Facebook is becoming an essential tool for corporate public relations even for those firms that sell to other businesses. Easy access to consumers who seem willing to share just about anything with their peers has sent waves of business marketing executives into the social media waters here, but we’ve found that it can be just as effective for B2B players.

Some of the nation’s largest brands are already investing heavily in Facebook fan pages and apps (games or other diversions that attract the attention of target market consumers), but the truth is that expenses for social media can be relatively low.

We’ll be sharing more information about how to capitalize on Facebook on our own fan page: facebook.com/rgapr. Check it out.

Image via CrunchBase

But the government reports that it’s not mortgage bankers adding to their ranks, but rather mortgage brokers, a breed of worker some have written off as endangered.

National Mortgage News reported that the jobs report “disappointed analysts who were looking for a sign that the job market had finally turned the corner.”

I’m no analyst, but I find this encouraging news for our industry. The brokers are the first to leave when things turn bad and lenders tighten up credit. They are also the first to return when there is money to be made lending. Perhaps this is a harbinger of better things to come.

That’s why you’ll see us launch a new custom publication in a few weeks. In fact, Matt Strickberger is working on it now and I expect it will rival any publication in the space. Not that we’re trying to do that. We’re really trying to add some real value to our existing clients and this will do it. But that’s not the point. The point is that we tell people to do something for their own good and they should expect to see us do it for our own good.

We’re not the only company out there helping firms produce their own publications. Imagination Custom Publishing and Content Marketing in Chicago is another. They don’t work in our space, but they are drinking their own Kool-aid. They’ll be launching a new publication for marketing pros this week, according to this story on their website. I’ll be checking it out. If I see some value I’ll recommend that my clients read it, which means I’ll have to read it. Let’s hope they do a good job.

Are you publishing something? Send us a copy.

ReleaseLINK 2.0 offers the following enhancements, which are automatically available to NTC lien release clients:

1. Exception Handling Queue

a. Exception Categories. New filters allow the user to view categories of exceptions at a glance, such as Chain of Title Exceptions, Data Discrepancy, Exceptions Requiring Research, Incomplete Initial Order, etc. This helps sort and handle related exceptions together.

b. Expanded Exception Types. This extensive list reflects the exact array of missing information, such as Recording Info and Legal Description, Legal Description and PIN, missing Assignment, etc. You can sort and filter by any exception type. Clients can also define which types of exceptions will appear on ReleaseLINK for them to process. This is especially helpful if auto-research is enabled on certain types of exceptions and one does not want to approve each research file.

c. Clearing Exceptions by Type. When you select “Edit” on a loan in the queue you will see a window unique to that specific exception type. It shows what is missing and gives you a tool to clear that type of exception as well as options to submit that type of exception back to NTC for handling. Types of exceptions can vary widely in regard to what is needed to clear them, as well as what type of research options may be applicable. With ReleaseLINK 2.0, you can easily address all types of exceptions.

2. Other Enhancements

a. Import Loans. You now have the ability to import loans from an excel spreadsheet directly into ReleaseLINK for Full Order Entry or Partial Order Entry.

b. Input By Field. When an order is placed in the system, the Process Queue now displays the user who entered the order, easily distinguishing between NTC employees and client entry.

c. Rush Orders. You can select Rush processing when entering an order that needs immediate processing.

d. Delete. You can now delete an order from the ReleaseLINK Full Order Entry or Partial Order Entry queues.

e. Input Notes and Instructions. You can now enter a note when you place an order or perform full entry to relay key information to NTC regarding that file.

f. Loan Count in Queues. You can now see a count of how many loans are in each queue (Exception Queue, Full Entry Queue, Place Order Queue, QC Queues, etc).

g. Unlock Orders in ReleaseLINK. When a loan is mid-entry in the ReleaseLINK system it is occasionally locked by the system. As necessary, you now have the ability to unlock a loan, even if you were not the original data enterer.

h. Upload Images. When you enter an order you now have the option to upload an image that corresponds to the order.

i. Upload Legal Description. You can now upload an image of a lengthy legal description instead of having to type it out.

j. County Requirements at a Glance. If there are unusual or special requirements for a particular jurisdiction a hyperlink appears at the top of the entry screen to provide additional details.

k. Interface Improvements. Many user requests and features have also been addressed to save input time and enhance user experience.

For a Web demo of the new software, click here.

Disclosure: NTC is an RGA client.

That’s the general topic I hope to fully explore in my new column in Scotsman Guide. How can you keep that blog fresh and, above all, valuable your readers? I have some ideas on that and every month I’ll provide one to readers of that publication. The first one came out recently in the January issue.

While this column is primarily intended for front line loan originators, it can also be useful to anyone trying to get a handle on New Media strategy. Check out the column online or download the PDF version.

For instance, Barclays Capital recently predicted that investors will begin returning to the secondary market by the second half of this year. That will be a welcome development for lenders.

Technology vendors are also showing signs that they expect 2010 to be a better year. Irvine, Calif.-based Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, a provider of enterprise-class decision management solutions for the financial services and banking industry, recently announced that it is looking for a mid-level developer to help manage rapid client growth.

Loan-Score is a dynamic, fast-growing software firm specializing in lending automation. The company serves mid-size to large mortgage banking firms, community banks, and credit unions throughout the United States.

Specifically, the company is seeking an integration specialist to be responsible for all LOS and third party integrations. Candidates must be able to work out of our Irvine, California location.

The company is seeking a mortgage industry veteran with 3-5 years of programming experience in C#, ASP, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and Web Services as well as experience integrating with standard mortgage LOS platforms and 3rd party mortgage applications. MISMO standard experience is a plus but not necessary.

If you have the qualifications, send a request for more information (along with your resume and salary requirements) to info@loan-score.com. Find out more about the company on its website.

Those of you interested in doing a better job promoting yourselves should contact us as we’re in the process of adding clients, thanks to our success in bringing Matt Strickberger on board. Those of you who want to handle this in-house but need another hand should also contact us as we know of a great PR/marketing pro who is currently looking for a position with an industry firm.

Kaleidico is one company I’m very pleased to see blogging. I’ve been following Bill Rice for years now and find that he consistently adds value. While he’s been posting content on a number of New Media platforms, his firm only recently launched its own blog. In his words:

I’ve been blogging since 2003. I’m a huge advocate of social media. I’ve consistently been an early adopter. However, we’ve never had a blog on Kaleidico.com. I guess it’s true the auto mechanics often has the most neglected car on the block.

I’m glad to see the company is fixing that problem and that Rice will be putting more content onto his company’s own social media property.

Kaleidico is in the lead generation space, if I had to generalize, but Rice speaks out on a number of interesting issues. He was recently elected to his local school board and so you’ll often find him talking about politics, which, when you think about, it is right on par with our industry right now.

If you start reading the blog, be advised that the company will expect to hear from you. They understand that new media is about starting conversations, so don’t be surprised if they call you out. Don’t worry. It’s a good thing.

I suggest you sign up to receive his RSS feed. You can still follow Rice and his team in a number of other places. I enjoy following him on Twitter via @billrice.

This is excellent timing for a new blog in the space. This year saw the Home Valuation Code of Conduct shake up the business and the reverberations are still working their way through the industry. Next year promises to be another difficult year for appraisers as they work to remain competitive, while being pushed further from the loan originators who rely on their work. Appraisal Management Companies are hot to take up the slack, but contention between AMCs and appraisers is causing sparks.

It appears that FNC will be entering the fray. In an early post, Robert Dorsey, Chief Data and Analytics Officer and co-founder of the company, writes that the company is hearing from mortgage originators that they are receiving appraisals from appraisers who are operating outside their regions of competence.

“The downturn in the housing market has caused a major disruption in the appraisal process. New regulations and downsizing by the lenders has resulted in many lenders using larger appraisal firms or vendor management companies and relying on them to send the best appraiser to the property. This is not always happening. Appraisers are being assigned to properties without regard to their knowledge of the neighborhood, and the result is that values are being returned that don’t accurately reflect the market value of the property.”

This is troubling, if what FNC is hearing on the street is actually happening. But a press release issued earlier this month by the Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association raises some doubt.

“The typical driving distance traveled by independent appraisers, retained by the nation’s largest appraisal management companies (AMCs), averages 13 miles in urban and suburban areas this year, according to a new survey conducted by the Title Appraisal Vendor Management Association (TAVMA).”

It seems realistic to assume that if the appraiser is only driving 13 miles from a central location, there is a good chance they should be competent to handle the work.

TAVMA’s information relates only to appraisers hired by AMCs and it is possible that lenders who don’t work with AMCs, now grappling with a job that was formerly handled for them by mortgage brokers, are having trouble getting their orders routed to the right appraisers. FNC says its technology can solve the problem by using geocoding to track properties appraisers that use its system have worked on in the past, creating a method that lenders can use to assign work closer to the appraiser’s area of expertise.

We expect more of these problems to crop up next year and have already subscribed to FNC’s new blog to help us track this part of the industry.

Disclosure: RGA offers communications support to TAVMA and its executive director, Jeff Schurman. The organization retains another agency to handle certain public relations duties, including the press release referenced in this blog post.

In general, the leaders in social media have done a good job of trying to work though this. There are good articles here, here and here. But ulimately, I think it’s a lot simpler than all of this.

There is only one way to measure the efforts put into any department in a company: the ultimate impact on sales. Anything that doesn’t allow the company to do a better job of delivering its value to the marketplace, which can only be measured by sales volumn, should be discontinued. That includes marketing and public relations efforts.

There are those who, like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, will shift metrics when the numbers don’t work out in their favor, but ulimately they will fail if they pretend that their inability to be productive is acceptable to any degree. Any agency that offers a complicated forumula to help you gauge the results of their efforts should be shown to the door. If they cannot show you how what they do will increase your sales, you are better off not spending the money.

When you love your clients and you genuinely admire the efforts they put into their product development and marketing, you naturally want to help them spread the word. But stories that are all spin, that are written based on conclusions worked out in advance without consideration for the facts will not serve the long-term best interests of the client.

To their credit, our customers don’t complain when we ask them why. Why did you develop your products this way? Why does it meet the market’s need? Why are you selling it this way? Why are you better than your competition? These are the same questions we ask experts from companies that are not our clients when we write about them for industry publications. We need the answers to create meaningful stories that will ring true with readers, because they are true.

These thoughts come to mind as I read a story in the New York Times about “hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.”

According to NYT:

“Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.”

How sad. In college, I worked side-by-side with physicists working on what was then the largest cloud chamber in the world. They faced many challenges as they worked to control the temperature and humidity of every square centimeter of a 3-foot diameter aluminum column that rose up three stories from the basement of the Physics Building. They hoped to create clouds in a very controlled environment, mostly so we could pollute them and see what happened.

Many of the things they tried didn’t work. There were plenty of skeptics saying they would never get it done. Even so, they continued their work steadfastly, competing against themselves and using the data to tell them how close they were coming to their goal. They never attempted to trick the data they were getting into defeating their skeptics. What real scientist would do this?

Global Warming is a politically charged issue that could have a very real impact on our future survival. We need to find out what’s going on and what part we play, if any, in the changes we’re observing in our environment. It’s not a contest to be won by a particular political party or scientific camp. It requires scientific objectivity, not allegiance to a foregone conclusion that may have nothing to do with the truth.

Being objective can be one of the hardest things a business manager–especially a marketing manager–is asked to do. We ask our clients to do it every day and we make sure we don’t let them down by drinking the Kool-Aide before we know what the facts are. That’s how we ensure that our advice always adds value.

Would we be able to do this if we didn’t work with the industry’s best companies? Probably not. Like I said, we’re fortunate.