There’s always something to howl about.
Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker
This talk is a further elaboration on a post I wrote in April:
There are several other clips from this session on the BloodhoundBlog Unchained YouTube Channel.
Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology
We planned these video clips as a way of communicating Web 2.0 ideas by effecting Web 2.0 ideas. Kevin Wilhelm, shown below, seems to make our point for us:
Here’s Bloodhound Teri Lussier, Saturday night, after a long flight and a day in the desert:
Real estate coach Jan O’Brien and Realtor Vance Shutes:
Nick Bastian, who surprised Brian with a real-time Twitter at our event ten days ago:
Kevin Warmath revised his sitemap while Mary McKnight was still speaking:
Bloodhound Geno Petro on the state of his SERPs:
Andy Kaufman and Brad Coy:
Bawldguy Bar-B-Que: Bloodhound Jeff Brown teaches prospecting with Kam Hubbard at Honey Bear’s Bar-B-Que in Central Phoenix:
Russell Shaw spoke for about 45 minutes. Here he is seen answering questions posed by Kevin Warmath:
There are half-a-dozen other Russell Shaw clips, along with three dozen others, on the BloodhoundBlog Unchained YouTube Channel.
Nick Bastian kicks in this clip of Mary McKnight on backlinks:
Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology
There’s a ton more in Unchained clips to come, but here’s a quick taste from the work done today by BrokerIPTV.com.
To start with, Brian Brady interviews my best-beloved, Cathleen Collins:
Russell Shaw put in an appearance and spoke for about 45 minutes. We’ll have clips of that later tonight. In the mean time, here’s a post-session interview he did with BrokerIPTV.com’s Mark Eibner:
My take is that we delivered a lot of content for the first day. Our plan is to ratchet things up quite a bit over the next two days.
One of the things that I think is totally cool about what we are doing is that we aren’t just talking about it, we’re doing Social Media Marketing for the conference as we’re doing the conference. All this video is just a piece of that.
I’d love to hear from people who are at Unchained about how the first day went for them.
Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography, real estate training, technology
Video by Teri Lussier using the Flip camera.
A young convert:
Mary McKnight on SEO and social networking:
Much more at our YouTube channel.
This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). Watch this space. There should be a lot of Flip video coming out of Unchained.
The Flip digital video camera makes illustrating real estate ideas fast, convenient and fun
I’m becoming a fan of digital video for marketing real estate.
I’ve always hated the video home tour: “This. Is. The. Living. Room. This. Is. The. Dining. Room. The. Family. Dines. In. This. Room.” The images will be small, dark and grainy. The motion will be either jerky, swooping or both. And the tour itself will do nothing that could not be done better with digital photos.
But just lately I got a Flip video camera, and I can’t seem to stop thinking of real estate uses for it.
The Flip uses solid state memory rather than tapes to store its video. It’s a tiny little thing, about the size of a digital still camera, and you can operate it with one hand. It’s really only good for certain kinds of work. It would be useless at a wedding or a basketball game. But for capturing interviews, it is the prefect video camera.
Even better, it comes with a built-in USB connection and software for emailing videos or pumping them directly into YouTube or MySpace. Shooting, storing, editing and sharing videos are all painlessly convenient.
The first real estate application I thought of for the Flip was to collect testimonials from clients. That’s kind of self-serving, but the next idea was all about selling houses. In the past we have done video interviews with sellers or neighbors, but the editing process for normal video is onerous. But with the Flip we can just shoot the interview, upload it to YouTube and then link it from the web site for that property.
If I want to make a quick video to show weather conditions or traffic around a house, it’s easily done. I had a home inspector deliver a short video summary of the repair issues on a home for out-of-town buyers.
The breakthrough for me was thinking of video in the same way I think of still photography, Read more
From the shady courtyard of the Heard Museum, Brian Brady talks about what you can expect on Sunday at the BloodhoundBlog Unchained Social Media Marketing Conference.
Or, per the revised forecast, you could hang out at your hotel and play in the pool.
The air will be very dry, so 107 degrees will seem very pleasant. Even so, I’m thinking I should refer you to our relocation page, which details all the interesting ways there are to die in the desert heat.
The Cliff’s Notes: Drink water constantly and wear sunscreen. The weather will be truly perfect, but it’s not like what you’re used to back home.
We’re ready like firemen. Can’t wait to see you Sunday.
Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, real estate, real estate marketing
Colleen Kulikowski sent me a sweet card wishing us success with Unchained. Enclosed was a packet of Aster seeds. If I can get them to grow, I’ll take pictures.
Tom Royce sent an email note telling us to break a leg.
Kevin Warmath needs a roommate for Unchained. If you haven’t bunked up and want to split costs with a man who swears he’s not a Neanderthal, give him a call (678-438-3041) and work something out.
My post on transparency was picked up by my long-time friend and client, Richard Nikoley. Richard runs Provanta, a debt-reduction company. Partly owing to my influence, they’ve just switched their on-line presence over to a WordPress blogsite, putting them squarely in the warts-and-all Web 2.0 world.
I said this in email to Richard, an Unchained epiphany all its own:
What’s interesting is that everyone in our world shops this way: Full research, full knowledge of the pros and cons of everything. We might be at the right edge of the learning curve, but it’s all the same curve. Everyone is on it, and everyone is moving our way on that curve. Why would we market any way but as a reflection of how we shop?
Think about it, and I mean think about it a lot: Why would we market any way but as a reflection of how we shop?
That post was also picked up by The Innkeeper’s Resource, a blog for Bed ‘n’ Breakfast innkeepers. Their take: Anonymous reviews are a reality of their business. Get used to it. I offered this in a comment:
Brilliant.
Here’s an idea that can work in any industry that can be hit with an off-site review:
“When Mark and Marie Olson complained about our threadbare linens on TripReports.com, we saw red. Not because the charge was false. It was true, alas. We had let ourselves become so distracted by the big picture of providing a great experience for our guests that we forgot that big things are made up of little things. Not only did we add a quality control procedure to our laundry, we built quality control into every aspect of our business. And we gave the Read more
We list homes for sale like nobody’s business. I mean that: No one’s business is built like ours. That’s something I’m doing everything I can to change, by every means I can think of. It’s why I take such pains to describe the things we do, in the hopes that I can induce other Realtors to do those things, or others like them. I don’t think my job is to be a lead-producing machine. I think my job is to be a real estate marketing machine. I think that’s your job, too.
In any case, I have a no-fee referral in Boston (the South End, south and east of Berkeley and Tremont, near Peters Park). It’s yours if you can demonstrate to me that you deliver the goods for your sellers. We’ll even help on our end with a web site and hosting.
The seller sold his last house with us. We’re stronger now than we were then, but he knows how strong we were then. If you can come through for him, I’ll come through for you. That’s a better-than-decent trade, I think.
I should start thinking this way, anyway — compiling a list of listers and buyer’s agents who I think earn and deserve every penny of their commissions.
In any case, if you’re the lister I’m looking for — or if you know that lister — speak up. The seller is smart, experienced and very real estate savvy. He’ll keep the place in showroom condition, and he can help out with the marketing, too.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Using Eric Bramlett’s green ribbon and a little bit of PHP, I have built a small widget to keep track of the accumulating body of weblog posts on Trulia.com policy of adding the “nofollow” tag to links back to its listing partners. Shown below is an image of the widget; you can see the real thing in the sidebar.
You can read the articles linked in the widget for clarification, but the issue in its essence is this: Trulia is using the listings you give it to enhance its own search engine performance on long tail search keywords even at is not sharing any search engine authority with you on the link back to your listing. Another way of saying the same thing: You’re buying Trulia.com dinner and it is scarfing down your dessert while you’re away from the table.
If you’ve written a post on this topic, let me know and I’ll add your link to the widget.
If you care about this issue, you should echo this widget. It’s easy to do. The widget itself is not complicated, and I built it to be shared. It’s designed to work flexibly in your sidebar without clashing with your look and feel. In other words, it should take on the characteristics of your Cascading Style Sheet, not mine. If you want to echo this widget, it’s dread simple. Copy this line of code:
<?php
include ("https://bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/TruliaTracking.php");
?>
and paste it on a line of its own in your “sidebar.php” file for your currently active theme. FTP that into the appropriate folder on your file server and you’re done. (Note: These instructions presume WordPress and an FTP connection. If you know how to deploy this code in another blogging platform, or if you know how to edit theme files from within WordPress, speak up in the comments.)
Will BloodhoundBlog get Google “juice” for doing this? Yes, but we don’t need it. Instead, I’m using my code and my hot-rod file server to host this widget for anyone who wants to echo it.
Will the posts linked in the widget get Google “juice” for being there. Big time. Riding on BloodhoundBlog’s sidebar Read more
I’m completely sold on the Flip camera. Unchained bought a second one for Brian the other day. We’ll use both of them at the conference, then each of us will take one home. We’re going to buy another one out of our own money for Cathleen. I wrote my Republic column for next week about all the real estate marketing uses I’m coming up with for this little video camera.
Why am I so sweet on the Flip?
The video shared below is a brief summary by Mike Elsberry, my all time favorite home inspector, documenting the repair issues in the home we looked at today. The buyers are out-of-state, but they get to see Mike’s face, hear the confidence and expertise in his voice and judge his level of concern with the issues he raises. This simply rocks, a completely different way of dealing with a remote-control inspection.
I want for Brain and I to both have Flip cameras with us all the time because of the ease of making video podcasts. Whenever we find ourselves talking to anyone with something interesting to say, we can turn the conversation into a podcast, a permanent addition to our library of Black Pearls.
Until now I have shouted down real estate video with my volume knob set to eleven. I still feel the same way about what I call the Lurch video, the painfully boring home tour with swooping and jerking camera movement and a voiceover narration punctuated by way… too… much… punctuation… Cathy shot an interview on Sunday with the seller of our listing on Lookout Mountain in Phoenix, Read more
…it’s really bad…
That’s what I woke up to this morning. Windy, cold and spitting rain. I had a home inspection in the nearby foothills and I had to sit through a brief brown-out — a cloud of dust so thick I couldn’t see to drive. The Russian Thistle were on the march — that’s Tumbleweed to you. In all, a brisk and challenging morning.
Is that what you can expect for BloodhoundBlog Unchained, if you’re coming to town this weekend? Not hardly. Sunny and not too terribly hot — for the Phoenix natives. Bring your swim suit. Should be clear and dry — what I think of as Chamber of Commerce weather. The conditions you’ll see this weekend have been selling homes by the dozens in this Valley since 1948.
Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, real estate, real estate marketing
Hunter Jackson of IBlogColumbia.com wrote to me yesterday about the possibility of doing video testimonials with the RCA Small Wonder, a CMOS-based video camera like the Flip Camera we discussed a few days ago. Like the Flip, the Small Wonder has a built-in USB connector, and it also uses AA batteries for maximum uptime. Some users have had complaints about video quality, especially in low light, but a very cool feature of the Small Wonder is its ability to use 2 GB SD cards for storage. Each card holds up to four hours of video, so you can either just keep shooting, or you can record onto one card while you’re uploading your videos on another.
The cost? Ninety bucks at Amazon.com.
Here is Hunter’s first chapter of a video diary of a home-buyer’s journey through the escrow process:
This works as a blog post, or as a series of posts, but the video can also be blended together with interstitial text to create something like the Realty Reality posts I used to do, but with video instead of photos for the illustrations.
I’m short on time to play with this, but I think this may be a very effective way to integrate video into real estate web sites: Text plus video landing pages.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography, real estate training, technology
This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). I wrote this last Tuesday, but it coincides nicely with Barry’s post this morning.
Are you an investor looking for a rental home that will stay rented? Buy a home that’s worth living in
I represented tenants for my first two years as a real estate licensee. Working with tenants didn’t pay very well, but it was a good way to get a lot of real estate experience very fast. Gradually I started working with home buyers, and then with home sellers. By now, I only work with tenants as a courtesy. It still doesn’t pay very well.
But in those two years, I saw an awful lot of rental homes. Or, more precisely, a lot of awful rental homes. Again and again, I would find myself wondering why anyone would think a particular house would be appealing to tenants. Not just the condition of the property, often atrocious, but simply the location itself. It’s astounding to me how many vacant rentals are situated nowhere near where tenants might want to live.
In the years since then, I’ve represented a huge number of investors. Market conditions haven’t been kind to them lately, but Phoenix is once again a market ripe for landlords. Prices are low and cash flows are positive. If landlords buy the right properties to use as rentals, the homes should rent quickly and stay rented.
So which homes will work best as rentals?
I’m looking for a home in a built-out suburb. Buckeye is a bargain for owner-occupants, but why would tenants move to a town with no employment base? What I want are jobs, schools, shopping and entertainment, all nearby, with decent freeway and bus access. I want a north-facing home; tenants read their power bills, too.
Am I looking for the cheapest house? No. Price matters, but what matters more is livability. Parents worry about the kids taking a header down the stairs, so I want a single-story home. There has to be at least a little grass in the back yard so toddlers can romp.
Here’s the magic bullet: If Read more
I have two Unchained games, if you’re interested in playing.
First: We say a lot of interesting things around here. In the comments, list your favorite BloodhoundBlog quotes. They can come from a post or a comment — serious, comical, whimsical or true Black Pearls. I’ll take those quotes and make a slide show for interstitial display, as it were.
Second: Pick out your favorites from the Unchained Melodies. Embed in the comments or post the YouTube link. I’ll snag a bunch of those to use also, especially on Sunday morning during registration.
And just because I’m in a Sunday morning frame of mind — and because I don’t do business that don’t make me smile — here’s a reprise of Treetop Flyer by Stephen Stills:
One of the the things I like about working with Brian Brady is that, when we’re together, or even when we’re just talking by phone, marketing magic happens. We spark ideas in each other, and marketing strategies emerge that neither one of us had foreseen.
Last week, Brian suggested that I buy a Flip video camera for us to use at Unchained. Fast, easy, fun YouTube videos, like a Polaroid Swinger for the new millennium.
I don’t remember who came up with what, but we worked out a strategy for using the camera to make unique, viral content at the conference. You’ll have to wait until next week to see what we have in mind.
But I got on the net — take note of how real people shop, if you would — and researched cameras and prices. The best instant availability I found was the Flip Ultra with 60 minutes of flash video memory for $135 with tax at Sam’s Club. I bought one for Unchained, set it up and learned how to use it.
The video I showed of Brian last night was shot with the Flip camera, but it’s not as good as a camcorder for mid-range or distant shots. Up close, though, it’s the cat’s pajamas.
And that was something I realized while I was talking: The Flip camera is the absolute most perfect tool for collecting testimonials. Testimonials are credible because they’re not written by you. Video is credible because of its verisimilitude. By asking questions, you can direct a video testimonial to bring out the information you want to convey to other viewers.
You can use Richard Riccelli’s testimonial plot line, for instance: “If you want to get to heaven you have to go through hell” — or — “Given my past negative experiences, I was stunned and amazed by the incredible service I received.”
So I’m standing there in front of a room full of people, realizing that I had just hit upon something new and really cool. The Flip camera is as small as my everyday digital still camera. I can easily wear it on my belt along with the Read more