Good grief. Tell him to stop.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Category: Blogging (page 26 of 84)
One of the benefits of The Odysseus Medal competition, for me, personally — especially since we started echoing the Long List of nominees — is that I don’t feel as much pressure to weigh in on every last thing. I’ve been writing software in my spare moments for the last two weeks, and, amazingly enough, the world spins on without me. Last week we had Roost.com launch, which I wrote about, but we also had a huge Fed rate cut and the extended coverage of the Ummel lawsuit, and I got to coast on both stories, on the strength of the great work done by other voices in the RE.net.
And, as it works out, this week is an all-Ummel Odysseus Medal Awards post.
We start with Glenn Kelmann, who wins The Odysseus Medal this week for “114 Pounds of Absolute Perserverance”:
Once a buyer’s agent begins making representations about price, it seems possible for him to make negligent representations about price. This doesn’t mean an agent can’t make representations about price, and can’t be wrong when he does. He just can’t be negligently wrong, by withholding material information that a reasonable person would want to see. If the Ummels’ agent did that, he should pay for it.
Of course, since we have no idea from our seat in the peanut gallery what really happened between Ms. Ummel and her agent, the whole debate is academic. The only undeniable fact is that the lawsuit that Ms. Ummel is pursuing, at greater cost than she is likely to recoup, must be like all other forms of revenge, a hopeless attempt to regain what she lost: her sense of trust and self-reliance.
In this respect, the case just illustrates the perils to both parties when a client outsources her brain to a real estate agent, or a stock-broker, or anyone else trying to sell something. It is why we dislike the paternalistic mindset occasionally used to justify brokerage fees, in which talk of “hand holding” is not seen as condescending, fears about “the single biggest purchase in your life” are stoked, and agent attempts to be persuasive during Read more
There are 18 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 78 posts. A lot of news, so a longer short-list. Upside: A boatload of fascinating reading.
Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.
Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.
Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:
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“Brian Brady — Brokers/Lenders The Danger of Real Estate Brokers as Loan Advisors“,
“Charles Feldman — Litigious Clients Real Estate Agents: Are Litigious Clients Out to Get YOU?“,
“Dan Green — Mortgage Rates and the Fed Why Mortgage Rates Didn’t Fall More When The Fed Made A Surprise 0.750% Rate Cut“,
“Doug Quance — Self-Fufilling Prophecy And Now We Shall Witness The Economic Self-Fufilling Prophecy“,
“Dustin Luther — Roost.com Who gave Roost complete MLS listings?“,
“Galen Ward — Benefit versus Features Descriptive text as benefit, not feature“,
“Glenn Kelman — Absolute Perserverance “114 Pounds of Absolute Perserverance”“,
“Jay Thompson — Buyer suing realtor On Buyers Suing Agents“,
“Jay Thompson — Roost.com Roost.com: A New Player in Real Estate Search“,
“Jim Cronin — Slow-Loading 3 Reasons Your Real Estate Blog Loads So Darn Slow, and the Solutions“,
“Joel Burslem — Roost.com Roost.com Kicks over the RE Search Cart“,
“Kris Berg — The Fast Lane Real Estate in the Fast Lane“,
“Michael Wurzer — Branded or Unbranded Media Branded or Unbranded Media, A Video Conundrum“,
“Mike Price — Who Rules The Roost? Who Rules The Roost?“,
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Deadline for next week’s competition Read more
Nota bene: Slightly amended. Reread carefully.
I landed on Jeff Kempe’s weblog yesterday. In the way of the web, I don’t remember how I got there or why I came. But I spent a little while looking around, without quite realizing what I was looking for.
And then it hit me: There’s no contact information. No phone number. No “email me!” link. No contact form. You can find Jeff’s phone number on the About page, but that’s about it.
Maybe he wants it that way. Maybe it’s none of my business. And maybe I’m not so religious about this stuff that I can go out look for motes — or even beams. But Brian Brady is dead-on when he talks about asking for the business, so I decided to do something for Jeff, whether he likes it or not.
And: You can play, too.
What I came up with is a sort of universal contact form for real estate webloggers.
You can see how it looks on DistinctivePhoenix.com in the image to the right. It’s built to adopt the look-and-feel imposed by your weblog’s theme’s CSS file, so it should look just right when you deploy it. I deliberately made it narrow because sidebars can be pretty tight places.
The code itself is pretty simple, so if you feel comfortable editing PHP, you can go in and modify it to your heart’s content.
But if the thought of editing software makes your brain ache, you can deploy this form by editing only five lines of code, all very simple.
First, you have to email me to get me to send you the form. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get a PHP file to download from our server without executing. I can email you a zip file, but our anonymous FTP is so anonymous I can’t figure out its true name.
Anyway, when you get the PHP file, you’re going to do this — in a text editor, not in Microsoft Word: Edit the second through the fifth lines. They’ll start out looking like this:
$myName = "Firstname Lastname"; $myCompany = "The Almagamated ClusterFunk Team"; $myEmailAddress = "MyEmailAddress@MyFileServer.com"; $myWeblogAddress = Read more
by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Housevalues.com invested close to $3 million in Activerain.com. I chuckled about the irony of a lead company paying for leads, yesterday. I also reported that the Active Rain community was politely swallowing this shocking news. You see, for 18 months, the little purple pill has always been, “If you blog it, they will come” (‘they’ meaning customers).
Jon Washburn’s community press release generated comments like this one, posted by Ann Cummings:
Congratulations on the funding. Like others, I’m no fan at all of any lead generation companies. And I’m glad to read Mike Nelson’s comment above about this not being that kind of opportunity for them nor an advertising opportunity for them. That was a concern of mine when I saw this announcement over on BloodHound earlier. Thanks for the clarification, Mike.
I hope this funding allows you to bring all kinds of great positive things to AR and Localism – that would be terrific indeed!!
Ann
No surprise there. Ann’s a nice lady and adopted the cautiously optimistic attitude I would expect from her. She’s hoping for the best but ready for the worst (if it happens).
Later, demons were exorcised by some (understandably) jaded members who felt that Housevalues “took” their money by promising a product that failed to deliver. On cue, the Housevalues advocates expressed their opinions. Greg Nino from Houston said:
House Values or any other lead generation company is the current future. In case anyone needs to be reminded, the Internet is where prospects turn into dollars and sense. A lead that comes from your computer or how it gets in you contact management system is a mute point. What does matter is that House Values has been instrumental in launching careers for some and sadly not able to spoil others.
I have concern for anyone outside my market who claims Internet leads are either a waste of time or a waste of money. Effort being left out because that is what usually is for the typical naysayer. If your in my market carry on with your thoughts. I Read more
The Odysseus Medal this week goes to Trevor Smith for Theology, Postmodernism, and a Different Kind of Buyer:
– Postmodernism places value on the journey. Many of my clients are very interested in learning about the process of real estate. They don’t want somebody to do it for them. They want to be part of the journey. They want to be an integral cog in the process, so that when they get the house they want, they can say “I took part, in buying this home.” Contrast this to agent/client relationships of the past where the agent decided what homes to show their client, they drafted the paperwork and said “sign here,” and they moved their client through closing with directions rather than explanations.
– Postmodernism distrusts authority. At one time you may have been able to say, “This is a good value for this house,” and your buyer would simply trust your judgement. After all you are a professional. This is no longer the case. Now, multiple factors must go into making a decision: 1.) What does the data say? 2.) What does my agent say? 3.) What do my friends and spiritual advisor say? 4.) and lastly and most importantly, How do I feel about it?
– Truth is personal and it’s relative.There is market data, there are appraisals, there is the financial situation of the seller, and there are comparables; but none of this makes a bit of difference if the buyer doesn’t see the truth in them. Today’s buyer can’t be given the data and the data’s conclusion. They have to be given the data and make their own conclusion. To you the chicken farm next door might devalue the house by $10,000, but to the buyer it increases the value by $10,000. After all, they grew up on a chicken farm, and viewing one brings back fond memories.
– Postmodernism values community. It’s not just getting a good deal, but it’s meeting the seller of the house to learn about their kids and the experience they had in the home. It’s not just about advice from an agent, but its becoming friends with your agent. It’s not just about the lender, Read more
ActiveRain has accepted a minority capital investment from HouseValues designed to help us grow and become more of what we had always hoped we could be.
A great deal of thought and consideration went into this decision. I’d like to share some of that with you.
2007 taught us a few things. The biggest perhaps is how prudent we need to be about who we do business with. Despite the many hands held out to us over the past few months, the right one had to gain a firm grip on our trust. HouseValues did that – above all others.Financial terms were important to us, but throughout the entire process we continually asked ourselves “who understands us and our culture the best?” and “Who will help us keep our commitments to the community? HouseValues, a local company with a wealth of experience in our industry, hit the mark.
I’m not even going to remark on this…
Thanks to Cheryl Johnson for dropping a dime.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
There are 15 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 82 posts. Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.
Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.
Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:
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“Doug Quance — School Of Hard Knocks Tuition Is Expensive At The School Of Hard Knocks“,
“Drew Meyers — Neighborhood Boundary Files 7000+ Neighborhood Boundary Files in Shapefile Format“,
“Eric Blackwell — Network Solutions Network Solutions — I-CANN too hold your domain ideas hostage!“,
“Gary Elwood — Writing Why Writing Is the Most Important Thing You Can Learn“,
“Greg Tracy — Realtors are too Damn Old Realtors are Just too Damn Old“,
“Jim Cronin — Readers or Search Engines? Dichotomy of the Real Estate Blog – Do You Please the Readers or Search Engines?“,
“Kris Berg — Technology Hangover Technology Hangover – I’m a little fuzzy.“,
“Michael Wurzer — Seeking Clarity Seeking Clarity in Real Estate Data Standards“,
“Morgan Brown — A Fool’s Rally We’re looking at a fool’s rally – plain and simple.“,
“Chris Johnson — Economics of Wholesale Lending Some Economics of Wholesale Lending: Yet another Reason Why it’s a dead man walking.“,
“Stan Humphries — Zestimation What’s in a Number?“,
“Trevor Smith — Different Kind of Buyer Theology, Postmodernism, and a Different Kind of Buyer“,
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Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here.
It might seem like I’m shouting up the drain pipe, but I’m not talking to Dustin — I’m talking to you.
If you were selling a viral product like Skype, where for every 10,000 people with a casual interest in your product, one will turn into a paying customer — with the cost per conversion approaching zero dollars — what Dustin is saying would make sense.
But selling real estate is a direct marketing problem. If 10,000 people exhibit a casual interest in your product, you will have earned nothing, whereas if one person actually buys, you will have earned a huge pay-check.
There’s more: If you are spending some significant fraction of your time servicing inquiries from people who will not be buying your product, you will have less time — possibly no time — to work with the small number of people who will buy your product — from someone else if not from you.
Your goal is not weblog traffic. Your goal is converted sales. This is not news. This is me, from last March:
“Traffic is not about traffic. Traffic is about conversions.”
If you get 3,000 unique hits every day and convert one a month, you are an emaciated wretch with huge bragging rights. If you get three unique hits a day and convert one a week, you are constantly trying and failing to make time between appointments to get your Lexus detailed. Your goal is not traffic. Your goal is not even community, although this is a vitally-important secondary objective. Your goal is not forms filled out or leads captured or phone calls returned or listings emailed or showings scheduled. Your goal is conversions, as represented by a fat check from a title company. It does not matter how many shots you take at the basket. What matters is how many times — and how often and how regularly — you get the ball through the cylinder.
I pointed out that the False Dichotomy of schmoozing with the homies versus counting flowers on the wall is a logical fallacy. Your objective is not to be tripped-upon by accident by any one of Read more
I’m engaged in a debate with Dustin Luther at his place, but the issues are important enough that I want to highlight some of my remarks here. The meta-issue: Is linking back and forth among real estate weblogs an effective marketing strategy for a consumer-focused, client-seeking real estate weblog, or do other marketing techniques offer greater promise of financial rewards?
Notably:
[S]earch engines are suboptimal as a source of traffic for niche-based, consumer-focused weblogs. They’re going to get their long-tail searches anyway, but search-engine borne visitors are loosely-motivated and rapidly-bouncing. The objective should be to build relationships with future clients and to forge alliances that will result in even more of those relationships. Done right, the weblog doesn’t need search engine traffic — and the practitioner is immune to competition.
Professionals learning from experts is a great idea, which is why BloodhoundBlog is what it is. Professionals chatting with each other, as with Active Rain, is more than anything a pleasant diversion, a plausibly harmless waste of time. Professionals sending their prospects off to BloodhoundBlog or 4realz is a poor marketing strategy.
I’m sorry, Dustin. You’re simply wrong about this. It is to my benefit that so many locally-focused and hyperlocal weblogs blogroll BloodhoundBlog. But it almost certainly is not to their interest, nor is the conversation among such weblogs, nor is the incestuous cronyism among the webloggers — at least not on those weblogs. Flying fish don’t actually fly, and there is no rational convergence between fish and fowl.
Inadvertently, this becomes a commercial for BloodhoundBlog Unchained. We won’t teach you how to have fun publicly noodging other weblogs from what should be your office on the internet, but we will show you how to run a commercial weblog as a business.
More:
The larger topic is interesting to me, though, so maybe I’ll write about it. There is an extent to which the RCG model does a disservice to the idea of real estate weblogging. I make a point of telling our readers that what BloodhoundBlog does is not what they should do. Many of the major RE.net weblogs are modeled on RCG to greater and Read more
“Hyper-local micro-blogging”. Ya heard it here first.
Let’s gather the pieces:
–Twitter might be a village, but real estate is local.
-To create an insanely great hyper-local weblog, “Be the community”.
-In order for Twitter to be useful, you have to tweet something useful.
Let’s put it all together:
-What if you created your own Twitter village?
-What if you created your own unique hyper-local community content?
-What if all the tweets were for the benefit of your readers, and they all pointed back to your blog, your website, or if you were a broker they could point to the brokerage website and your agent’s blogs?
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.
Trulia.com is going into the Realtors-talking-to-each-other business…
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
The National Association of Realtors brings forth — I kid you not — the Voices of Real Estate Blog. Surely you will not be surprised to discover which voices are and are not “of” Real Estate. But don’t get the idea that this is just your garden variety NAR happy-babble. Consider this:
NAR disclaims responsibility for any of the content or opinions expressed in the President’s Report, including, but not limited to content or opinions regarding any products or service mentioned on the President’s Report.
NAR disclaims liability for any damages or losses, direct or indirect, that may result from use of or reliance on information contained in the President’s Report.
The President’s Report contains links to other Web sites operated by third parties. These links are provided as a convenience to access the information contained therein. NAR has not reviewed all of the information on other sites and disclaims any responsibility for the content of any other sites or the products or services that may be offered on or through those sites. Inclusion of a link to another site does not indicated any endorsement or approval of the site or its content.
They were aiming for gutlessness, but the commitment was just too onerous…
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Tomorrow there will be an interview with me published that will make a point to mention that BloodhoundBlog carries no advertising. So today seems like a good time to post our first ad.
My son Cameron is graduating from casual uses for money — fast food, CDs, movies, computer games — to more serious financial needs — like cars, car insurance, gas. We’re kinda happy about this, actually, because, even though internal resources are the best motivations, being hungry for money and the things it can buy will do in a pinch.
So: Cameron is finally interested in working reliably for money. He’s been doing great work for us, and we’re on the verge of rebuilding our automated web page/web site generator software so that other people can use it. This is wicked slick, and I encourage you to Watch This Space. When we’re done, we’ll have software that you can use to communicate with your clients in web pages or web sites, just as we do now.
In the mean time, though, Cameron wants to earn more money, and I want to help him. So if you scroll down the sidebar, you’ll see his ad, an offer to build a WordPress weblog from scratch and host it for a year for $500. He knows how to build a blog our way — he builds many of ours already — and I’ll be riding herd on him to make sure he delivers on his promises. I think he’s priced pretty aggressively — say so if you disagree.
We’ve never given Cameron money. He’s always had to earn his own funds. I don’t know that he’s all that financially astute even now. I don’t know that I am, either. But at 16 he’s a rockin’ web programmer who can build you a quality product. It will be interesting to see if he can build a good business from his skills.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
A few background facts that need to be entered into evidence:
a) My wife and I are the PROUD parents of 4 kids.
b) All parents with which I associate are PROUD parents. (Vanity thy name is author is accurate, but it has NUTHIN on vanity thy name is parent-grin)
c) Gannett’s 86 newspapers plus USA Today are locked in a desperate battle for advertising revenue both for newspapers and increasingly online. (All battles for revenue are desperate, no?)
d) They are getting creative at attracting eyeballs and MAY actually be listening to some luminaries in the journalism business who have crossed over to blogging success. James Lileks comes to mind. (He lost his column at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune despite being arguably the best blogging asset they had and one of the brightest minds in how to effect the organizational change they needed. He specifically called for them to “go local”.)
OK- So I was at work the other day and I get a call from my wife that our 16 year old son is going to be interviewed and have a two page article done about him in the paper. I inquire from Jen which paper and she replies the Courier Journal. I ask if they have told her which section. She says, the Southern Indiana Clark county section. Hmmm…Interesting. I just heard from a friend at church that his child was recently featured in the Floyd county section…sense a pattern here?
Apparently the reporters have called the local high schools from all over the area and are asking for kids with interesting background stories or who are “exceptional” to do stories about. They are being featured in a way that EVERY parent will tell their friends, family, church congregation and every other local person who knows our family. Very cool.
The article on our son will be published this coming Wednesday.
Other expose’s are being written on LOCAL issues that will appeal to the neighborhood crowd. They are specifically being for the “town square” as opposed to the “rip and read” AP stories.
So the take home lesson from this? REALTORS do not “own” the eyeballs Read more