Category: Blogging (page 43 of 84)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From ProBlogger:

I met a blogger recently who had a blog with a very local focus. His Guerrilla Marketing Tactic was to do a deal with three internet cafes in his area to make his blog the home page on all of the computers. In return for this he gave them some free advertising on his blog. The same blogger made a similar deal with the local library who also made his blog the home page of their public internet computers. This worked particularly well for him as his blog was on his local area.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This will have to be brief, because I’m crushed for time, but we’re promoting Real Estate Weblogging 101 at the StarPower Conference this morning, so it’s a topical topic.

The premise: The commercial value of real estate weblogging comes from making a visceral connection with future clients, ideally leading to viral results, not spam-trolling for short-term leads. In other words, where keyword-packed tapioca content may score well for now on search engines, and may bring in filled-out web forms, it will not create the kinds of enduring connections that result in repeat and referral business for generations. Certainly none of the people brought in by search engines will become loyal readers or subscribers to the weblog: There’s no there there. Even worse, spamvertising in weblogs surely repels at least as many people as it seems to attract, and the people repelled are very probably the ones most likely to yield significant viral results over the years. You’re not only not building bridges, you’re blasting the bridgeheads.

There’s more: What happens when Google changes the rules? When a vendor crows, “Ha, Ha! We tricked Google!” the demise of that particular trick is foreseeable. When Google discovers that favoritism towards weblogs is bringing spam to the top of its results, it will change the way it weights weblogs. Locally-focused webloggers like Jay Thompson who have made the effort to build a following will chug on unabated. Keyword-packing spamvertising weblogs will dry up and blow away.

This morning’s post from Jay is good example of how to do this job: The keywords are there, but they’re there because the post wouldn’t makes sense without them. Jay is providing real value to his readership, practical, relevant advice. Even so, the post should search very well. But here’s the interesting part: Even though Jay is writing about the news of the day, if someone should happen upon this post by search a year or two from now, it will still be serving the visceral, viral function: Jay Thompson cares about his clients, and he is working to provide meaningful benefit to them with his weblog. That’s a very powerful Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Comes news today that a keyword-packed fake weblog is every bit as attractive and satisfying as an inflatable spouse. I don’t doubt it for a minute, but if the objective is to snare random morons by deception, I think a “stealth” web site is a better-yielding joy-doll.

I swear to god it’s Groundhog Day in the real estate industry — 1974 every damn day, over and over again. Does real estate weblogging offer a path to transparency? Not if it’s just another sleazy gimmick.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Project Blogger is over — I think. Truly the fun never starts, but the drama never stops. I mostly ignored everything except the work Teri Lussier and I did here, at TheBrickRanch.com and at RealEstateWeblogging101.com. The contest pretty much ignored me, too, an unexpected delight.

We didn’t win — as nearly as I can tell. We developed a full-blown viral marketing strategy for locally-focused real estate weblogs, then codified the frolicking thing in a blogbook — itself something new under the sun. Teri understood what we were aiming for, but she understood it in her bones before we got down to business. To my knowledge, none of the other contestants paid the slightest bit of attention to what we were doing, even though we did it all in public.

All that’s as may be. I personally have been less than enthralled by the writing on the contestants’ blogs, but I confess to not having much tolerance for local blogs. To write about things of small importance, you really have to be able to write. I picked Teri to suffer through this with me because she writes so engagingly.

Pat Kitano was the judge for the last week of the competition, and he got to bathe in all that Project Blogger drama. One of the things he did that I thought was very smart was running Technorati rankings on each of the contestant’s weblogs.

This just by itself elicited complaints, which I thought were kind of funny. We said for months that the important thing is viral networking, with SEO factors taking a back seat. So the folks who listened not a word when we were demonstrating how to make a family of your farm were quick to pump their fists and shout, “Linking doesn’t matter.”

That’s not quite true. I wrote this in email to Teri tonight:

Technorati Authority is not vital to your purposes, since the users you want will find you by other means — local blogrolls, comments you make on local blogs, face-to-face contact, your local advertising, etc. But significant linkage from other websites will help your Google PageRank, which will help potential clients Read more