A few background facts that need to be entered into evidence:
a) My wife and I are the PROUD parents of 4 kids.
b) All parents with which I associate are PROUD parents. (Vanity thy name is author is accurate, but it has NUTHIN on vanity thy name is parent-grin)
c) Gannett’s 86 newspapers plus USA Today are locked in a desperate battle for advertising revenue both for newspapers and increasingly online. (All battles for revenue are desperate, no?)
d) They are getting creative at attracting eyeballs and MAY actually be listening to some luminaries in the journalism business who have crossed over to blogging success. James Lileks comes to mind. (He lost his column at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune despite being arguably the best blogging asset they had and one of the brightest minds in how to effect the organizational change they needed. He specifically called for them to “go local”.)
OK- So I was at work the other day and I get a call from my wife that our 16 year old son is going to be interviewed and have a two page article done about him in the paper. I inquire from Jen which paper and she replies the Courier Journal. I ask if they have told her which section. She says, the Southern Indiana Clark county section. Hmmm…Interesting. I just heard from a friend at church that his child was recently featured in the Floyd county section…sense a pattern here?
Apparently the reporters have called the local high schools from all over the area and are asking for kids with interesting background stories or who are “exceptional” to do stories about. They are being featured in a way that EVERY parent will tell their friends, family, church congregation and every other local person who knows our family. Very cool.
The article on our son will be published this coming Wednesday.
Other expose’s are being written on LOCAL issues that will appeal to the neighborhood crowd. They are specifically being for the “town square” as opposed to the “rip and read” AP stories.
So the take home lesson from this? REALTORS do not “own” the eyeballs to a hyperlocal blog. We will increasingly be competing for those eyeballs and minds and hearts and souls against other media that is (finally…) starting to get it. How will we fare?
Granted…they have a higher cost of operation than ours. Granted…they are late to the game. Granted…it is kind of like teaching the elephaunt to dance…BUT we cannot be complacent and IMO need to entrench ourselves into our communities and truly compete in 2008.
Rhetorical question: Gannett (either individually, with subsidiary investors, or by joint marketing agreement) joined forces with CareerBuilder.com, HomeGain, and many other online marketing entities…Has the time come that the REALTOR, the Mortgage guy/gal, the interior decorator, the builder and the rest of the home related industries joined in some marketing efforts on hyperlocals?
Kudos to Gannett on a solid strategy. I certainly cannot fault you all for doing what I recommend to the REALTORS in our office.
Thoughts?
Glenn says:
Eric,
Shouldn’t an agent’s blog reflect the community and discuss or show those things that are not commonly discussed in the formal news channels?
January 14, 2008 — 5:54 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
Hi Glenn;
Interesting question. Here’s my quick take on it.
I guess, now that you mention it, that’s sort of my point. My son wasn’t “making” formal news. This was an effort on the formal new guys’ part to enter the blogger’s typical realm.
After further review, I will admit as well, I have not ever limited myself from posting something on a blog just because it was breaking news. In fact I think that hard news is much a thing of the past. So much hard news has opinion throughout and many bloggers are breaking hard news faster and more accurately than their main stream media counterparts…
I think that line between blogs and hard news may well get even more blurry over time.
January 14, 2008 — 6:52 pm
Glenn says:
Eric,
I think that we that are involved in the real estate profession are usually asked the same question along the lines of “how is the real estate market?” When was the last time someone asked about your garden early in the conversation?
So we by-pass articles or pictures about nature. Nature – trees, flowers, and wildlife is something that I truly appreciate about living here. I wonder how a visitor to my blog would view seeing something on a real estate blog about nature?
We all might need to start thinking outside the box a little more, while still addressing our targeted audience.
January 14, 2008 — 7:04 pm
Jeff Brown says:
This whole hyper-local thing makes me crazy. Why? Cuz it’s so obviously a gold mine.
1. Get the blog’s url in the hands of the homeowners no matter the cost or effort.
2. Sure, write about Eric’s boy — and the Little League hero last Saturday. The 7th grade girl who won the science fair. And on and on.
If an agent is able to do this for 2-4 1,500-2,000 home neighborhoods, his only problem after 6-8 months would be sheltering his income.
Eric — why does there seem to be so much resistance out there among agents to this concept? It’s a no-brainer.
January 14, 2008 — 7:36 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@Jeff–EXACTLY. I don’t understand it either. Actually the resistance (I think) simply is because it is the unknown. I can guarantee you that it is known in our office…I cannot help them get started fast enough. Now I just need to figure a way to get a piece of the action! (grin)
January 14, 2008 — 8:01 pm
John Wake says:
Hyper local hasn’t proven itself yet, to me anyway, even though I *think* it will be successful.
In a couple of years we’ll probably all be saying, “All he did was X and hyper local took off. How come I didn’t do that. It was so obvious!”
This revolution will not be televised.
January 14, 2008 — 10:39 pm
Derek says:
Has anyone realized that Rain City Guide is a hyper local blog? 90% of the stuff they write over there is about the Seattle Real Estate market.
There is a bit of other non-local stuff with the mortgage rates and the Mortgage laws but most of it is centered around the stuff happing in that area and state. Ardell posts the king county stats, and about her clients (local folks), Rhonda posts about JP Patches and all the rest of the local happenings, Karen loves to compare her new Seattle home with that of Chicago and write about her experiences finding her way around town and asking for suggestions from the locals Reba likes to post about stuff happening like those TV shows and local energy appliances.
A lot of it can apply nationwide but it’s all has a local favor.
January 14, 2008 — 10:59 pm
Jeff Brown says:
Derek — a blog centering on a population of 500,000 to a million is not what most would define as hyper-local. Your points are well taken, as the blog is local in the sense they focus on Seattle very narrowly.
Still, Rain City Guide is nowhere near hyper-local.
A truly hyper-local blog will ultimately penetrate well over half of their target market — converting them to regular, or at least semi-regular readers. Those kind of stats, in my opinion, are only possible if the blog has been scaled down so local it’s defined by well known neighborhood boundaries known by one and all.
A blog aimed at an entire city as large as Seattle can’t be hyper-local by definition.
January 14, 2008 — 11:15 pm
Derek says:
Jeff: While I don’t usually agree with umpires, I’ll admit you make a great point. I am not sure so sure if RCG would have worked as well as it has being locally centered if Dustin didn’t have such a diverse group local of bloggers all in one place.
I think someone like Terri Lussier coming in to a small town like mine which is one of the smallest towns in NC, would be very successful. Dayton, Ohio is much bigger than where I live in Snow Hill but with the way she writes, I can see it being rather appealing to people like us. I don’t see her blog being as successful in nearby Greenville or Wilson where the county is nearly double that of our small one. With daily newspapers (we don’t have one) there, her writing would be seen as more of a carry over from the news, so it wouldn’t be as appealing in those places. Keep in mind however, that Dayton, OH is a lot bigger than what we have around here so.
I mean come on, down here, we still sell real estate by telling our faming buddies over a pack of orange nabs (hat would be cheese crackers to most of you non-country folks) and a Coke (bottled Pepsi please) or Mt. Dews stuffed with salted peanuts that we’re considering putting our land up for sale and having 5 or 6 other farmers to keep raising the price among one another and telling such and such that another farmer has asked about it (even if he isn’t interested but has indeed asked about it) just so the original farmer will raise his price.
January 15, 2008 — 10:28 pm
Jeff Brown says:
Derek — You must be one of those smart ballplayers I used to see a few times a season. 🙂
My city has 50,000 people, a bunch of churches, three middle schools, two hi schools, and best of all, five Little Leagues, and a Pony League.
I’d have to have a staff of at least three full timers to do the whole city. I’d probably start 3-4 hyper-locals. Though I’d still need 2-3 full timers to make it happen right, those blogs would be pretty much my only marketing.
Seattle must be ripe for those kinda blogs.
January 15, 2008 — 11:10 pm
Derek says:
We have two real estate firms here. Used to have three. All have been here since the dawn of time but pretty much one agent covers the entire county. The main agent here has a second office in nearby Greenville. This particular office that the lady has seems to be staffed by whoever wants to come in and unlock the door.
The other agent, his wife and son teamed up and moved their business to Greenville. This agent now is doing most of the work for the new county club that a childhood friend of his started.
Both agents are life long residents of the county so that pretty much explains why they still have an open open. Both agents’ office are in a small retail shopping center which they own so, makes sense that they keep a small office here I guess.
The funny thing is, when I first started blogging, pretty much all of my pages ranked higher than their’s.
We share the MLS with Greenville/Pitt County but the way things are here, most of the people who do decide to sell their homes end up with a agent outside of the county. It kind of makes things a bit interesting as half of our listing are in the Greenville/Pitt MLS and the other half in either the Lenoir County or Wayne County MLS.
The listings basically ends up going to agents who do not know the area very well.
The best marketing I have seen locally is having an agent bypass the MLS and just stick flyers on the door of a local gas station.
Our county is so small, one agent could cover the entire county. In fact, the state actually was talking about a while back, splitting the county in fours and depending on what side you’re living on, have you to be a part of the neighboring county, but the proposal never gotten anywhere. NC has exactly 100 counties and I think most people want to keep it that way.
January 16, 2008 — 2:36 pm
Bob in San Diego says:
The Gannetts of the world want it all. So do I. If your focus is hyper local, you will lose to those who aim higher.
January 16, 2008 — 8:18 pm
Colby Fitch says:
Hi Glenn,
I have followed your posts for almost 1 year now and felt compelled to reply to this one. I’m a bit confused.
You wrote:
“Shouldn’t an agent’s blog reflect the community and discuss or show those things that are not commonly discussed in the formal news channels?”
I agree with you here. This is what a basic RE blog should consist of. However, I think you missed Eric’s point all together. So Gannett and others appear to be taking notice of the hyper-local approach and it’s benefits. This should not be ignored entirely and I believe warrants a watchful eye in the near future. We may end up laughing at their feeble attempts or possibly even learning something. In my neck of the woods they are moving in this general direction with a nice print and online one-two punch. RE blogging and what these big names are venturing into are similar but completely different at the same time.
In Denver, the 2 large papers (DNA) jointly produce, in print, a neighborhood specific section mostly made up of reader produced content. It is unique , most articles are short and require you to log on to the http://www.yourhub.com/ site to read entire articles. Right now they offer this in 7 or 8 states and I’m sure plan a national roll-out in the near future.
Eric’s post was intended to point out a possible trend in the main stream media similar to what is heavily discussed amongst us here, and he was a bit giddy about his son being featured as well and understandably so (I’m a father as well).
Glenn, I felt your reply was a bit one-dimensional. You offered up a very basic RE Blog model in your first reply and these closing lines in your second:
“We all might need to start thinking outside the box a little more, while still addressing our targeted audience.”
I know you have countless archived posts that expand on your first reply and this is really pointless when it comes down to it. I believe Eric’s post deserved more attention, you kind of stifled it all together right out of the gate and I’m not sure why. Could you enlighten me?
Thanks!
January 17, 2008 — 4:52 pm
John Wake says:
Colby, Thanks for the heads up on that Denver Post “hyper local” product. It’s very well done and will certainly be competition for “hyper local” real estate blogs.
On the other hand, I just saw for the first time today a video real estate blog for one town in metro Phoenix… although it’s the most expensive town in metro Phoenix. I think it would qualify as hyper local (or at least “pretty dang local”) blog and it isn’t something that the newspapers could easily compete with because of the real estate expertise required. It’s cutting edge (bleeding edge?) and down right neat.
http://www.mypv.tv/
The question is, can such a video blog be profitable?
January 17, 2008 — 5:23 pm