shaw). This post is about how social media can connect people who theoretically should not really be connected.

Let’s face it, a rookie real estate agent less than one year in the business with hardly a track record to speak of, should NOT be having coffee with the NAR keynote speaker at Starbucks and getting interviewed for his new book. Without even knowing it, I was becoming a living, breathing example of exactly what David talks about in his “New Rules…” book.

So when people ask me how much money have I made off Twitter, or how much direct business I’ve generated on Seesmic, I explain that some of the best value of social networking is extremely difficult to measure in dollars and cents. Some of the most fruitful rewards of social networking are not the deals we close today, but the connections and relationships we open for tomorrow.