Project Bloodhound: Viva Las Vegas pays out in Black Pearls

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Blog World and companion conference, REBlog World, have ended. Kudos to Todd Carpenter and Jason Berman for putting REBlog World together, very nice to meet both of you. I completely agree with Eric Blackwell that the relationships matter. I agree with Inman Connect and NAR Convention goers that what happens in the halls is very important. I maintain my aversion to the vendor exhibits, bringing home zero sch-wag except for a crap pen from the hotel, the Palms, which has the Web 2.0 cluelessness to charge $2.00/page for printing. For that reason alone, I won’t be staying there again thanksverymuch, although the bathroom in our room was quite spectacular, and the bed was comfy enough to sleep in. No cockroaches, yet. Note to Palms staff- the room was a bit grungy under the window, and you shouldn’t neglect to clean the sides of the chairs. Ick.

Back to the conference. It was mostly geared toward starting a blog, but I did learn a thing or two, or three. Let me share some random notes.

If you are not paying attention to what the Housechick is doing, you are missing out on one of the sharpest minds in the RE.net. Her Vegas presentation on Pay Per Click marketing was, by all accounts, one of the best sessions of the entire weekend. Watch this space and learn how brilliant and unique marketing can create a kickass online presence. Some take aways that you can put to use whether or not you care to PPC “Win the small battles. Go niche.” Kelley’s focus for her ads is not for broad search terms like “Tucson real estate”, but in very well defined terms like “average sales price for homes in Tucson”, or even more narrow- down to neighborhoods. Then she writes posts to answer that question. She likes to focus on verbs “Buy a home in Tucson”, “Search for a Tucson home”. She’s using concise terms, with a clear benefit, and action words to create her ads. I think using those parameters as a basis for a post and post titles, is a wise idea. Write to that person’s mind, write in an engaging style, you’ve got yourself a blog that has real value for the reader.

Jeff Turner yelled at us. ::sniff:: Yes, warm and fuzzy @ResPres admonished us to get off our booties and start utilizing tools that will make our sites and our world richer and more meaningful for our clients. I took that personally as I am sometimes slow to appreciate the added value of tools and widgets, but he quoted Dan Green, “You can never explain an important issue too many different ways.” Cue the light bulbs: Oh. Yeah. That. Jeff’s requirements for a useful tool: It must be “simple, stable, sharable, personal”. He suggested Yammer, eyejot, the tool formerly known as utterz, to name a few. These are not toys with which to gum up your site, but tools that can create useful applications for reaching clients in ways that make sense to the reader- added value. Who knew? Okay Jeff, I’m on it.

From the Blog World conference:

A panel discussion on How to Plan, Build and Promote a Business Blog had handouts! I love handouts. Some black pearls:

“Think about finding the clients you want to work with and dissuading the rest not to work with you.” –Rich Brooks.

How to get started writing: Des Walsh suggested thinking about having a cup of coffee with someone, and then writing to that person. That’s been discussed, but I love that he suggested starting a post with sentences such as: “I’ve been thinking about…” or “I’m really excited about…” What a great way to just sit down and start writing if getting started is an issue for you.

John Unger is an artist who makes six figures selling art through his blog. I would think that takes some skill so I’m paying attention to this guy. From Unger’s handout: “Ideally, the overlap between your needs and your readers’ is a one-to-one match. But in the real web, there’s some discrepancy. By focusing as much as possible on the area where both needs come together, you’ll meet with the greatest success.” And more about that “By designing every element of your blog to serve a purpose or need for the kind of client you actually want, you make it easier for them to build a relationship and eventually do business with you.” He’s very adamant about good blog design, has a TypePad hack blog, offers these thoughts about design: “In design, and hacking especially, the answers come from looking at what things do rather than what things are supposed to do. … almost all the hacks I’ve come up with are based on using a feature for something other than what it’s intended use. Misusing something because it does exactly what you need when put in a different context is the core skill of hacking.”

And finally, I’ll leave you with this brutally honest reverse Black Pearl from Notorious R.O.B., who, during Jeff’s session, shared his opinion about the quality of writing on some real estate blogs: “In the name of all that’s holy, you should stop blogging!” Ouch, Rob.