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Category: Blogging (page 15 of 84)

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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May 19, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained: The Way of the Hunter…

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.

  • Two words: Ubiquity works
  • Setting traps on the sites that can expose you to consumers
  • Baiting the traps – providing relevant consumer content to match up with the community
  • Building a community – recruiting eyeballs that keep coming back
  • Getting commitment – how to convert engaged consumers to permission-based marketing participants
  • Channel marketing – building a referral network online

Brian Brady teaches you how to be as hard to miss as he is…

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May 19, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained: The Unchained Epiphany…

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.

  • You are free at last, a free moral agent with no one to order you around — but no one to blame but yourself if you should fail
  • You are free to thrive
  • You are free to starve
  • But you are not free to escape the necessity of making a choice

An introductory convocation from Greg Swann featuring philosophy, history, stirring rhetoric and some really scary homework…

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May 18, 2008

Kevin Wilhelm on the first day of BloodhoundBlog Unchained: “Today was the first day, which was meant to be a bonus day. But if it ended today, it would be worth the money, period.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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:


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May 18, 2008

More BloodhoundBlog Unchained video: The antediluvian trickle

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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.

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May 16, 2008

What to expect on Sunday at BloodhoundBlog Unchained

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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.

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May 16, 2008

A link letter: Instead of a post by a man too scattered by the winds

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

May 14, 2008

TruliaTracking.php: Keeping track of the Trulia.com nofollow controversy with a widget for the rest of us

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

May 13, 2008

One-hand solid-state video cameras like the Flip are a fantastic resource for both real estate documentation and video podcasting

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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?

  • It’s second only to my digital still camera as an on-hand resource for recording and communicating real estate ideas
  • It fits on my hip — just like my still camera — and that’s where it rides
  • Because it’s so easy to carry and so easy to use, there is no aversion or impediment to using it
  • It’s eminently useful for documenting traffic conditions around a house — or weather, as I did earlier today
  • It’s simply excellent for doing interviews, whether those are testimonials, vendor reports for clients or video podcasts

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

May 13, 2008

When the weather in Phoenix is bad…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…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.

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May 12, 2008

Using YouTube video cameras to create text plus video landing pages

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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.

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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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