I don’t know what to do. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “It is not my function to be a fly swatter.” And yet every time I turn around I find myself reading abject nonsense from technology vendors who have never in their lives sold real estate — who have never sold much of anything but hot air.
Should I just wince and move on to the next article in my feed reader? Or do I have a duty to point out obvious, bone-headed errors, so that y’all don’t repeat them, not knowing they are errors?
I sat on this one earlier today, but it just keeps bugging me. If you think I’m being mean for calling the author out, all I can think of to say is, “Dang!” I myself never, ever forget the ninety-and-nine. If I can spare just one person one dumb mistake, I’ll call that a win and ignore everything else.
So: Joel Burslem’s advice to build single-property widgets is truly bad counsel. The future of real estate weblogging is not widgets, and widgets are not valuable replacements for single-property websites.
First: Off-site resources are bad, m’kaaaay? If you watch where your pages drag when they are loading, you will see that your problems are almost always the result of calls you are making to other servers. In this context, it doesn’t matter if you are calling Flash, Javascript, PHP, PERL or plain vanilla HTML. What matters most is that the other servers you are calling often will not work as quickly as your server. Even if those servers are very sprightly, there are still going to be delays from hand-shaking. Flash and Javascript can madly exacerbate these problems, since they require processing power in the client computer also. As cool as the free stuff you can get from vendors can seem to you, much of it is white noise, at best, of absolutely no benefit to advancing your marketing message. And if those widgets, gizmos and gadgets are slowing down your pages, they are acting against your marketing objectives — by coming between you and your clients.
Second: Flash and Javascript do not search. The goofy little toys might look cool to you on your screen, but Google sees nothing. It’s wasted code, and it could be just enough wasted code to send the spider off to another site before it sees your real code. Not cool. Not smart. Not profitable.
This is the actual code from the first of Joel’s two widgets:
<p><strong>FOREM Widget</strong><br /> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/ cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="300" height="271" id="sIAD5Olq_AT5BgpUg"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> <param name="align" value="middle" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="movie" value="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/81725/load/ IAD5Olq_AT5BgpUg.swf" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="https://farm.sproutbuilder.com/81725/load/ IAD5Olq_AT5BgpUg.swf" width="300" height="271" wmode="transparent" align="middle" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" quality="high"></embed></object><br /> <img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="https://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/CIMP/Jmx* PTEyMDU1MjI5MzcyMTUmcHQ9MTIwNTUyMjkzOTY3NiZwPTEyMDc* MSZkPTg4NzA2Jm49.jpg" /></p>
That’s what Google will see when it looks at any page hosting that widget. See any keywords in there? See anything searchable at all? This is null, void of all meaning — at best.
Third: Our job is to sell houses!
When Joel Burslem says this:
Single property web sites (or for that matter – any static listing) may be fine for SEO purposes but ultimately, since they aren’t transportable, they have limited marketing value outside of the wow factor they give the home sellers.
I cannot imagine what the hell he is thinking.
The purpose of a single-property web site is to sell the house!
Astoundingly enough, it is only tech-vendor cheerleaders who get paid for sticking goofy, useless stuff on their web pages. The rest of us sell houses or originate loans or deliver some other form of true added-value to our clients — or we don’t eat. A well-built single-property web site communicates, engages, involves and persuades a buyer to buy this home and not some other one. That is what it’s for, and it is not going to be supplanted by nine unreadable lines of Flash.
I think I’m going to have to do this every time I see one of these dumb ideas. I won’t say we bat one-thousand around here, but everything we talk about at BloodhoundBlog is actually tested in the real estate marketplace. The same goes for Agent Genius and Lenderama. These are actual working real estate professionals talking about how they work at their professions. We may not always be right, but we’ve got more at stake than just hot air. From now on, I’m going to take a smack at every one of these inane insipidities — and, if you think I’m wrong — prove it.
In the mean time, my full and final answer is:
Yes.
Yes, you should market your listings as robustly as you can, building full-blown single-property web sites if you can. (Watch this space. We’re going to show you what we do.)
Yes, you should blog about any real estate listing you would love to sell — and for which you have permission to blog about.
Yes, you should limit your weblog as much as possible to pure HTML at run time.
Yes, you should avoid off-site gadgets, especially gadgets written in Flash or Javascript.
Yes, you should keep your eye on the frolicking ball! The question, always, is: In what way does this advance my marketing objectives? In what way will this put food on my table? When in doubt, leave it out.
And: Yes, you should stop crediting professional advice proffered by people who have never worked a single day in your profession. Certainly there are plenty of bozos who have had the same one year of experience ten times. But this cadre of completely inexperienced vendors have nothing to sell you but fillet of jawbone, hold the mustard. You can listen to anything, and you can try to apply what you can, but do make an effort to remember that our job is to sell houses!
Jeesh!
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology
Rick Macosky - Phoenix Realtor says:
Greg, very eloquently put. Many REALTORS will put those kinds of widgets on their sites/blogs just because they think they look cool. Most REALTORS have not yet learned or taken the time to learn that they indeed should be learning about marketing on the web including keywords, blogs and SEO.
Agents that are new to marketing on the web should pass on the widgets until they know more about on-page optimization and page load times, etc. 90% plus of the REALTORS have no clue of what it actually takes to be effective on the web. In the mean time, I’m afraid there will still be a market for many useless widgets that bog down poorly built Real Estate websites/blogs.
I personally have spent the better part of the last 20 months or so studying and implementing web based marketing techniques. What better time to learn a new skill than during the slow real estate market. Learning to market on the web indeed has a learning curve and a large time commitment. I think that is something most agents are intimidated by and just aren’t willing to take on.
My advice to agents is to learn now before the market gets back to where it should be. Remember, as independent contractors it’s our business. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. Take advantage of the lull to build a new skill set to add to your arsenal. Good luck to all!
March 15, 2008 — 2:55 am
Ann Cummings says:
Ah, the very little creatures I see all over the place and often wonder about! I’ve read a number of times to stay away from these little things (and some are rather large, too), and I know on some sites I visit that they really do seem to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to load. Personally, I prefer the clean crisp look, not the cluttered-up, distracting look that so many seem to go for.
March 15, 2008 — 3:12 am
Greg Cremia says:
As agents become more and more desperate to stay afloat in this market the smell of fear brings the sharks and there are more and more of them every day.
The sad thing is there is enough desperation going around to make it very profitable for those who prey on real estate agents.
March 15, 2008 — 7:02 am
Doug Quance says:
While I would not use this on my real estate website… I can see where something like this could be used to market the agent or the agency on other websites.
Combining multimedia content into something this portable is the wave of the future… and in time – the bugs will work themselves out.
March 15, 2008 — 9:01 am
Sevierville TN Homes says:
How right you are. There are agents currently in our office that are scrambling to keep their heads above water. They are trying to obtain some type of web presence and have jumped into bed with the first web company they came across. Widgets, flash, crap code, etc. Many aren’t even companies that specialize in real estate sites. Its unfortunate because many will spend good amounts of money and will get nothing in return.
March 15, 2008 — 9:14 am
Greg Swann says:
> Combining multimedia content into something this portable is the wave of the future…
I don’t buy it. The future of the internet is the semantic web, which implies that the future of the internet is in accessible formats.
Last night I was thinking it might be fun to write a dialogue about an on-line home search: Mom wants a house — which means she wants listings, big photos, floorplans, virtual tours, single-property web sites — but all dad wants to do is play with gee-whiz gizmos: “Hey, let’s see how many houses we can find on Facebook!”
It’s not necessarily an either/or proposition, but if you have to choose between 50 big photos, when you are listing a house for sale, and one scrawny, muddy video — the video is sharkbait. Whatever vendors and their cheering squad say buyers want, what they really want is to see the house.
March 15, 2008 — 9:31 am
Doug Quance says:
I agree – it’s NOT an either/or proposition… which is why I don’t find this method so repulsive. Now if an agent thinks this is the killer app to replace the other aforementioned marketing methods – then they’re toast.
March 15, 2008 — 9:42 am
Greg Swann says:
Expanding on this:
Me: > It’s not necessarily an either/or proposition
Burslem is advising Realtors to forego single-property web sites in favor of goofy, non-searchable gizmos — an either/or proposition that consists of trading in a Howitzer for a pea shooter.
Single-property web sites sell houses — they kick ass at selling houses. But their long-tail marketing power is enduring and undeniable. When I search for culver street phoenix, I get our past single-property web sites in first, second, fifth, sixth and ninth positions. This sells us very well to sellers, but it also appeals to buyers, who comb through the hundreds of photos even though the homes are no longer for sale. The portfolio of our past listings is one of the most popular features on BloodhoundRealty.com.
I know of an even better way to dominate the long tail in real estate search, but you cannot achieve any results in horizontal search — the now of the internet — if your code is not searchable.
March 15, 2008 — 9:54 am
Greg Swann says:
> I agree – it’s NOT an either/or proposition…
Ah, great minds think alike. We were writing at the same time.
> Now if an agent thinks this is the killer app to replace the other aforementioned marketing methods – then they’re toast.
Agree completely.
March 15, 2008 — 9:57 am
Doug Quance says:
And I agree that the single property website – done properly – is an essential part of the long tail.
You’re right – Burslem was putting forth the notion of this widget as being a single property website killer. To that end, he is dead wrong.
March 15, 2008 — 10:25 am
Morgan says:
I think what Joel is primarily advocating is the power of atomizing and distributing information vis a vis hording it and expecting people to come to you. If you only market yourself on your own pages you limit your reach. So while single property web pages are essential (and I didn’t see where joel specifically said to abandon that tactic) not taking advantage of opportunities help spread and share your information is to miss out on audience.
It’s about fishing where the fish are, not honey pots. And let’s face it the former concept is what web 2.0 marketing is all about where the later is clearly marketing dogma from the 90’s.
We’re communicating all over the place, twitter, facebook, active rain, blogs, why not collect our best knowledge and share it through an easy aggregator? Why not leverage amplification. For one example, why should your trulia answer only apply to the trulia audience? Why isn’t there value of cross-pollinating audiences with your expertise?
And respectfully Doug – He is far from advocating a notion “of a widget being a single property website killer” if you can glean that out of his post I must have the wrong link.
March 15, 2008 — 3:51 pm