BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Marketing (page 86 of 191)

February 25, 2008

A custom weblog can be your home’s 24-hour real estate salesperson on the world-wide web

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
A custom weblog can be your home’s 24-hour real estate salesperson on the world-wide web

I have an unshakable faith in the three P’s of home marketing — Price, Preparation and Presentation.

If the home is priced above its value to the buyer it will not sell in this market — it probably won’t even show.

If it is not well-prepared — repaired, staged, cleaned — to the condition implied by the price, it will not sell even if it does show.

Presentation is your Realtor’s job — or yours if you’re trying to sell without representation. I don’t have space to go into a full-blown marketing plan, but here’s an idea that can make a big difference for very little cost:

Give your home a blog.

Every home for sale should have its own web site. What makes a weblog useful and practical is that weblogging software is so easy to use. And the price to get started? Nothing.

Sites like WordPress.com or Blogger.com will let you set up a blog on a subdomain — an address like 123MulberrySt.WordPress.com — for free. Or you can buy your own domain — 123MulberrySt.com — for less than ten bucks a year. You can host your own domain for a few dollars a month, but using your weblog provider’s hosted option will work just as well.

What do you want for content? Photos — and lots of them. Good pictures of clean, well-lit rooms sell houses. Your text should be just-the-facts, nothing overtly promotional. Not only can people see through hype, it turns them off.

With a weblog, you can document your house room by room — or by the benefits to be realized from the home’s features and amenities.

Best of all, you’ll have a 24-hour salesperson working for you on the internet. Put your blog’s address on your flyers, in any advertising you do, in your Craigslist open house notices, on Zillow.com and Trulia.com. The more you can promote your blog, the more traffic it will draw.

You still have to be priced right. You still have to be prepared Read more

February 25, 2008

The Network — Excellent Real Estate Agents Wanted

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dead or alive. Just kidding.

How many excellent agents are there in your area? Well, first let’s define “excellent” so that it meets my purposes. There are successful agents who were born in the right family and have “excellent” connections. There are sucessful agents who are excellent in the old way of doing things and they will die successful doing the same things — I’ll exclude them from “excellent” because I am developing my definition of excellent as I look forward. There are agents who are successful because they tapped into a big local builder and will be successful as long the builder is building — maybe beyond if they can transfer what they have going on. But how many agents are excellent at providing service, wired to web 2.0, good salespeople (great at marketing listings), proficient at information management, have excellent verbal skills, have comprehensive knowledge of real estate, have comprehensive knowledge of the area, have great people skills, have the energy to incubate prospects and follow up, have the willingness to work with and represent buyers and have the experience to be called an expert? How many are excellent in these ways?

I don’t know, but I can’t think of many. (Of course, I fit all these requirements for excellence, but modesty prevents me from broadcasting it).

The consensus when talking to the public about agents is that so many are inexperienced, don’t follow up, are pushy salespeople, etc. — but then they go on to say that there ARE good agents and they are useful, helpful, worth their weight in gold, on and on with different levels of kudos or positive evaluation. Except for the diehard agent-haters, I think most people would say a good agent adds value to the process. (While here I’m talking about agents, in regards to the real estate process, please keep in mind all types of professionals providing RE services such as lawyers, inspectors, lenders and mortgage brokers.) 

This morning in my mind’s eye a vision formed out of disparate bits of thoughts that had been floating around in my brain for about a year. A group of brave souls Read more

February 25, 2008

The Odysseus Medal: The art of rhetoric — and the rhetoric of art

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As I said yesterday, I had already picked this week’s Odysseus Medal winner, so I didn’t include his posts among the Short List of nominees. Instead, I’ll present them here. The Odysseus Medal this week goes to Mike Farmer for his tour de force series of posts on Web 2.0 and the real estate practitioner. Mike had an astounding thirteen posts on the Long List last week, but the eight posts (!) cited here are a cut above everything I saw last week. These are Mike’s essays, in chronological order:

If you didn’t read them — or didn’t read them all — making the time will repay your effort. Cathy and I were talking about thanking authors for the gifts they bear — not as fawning fan mail but as a simple expression of gratitude. I’ll thank Mike now for this compendium, and I hope you will take a second to do the same by email or in a comment on his weblog.

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Set Godin for Advice for real estate agents (quit now!):

The second asset to build is permission. It turns out (according to the NAR) that 91% of all Realtors never contact the buyer or the seller of a home after the closing. Not once. Wow. Someone just spent a million dollars with you and you don’t bother to call or write?

The opportunity during the current pause (and yes, it’s a pause) is to find, one by one, the people who would benefit from hearing from you and then earn the right to talk to them. Earn the right to send them a newsletter or a regular update or a subscription to your blog. NOT to talk about what matters to you, but to give them information (real information, not just data) that matters to them. Visit Read more

February 24, 2008

The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We have 16 entries on the short list this week, out of an astoundingly long long list of 104 posts. I’ve already decided on the winner of the Odysseus Medal, so I’m not linking that way. Instead, this week I’m showing nothing but Black Pearls, practical hard-headed ideas for working better, faster and more profitably.

Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Athol Kay -- Sunshine Is The Bomb Sunshine Is The Bomb For Real Estate Photos”,
“Brian Brady — Gene Simmons: Originality is Overrated Gene Simmons: Originality is Overrated“,
“Brian Brady — Sins Writers Commit The Two Sins Writers Commit That Business Bloggers Can’t Afford“,
“Chad Smith — Starbucks Wi-Fi Starbucks Makes Decision That Could Save Real Estate Agents Money“,
“Cheryl Johnson — Static Page and Blog Page Coexist WordPress: Static Page and Blog Page Coexist“,
“Cheryl Johnson — Using FTP Using FTP“,
“Dan Green — The One-Day Change To Your Closing Date The One-Day Change To Your Closing Date That Will Save You Money“,
“Dave Smith — Hyper Local Blog Market Targeting Hyper Local Blog Market Targeting“,
“Jay Thompson — The Taxman Approacheth The Taxman Approacheth“,
“Jeff Brown — My Topic Wish List I Hope Unchained Considers My Topic Wish List“,
“Jim Cronin — Not Your Competition 7 Reasons Why Your Local Real Estate Blogging Peers Are Not Your Competition“,
“Jim Cronin — Website Working Against Your Career? Is Your Website Working Against Your Real Estate Career?“,
“Paul Chaney — Keyword-optimized blog posts Don’t tell me keyword-optimized blog posts don’t get Google’s attention, cause they do!“,
“Reggie Nicolay — ESignature Technology Is ESignature Technology Right For Your Real Estate Business?“,
“Sean Purcell — Think Cat Blog Want Hyper-Local Blogging? Think Cat Blog“,
“Seth Godin — Advice for real estate agents Advice for real estate agents (quit now!)“,
);
shuffle($AltEntries);

$radioGroup Read more

February 24, 2008

Has Web 2.0 Failed YOU?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Louis Cammarosano, of Home Gain, outlines his theory about the failed promise of RE2.0. He offers four thoughts to back up his premise:

1- Success has been marginal.

2- It’s TOO consumer-centric and neglects the real estate professional (I’m still trying to understand how the anonymous presentation from real estate professionals, at Home Gain, really puts the REALTOR out in front.)

3- User-generated content is biased and therefore irrelevant.

4- Re.net adopters are somewhat smug in our “secret” which eventually turns people off.

Louis is new to weblogging so I want to be welcoming. He’s also a big boy and can handle himself so I will pay him the compliment of being blunt. He started his weblog with the initial purpose of communicating with his subscribers. When he invited a bunch of real estate bloggers to contribute, he recognized that Web 2.0 has legs. The very platform he criticizes is the one he employs to deliver that criticism and that…makes no sense.

The kept promise of interactive marketing is independence. We look no farther than my co-contributor (on Home Gain) Jay Thompson for proof of that kept promise; independence. Web 2.0 disintermediates the BROKER and LENDER (in my case) if practiced correctly. It allows you to connect with consumers around the globe. 90% of the consumers are still going to use a real estate agent when buying or selling a home. While that percentage may drop, it will still be overwhelmingly large.

Why? Real estate agents (and mortgage originators) add value. If we can communicate that value proposition, directly to the consumer, without dependency on a Home Gain, a Countrywide, or a RE/MAX, to do our advertising, both we and the consumers win.

I continually proclaim that blogging isn’t the “little purple pill” to cure all of your marketing deficiencies. It is, however, an opportunity for you to find a large number of people, who when employing a long-tail search, want exactly what you can provide.

That’s not failure. That’s power.

February 23, 2008

Practical Marketing With Twitter

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

We learned that we are not alone, yesterday. It might do us all some good to look outside our little world to see how other small businesses are using technology and new media. You’ll recall that I started tweeting rates about a month ago.

It is in this spirit that I offer you a series of articles, written by Jennifer Laycock on Search Engine Guide:

If you’re just joining the series, make sure to go back and read part one where I gave step by step directions on getting your Twitter account up and running, part two where I explain how to send messages and take advantage of the Twitter follow/followers system and part three where I explained how Twitter can help you meet new people. In part four, I looked at the traffic potential of Twitter and explained the value of retweets in making a link go viral.

Greg, I’d like to include her series in the Odysseus Competition.

February 23, 2008

Living up to the BloodhoundBlog mission statement: We’re everything you wish were in Realtor magazine

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is our mission statement:

BloodhoundBlog is everything you wish were in Realtor magazine — but isn’t.

Damned if it ain’t the gospel truth! Realtor Magazine does a cover story on real estate weblogging — and none of the Bloodhounds are there.

Not sour grapes. We’re the big dogs in this menagerie of minds, but, at the same time — we’re big Bloodhounds. Friendly enough, but fiercely independent and impossible to dominate. Does that sound like Realtor magazine to you?

In fact, the article is mostly a catalog of kiss-ups to potential advertisers, the usual sort of Realtor magazine mash letter.

Even so, congratulations to the real webloggers mentioned in the piece. My thought is that the waxed fruit is there to distract our attention from the rancid vendor stew that is the real purpose of the article. But, even so, the coverage should be huge for building credibility with clients.

(What would David Gibbons do? I’m thinking this is the kind of post that people find objectionable because I am not being falsely effusive about what is, in fact, not a wholly-positive development. I live in a graduated universe, and so I understand that most blessings are mixed. Realtor magazine’s objective — always — is to pimp vendors. This is why we understand, in every other context, that it is largely ridiculous and irrelevant. But — even so — this is a sweet coup for the actual real estate webloggers mentioned in the article. I offer them my heartiest congratulations. And I’m belaboring the obvious, I think.)

Tipped: The Real Estate Tomato.

Technorati Tags: , ,

February 22, 2008

Search Engine Guide is unleashed, but only the wild dogs are unchained

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jeff Brown found this promotional film for Small Business Marketing Unleashed and passed it on to Brian Brady, who forwarded it to me. Could someone be pulling a Davison on both BloodhoundBlog Unchained and the Daniel Rothamel video?

My take: Synchronicity. As you might recall, Unleashed was one of the names we considered on the way to picking Unchained:

Here is why I like Unchained:

  • The idea of free or even feral dogs
  • Unleashed implies has-been-leashed or will-be-leashed-again, but unchained can suggest never-having-been-chained
  • Again unlike unleashed, unchained has connotations of human slavery or imprisonment, and hence manumission or liberation
  • The word looks and sounds hard and edgy, promoting a hard and edgy graphic representation

These metaphors are not new to me, nor is the metaphor of dancing. I don’t actually care about dancing, but I care a lot about metaphors.

That’s actually kind of interesting as a comprehensive glimpse into our marketing prowess. But Search Engine Guide got to a slightly different place ahead of us.

[This post was redacted to correct factual errors addressed in the comments. –GSS]

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

February 22, 2008

Long Beach Realtor Laurie Manny to Speak at Bloodhound Blog UNCHAINED Social Media Marketing Conference in Phoenix, AZ

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

I’m ecstatic about our latest addition to the UNCHAINED faculty.

Laurie Manny, host of Long Beach Real Estate Home, has signed on to discuss how to build a locally-focused real estate weblog. In one short year, Laurie has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the search engines for the competitive keyword phrase “Long Beach Real Estate“. More effective, however, is her complete domination of long tail searches, “downtown long beach real estate“, “goldengate square“, and “oceangate square“. The latter two search terms are buildings in which Laurie has a major market presence.

Alas, search engine placement is nothing if the site doesn’t create fans. Laurie delivers the goods consistently with interesting content, a plethora of guest authors, and detailed market reports. She enjoys commercial success by employing a sophisticated IDX feed and CRM solution.

Laurie cut her teeth on Activerain.com and has strong following of “students” there who model her. She readily shares her success causing many Active Rainers to wonder why Laurie hasn’t had a more prominent, instructional role in RE.net conferences.

Frankly, we couldn’t let her knowledge escape the national spotlight so we invited her to join the faculty of UNCHAINED.

Ask Laurie a question about how she thrives in the rough and tumble world of online real estate marketing and the answer you’ll get will be complete. It’s like taking a sip from a fire hose as she rattles off actionable ideas about how to drive traffic and attract customers.

Leave your raincoat at home but bring a pen and paper. Laurie Manny is UNCHAINED.

PS- When Laurie writes, Active Rainers listen. The smart money is getting seats in the front row before Laurie’s fans hear about this and crash the server.

February 22, 2008

PhotoDropper WordPress plug-in puts zillions of creative-commons-licensed Flickr photos just a click away

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Tipped by ProBlogger Darren Rowse, I’m adding the PhotoDropper WordPress plug-in to four of our weblogs this morning.

What is it?

With the Photo Dropper plugin, you can now search millions of Flickr photos and add them to your WordPress posts with just 1 click, all without leaving your WordPress dashboard. Attribution links are automatically added underneath the images to comply with the Creative Commons license rules. It’s the easiest way to add photos to your blog. Period. And best of all – it’s Free!

I’m not a member of the images-incite-interest delegation. I believe mere prose is sufficient to attract attention if it is the right prose, and I’m only interested in a picture if it does that work that could be done by a thousand words.

But: I am a prototype without a production model, and many people writing here take exactly the opposite position, that pictures can make the post. That’s what makes horse races. And to be completely frank, sometimes the images our authors come up with knock me out.

These are the weblogs I’ve upgraded:

If it seems to work for people, I’ll add it everywhere.

A word of caution: A Creative Commons license does not put an image in the public domain. Russell Shaw, for example, loves to make image mash-ups in photo-editing software. People similarly inclined should make sure the photographer permits you to mess with his or her images, rather than simply displaying them.

How do you use it?

1. Once you have the plugin activated, you will see a “Photo Dropper Browse Photos” panel right under your Write Post (or Write Page) editor. Enter keyword(s) for a photo you would like for your post (Example: “sunset”, “black cat”, or “HDR bridge”) and click the Search button.

2. The search will return photos matching your keywords.

3. Once you find a photo you would like to add to your post, click on any of the sizes (”S”mall, “M”edium, “L”arge) to add that photo and attribution link to your post.

Here’s a Heard Museum photo I snagged in a split second:

Read more

February 22, 2008

Like a Dog With a Bone — Vindicated By a Super Star — Hyper-Local Blogs Rock

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

No less than Seth Godin has now come out and said it’s the only way to go. Even went as far as telling agents to quit otherwise. 🙂

Seriously, take a look at what I’m talking about. Yeah, yeah — I know Greg already beat me to it. So what?

Maybe it’d be better if you read (Reread without scoffing?) something from the archives

I feel so vindicated. 🙂 What cracked me up most? He used high school sports as an example to include in your blog, or ongoing conversation. Go figure. Seems like I’ve read that somewhere before.

The folks doing this best? Our own Eric and Teri. Eric is showing agents how, while Teri is an agent doing it in real time.

Life is good.

February 21, 2008

Zillow’s Virtual Sold Signs go live: Are yours up yet?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you’re a working Realtor, Zillow.com’s Virtual Sold Sign technology is another weapon you can deploy in your guerrilla marketing strategy.

I raved about this when it was announced, but now the feature has finally gone live.

What’s a Virtual Sold Sign? If you were the the listing agent the last time a particular home sold, Zillow will associate that home’s record with your Zillow profile, noting that the homes was “last sold by” — you.

Because Zillow has a database of almost all of the homes in the country, we have the unique opportunity to provide this feature.  Traditional listings sites just take a listing down once the transaction is complete, but we have over 4 million visitors coming to Zillow and viewing millions of recently sold homes each month.  In fact, over 35 million homes have been viewed on Zillow since we launched.  In some cities (Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, among others), over 90% of ALL homes in those cities have been viewed on Zillow.  Your sold homes are already getting viewed a lot on Zillow, with (until now) nothing to distinguish them as your sold homes.

The VSS program allows agents and brokers to continue marketing themselves on their sold properties for free, long after the home has actually sold.  Past transactions can even be submitted, to get attribution for listings that [sold] long before the Zillow Listings Feed program was even started.  It’s like leaving the “sold” sign up in the yard of each and every home you’ve ever sold.

Aside from the obvious benefit to agents and brokerages, the VSS program is beneficial to prospective sellers, and even buyers to find out who the top agents and brokerages are in their neighborhood, or the neighborhood where they want to move.

This is another piece of the marketing strategy that Brian Brady, myself and others have been working on, but which Tom Johnson has given the sizzling sobriquet “ZestiFarming.” Not to get too unhinged on the Unchained promises, but I’ll be teaching two hours of ZestiFarming techniques to enable you to completely dominate a geographic listing farm.

And this is also another demonstration of Read more

February 21, 2008

Gene Simmons: Originality is Overrated

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

I’m a Dan Kennedy disciple, a card-carrying member of the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle.  I read his book, The Ultimate Marketing Plan, six years ago, and was hooked.  Gene Simmons is one of the keynote speakers at the GKIC Super Conference, this April.  I listened to an interview with Gene Simmons today about his message for this April’s Super Conference.  Oh, if you’re wondering why I listen when a 70’s rock and roller talks, it’s because he’s a marketer; a damned fine one.   Here are some snippets from the interview.  I think it may give you a glimpse to why I think the way I do about marketing.

1-You only get the respect you demand.

Gene tells a story about his advice to a fifteen-year old girl.  He advised her to get over the idea that people’s perception of you somehow defines you.  He continued by saying that you are only as important as you believe you are; how you perceive yourself is eventually how others behold you. 

Does your marketing message convey that?  I’m not talking about ego.  Do you truly believe that you are an expert agent or originator?  This isn’t about “act, as if”, it’s about demonstrated expertise.  Can you deliver the goods?  If your self- perception is less than expert, correct the flaws that hold you back. 

2- Originality is overrated.

I don’t think I could agree more.  To the doers come the riches, not the thinkers.  Anyone can have a great idea; it’s the implementers, the innovators, the action-based people who change the world.  Gene Simmons called KISS a pastiche; part rock and roll, part comic book, and part horror show.  A great example of pastiche,in theater,  is Quentin Tarantino.  Neither Gene Simmons nor Quentin Tarantino “created”, they innovated. 

Are you constantly planning or constantly doing?  I talk to agents and originators, daily, about their customer acquisition systems  Sadly, most explanations are long on ideas and short on action. 

3- Marketing is the most important thing you can do.  If the market is crowded, move the market.

Gene Simmons told the story of the Citrus Growers of America.  They crafted a message that the first thing you should do, Read more

« 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