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March 17, 2008

UNCHAINED: The Way of the Hunter

by

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

Author website

The BloodhoundBlog UNCHAINED Social Media Marketing Conference, brought to you by Zillow, was referenced by Teri Lussier, last night.

Greg Swann outlined his session, The Way of the Farmer:

Day 1, Class 2: The Way of the Farmer, dominating the Long Tail to dominate your farm Six 20-minute segments:

Segment 1 — Listing strong to farm strong
Segment 2 — Building single-property web sites
Segment 3 — Using engenu to dominate the long tail
Segment 4 — Zestifarming to dominate Zillow
Segment 5 — Blogging listings with engenu
Segment 6 — Belly-to-belly farming the Web 2.0 way

Here’s my session, Day 1, Class 1: The Way of the Hunter:

1- Why Ubiquity Works

2- Setting Traps- Sites that Can Expose You To Consumers
a- LinkedIn
b- Yahoo
c- MySpace
d- Facebook
e- Zillow
f- Trulia
g- Active Rain
h- You Tube
g- Gather

3- Baiting the Traps- providing relevant consumer content to match up with the community

4- Building a Community- getting eyeballs that keep coming back

5- Getting commitment- how to convert engaged consumers to permission based marketing participants

6- Channel marketing- building a referral network online

There’s our first morning for you. 4.5 hours of intense classroom work. We’ll have an accompanying workbook for all attendees and everyone will get a DVD of the event.

Keep in mind that the price is still discounted at $199.

I’ve heard tons of criticism about our pricing strategy; everyone remarks that we’re not charging enough. Greg and I recognize that 2008 is hardly a banner year for most folks. We further recognize that now, more than ever, practitioners need to learn about how to rework their marketing efforts to be more in line with consumer behavior.

Unchained is going to be a business saver for many folks; jump on the discounted conference fee while it lasts.

March 17, 2008

Rate Your REALTOR® – Why Are Agents Scared Anyway?

by

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

Author website

I’ve had little luck selling the idea that REALTORS® should embrace an Internet rating system.  Local associations, individual REALTORS®, other association executives, NAR, and even other bloggers have rejected the idea of allowing clients to rate their agent.  Twice last week I pitched it to influential leaders in the industry, but both times the conversation died with no support.  Here are a few typical “reasons” this idea is rejected by the industry:

  • My competitor will give me bogus ratings
  • One bad rating and I’ll look bad even if most of my clients love me
  • Only clients who are upset would be motivated to rate me

I did hear one legitimate argument last week, but it was not a deal killer for me.  A wise REALTOR® explained that ratings would not work in the real estate business because a transaction was often a confrontation between a buyer’s rep and the listing agent.  Since the agents were working for opposite sides, the other party’s client was bound to think poorly of you.  Okay, there is some truth to that, but a properly set up rating system could make sure readers knew if the evaluation came from your client or from the other side. 

The reason this idea will not leave my head is that I sit in many industry meetings and listen to REALTORS® and association executives whine about the lack of training and professionalism from their competitors or members.  The common answer for most people to this problem is to require more training before and after licensing.  While more education can help, it will never weed out the bad from the good.  Taking more courses will not make you more ethical, professional or pleasant to work with unless you want it to change you.  Only the power of the consumer will require you to change or quit. 

Overall, I find REALTORS® to be an amazing group of ethical and professional entrepreneurs, but a few bad apples and rotten eggs has left a bad taste in the mouth for many.  Surveys constantly back this up by showing that the public generally loves “their” REALTOR®, but rates the Read more

March 17, 2008

Introducing Dave Phillips, taking the lead role in a reenacted historical drama: St. Francis Xavier and the Bloodhounds

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That headline is a Jesuit joke, y’all. In fact, Dave Phillips, CEO of one of the most interesting Realtor associations in the United States, may be bravely putting his head into the Bloodhound’s mouth. (Ooh! The drool!)

We’ll find out. Behold the man:

Dave Phillips is the CEO of the Charlottesville (Virginia) Area Association of Realtors, a national pace-setter. He describes himself as “a writer, speaker, and facilitator on all things real estate.”

I hope Dave doesn’t try to convert us with the sword, but, again and again, Francis Xavier took the contest to the contestants, an exceptionally courageous act. My hat is off to Dave for exhibiting a similar valor.

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March 17, 2008

How to use engenu to reinforce your blog posts about listed homes you would like to sell, to build single-property web sites, and to achieve total global hyper-local long-tail search domination

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my response to a comment that Jennifer Castillo left on my post about the benefits of blogging about real estate listings you would like to sell.

Jennifer said:

My questions to you arise from this quote of yours, “For each house you preview, build an engenu page. That way you can show all the photos, captioned as needed, if someone wants to see everything. You can also link to appropriate offsite resources. This engenu page will be a permanent asset in your inventory of on-line content.”

Being a total n00b in this business I am very excited about what you have written in this particular post. My question to you is how do I build an engenu page? I have a blog at wordpress so can this even be done with my existing blog? Do I need any particular software?

Hi, Jennifer. I like your weblog. You have en eye for striking images.

engenu is software written by me. It runs on Apache web servers, or it will once I release it. It’s all but finished, but I keep finding small things I want to change. I’ll be releasing it as a public beta shortly.

I’ve written about engenu on BloodhoundBlog. In that post, I talk about a house we know and love. Cathy blogged about that house, and her weblog post linked back to the engenu site I built for 101 West Seminole Drive.

That’s an illustration of how you can use engenu to support a weblog post about a house. The post can highlight the features and photos you are interested in talking about, then you can link back to you engenu site for the folks who want to see everything. The post and the engenu site are mutually-reinforcing, both in terms of immediate marketing and in future long-tail search results.

The point of all this is that engenu permits ordinary people to build rich, elaborate, highly searchable web sites very quickly and without knowing any HTML or other coding languages. If you do know how to code, you can build almost anything you want, but the kind of sites we build every day to Read more

March 16, 2008

Bear Stearns Employees Wake Up To Tenuous Employment Prospects

by

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

Author website

Bear Stearns employees will wake up on St. Patrick’s Day and wonder about their future. JP Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns, a venerable Wall Street institution, for about 2.5% of the firm’s stated book value. The sales price was just 20% of the value of the Manhattan headquarters alone.

How safe are the jobs at Bear Stearns?

Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s CEO, cut his teeth in the brokerage and banking business under Wall Street legend Sandy Weill. He rose with Sandy as Weill made his comeback move after being ousted as American Express’ Chairman. Weill took control of Primerica and leveraged it through acquisitions of Shearson Lehman (bought from his nemesis, American Express), Travelers Insurance and ultimately Citigroup. Weill, and protege Dimon, were able to build the empire through cost-cutting in the name of economies of scale.

That doesn’t bode well for Bear Stearns’ employees.

Like the Countrywide/ B of A merger, we have a culture clash ahead. Bear Stearns vertically integrated into the mortgage industry, eventually owning its own wholesale lending channel. Bear violated the “Chinese Wall” securities brokerage firms try to respect; they bought their customers. JP Morgan owns Chase bank, a VERY conservative bank that owns a mortgage operation. The bean counters just bought the cowboys and in this era of “fiscal responsibility”, the cowboys will be kicked off the range.

Jamie Dimon doesn’t own a ten gallon hat.

JP Morgan bought Bear for its brokerage operations not its mortgage banking business. The $82 discount to stated book value suggests that JP Morgan will keep the prime performing mortgages, for its Chase Manhattan Mortgage portfolio, and most likely rid itself of all other mortgage assets. They can afford a helluva lot of losses on those mortgage assets with the discount they got.

What’s that mean to the mortgage market?

Less liquidity. While Bear Stearns Mortgage was reinventing itself to be a conservative lender, they were aggressively pricing their loans. Less liquidity and elimination of the price leader means higher costs, long-term.

Like their Countrywide cousins, Bear Stearns Mortgage employees Read more

March 16, 2008

Unraveled by Unchained, or: Why I put a leash on my Spring Break plans.

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

So I was chatting with Brad Coy the other day, (On the phone!? Get out of town) and he asked me why, after participating in the hoopla of the Project Blogger competition, did I not go to Inman Connect.

Me: “Well, uh, um, well, uh, you know, um…”

I must come clean: I really hate conferences. I have the patience of Job with a lot of things, BS ain’t one of them.

I simply can’t sit in a crowded room listening to someone drone on and on, particularly if they are droning about something they are selling. And with a conference I’m supposed to pay for that unique pleasure? Especially when there is a big beautiful city calling my name? No way, not me.

When I heard that Bloodhound was planning a conference, I cringed. Then I immediately made plans to go- not because I thought that this conference would be different- the truth is I didn’t think it would be different, oh me of little faith. I made plans to go because I love Arizona and haven’t been in years, and thought it would be fun to finally meet a bunch of Bloodhounds. That was it. My double secret plan was to show up, say Hello!, put in a minimal amount of face time, then quietly bug out and head for the desert. And let me add something I’m not entirely proud of, but it’s important to this story: That was still my plan up until yesterday.

Greg says: “We’re nobody’s fan boy, nobody’s water boy, nobody’s pony boy.” Amen, brother! I might be a contributor here, but the way I see it, BHB Unchained is going to have to prove to me that it’s worth something before I’m sticking around for the show. I love this from Kelley Koehler in a comment on Agent Genius

“Remember me? I bought a ticket. Me. My money bought me the right to demand your attention on me, the right to only care about what I can get out of you. Anyone wearing a vendor hat and doing anything other than helping me becomes merely an irritant with no value. Your focus is on me. Your goal is within me. Anything – Read more

March 16, 2008

The Future of Marketing: Intent and Content

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

John Battelle wrote a book a while back called The Search which is basically about Google. In this book he discusses, among many other topics, the mountain of information being gathered by search engine companies and gives a few scenarios of how this might affect adverising and marketing. One particular scenario is something I think is not too far away from being a reality.

He uses a couple gathering information about the expected birth of their first child, how the husband is badgered into taking a part and learning about child-birth, parenting and such, so he begins searching — searching for articles, searching Amazon for books, etc. Battelle’s point is the merging of intent-based and content-based advertising. The husband then gets with his wife to use the TV search capabilities to find the programs related to child-care and parenting.

He goes on with the scenario describing the behind-the scenes computer gyrations that trigger connected sites to form the “intent” and begin the auctioning for advertising — all this taking seconds, from TiVo to Amazon to BabyWorld.com to whatever other connection he’s made.

When they start the child-care programing, in the corner of the screen is a message that three advertisers have information packages. The agreement with the cable program services is that he will access the ads every so often in order to get an incredibly low cost for the program services. He really doesn’t mind this because he’s found the ads very useful and pertinent to his needs.

The auctioning process behind the scenes was preset by advertisers with a maximum bid they will go, or they set to always bid the highest for top placement. The bids are in and three advertisers have won the top spots.

When the husband clicks on the ads, he not only gets a textual ad saying “We’re the greatest”, he gets links to information sites, discount offers, a whole package of useful content.

Now, plug in a home searcher and real estate and we get a glimpse of what the future might hold. I won’t even go into the predictions of barcoding technology, but imagine scanning your smartphone over a barcode on a for sale sign and uploading Read more

March 16, 2008

Sunday Morning Tribute To Bloodhound

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Bloodhound is an astounding blog. Now before I’m accused of buttering up to Greg, let me explain I’m not that type. What I find astounding about Bloodhound is the consistent quality of the work here. It’s amazing a real estate blog can generate such rich material for the imagination, and one reason I think it does is that it transcends, on many occasions, the limits of basic real estate information.

That’s not to say that all types of RE blogs don’t have their place among the RE blogosphere and much valuable information is transmitted all over. Bloodhound itself transmits valuable nuts and bolts information. Along with other sites, Bloodhound transmits good technology tips and is in the loop of the latest news going on in the industry. I think, though, what raises it above other efforts is the transcending part.

I like the fast, informative style some sites have, with a few pithy words, neat pictures and links to good information, but they lack the substance that I think makes a place like Bloodhound stand out. That’s what I’m getting at – rich content, substance, mind food, sparks to fire the imagination. We often praise the informative aspect of Bloodhound, but seldom do I see the content given appropriate praise.

In order to stand out among a field of writers, substantive content is critical in my estimation. Allan Bloom, the great literature critic, feels that being “strange” is what sets great writers apart and makes them immortal. By “strange” he meant that writers like Kafka, Shakespeare, Pynchon and Cervante are different, on the edge, that their content fires the imagination. Not that I’m comparing Bloodhound to canonical writers, but relatively speaking, the concept is the same – in the arena of RE blogs, Bloodhound has the “strange” factor which sets it apart, makes it noticeable, whether you agree with Greg and the contributors and like them or not.

This powerful form of branding is what all businesses, and other efforts to be seen and heard, search for, yet few fully succeed in finding. I think it entails taking a risk, having the courage to express Read more

March 16, 2008

BloodhoundBlog is the number one real estate weblog? Technically true for a brief moment, but we still have some growing to do

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A tiny trophy, a huge victory — to come.

Biggest, most comprehensive and most popular real estate industry technology and marketing blog

We had a helluva week last week, our best ever — until now. So what did we do this week to top last week’s numbers? How about almost double?

Biggest, most comprehensive and most popular real estate industry technology and marketing blog

The real estate category on BlogTopSites is the home of truly competitive real estate webloggers. We’ve always held our own there — the respectable low teens until lately, in the higher single digits so far for 2008. The top of the list has almost always been dominated by bubble blogs, but BloodhoundBlog has been among the top RE.net blogs — and almost always first among real estate industry weblogs — for quite some while.

But we’ve never been first overall before, and the chances are good that we won’t be again, not for a while. But first place on that list is ours to earn and ours to keep — eventually. We deliver so much more content — so much better content — that we will own the top of that list in due course. Just not yet.

So what gives? How did we get to be number one at the start of this brand new week?

Earlier this week, Brian Brady gave us all a practical demonstration in how to dominate a Google search. On Thursday, he wrote a post about Ashley Alexandra Dupree that was first, fastest and best — from Google’s point of view. He’s spent the past three days on the first page of Google for a number of Ashley Dupree-related search terms — sitting squarely atop major news organizations and A-list webloggers. As I write this, Brian’s post is second for ashley dupree — and first place is off-topic.

So what happened? With that first Ashley Dupree post and a follow-up about Ashley’s singing career, Brian by himself brought over 14,000 unique souls as hard clicks into BloodhoundBlog this week. He beat all of last week by himself. Yesterday we had over 8,132 unique visitors, of which at last 6,000 were brought here by Brian Brady alone.

Yeah, but, but, but– It’s just an SEO trick. No, it’s not. It’s an SEO demonstration. Brian Brady Read more

March 15, 2008

As if the Dollar isn’t already tanking…

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

You Know I Had To Say Something…

To read me is to know me and if you’ve read me before then you already know that I am no economist. Far from it.  I can reduce by 10% and multiply by 5%–the two basic math skills needed to be a realtor in Chicago–but anything much beyond that, I start spelling out the numbers instead. If I had to rely soley on the mathematic portion of my brain to come up with D’enouement in any given circumstance, then I’d be wandering the halls of Pi purgatory, ad infinitum. See, I just did it.

Nor am I now, or have I ever been, a candidate for political office of any kind although one entry on Google claims I was once the Treasurer for a Virginia chapter of the Knights of Columbus in 1993-94. (I will state for the record right here in a national forum that I don’t know what happened to that Bingo money but hookers were definitely not involved.)  In fact, according to Sister Mary Timothy from the old neighborhood, I ceased even being a Catholic after I got caught smoking in the Girls bathroom with Melanie Mortimer back in the 6th grade.  My blanket response to both of these scenarios is this—-and I paraphrase G. Gordon Liddy from his Watergate days,  “Much beyond that, Senator…at those particular points in time,…to the best of my knowledge,….I don’t recall.”

However, I am not completely without opinions.  And if I should ever find myself in such a position, my iPhone is sure to ping me otherwise. Such was the case this past Monday as I topped off my Mini Cooper, silently cursing any and all things OPEC, and wondering if I should have bought an even smaller form of transport.  The MSNBC feed alerted me that a notable politician admitted to paying $1,000 per hour for the services of a jezebel.  I just paid $39.79 for a tank of Premium,  then quickly figured (with the help of my iCalculator, of course) that alas…Super Premium was a mere $960.21 more.  As I read on, I imagined the following Govenor’s Mansion pillow talk later that evening in far, far away Albany:

First Lady of NY:  “You paid $1,000 per hour for a hooker?”

Govenor of NY:   “Yes Read more

March 15, 2008

Paradigm Shift? Not Quite Yet

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

In just the past couple weeks alone I’ve read over a dozen blog posts declaring a paradigm shift in real estate — specifically in what it takes to succeed as an agent. Before I continue, it’s not my intention to offend anyone in any way whatsoever. Seems about 2-3 times a year I manage to step in it big time, causing some sorta perfect $#%storm of wounded egos and/or encroached empires of ideology. This should be filed under, ‘Hey, I’m just sayin” and leave it at that.

Look at the history of the car, beginning at the turn of the 20th century. Going out on a limb, I’d say far less than 1% of the population had seen one, much less owned one. Now look at today’s car. A paradigm shift? Not in my thinking. They still require gas, a driver, a drive train, and brakes. A 1908 Ford got you from point A to point B faster and more comfortably than a horse — and so does the 2008 model. Yet many would say due to the myriad improvements over the last 100 years there’s been some sort of paradigm shift from 1908 to now.

Show me. Where is it? Does the ’08 version fly? Does it drive itself? Does it make its own fuel? No, it gets us from A to B faster and more comfortably than a horse. A paradigm shift was when the car replaced the horse.

Segue to real estate brokerage.

It was Saturday in the middle of a cloudy October in 1969 when I first stepped into a real estate office as a licensed agent. Not much has changed in the ‘paradigm shift’ kinda way.

Before you start your enraged fingers racing over your keyboard, read on.

Sure, there were no computers, no internet, no 2.0, not even 1.0 — hell we were barely 0.0 back then. Still, we did then what we do today. We seek opportunities to get in front of qualified prospects in order to make our living. We took listings, represented buyers, used the MLS, had to deal with contracts, dealt with lenders, Read more

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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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