Project Blogger is officially under weigh, so I thought now would be a good time to go read the rules. I had read an earlier version and hated them, but, at a certain point, I decided it wasn’t worthwhile to stand on principle. There is an extent to which this is what I would characterize as a Goofy Drive-Time Radio Stunt, and we have to assume that that extent extends at least as far as $5,000 worth of value to Our Sponsors.
If the new rules are actually less nebulous than the old rules, they are still nebulous enough that I cannot for the life of me determine what would qualify as a laudable achievement, much less the stroke of genius that denotes a decisive win. Fully fifteen percent of perfection consists courting good opinions at Active Rain, which will probably work out well for competitors who are actually active on Active Rain.
But: I don’t care. I decided to do this not because I expect Our Team to win, but because I wanted to talk about real estate weblogging. I have a lot of ideas, as we’ve seen so far, and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.
That changes now. Here is a vitally important idea about real estate weblogging that you should read, learn, mark and inwardly digest:
Real estate weblogging is very likely to be a very low-yielding prospecting activity, especially at first.
Say what? Almost any sort of real world, voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting will return more, better, faster, more-predictable and more-profitable results, at least in the short-run, than real estate weblogging.
Say what?!?
What’s the point of all this, if the fishing is better elsewhere?
There are two points that I can see. The second is that, if you’re doing it right, your yields should improve in the long-run. But the first is much more important, I think: Real estate weblogging is work you can do when you can’t do voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting.
What are the implications? The first is that if you let weblogging come between you and money work, you are probably costing yourself more than you will make up in later earnings. And second is that you should confine your weblogging to times when you cannot, practically speaking, do money work.
I do like the idea of at least one new post a day, but your posts don’t have to be definitive texts. For one thing, the time commitment will kill your earning power. For another, your goal is to connect, not to define.
So: You can pound things out late at night, like me right now. Or you can knock ’em out in the untenanted hours of the morning — which might help, since the morning papers can furnish post ideas. But if you’re writing weblog posts instead of taking and making calls, going on appointments, showing, listing or cashing paychecks, you’re probably going to run short on paychecks to cash.
Even so, I think the heart of the matter is forging relationships. As Teri noted yesterday, I told her to stop paying attention to other weblogs. The would go at least quintuple for BloodhoundBlog, because we are the worst kind of example for forging warm and fuzzy relationships. We are all about defining things, and we are not necessarily not about pissing people off. This is not what you want to do.
But I think it’s a bad idea to attend too much even to currently-active local real estate weblogs. A huge number of them — the ones I like — are half or more devoted to national, industry-related issues. This is BloodhoundBlog kibble, and I eat it up. How does that kind of content play to ordinary consumers? My guess is not so good.
But there is another kind of local real estate weblog that is truly locally-focused. I tend not to read these — because the fare is not BloodhoundBlog food — but even then I think the content might be too definitive, too goal oriented, too broadcast-like.
Here’s the deal, and it’s a lot easier to define than to do: Web 1.0 was about broadcasting, essentially paper publications expressed in electrons. I’m the teacher, you’re the class. I’m the reporter, you’re the audience. I’m in charge. You’re not.
This is wrong. Why? Because Web 2.0 is about conversation, not lecturing. If I’m writing well for a locally-focused real estate weblog, I’m writing in a way that includes, enfolds, envelopes the reader in a fuzzy blanket big enough for both of us. I’m certainly not the right writer to do this, and you may not be, either.
Here’s an interesting example: Steve Leung, of Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog, approached me to be my protege in this contest. I think Steve is a great writer, an amazingly great communicator, to the extent that he has a standing invitation to join us at BloodhoundBlog whenever he wants. At the same time, even though he is a relatively new weblogger, I regarded him as being way too experienced to be plausibly presented as a novice weblogger. What’s interesting is that only just lately has Steve generated his first real estate lead from his weblog.
By the idiotic otherly-brilliant rules of this contest, I qualify as a novice real estate weblogger:
The only criteria regarding experience of apprentice is that they have not generated any business or leads from blogging before the start of the competition.
Steve Leung is an INTx. I haven’t tested him, but he doesn’t have to tell me it’s so. It’s all through his writing. His work appeals so strongly to me because it resounds in harmony with my own INTxtreme sensibilities. In the long-run, Steve may attract a lot of business through weblogging, from a lot of really prosperous people. In the short-run, they’re going to wait and see if he can deliver consistently.
As a good counter-example, consider Ardell DellaLoggia, who writes on her own weblog and on Rain City Guide. Ardell gets most, possibly all, of her new business from real estate weblogging. How does she do it? With an empathy that seems to me to be infinitely maternal. You have to be careful when you read her, because she is often talking to industry junkies like me. It’s when she’s talking about true justice for the consumer that she forges client relationships. It’s not so much what she says, nor even the way she says it. What matters is that her readers believe that she believes in the high standard of customer service she upholds.
So is that what you should be doing? Ardell is sui generis, non plus ultra, as fundamentally convinced of her internal rectitude as St. Jeanne d’Arc. If you regard what she is doing as schtick, a performance, you won’t be able to pull it off. Ardell glows from the inside out, and so must you to follow your own sword into Holy War.
But the difference between Steve and Ardell is important. Steve connects intellectually, which is a slow process likely to be effective on only a small, but inordinately wealthy, subset of the population. Ardell connects, emotionally, even viscerally, and she can make clients out of her readers before they get to the second paragraph.
Which style is more likely to produce results for you? Unless your locally-focused weblog is focused on Lower Manhattan or Silicon Valley (like Steve’s is), I think you need to learn how to connect emotionally, viscerally — as a neighbor, as a friend, as family.
Not as a teacher. Not as a reporter. Not as someone who is ostentatiously In Charge. The connection, if it can be made, has to be as an equal, as someone you’d invite in for coffee at the kitchen table, as someone in whom you would confide a funny but embarrassing secret. That is everything a conversation is, and everything a lecture is not.
Is there homework? Write!
When? When it is the only profit-seeking work you can do.
What? You figure it out, but think of the problem of what to write about from the point of view of your hypothetical prospect. Not, “What do I want to tell him or her?” Not even, “What might he or she need to learn?” How about this, instead: “What will make me, as your prospect, feel more completely like myself as a consequence of having gotten to know a little bit about the world we share?” Your objective, I think, is to make them feel at home — and more at home when you’re there with them.
And this is why real estate weblogging can pay off very well in the long-run. Your long-tail search hits will pile up as you accumulate content. But that’s wild, unpredictable, over-the-transom stuff. If you can connect in an emotional, visceral way with a steady population of long-term readers — neighbors, friends, family — you should be able to do an astounding amount of business in the long-run.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Mark Ballard says:
You said, “Almost any sort of real world, voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting will return more, better, faster, more-predictable and more-profitable results, at least in the short-run, than real estate weblogging.”
That is very true. But weblogging may be a greater service to the community than those more personally profitabl activities.
April 10, 2007 — 7:19 am
Phil Hoover says:
Blogging is a way to build community interaction between those in the community and the Realtor.
It’s a way to set yourself apart from those agents who are unwilling/unable to figure out how to communicate with their clientele.
I am intrigued with the emerging concept of blogging to a local audience.
I think the greatest potential is at the local level, not national, or citywide.
April 10, 2007 — 8:56 am
Steve Leung says:
I guess I’m one-half of a living case study! Well, since I’m on the lab table, you may as well hear directly from one of the exhibits…
I’ve been blogging in earnest since mid-January with my first post around Thanksgiving. I like reading a lot of folks but I approached Greg because of, to use the Myers-Briggs reference, that INTx writing style.
We don’t agree on everything and what Latin I know fits on the back of a dime quite literally.
But, stylistically, I knew there were similarities and, like you, I read his stuff because it’s consistently provocative. I mean that as a compliment: getting readers to think, feel, and care about what you’re writing — relevance — is the benchmark of many authors.
Which leads me to two points that I’ve learned in blogging.
1. Write the way you’re going to write. You can’t hide yourself in blogging. Professional writers manipulate their own style and cadence like a paintbrush on canvas. If you’re a real estate agent, not a writer, who’s trying to change his spots for the sake of the Internet, it’s going to be unnatural. Staying true to yourself will save you time and help you enjoy your work. Hey, a segway…
2. Write at least partially for enjoyment. When I first started blogging, I would rack my brain for the bullet points and keywords I wanted Google to home in on. And I think it was an important start: I have decent PageRank, have the traffic of many older blogs, and accidentally hit some successful search terms (BTW, the long-tail finds you, but that’s a story for another discussion).
Truthfully, it wasn’t that fulfilling. I like to go to McDonalds but eating everyday off the fast-food menu gets old quickly. At around that time, I approached Greg because (in addition to the reasons above) he seemed to enjoy himself.
While my blog is constantly evolving (dog years ain’t got nothin’ on Internet time — that’s just a techie joke not a reference to BhB), I’m enjoying writing and have a writing style I’m pretty comfortable with.
The bonus point I’d like to mention is that your audience self-selects. I’m just not maternal and if I try, my blog will end up in the “uncanny valley.” (And I use phrases like “uncanny valley!” An old friend said, “I hate having to use Google to read your emails…” She’s still my friend, though.)
I may not even be a blogger by it’s true definition.
(Blogging rules say I should bold that sentence.)
Does that appeal to everyone? Well, sure as shootin’, no. And everyone has a mother. Sometimes you need a trusted advisor — a chief-of-staff — someone who can empathize, not sympathize, with you. And, you know what, like any other good agent, I make the right things happen for my clients.
I believe not appealing to everyone, maybe not being student council president, is okay.
If, for example, your working style doesn’t match your client, are you more or less likely to make things go smoothly or as expected? Why not let your readers decide?
April 10, 2007 — 11:26 am
Kris Berg says:
Steve,
Why in the heck aren’t you contributing here? Great post, I mean, comment. 🙂
April 10, 2007 — 8:04 pm
Kevin Boer says:
I’m definitely with you, Steve. Your writing style has to be your own, not some affect you’re aiming for. A few other points:
1) I believe blogging as lead-generation per-se is bound to be a frustrating experience, as is open-housing as lead generation, or postcard-ing as lead generation, or newspaper-advertising as lead generation. It takes time to get your name out there, regardless of what your preferred medium is.
2) I also believe getting results from blogging is at least partly related to longevity in the business, and the same could be true of almost any form of advertising. Russell Shaw could probably generate another 50 sales a year from hiring clowns to stand at a street corner.
3) I haven’t been tested, but am almost certainly an INTX’er as well. Fortunately for myself and Steve (who also works in Silicon Valley) there are enough INTX’ers here to keep both of us busy. If you’re an INTX’er, you’ll tend to connect better with other INTX’ers at open houses…as well as on your blog.
April 10, 2007 — 8:11 pm
Greg Swann says:
Steve, I agree with Kris on both points — but you knew that.
Kevin, rid your mind of all doubt. You are INTx to nine decimal places.
(FWIW, I desperately want to be ESTJ, but Cathy won’t let me.)
April 10, 2007 — 8:25 pm
ardell dellaloggia says:
Interesting. I am amazed at the number of bloggers who stress and ponder over the person they are projecting on the blog. I have even seen advices in Active Rain to NOT let people know who you really are, and how your blog voice does not have to match your real voice.
If being yourself in real life gets you nowhere, well I guess being yourself on a blog will get you nowhere as well.
But I agree that somehow blogging has come with a responsibility to be a reporter. I hadn’t bargained for that part, and still struggle with it at times. But I’m trying to do that part as responsibly as possible, and still be true to my opiinions.
I did the whole Zillow thing the other day as an honest report of my feelings. My honest expression of how I felt, AS I was feeling it, when I saw my home value on Zillow had plummeted. To me that’s a blog…a log…and I can change with the wind whenever I want and let people see it as I do it.
I let it all hang out 🙂
I’m hoping you will be in San Francisco. Will be interesting to see if we “already know each other” upon first meet.
April 21, 2007 — 12:01 am
Derek Burress says:
2. Write at least partially for enjoyment
I think writing about real estate is boring which is why I am starting to convert my real estate blog into something entirely different. I enjoy real estate but I do not enjoy writing to industry junkies which is what real estate bloggers tend to be doing a lot these days. I want to write to the consumers.
I also think trying to start a local community focused site where one has never before existed is a lot of work so I am trying to break away from that mold and while I do plan to do some community type stuff, I want a vast majority of my readers to be nationally focused.
I think if I focus on the big picture, the local guys will eventually follow and take suit.
As for personality types…. I am in the 1% of the population (INFJ).
July 16, 2007 — 9:42 pm