Gahlord Dewald has a interesting column up at Inman today where he outlines a method whereby — gasp, shock, horror — one could actually put a dollar figure on the value of one’s social network.

The method is a little involved. You’d have to coallate metrics from a number of different services, as well as dig up estimates of advertizing costs to use as comparables, which might not be ready to hand for some. But it seems to me that the thing that really might stop people from doing this might be less the the effort involved than the bravery to begin. Putting a real dollar figure on the value of all those Tweets and statuses is likely to be more than a little depressing for most. Unless you’re one of those lucky charmers whose follower number has five digits in it. Much easier to remind yourself about the one time your boyfriend’s mother’s dentist happened to see your post in their Facebook feed just as they were thinking about buying a house. As oppossed to the one million or so other times one sent a cheerful wave out to the world and got back nothing but crickets…

On the other hand, many traditional methods of real estate marketing also depend on low-cost, low conversion tactics. Mass mailing thousands of postcards to a particular neighborhood may only generate a few nibbles, and perhaps a sale or two. But at a few hundred bucks to mail them out of $10,000 in commissions it’s well worth it. It will be interesting to see, if methods like Dewald’s catch on, whether some of the hard-nose, show-me-the bottom-line brokers out there warm up to social media marketing.