Project Bloodhound: Are you talking to me? Connecting to your community and avoiding the echo chamber.

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

“I wonder who was your intended audience?”

A question from my inbox, and one I hear occasionally. I’m always pulled up short by questions like this, or this, because they tend to come unexpectedly and in this case, it greeted me first thing in the morning, and the writer, who shall remain nameless but knows who he is (and is, I’m sure, laughing right now) was by his own admission, a bit grumpy when he asked this question. So Good Morning to you too!

Actually, this question, or variations of it, has been on my mind lately because I forgot this intended audience for awhile, and the post to which this writer was referring was my way of going back to the beginning of my blogging days, when I was writing to the very same people to whom I wrote this post- local bloggers. How did I lose my way? Quite honestly, I think it was Twitter, but that’s another story for another time. Let’s return to my blogging roots.

Possibly the first piece of advice Greg gave me when I started blogging on The Brick Ranch was to find other local blogs and connect with them. Notice he didn’t say other real estate blogs, but local blogs. A Google search, and Google alerts, turned up only a handful of blogs back then- March 2007. Seriously, I think there were about five non-political blogs, and most had only been at it for a few months, which is a cool thing as I’ll explain shortly. At first I simply left comments on their blogs without a return blog url, because I wanted to be there as a participant, not as a spamming Realtor- there is an implied accusation when visiting local blogs, am I really there to sell them a house? Um, no. I’m really there because I like talking with people, throwing ideas back and forth, and I know that most bloggers like comments, so leaving a thoughtful comment, using my name, not “TimbuktuHomesForYou” in that tiny little blogiverse where everything was shiny and new, was an easy way to say “Hello! Nice to meet you.” It was about the conversation, not the conversion. Greg talked about this so eloquently here. David Gibbons and Jeff Brown talked about this at Bloodhound Unchained.

Warning: This is not the Get Rich Quick way of Blogging for Dollars. This is the slow and thoughtful way of connecting, networking, communicating. It doesn’t get you to the top of Google in 30 days, but it does get you as close to belly-to-belly as you can get online. It means you have to pay attention, think, share, discuss. It also means that we may not have anything in common, so I’m going to have to work to find a common ground. It means that I will find something interesting in your posts, and share it on my blog. In other words, it takes time to build relationships locally, which may not be the case with the echo chamber.

The echo chamber: I’m okay, you’re okay; I’m a Realtor, you’re a Realtor. Ah. A shared experience, a common ground. I may not have to pay too much attention because we have real estate in common. Unlike those local folks who may not want to talk to me at all because I’m a Realtor. You and I can fall into conversation faster, with more ease, talk shop- and it’s all good. Except it isn’t really. Ultimately it’s distracting to someone like me- focus, Lussier!

So I’m focused and on this particular day, my post it isn’t for the echo chamber to understand, or the out-of-town buyer, or the home seller. That particular post is a conversation with local bloggers. If you, my dear RE.net buddy, like my post, that’s nice, but it is ultimately unimportant to me- nothing personal.

The problem with all this is that we get warm fuzzies quickly from the echo chamber, but not so much, if at all, from the local blogiverse- it’s a tough crowd- why bother? If you can get to the top of Google quickly, get lots o’ leads without the time invested locally, get your ego stroked at the same time (who doesn’t like strokes?) then why go to all that trouble? Because the local folks with whom you’ve developed this relationship with, know folks who know folks, and while I’m only beginning to see some ROI for that particular audience, when the clients who are connected with local bloggers ask me for more business cards, that’s some mighty powerful ROI.

And I’ll take that any day of the week and twice on Sundays.