Category: Blogging (page 73 of 84)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Online Marketing Blog’s “25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog”, here is tip number twenty-five:

Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

There is no one on this earth who loves you like your mom does. Even your spouse’s love is conditioned on your continued good behavior. But your family, friends and former clients will have a warm spot in their heart for you long after you have done anything heart-warming.

As with everything in real estate marketing, you should be working your warm networks for weblog traffic.

Your weblog should be a part of all of your promotion, as well, as this tip advises.

All of this implies that you can’t have one-size-fits-all content. People will come to you with different interests. They won’t stay long if there’s nothing for them on your blog…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Larry Hendrick offers tips on how to increase your sales:

Would you like to earn more money next year? How about next month? Today I offer a method to increase your sales, and it’s not hard. It is represented with an easy-to-remember acronym: QUESTIONS. Questions that will give you the edge over your competition because they are too busy telling and not selling.
Here is the acronym with quick reminder words:

Q = qualify
U = understand
E = engage
S = state
T = timing
I = image
O = objections
N = notify
S = send

I am inordinately skeptical about sales tips ‘n’ tricks, because I think it is too easy to trip over into a rote, scripted kind of selling. But the ideas Hendrick discusses are not bad, assuming you keep your eye on the real prize: What your client truly needs — even if there is no sale involved…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jeff Brown’s Behind the Curtain is one of the most-amusing weblogs in my feed reader. Jeff writes in a folksy, avuncular style that just sweeps you up. The man is nobody’s grammarian, but you’ll forgive anything to get to the next killing joke.

Like this:

First, is it me, or does everyone everywhere think they know which way is north on the map with real estate investments? I swear, if one more person corners me at some social gathering just to tell me how they’ve ‘found the next Golden Goose’ I’m gonna scream. What makes it worse is that half of these Donald Trump types are agents and brokers who should know better than to spew their ignorance in public. I remember thinking last weekend that if this guy just spent a few minutes talking real estate while walking on my front lawn, I’d have the greenest lawn in the neighborhood.

It’s a hosted WordPress weblog, and it’s updated only infrequently. But the whole thing is so sweet and fine, like a warm pecan pie, that I’ll forgive anything.

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Online Marketing Blog’s “25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog”, here is tip number nineteen:

Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.

This is hard. Not what I’m doing now, but real estate weblogging in general.

Real estate is a demanding job, with very long hours, and a lot of intense but irregular activity. How are you supposed to keep up a regular blog-posting schedule as well?

I don’t know, but it’s something you’ll have to work out if you want to make real estate weblogging work for you. People have to know they can depend on you to make regular, creditable weblog entries. As hard as it is to get a reader, it’s very easy to lose one…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Stix ‘n’ Brix teaches us how to make buyers fall in love with our home:

Uncover The Bones
Clean It Up
Neutral Does It
Curb Appeal Sells
Set A Comfortable Mood
Head Off Their Doubts
Price It Right

In general, I like the detailed advice given in this article.

The number one problem I have with homes I’m showing right now is that they are not market-ready. That can be a moving target, but, in this market, if everything is not absolutely perfect, everything might just as well be rotten. Buyers have many homes to choose from. If yours isn’t everything they want, they’ll just move on…

Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, phoenix, phoenix real estate, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jim Cronin’s weblog, The Real Estate Tomato could not be better-named. Juicy, tart and refreshing. Jim has a terrific graphic sense, and that serves to liven the place up as well.

This is a business blog, in more ways than one. Jim’s evangelical mission is to spread the idea of real estate blogging among practitioners — and not just Realtors. But Jim is a vendor, as well, and — although this is rarely obvious — his role is to move his company’s product line. I deeply admire the deft way Jim handles this, because I feel that the best salesmanship of those products comes from his not ramming them down our throats. I trust him because he doesn’t betray my trust, and that’s a lesson every salesperson should learn.

The blogging platform is Typepad, which I don’t hate, but which has a truly annoying trackback system. Overall the site is clean and easy to use.

Jim Cronin is an excellent teacher and The Real Estate Tomato is an excellent teaching web site.

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Online Marketing Blog’s “25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog”, here is tip number one, perhaps my number one crazy-maker:

Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!

So many of the real estate weblogs I like, including some I will review, are in violation of this rule.

True hosting is fast, easy and cheap. WordPress will come free with the hosting package. There is no good reason not to do this, and one outstanding reason to do it now rather than later: The bigger your traffic base, the more readers you will lose when you make your move. As with the Chicken Pox, you’re better off living through the pain while you’re still young…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What’s the curse of volunteer organizations? For every stand-up guy or gal who steps up to pick up the slack, there is a cadre of slackers standing down, standing around, circling in inaction until they wear a hole in the ground.

This is a signal defect of Rain City Guide, arguably the best of the real estate weblogs. Blogger-in-Chief Dustin Luther has assembled a fantastic team of writers. But it seems, too often, that the team is happy enough to let Ardell DellaLoggia or Dustin himself carry the ball.

When the others are there, they’re all the way there. But I wish they were there more often. No one can tell volunteers when they have or have not done enough, but, as much as I like RCG, I like it best when all of the contributors on the masthead are making prominent contributions.

That criticism aside, RCG is first-rate in every way: Nicely-presented in WordPress, finely-tuned and very, very active.

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the seminal SEOBook article “101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006”, here is a sure-fire way to get no inbound links:

Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.

This one makes me nuts. There are some amazingly great real estate weblogs out there. But there are many, many more than consist of nothing but stolen content. Some rip-off RSS feeds and re-syndicate them without permission, usually as pretend-content to cover their own splogging ads.

But still worse are the hand-crafted plagiarist sites: Actual real estate licensees, stealing weblog content or ripping-off newspaper or magazine articles, presenting them in full, often without even attribution. Presumably, most of these creeps don’t even know how sleazy they’re being, simply because honest webloggers aren’t even talking to them, much less linking to them…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Pittsburgh Homes Daily teaches sacrilege: How to sell your own home ‘by owner’:

1. Fix up your home before you put it on the market.

2. Read up

3. Set your level of involvement.

4. Set a price.

5. Prepare for the finish.

6. Market it!

Details abound, but there’s nothing about praying, crying or spending every weekend at home.

Here’s an even better how-to: Hire a Realtor and gripe about the costs, never knowing what you missed by skirting the outskirts of FSBO hell…

Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, phoenix, phoenix real estate, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If I ever said anything nice about the Sellsius° real estate weblog weblog, I take it all back! My hands are tired, my back is sore and I’m barely 11% done with their insane challenge!

No, I take that taking-that-back back. Someday, I will find a way to love these boys again. They publish one of the brightest and most eclectic of the real estate weblogs, often casting out into waters none of the rest of us are fishing. The writing is sprightly, the graphics are deft and the overall presentation is first class.

WordPress, of course, and they know how to use it. They’re a gee whiz technology company themselves, an incipient listing bot, but they are not so enamored of technology as to miss the sleaze factor among some new entrants in hi-tech real estate.

I don’t like to be uncritical in a review, but I really like the Sellsius° blog just the way it is. Except for the rassafrassin’ Sellsius° 101 Blogoff…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsus 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the seminal SEOBook article “101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006”, the section titled “71 Good Ways to Build Links”:

45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

Again and again, I see real estate weblogs with no blogroll and no outbound links to other real estate weblogs, and — in consequence — no inbound traffic. The hoarding mentality is failing in tangible economics, but it never worked at all on the intangible internet. If your goal is to hold your readers hostage by giving them no way out — they will never find the way in…

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsus 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, The Golden Pencil offers some tips on how to proofread your own writing:

The fact that you wrote it means you know what it’s supposed to say and that’s exactly what your mind tends to see – what should be there, not what’s really there.

Of course, ideally, you’ll have someone else proof it – they bring a fresh eye and no pre-conceived notions, and hopefully they can spell. In fact, if the writing is for something that really matters, it can make sense to pay a professional proof reader.

The next best bet is to put it away for a day or a week – that way, your eye is much fresher and you’re much more likely to spot errors.

But life doesn’t often give us that much time. When the writing (or the check) has to go out today, take time to read it out loud to yourself.

Sure, you’ll feel really stupid the first few times you do this, but it works. If you’re in cube or other un-private place, whisper it to yourself. Somehow your ear will hear mistakes your eyes wont see.

I worked once with a great proofreader who read everything upside down to overcome the eye’s tendency to correct errors. At that same job, I had a vicious drunk of a boss who could fall down dead drunk, his finger landing unerringly on the ugly typo everyone else had missed.

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kevin Boer’s In the Trenches weblog is a serious place — notwithstanding Kevin’s creation of a predictive betting market for the Sellsius° 101 Blogoff. Kevin believes in math, and it shows. His weblog is awash in charts and data, and he doesn’t hesitate to create his own metrics where none are available.

But don’t get the idea that the man can’t write. His data defends his prose — clear, concise and readable.

Kevin uses Blogger.com as his weblogging platform. This is not the end of the world, an event that transpired well after Blogger was invented. For writing or reading, this doesn’t matter much, I suppose. But Blogger shows its age as soon as you try to comment or to search into the database of posts.

The good news is that Kevin is working with TransparentRE to find a better weblogging platform.

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the seminal SEOBook article “101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006”:

1. Sorry, but link building is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future.

2. I wouldn’t hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. Because links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship, on the Web. And for the forseeable future they’re going to be the easiest way for a computer program to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a Web page.

Whether your concern is your primary web site, your weblog — or both — the essence of search engine findability is the inbound link. Our goal at BloodhoundBlog is to build a community — but we want to build a big community. We don’t go out of our way to attract links — contemporaneous appearances seemingly to the contrary — but neither do we shun them.

I’ll come back to this as we proceed, because I think it’s interesting. In the mean time, what’s the best way to attract an inbound link? Very simple: An outbound link.

Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing