BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: May 2008 (page 3 of 8)

May 22, 2008

What I unearthed at Unchained

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

The big question: Did you learn anything? Why yes I did, thanks for asking. I learned that Bloodhound readers are kind, generous, caring, funny- I already knew they were smart.

I also learned that there are a whole crew of real estate professionals out there who are rowing the same boat as the Bloodhounds. We are dealing with a market that has experienced huge changes for many reasons.  We are hard working and absolutely professional. We love what we do, we are passionate about real estate, and we crave information to make us better. The biggest similarity I found is that we all yearn to conduct our business with as much freedom as possible.

Freedom- or living an unchained life- isn’t simply an idea to us, it’s the only way to exist, and that’s the unifying belief that everyone at this conference held. We might be going about finding our personal freedom differently, but that longing to be as free as possible is what brought people to the conference. I also think that it’s what repels some readers.

Freedom is a frightening thing to some people. I don’t know why, so don’t ask me to elaborate on that, I only know that some people seem uncomfortable with the idea that someone could choose to seek out as much freedom as possible. Or maybe they are uncomfortable with a different path to freedom than their own. Or perhaps they think that they should dictate what freedom should mean to everyone. Like I said I don’t know what motivates people to dislike the idea of Unchained, but I choose not to care.

Bloodhound readers are smart. The feedback that is being given to Greg and Brian will not be ignored. Unchained will be better next time because the folks who have dedicated themselves to giving all of us professional freedom are the same folks who also dedicate themselves to the pursuit of excellence and we can all benefit in the process, but only if you exercise your freedom to do so.

May 22, 2008

Google Juice? Yeah…That Hits the Spot!

by

Real Estate

Author website

Lots of fun at the Bloodhound Blog lately! Unfortunately, I had to miss Unchained, but was able to catch enough on Youtube to realize that I missed out on a lot – not the least of which was a great networking opportunity. I’ve been enjoying BHB more and more, though, and I know it has to do with increasing the level of my participation.

I think it just took me a bit to get warmed up, and to find a topic that I could really sink my teeth into. As much as I love real estate, I’m a relative pup (5 years) compared with most of the ol’ dogs here, so it took the introduction of a pretty serious SEO debate to reel me in. I’m not here to grind this topic in. In fact, I think we’ve done a fine job getting the word out about a practice that bothers us. However, during the debate, the statement “No one really knows how Google works” was thrown out a few times. Because of this, I wanted to write a quick tutorial on one basic concept that we know Google uses, and that has been proven time & again to be correct.

Page Rank, or “Google Juice,” was developed by Larry Page & Sergey Brin in the mid 1990’s while students at Stanford. The algorithm utilizes the inherent democracy of the web, counts the links to different websites as votes for those particular sites, and so measures the relative importance of each website.

Rand Fishkin, of SEOMOZ, put together one of his fabulous illustrations demonstrating the very basic function of the Page Rank system:

innate-pagerank.JPG

Obviously, the algorithm is much more complex than this, but this gives us a very fundamental understanding of how Page Rank works, and why inbound links are so important. The web, according to Google, is one big popularity contest, with the authoritative sites (like BHB) holding a lot of the juice, and less authoritative sites (like my dinky search blog) carrying less juice.

The easiest (but not always the most accurate) way to measure the Read more

May 21, 2008

UNCHAINED: Constructive Criticism

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Mark Eckenrode of Homestomper.com offers constructive criticism of the BloodhoundBlog Social Media Marketing Conference brought to you by Zillow.com:

For being the first Bloodhound Unchained this was nothing but a success. The fact that folks flew across the country to an unproven event to see and meet folks who they’ve only known through the web… a testament to the power of what it is that we’re doing.The flow of the event and even the presentations sometimes felt a bit dis-jointed but let’s face it, this was the first event of it’s kind and these weren’t professional platform speakers.

The time schedule we had was dictated by the event location (had to be out by 4pm). Pretty crappy, in my opinion. Considering that folks came from across the country to drink from a firehose of knowledge, I’d like to see the next Unchained have marathon sessions. With SalesDogs and Rich Dad Poor Dad we’d run from 9am until 11pm.

One major thing I did find missing was a lack of discussion on strategy. There were great tactics covered but without a strategy to unify the tactics and make sure the tactics supported the overall goal then, well, tactics don’t amount to much but busy work.

Of great benefit to all would also be breakout sessions… “You just learned how to XYZ. You’ve got 5 minutes to go online and do this for your website.”

A great companion piece to the breakout sessions would be roundtable discussions. A group of attendees at a table with an expert answering hotseat questions for 15 minutes before attendees switch to another table and another expert.

Mark offers “mindmaps” which are amazing summaries of our sessions. Download them. Print them. Read them.

Bloodhound Unchained Day 2 Mindmap PDF

Bloodhound Unchained Day 3 Mindmap PDF

Thanks for the ride to Ahwatukee and the great feedback, Mark.

May 21, 2008

Black Pearls: Controlling your own destiny in your hi-tech real estate practice: Three simple rules for dealing with technology vendors

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

[This post came up yesterday in a discussion at Unchained, and I’m kicking it back to the top of the blog because the issue of data portability is so important for people who might be coming anew into the world of Web 2.0/Social Media Marketing. –GSS]

 
Would it surprise you to learn that host, hostage and hostility are cognate terms? They come to us by way of French and German, but that hos idea in Latin trips lightly from guest to stranger to foreigner to enemy.

I happen to be thinking of these English words — host, hostage and hostility — because I wanted to come up with a very simple rule for dealing with technology vendors. Alas, I think the best I can do is three simple rules:

  1. Avoid hosted software systems
  2. Avoid proprietary technology
  3. Pursue commodity solutions — and prices

I bought and populated two new domains tonight. We buy all our domains from Godaddy.com — a commodity vendor — to simplify management and renewals. I control all of our hosting through a semi-dedicated server at HostGator.com, which means that I pay nothing extra to propagate a new domain. I have to pay for the domain registration, but I pay no additional charges beyond our regular flat monthly fee for hosting as many domains as I want.

I’m at the far right edge of the Realtor geek curve — as of tonight, we control 79 domains — but, with one exception, we control all of our data, with no need to fear the vicissitudes of vendors. (What’s the exception? Our virtual tours are hosted through VisualTour Obeo.com, which seems to us to be less odious than the other odious virtual tour vendors.)

Why does this matter? If you don’t control your own data, you don’t control your business. You are at the mercy of the vendors who do control your data. If you lose faith in them — or if they look like they might fail the test of the marketplace — you may find out much too late that applying my three rules would have made good sense.

So: Let’s go through them again in detail:

  1. Avoid hosted Read more
May 21, 2008

Satire is an evermore difficult and demanding art. Why? Because the world around us is often so risible as to be beyond parody…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Like this…

Unchained was promoted by Social Media Marketing only, most of it here. No advertising. No affiliate marketing. No ass-kissing. No taking crap from morons. No Inman.

If the lesson of this is lost on you, then you missed out on the biggest piece of what we were doing this week. I might try to convey the point in a satirical post, but how can I top the item linked above?

All of this broke out as I knew it would. We talk all the time about “What would David Gibbons do?” but this sequence of events came straight from the “What would Greg Swann do?” playbook. We’re not revolutionaries, despite the poses we might sometimes seem to strike. We’re all about supplanting what we see as negative forces, not up-ending them or making war on them.

So: What did Inman News do to itself this week — and in the preceding months? It ignored us, which did us no harm at all — but which demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is not devoted to news in the real estate industry.

It’s a dead letter, just like the NAR. In their heart of hearts, Brad Inman and his employees have known this all along. Now you know it, too.

In any case, here’s my great idea: No chokepoints. No bosses. No taking crap from morons. No Inman.

Feel free to add your own great ideas. There’s no “application form,” and you don’t have to kiss anyone’s “community” to win recognition for your brilliance.

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May 21, 2008

Memo to ePerks.com: You idiots! Trying to censor a real estate weblogger is a poor way to defend your reputation — such as it is…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

[I’m kicking this back up to the top. At the time I wrote this, I thought it might be enough to make the jackasses at ePerks.com come to their senses. Apparently not. If you are a real estate weblogger, and if you don’t want some sleazoid attorney pulling these stunts on you, you need to set your shoulder beside Vlad Zablotskyy’s and fight for your right to free speech. Let the world know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. –GSS]

 
Sleazeball lead vendor ePerks.com (corporate motto: “We don’t totally suck because we can’t get anything right!”) has found a great new way to respond to criticism: Censorship.

Real estate weblogger Vlad Zablotskyy exposed ePerks to what by BloodhoundBlog standards amounts to very mild scrutiny. His posts elicited a number of horror stories from Realtors who had been misused in their dealings with ePerks.

So far nothing surprising. Lead vendors suck. They persist by virtue of creating an artificial marketing chokepoint, interposing themselves between consumers and the vendors who can satisfy their needs:

In the Web 1.0 world, lead vendors snapped up domains and fought hard for dominance on organic and pay-per-click keywords relating to real estate sales, mortgage origination and refinancing. By these means, they harvested contact information from interested parties, which they were then able to sell to Realtors and lenders, often for enormous fees. The lead vendors created an artificial chokepoint by marketing, then charged practitioners a premium to gain access to the consumers trapped at that chokepoint.

It is hardly shocking that most of the victims of lead vendors come to hate the scum who run these scams.

In the long run none of this matters. The Web 2.0 world disintermediates all man-made chokepoints. ePerks.com is one with the dinosaurs — and sic semper tyrannosauris!

But wait. There’s more. Instead of ignoring criticism on what is (sorry, Vlad) a low-traffic weblog, instead of asking itself “What would David Gibbons do?”, instead of engaging the enraged while retooling the chokepoint like Homegain.com’s Louis Cammarosano, ePerks.com chose to do the stupidest thing any corporation or government can do in the Web 2.0 world: It sent a Read more

May 21, 2008

What happens when a lion of the industry sticks his head in the lion’s own mouth? Glenn Kelman joins BloodhoundBlog as a contributor

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is one of those completely obvious ideas that only takes about a year to bubble up to the surface: We write about the real estate industry. We are not very shy about advocating change in the real estate industry. Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman is one of the key exponents of change in the real estate industry. Ergo: Glenn Kelman should be writing here.

I told the man yesterday that I bear my ignorance as a curse, and this is potent evidence of that fact. I should have seen all this long ago, but it didn’t cross my mind until last week. But all we can do, when we make an error, is put it right and strive to do better in the future. Here’s the putting it right part:

Glenn Kelman has been a lightning rod for controversy since the founding of Redfin.com. What we have all failed to notice is that he owns a gentle soul, a thoughtful mind and a prodigious writing talent.

I think this is admirable and courageous on Glenn’s part. I am never very kind to that nebulous population of folks I deride as “vendors,” but I have been especially rough on Glenn and on Redfin. I’m pleased that he trusts us to treat him with the honor and respect a guest in our home deserves, but I am beyond delighted that he has agreed to share the workings of his incisive mind with us.

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May 21, 2008

The Secret Hunger

by

Real Estate Broker, Investor

Author website

Congratulations to Brian, Greg and Cathy, and everyone, for a successful conference. Thanks to Glenn for his presentation. And special thanks to Russell Shaw for contributing. Super special thanks to Rudy Bachraty for yesterday’s live video feed – that was awesome! And on to Orlando!

And all that brings me back to Don Reedy’s comment yesterday about how much he enjoyed Greg Swann’s opening segment that delved into history and philosophy. I wholeheartedly agreed.

I suppose I might be in the minority, but I would happily attend a conference consisting of 100% history, philosophy and linguistics. Greg Swann would be the main event, and I wonder if interesting people from local universities might be found who would enjoy presenting summaries of their particular disciplines.

Oh, and I think I would toss in a public speaking coach, since with the advent of video as a marketing medium, grace and skill in public speaking is becoming an absolute necessity.

I even have a name for this conference: “A Crash Course In Liberal Arts For the Busy Professional”. Seriously. We get so caught up in the frenzy of doing business and finding ways to prospect for more business, that we forget the foundation for all commerce lies in our ability to think, to understand, and to reason. And learning to think, understand and reason is precisely the purpose of a Liberal Arts education.

Keep in mind here the word “liberal” in this context does not relate to a contemporary political opinion, but rather the definition from classical antiquity: The education proper to a freeman (Latin: libera, “free”) as opposed to a slave.

I think the reason Greg’ words resonate so deeply is many people have passed up a Liberal Arts education, opting instead for business-intensive vocational or technical learning. And when we get a taste of that Liberal Arts mindset, we are hungry for more. We find there is a deeper and wider context with which to view our activities and our lives.

I am wondering if a one or two day conference built on that Read more

May 20, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained: Commencement news, and then to bed

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve already been to sleep once, briefly. After Unchained broke up this afternoon, we came home to knock out the essential work. Teri Lussier cranked out a solid hour of video clips today, so I started pumping those into the YouTube mill. I’ve got a lot more to talk about, but first I have to go to sleep.

So first: The news.

Glenn Kelman gave a knock-out keynote speech. He spoke about Redfin.com’s recent performance, as compared with the company’s initial assumptions, and we all came away with a better understanding of how more alike our businesses are than they are different.

When Glenn finished speaking, we announced that he will be joining BloodhoundBlog as a contributor. This is a stone obvious idea that should have occurred to me a year ago, but, in fact, it only came to me last week. We’ve talked to other bigfeet in the realty.bot and franchise worlds, but, where the flesh has been willing, the PR department, until now, has always turned out to be weak.

I think Glenn made a lot of friends for Redfin today, and it certainly was an honor to have him with us. Whatever differences we might have had, he’s a fine writer and a thoughtful man, so it will be interesting reading him here.

The other news was Brian Brady’s announcement that we will be doing another Unchained event in Orlando, Florida, at the time of the NAR Convention. We don’t have a date or a location yet, but it will be right around Friday November 7, 2008. We want to be there to catch the Realtors before they rush into the convention center to spend a ton of money on hokey gimmicks that won’t work. This seems like an appropriate mission for a couple of wannabe Jesuits.

Teri’s videos are chugging along, and I’ll get around to tagging them tomorrow or Thursday. Feel free to watch them anyway, as they get uploaded. In the mean time, here is Brad Coy doing what Cathy says is a spot-on imitation of me:

And just to share the love, Brad also gave a parody performance of Brian Brady:


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May 20, 2008

So How Does Your Lender View You As A Customer?

by

Associate Broker

Author website

If Your Lender Is Countrywide – This Telling Email Might Give You An Idea

This email is being circulated on the web… I cannot verify its authenticity or content, so until it can be confirmed, take it with a grain of proverbial salt.

A Real Countrywide Email From the Office of Angelo Mozilo – Email Below Calls Homeowner Disgusting
By Moe Bedard on May 20th, 2008

It isn’t every day that you get to see behind the scenes of the housing and mortgage crisis. Mainstream media usually tells the same homeowner story of pain and suffering and then the “made up” stories from the lenders and servicers who are masters of deception and lip service.

Here is an email that was forwarded to me by a Countrywide Home Loans borrower named Don Bailey. Don joined my forum to get free foreclosure help and assisitance in obtaining a loan modification from Countrywide and that is just what he got. He followed or advice to a “t”, wrote his hardship letter (we provide free samples here and on the forum) and then proceeded to email and fax his information to the email list we provided him.

Email from Don to Countrywide after he received the disturbing email from the Office of Angelo Mozilo sent to him by accident:

Hello,

I took the advice on this forum, and e-mailed my hardship letter to the list of e-mail addresses posted in the threads. Two minutes later, I received a reply……a mistaken reply by Angelo Mozilo to the rest of the people on the list. Here it is. Nothing like this to kick a person while they are down. What hope do I have …

“removed@yahoo.com
CC: Steve_Bailey@Countrywide.Com
Subject: Re: bailey acct# xxxxxxxxxx
From: Angelo_Mozilo@countrywide.com Add Mobile Alert
Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 06:41:34 -0700

This has already been sent on to our senior manager who will determine the facts behind your request and he will take the appropriate actions.

Dan Bailey
05/19/2008 06:37 AM
To Angelo_Mozilo@countrywide.com
Cc
Subject Re: bailey acct# xxxxxxxxxx

Interesting to find that you think my letter is disgusting. I will send Read more

May 20, 2008

Unchained voices: Video clips from the conference and after-hours events: “It’s been like learning more than my brain can fit”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

BloodhoundBlog’s Geno Petro:

Don Reedy talking about his new venture:

BloodhoundBlog’s Cheryl Johnson:

Brad Coy and Andy Kaufman taught a working lunch session on Twitter. Here’s Brad:

And here’s Andy:

Katherine Whiting talking about her own Web 2.0 epiphany:

Teri Lussier and her posse had dinner Sunday night at Durant’s a famous Phoenix steak house. Here are Jeff Royce and Lenore Wilkas at dinner:

Mark Eibner and Dirk Freeman from BrokerIPTV.com:

And we are all of us Greeks, as Teri demonstrates by interviewing the kitchen crew:

There are dozens of other clips on the BloodhoundBlog Unchained YouTube Channel. Even more at BrokerIPTV.com’s UStream Channel.

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May 19, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained: Real Estate Website Makeover…

by

Big, Beautiful Bloodhound

Author website

We’re Unchained, but we’re still wired to the net — wirelessly. These posts are set up so that folks can make notes or comments in real time.

Mary McKnight of RSS Pieces will review and suggest improvements to several web sites and weblogs:

  • Mary Burak’s Advanced Access Site
  • JTC Realty Group’s Point2 Site
  • Gulf Coast Associates’s RealEstateWebmasters Site
  • Patti Herrington’s AgentImage Site
  • Karen Borden’s Z57 Site
  • Just for fun: BloodhoundRealty.com’s WordPress Site

Plus a surprise debut of a brand new blogsite for an RE.net mandarin

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May 19, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained: The Way of the Farmer…

by

Big, Beautiful Bloodhound

Author website

We’re Unchained, but we’re still wired to the net — wirelessly. These posts are set up so that folks can make notes or comments in real time.

  • Listing strong to farm strong
  • Building single-property web sites
  • Using engenu to dominate the long tail
  • Zestifarming to dominate Zillow
  • Blogging your listings – with SEO power
  • Belly-to-belly farming the Web 2.0 way

Applying Web 2.0 technologies to the the traditional real estate marketing idea of the geographic farm. Greg Swann will take you through a set of techniques you can use to establish an online ubiquity more complete than you could ever achieve with postcards and pumpkins.

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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