BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Marketing (page 138 of 191)

March 29, 2007

Late-night random notes . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I finished moving the last of our 29 hosted web sites today, and, so far, I am 98% delighted with the choice me made. The pages just snap, including BloodhoundBlog — which is one fat, data-sodden dog. We have some kind of DNS problem that is intermittently affecting some of our PHP programming. Until now, I have been prepared to write this off to slow or flaky DNS servers out in the world. As of today, I’m thinking we have a problem in-house. By Friday, I’ll have it worked out, and then I expect to be 100% happy.

I’ve had poor Cameron working for two days to solve a problem that may not even be his problem. It is biologically ordained, I think, that fathers and manling sons must quarrel, but Cameron and I spar not about cars or curfews but about software — right now about Unix environment variables. Tonight’s South Park was aimed right at both of us — family togetherness in the form of rude comedy peppered with net.references.

Todd Tarson’s MOCO Real News celebrated its first anniversary yesterday. Todd deserves accolades every which way. The depth of responsibility he feels for other Realtors is without parallel. Because he’s in Arizona, Cathy and I will get to watch him as he becomes one of the Grand Old Men of the Arizona Association of Realtors.

We’re at StarPower tomorrow, so I have a couple of entries set up in advance, to be posted by the scrupulously punctual WordPress bot. Because of all the work I did to keep the foul-mouthed flamers out, quite a few comments are being captured by the moderation bot, or even the spam bot. I won’t be around to deal with those until late in the day. My apologies.

I have many more thoughts on the subject of local real estate weblogging for dollars. Now that I have this hosting issue (mostly) off my plate, I can begin to implement some of them, as well as talk about them.

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 28, 2007

Resource recourse: For the budding real estate weblogger, opportunities for self-improvement are everywhere — and every where is right here

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth says to write an ebook, and I think this is a fine idea. When we start to look like we’re done with the Weblogging 101 curriculum, I’ll go back and whip together something that can work on dead-tree media. This would not be the ideal way to work with it, though, since an ebook can be rich in links — including a “check for the latest edition link.”

One thing I would want to do with something like this is make it link out to richer resources. I can gloss topics, but there’s a lot of deep-think stuff that is much better handled by other people. At the ante-penultimate stage of revision, I’ll put it out for link suggestions. Real Estate Weblogging 101 could end up being an iterative resource, the half-way point between a legacy-style book and a piece of software: Work through the big print first, then pursue the links, then work through the arcane but massively edifying sidebar links. That could be very cool.

On the subject of resources, or perhaps the unexpected serendipity ensuing from web-based resources: Two nights ago before bedtime, I wrote How to make Google your weblog’s best friend. It was a small idea that I had been wanting to hit. I had the time to take care of it, and I wanted for there to be something new on the weblog. I don’t ever do anything half-way, but if ever there was a just-knock-it-out post, that was it. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, and it took me no time to to compose and post it.

Serendipity came in the form of Mike Levin of HitTail.com. HitTail is a web site/weblog stats service that will monitor your incoming traffic and tell you what keywords are bringing people in. You can use this information to SEO optimize your site, to plan AdWords campaigns, etc. Anyway, Mike Levin coming here was cool, but what was even cooler was that he cited my post and its comments thread on StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking site similar to Digg or Del.icio.us.

Hundreds of people came to read that post. Read more

March 27, 2007

Egoism in action: How you can grow and prosper, at work and everywhere, even in the face of hostile criticism

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is email I had from Corey Hague, one of the founders of BuyerHunt.com. This is important to the philosophical issues I’ve tried to raise, and Corey agreed to let me talk about this in the weblog:

Well Greg, I am out of ideas, slowly becoming “zestless” and looking for some inspiration. A couple of months ago a friend and I created a website, www.buyerhunt.com. As agents ourselves, we designed the site with (progressive) agents in mind. Despite our best efforts, to date, most of the agent-derived response we get is negative and is often personal and unrelated in nature. And these agents aren’t giving the site a shot. They visit the homepage, make a quick decision and write scathing responses (usually in regards to the fact that we give joe schmoe buyer and seller access). All this after we got the “stamp of approval” from Inman News, who named us one of the best new web ideas for 2007. It just doesn’t seem right. I am a big fan of your blog, and am awe-struck by the manner in which you are able to hold your own in the face of often ludicrous and nonsensical banter.

Though I pride myself on being a young (25), determined, forward-thinking individual with plenty of family-infused and “real time” real estate experience, I am for the first time finding it difficult to brush off the aforementioned criticisms and personal attacks. I guess my question is simply this… How do you do it? You lay your heart, soul and ideas on the line and so often have them thrown right back in your face. And yet everyday, I wake up and see that you have written again, unscathed and unabashed. I want to continue to be a progressive, trailblazing agent… but am starting to see a side of the business that I would rather not be privy to.

Without intending to be flippant, I don’t notice things like that. In any sort of reaction to anything — positive or negative — all I am listening for is the resonance of reason.

There’s this first: The reaction, whatever it is, Read more

March 27, 2007

Going local? Why not go hyper-local?

by

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.
< ?php include ("REWL101.php"); ?>

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 27, 2007

Rocking the boat for fun and profit: Introducing Morgan Brown

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re adding another contributor this morning: Morgan Brown, a lender from Orange County:

Morgan Brown is a mortgage banker and broker in Irvine, CA. He enjoys reading and blogging, and he is on a personal mission to change the public perception of the mortgage industry through honesty — even if it kills him.

If you visit Morgan’s personal weblog, you’ll see that he is a man in deep earnest about reform in the mortgage lending industry. I’m a believer, and yet I know from first-hand experience that bearding the lions of the old guard is very effective as a marketing strategy. Plus which, it’s fun.

Realtors are not immune from the charge of being Pollyannas, so for quite some time I’ve been interested in entertaining a voice from The Dark Side, as it were. I’m not accusing Morgan of being dour — very much the countrary — but he will certainly bring us a take on the news you won’t hear from our other contributors.

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 27, 2007

What Do I Want In a Loan Officer?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Todd Carpenter wrote:

Hey Greg,

Now that REMBEX is working the way I want it to, I’m resurrecting my other pet project. It’s an all free training web site for new loan officers. Details are here. http://blog.mariah.com/2007/03/open-source-mortgage-training-manual.html

I would really like to get a real estate agent’s perspective on what they think a new LO needs to know in reviewing the contract and purchase process. I know you are busy moving your web site and training your protege, but maybe you know of someone else who can write an article for the project if you don’t have time. Even a word about it on your blog would be appreciated. I’m accepting volunteers for the other sections as well.

BTW, I know you are a Mac guy. I just upgraded to a 24″ iMac and am self-learning to use Keynote & Garage Band to make training videos for some of the key topics. The finished product should be pretty cool (I hope)!


Thank You!


Todd Carpenter
mariah.com

First, a disclosure; I am not an expert in loans, lenders or what they “ought to know”. But I am very comfortable in answering the question I used for the title of this post: What Do I Want In a Loan Officer? I’m not looking for one just now, because I have one who perfectly fits the description I’m about to write. How did I get her? Almost by accident, one of my Buyer Agents, Therese – who was making the transition into being one of my Listing Agents – said she had several good experiences with Kathy Rhubottom with O’Dowd Mortgage. Several “good experiences” consisted of the loans closing when they were supposed to and here is the “big one”: she was only told things that happened to be true. In the almost three years we have done business with Kathy, every deal – with two exceptions – closed on time. Both of those exceptions were title company errors, not the lenders. When Kathy said a deal was a makable deal, guess what? It actually closed.

Do I think Kathy is remarkable in her knowledge? No. I didn’t even meet her Read more

March 26, 2007

Scale your locally-focused real estate weblog down to the size of a good time. Why? Because there’s no place like home . . .

by

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

March 26, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is at miOaklandCounty, Maureen Francis’ weblog. Teri Lussier’s introductory post came in fifth place,* not bad for a start.

With his post Persistence: The Investors Greatest Tool, Michael Cook took top honors at The Carnival of Real Estate Investing, hosted this week by the Ral Estate Investing for Real Blog.

Plenty of good reading at both carnivals, so get thee hence.

*Foot(-in-mouth-)note: I think I have this wrong. Teri came in “in no particular order” (sounds like second place to me 😉 ) and FBS Blog, one of my personal faves, took first prize.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

March 26, 2007

A Boston advertising photographer becomes a Boston real estate photographer — with stunning results

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Richard Riccelli fingered this New York Times article on real estate photography and related technologies (it’s behind a registration wall to make sure you know they don’t get it). Evidently, Richard had been impressed enough with my ideas about real estate photography to impress them upon the professional advertising photographer he hired to shoot his Boston townhome.

I read Richard’s reinterpretation of what I had said, and I think my ideas were considerably improved by the filtration. In any case, the photographer was impressed enough to repurpose his entire business to real estate photography. Richard highlights one home in particular, but the whole portfolio is excellent, an inarguable statement about what real estate photography can be.

My take: Virtual tours draw eyes at Realtor.com. People will watch videos, if only for the trill of watching “TV” on the computer. Poetic copy instills dreams. But nothing sells the buyer’s imagination on a home like a wealth of big, colorful, richly-detailed photographs.
< ?php include ("REWL101.php"); ?>

Technorati Tags: , ,

March 25, 2007

Skewer you, Jack! You’re the guest of honor at a feeding frenzy

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

FBS Blog:

Think about this: Trulia’s brand is trumping the franchise brand, requiring payments to Trulia, and the franchise brand is trumping the brokers’ and agents’ brands, requiring payments to the franchise. At the same time, the brokers and agents in the field are building the business relationships that form the foundations of the all the brands. They’re doing all the work and they’re having to pay very dearly for lead generation that the web is supposed to be making more efficient. Efficiency for Trulia and Realogy, perhaps, but it doesn’t look very efficient for the brokers and agents.

Check. I think working Realtors need to work without ceasing at developing sources of business that do not require you to give up half of your own deal to cling to the other half. Forget commission relief. There are way too many mouths to be fed upstream.

These business models don’t work in the long run. There’s a fascinating post today on O’Reilly Radar about how Google and others, in their quest to “free” information, need to be careful not to destroy content creation. Here’ a quote from a Google employee, I find highly relevant to MLS today: “”Some think of Google as selling search. Some business types think it sells ads. I think it needs to be in the business of ensuring there’s something to sell ads around.” Yes, exactly. We need to protect content creation, especially the content that’s hard to create, like broad, deep and standard listing information.

Sooner or later, the brokers and agents will figure out that they are paying too much money to Trulia or their franchises for these leads and that they can do it more efficiently through cooperation. This brings me back to the MLS, back to local decisions in the best interest of all competitors. The MLS can and will figure out a way through these challenges. The specific business model for data aggregation and sharing on a broader scale may not exist yet, but the solution exists in a framework of trust allowing MLSs to foster a national non-advertising listing portal controlled by the brokers and Read more

March 25, 2007

The potentially-canonical list of real estate weblogs grows to a respectable level of inadequacy

by

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: , ,

March 25, 2007

“If you make great stuff, people will find you”

by

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: , ,

« Older posts Newer posts »

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.

Media Contacts