Category: Blogging (page 52 of 84)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Todd Carpenter at Inman News Blog:

A real estate agent’s idea of local my not be local enough. I mean really local. Not a state, not a metro area, not even a single city. Go hyper-local. Every real estate agent should have a prospect farm. You mail out newsletters to just these people. You focus much of your market analysis on the neighborhood. You might even walk each block, introducing yourself door to door. But hardly any agents bother to put that commitment online. Why? Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve personally reviewed over 400 real estate blogs over the last couple months. Only a handful of them attempt to do this. I look at most real estate sites and see an all inclusive catch all net for Internet fishing. Thats a strategy that works for now, but why not take advantage of the unused Web hosting bandwidth you are renting to build a separate, hyper-local Web site or blog for your marketing area? The alternative is to let people from out of town, who know more about html code than real estate, set up as your competition.

I have at least three more killer ideas to explore on this subject, one good, one great and one insanely great. If you’re not playing along at home, there’s still plenty of time to get in the game.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Teri has a weblog. It’s just a prototype for now. She’s shopping for theme so that we can make something truly unique and Daytonacious. I am by now at the point where I can set up a WordPress weblog in my sleep, which is lucky because, with 23 hosting accounts still to be moved, that on top of the normal crush, I’m not sleeping very much.

Teri already owned the domain, so all I had to do was redirect the nameservers to our new semi-dedicated file server. I keep a standing folder of WordPress-the-way-I-like-it on my desktop, so I copied that in, created the database, plugged the files into the database and — Eureka! Done.

A lot easier to say it than to do it, for most of us. My experience this weekend taught me a new trick, and this is strictly for the propeller-beanie set: If you have a certain way of setting up WordPress weblogs, you can save yourself the effort of setting your preferences with each new installation. Here’s how: Get a prototypical weblog set up the way you like ’em — settings, plug-ins, the works — then save a back-up of that set-up to your hard disk along with all your set-up files. When you make a new clean installation, inherit that backup into your new database. The new install will be a mirror of your prototype, fully-formed and fully-armed.

If you’re a propeller-wanna-beanie, Dave Smith of The Real Estate Blog Lab has prepared a step-by-step tutorial on setting up a WordPress weblog from scratch.

But: That’s really the easy part. In my view, the hard part of setting up a locally-oriented real estate weblog is scaling things down to what Robert Mosescalled “the size of a good time.” Moses built Jones Beach, among many other enormous masterpieces, but he was always aware of the small touches that would make people feel at home within his immense vision.

So what are we looking for? Hmmm… There’s no place like it, and, when you go there, they have to take you in…

We’re looking for home, of course. If I could lay one blanket Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The potentially-canonical list of real estate weblogs has grown again. I tend to maintain it daily in my own surfing, but I’ve been dealing with emailed additions in batches. I keep meaning to have Cameron write a form to streamline that process. In any case, look it over when you have a chance. I need to hear from you in any one of three circumstances:

• A weblog should be on the list but isn’t
• A weblog is on the list, but its details are in error
• A weblog is on the list but shouldn’t be — it’s dead or a splog

There are 231 weblogs on the list right now, but I’m sure I’m missing dozens more.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth on SEO shortcuts:

The author said you should make sure that the keywords and title are perfect and limit outbound links so that you can be sure that people will only do what you want them to. Others spend time studying the algorithms of Google and Yahoo to figure out the very best way to jump ahead in the rankings for their blog or corporate site. Is it reciprocal links or careful metatags? What if I create some sort of ring so that the  spider won’t realize the scam?

Hey. It’s not so hard. If you make great stuff, people will find you. If you are transparent and accurate and doing what’s good for the surfer, people will find you. If you regularly demonstrate knowledge of content that’s worth seeking out, people (being selfish) will come, and people (being generous) will tell other people. It turns out that it’s easier and faster to do that than to spend all your time on the shortcuts.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m quoting from comments to BloodhoundBlog posts, so I’m not going to show the links.

Brian Brady to Teri Lussier: “Soon she’ll be winning carnivals.”

Not to put any pressure on the girl, but I think this is a fine idea. Won’t win us the contest, but it’s a testament of excellence that’s kind of difficult to dispute. I like stuff like that.

John L. Wake: “Have you ever noticed that a common strategy used by many successful Realtors is to become an area specialist?”

But exactly! I don’t know how large or small an area Teri wants to work (or you want to work, for that matter), but it pays to think small. For now, Cathy and I target a very small region of Downtown Phoenix, but the neighborhood names that pop out of that are legion: F.Q. Story, Willo, Encanto, Palmcroft, Del Norte, Alvarado, Campus Vista, Ashland Place, Fairview Place, Woodlea, Yaple Park. Believe it or not, that’s only about half.

But we can get even smaller. If you search for Culver Street, the first two hits should be us. There are other streets down there for which we will pull very strong results, and, in the long run, we will tend to be category-killers for the names of the streets we list on.

Isn’t that the opposite of what I said the other night? Yes and no. We are looking for Long Tail search results on very arcane search terms, but our objective is not to capture random leads but to attract, enchant, delight, enlist and convert people who have a very strong interest in those same arcane search terms. How do we know they have a very strong interest? Because they’re searching for terms no one with a casual interest would ever use.

“Phoenix real estate” or “Dayton real estate” are difficult keywords to dominate, but neither would be all that useful, anyway. The Greater Metropolitan Phoenix-area is bigger than Rhode Island, maybe bigger than Vermont. I have to drive to make money, but I don’t get paid by the mile.

There’s more: By focusing Read more