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Category: Blogging (page 70 of 84)

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #100: Beginners guide to SEO . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From SEOmoz.org, a beginners guide to SEO:

What is SEO?

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).

This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO – from discovery of the terms and phrases that will generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization’s offerings.

For a “beginners” guide, this is a very robust, step-by-step approach to improving your SEO performance.

Bookmark the page. You’ll be back…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #99: Integrating a forum with WordPress . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, blogHelper offers great help on the subject of “Integrating a forum with WordPress”:

One of the most popular questions I’m e-mailed with is usually along the lines of: How do I integrate a forum with my WordPress (WP) blog?. Often, this is with reference to using WP as a more web site-ish CMS, e.g. a community site. So, I thought I’d kill three birds with this post. One: Write a (hopefully) brief guide answering the abovementioned question. Two: Before writing a how-to on using WP for a community site, prepare for it by tackling the forum integration issue first. Three: Participate in ProBlogger’s latest group writing project (which will be my first ever participation BTW).

Now, let’s get to work. I’ll list each option I know of, along with instructions or more likely, links to those elsewhere on how to integrate it with WordPress – both backend, e.g. user accounts, and layout/design-wise.

We’re not ready for this at BloodhoundBlog, but this is an eminently doable next step of blogevolution. The forum software discussed is available to you as a part of your hosting package if you host your own domain. And where a weblog can serve hundreds of active members, a forum can serve thousands…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #97: Weblog Review: ARDELL’s Seattle Area Real Estate Blog . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Although probably more people know her from Rain City Guide, ARDELL’s Seattle Area Real Estate Blog is the home weblog of my intrepid oppenent in the Sellsius° 101 Blogoff Challenge.

The site runs on the Realtown blogging system, owned by InternetCrusade, which gamely manages to make Blogger.com look good. It’s a travesty that such a large-calibre weblogger is shooting with such a small-calibre weapon.

But Ardell is so good that she couldn’t miss with a pea-shooter. She’s been one of my favorite writers in the real estate blogosphere since I knew there was a real estate blogosphere.

I entered this contest with a hard game plan. If you track my posts, you’ll see they run in regular cycles of five posts each, 20 laps of circuit-training.

I think I’m ahead right now, but I want to cross the finish line with Ardell. To that end, I have two notions.

One is that she do as Dustin suggests and pile up a few dozens one-liners.

And the other is that I will hold off on Blogoff Post #101 until nearly midnight.

I want to finish this race — and I intend to be an Insufferable Bastard on my Victory Lap. But I know already that we’re both winners in this contest, so I have no need to beat anyone.

Godspeed, Ardell. You’ve always been way ahead of me in every way that matters — and it’s all downhill from here…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #96: Ask the Broker: Are you glad you did this . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Here’s a question with a following, judging by the 300 unread emails in my inbox:

Are you glad you took the Sellsius° 101 Blogoff Challenge?

Emphatically, yes. BloodhoundBlog is going to end up with dozens of new, worthy posts as a result of this — call it by its right name — dumb stunt.

I normally work from around 6 am to around 10 pm, a 16-hour day. I’ve been at this since last night at midnight, so I’ll finish in a little over 18 hours. My arms are tired and my brain is slightly mushy, but other than that I’m in good form. I could do a listing appointment right now and no one would guess that I’m toast.

On the other hand, I really thought this would go faster than it has. At my best — which ain’t now — I was averaging about nine-minutes a post. The Leggy Blonde has been reading behind me, and she has been gracious enough not to tell me what kind of typos I’m making.

But: This is proof enough that this is possible. My whole life, I have argued that the secret to getting anything done is to not stop doing it, so I could probably throw another 35 posts up against the wall between now and midnight.

But I won’t…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #95: Ten reasons why you should never get a job . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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In addition to teaching you how to be self-employed, Steven Pavlina offers you ten reasons why you should never get a job:

In our household it’s a running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a job, derelict!”

It’s like the scene in The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that!  Anything but that!”

It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job.  But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.  In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself.  There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.

I’ve been self-employed since 1993, and I know that, by now, I would truly hate to have a job. Pavlina speaks for me throughout this essay as he delineates all the disadvantages that accrue to the employed…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #94: How to manage your manager . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, From flippingHECK: How to manage your manager:

Why should you manage your manager?

There have been several companies I’ve worked for in the past that, whilst having a good “social” relationship with my manager(s), I have felt un-wanted and un-rewarded by what I would class as bad management.

When I say “bad”, I don’t mean evil in a Freddie Kruger way, it can come in a variety of styles and disguises. Not only can they drive you to a nervous breakdown with their ineffectual management styles, they can also make you look exceptionally stupid and kill any chance of a pay rise/promotion/parking place that you may once had.

Bad managers are everywhere – you may even be one yourself and not even know it! Whilst some of this article takes a rather lighthearted (even tongue in cheek) look at managing a manager, I think there are some important points here that you’ll hopefully be able to use on your own boss (or indeed yourself).

Lucky me, I don’t have to worry about this. But — who knows — maybe The Leggy Blonde will want to look it over. If you’re unlucky enough to have a boss — or a sales manager, which might actually be worse — this article offers some sound advice for surmounting that obstacle…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #92: Weblog Review: TransparentRE . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Pat Kitano’s TransparentRE.com weblog is a profoundly unapologetic disturber of the peace. Pat’s background is technology, rather than real estate, so he devotes his days to asking questions no one in the San Francisco real estate industry wants answered.

As with Kevin Boer, with whom he has a loose alliance of like minds, Pat’s work is highly analytical — although less reliant on graphs and charts.

In all honesty, I don’t know where TransparentRE fits into the real estate food chain. I’m inclined to think that Pat is an incipient technology vendor.

The weblogging platform is WebSite Tonight, which I believe is offered by hosting vendors such as Godaddy.com. Looks and feels like WordPress.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #90: Stupid mistakes of the newly self-employed . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Pat Kitano from TranparentRE sent a nice note about Steven Pavlina so I went looking for more. This is from his article “10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed”:

1. Selling to the wrong people.
2. Spending too much money.
3. Spending too little money.
4. Putting on a fake front.
5. Assuming a signed contract will be honored.
6. Going against your intuition.
7. Being too formal.
8. Sacrificing your personality quirks.
9. Failing to focus on value creation.
10. Failing to optimize.

One point I might add is learning to master your own time. The only benefit I can think of to having a job is that there’s always someone to tell you to get busy. Not so for the self-employed. If you don’t learn to monitor and manage the hours of your days, you’ll be back on the clock in no time.

This is a very long article, and an outline-like summary does it little justice. Read the whole thing — particularly if you’re self-employed or want to be…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #89: How to get promoted when you work from home . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Home Office Blues offers thoughts on “How to get promoted when you work from home”:

One of the dangers of working from home is that it is more difficult to move your career forward. “Out of sight, Out of mind” often applies to telecommuters. What options are available to the upwardly mobile teleworker? How do you set yourself up for promotion when the odds are stacked against you?

I’m glad you asked. It turns out that the steps that are necessary to get promoted when you work from home are the same as those that are necessary to get promoted when you work in an office. Like everything else however, the telecommuter must work smarter.

Here are the 3 steps to getting promoted:

1. Be valuable.
This is obvious. You must do good work, have a good work ethic, and be a real value to your company. Most people stop here assuming that their work speaks for itself. Don’t make that mistake. You must proceed to step two.

2. Be visible.
You must market yourself and your work. You must make your presence felt by making sure you are working on visible projects. And finally, you must network and build relationships across the organization (and beyond). Know what other people are working on and be sure they know what you are doing.

3. Ask for the promotion.
You are doing good work; people know it and you have paid your dues. Don’t stop there. If you want to be promoted, you have to ask for it. This is where most people drop the ball. For some reason people are afraid to ask for what they want.

Even though this is about the world of corporate advancement, I found it valuable for two reasons: Realtors working from home suffer the same kind of invisibility from the Mother Ship. And, in essence, our true employers, home sellers and buyers, only see us working when we’re working directly with them. We need to make the same kinds of efforts to make our efforts known…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #88: Rental house smart opportunity if set up as business . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is one of my personal favorites from my Arizona Republic column:

I’m helping a young friend buy his first home. I’ve known him since he was in high school. I admired his decision to defer college for an arduous tour of duty in Iraq. He’s back in school now and he and his mother are buying a three-bedroom home to use as his staging ground for his assault on ASU.

I think this is very smart by itself, but here is the stroke of genius: He is going to rent his two spare bedrooms to other students, using their rent to help amortize the property. The house will be his starter home, but it will also be his first foray into real estate investment.

This is my young friend Andy. Here is the advice I gave him:

1. Form a limited liability corporation to own the property. God forbid something tragic should happen in the home, but, if it does, you want to limit your liability to the home itself, not the rest of your assets.

2. A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. In Arizona, a lease of less than 12 months does not have to be in writing, but if you take your verbal lease before a judge, he will treat you to equally verbal laughter. A written lease protects both parties, the landlord and the tenant.

3. The past is prologue. If a prospective tenant cheated his last three landlords, he’ll cheat you, too. Credit and rental history matter, and the most important part of being a happy landlord is mastering tenant selection.

4. Pay your own rent. Since the home will be owned by an LLC, pay the corporation the same rent your tenants are paying. If there is a surplus on costs, you’ll be able to use it for maintenance and improvements – or as capital for future investments.

The bottom line: “Owning a rental home is the smallest of small businesses – but it is a business. Treat it that way and it will enrich you now and for years to come.”

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #87: Weblog Review: RealBlogging.com and RealtyBlogging.com . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I am at a complete loss to explain RealBlogging.com and RealtyBlogging.com. I will stipulate the idea of weblogging to a purpose, as against ars gratia artis, but even then I can’t figure out what the purpose is. I gather the sites are composed of re-syndicated content, but I don’t understand to what end.

Just as a guess, I’d say the objective is consulting and speaking gigs for the contributors, but I have no confidence in that answer.

It may not matter, in any case. I take the RSS feed on both of these weblog, but I never find myself clicking on the “More” tag. Whatever point there may be to all this activity, I think both weblogs must stand proudly beside it.

Looks like a proprietary weblogging platform, who cares what.

I may find better use for these two weblogs in the future. I haven’t so far…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #85: How to build a high traffic weblog . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From Steve Pavlina.com, excellent advice on building a high-traffic weblog:

Here are 10 of my best suggestions for building a high traffic web site:

1. Create valuable content.
2. Create original content.
3. Create timeless content.
4. Write for human beings first, computers second.
5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.
6. Let your audience see the real you.
7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.
8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.
9. Keep money in its proper place.
10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.

The article is very long and very detailed. Read it all. I think this is remarkably good advice…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #84: Give your weblog posts a magic middle . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Business Blogwire serves up “5 Tips on How to Give Your Blog Posts a Magic Middle”:

1. Think meat and potatoes.

2. Transitions are crucial.

3. Make your theme abundantly clear.

4. Read your post carefully before publishing it.

5. Whatever you do, overdeliver.

The dinner is in the details, of course, but I think these are good working principles for any kind of writing or presentation, not just weblogging…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #82: Weblog Review: The Phoenix Real Estate Guy . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Hey, wait. I’m the Phoenix real estate guy. Jay Thompson is an East Valley Realtor who publishes The Phoenix Real Estate Guy weblog. All gussied up in a brand new weblog template, this blog is fun reading. Well-researched, deeply-linked and yet still great fun to read.

Jay is the Arizona points leader at ActiveRain, but he manages to punch out a ton of content at both places.

Like this:

What real estate school teaches you is how to pass the state licensing exam. They don’t teach you how to sell real estate, how to deal with clients, other agents, title companies, loan officers, inspectors, whiny kids, buyers, sellers, or brokers. Oh you may occasionally get a war story about real estate from the instructor-I learned more REAL real estate talking to my instructors during break that I did in the classroom. The schools churn out future professionals by the score every single day. And they do a damn fine job preparing you for the state exam. They do nothing to prepare you for selling real estate.

Hopefully the new agent aligns himself with the kind of broker that will take them under their wing and truly help them. Sounds simple, but finding a broker that does that these days isn’t easy. Too many brokerages just bring in agents by the truckload. Some have HUNDREDS of agents working for them. It’s just a numbers game to them. The more agents they have, the more desk fees they collect. If they run a commission split office, they figure if they hire a few hundred agents then dumb luck means some of them will turn out to be successful. Those that quit (and 80% do in the first year) are simply replaced by new sheep.

Jay is running WordPress — beautifully. The site just sings…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #80: Attracting and retaining traffic by being visually interesting . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource, how to use art and graphics to attract readers to your real estate weblog:

Ingredients: A useful site, a talented CSS designer and a list of design portal sites (this one and this one come in handy).

Process: Re-design your existing site to the best of your ability. Use pure CSS, graphics, color and layout that mesh well and make it not only easy to use your site, but aesthetically remarkable, too. If you’re struggling for inspiration, look at the sites that make it to the front page of this site.

Results: The design portals themselves can send 1-2 thousand uniques per day if you make their front pages, but the additional value you’ll get from other bloggers and sites picking you up once you make it there is also worthwhile.

The work they’re talking about costs serious money, but that’s not an excuse to limp along with a site that looks like a circus poster or the classified pages. This is something you can always keep on your radar, how to make your pages more interesting graphically…

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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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