by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It’s Soundgarden, but you can’t know what it should sound like until the man comes around: Rusty cage covered by Johnny Cash from American III.

You know my name. Look up the number.

Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Remember, it ain’t news until it’s been processed by a professional.

For all us amateurs out there: If you missed out on something that happened a week ago, you can pretty much figure everyone who cares already knows.

And a note to the self-professed professionals: We already know you’re not paying attention. You don’t have to paint a target on your forehead.

Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology

by Cathleen Collins

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Teri Lussier loves Twitter so I’ll give it a shot

That was my “Hello World” last night on Twitter.

At the 2007 Star Power conference in Phoenix I learned about Jott, the safe and legal way to text message while you’re driving; so when I noticed Greg using it to send himself a reminder, I signed up, too. This is a tool that has really come in handy. When my dad was still alive he would tease my eighteen year old niece and me about text messaging. He couldn’t understand why anyone would prefer something so clumsy over simply using that cell phone to talk. But there are times when text messaging is more appropriate — for example, when the timing of your message might be an inconvenient interruption for the person who you telephone. You may want to connect with someone in a more passive way. You’re not disturbing them like you might be doing with a phone call, but your message is more intimate, direct, immediate than email. My dad was right… texting manually can be clumsy, tedious. And what do you do when you’re driving? Here’s where Jott is champ. I hold down the J key on my Treo, tell Jott I want to jott Cindy Client, say “please call Cathleen when you’re free to talk,” and hang up. My voice is transcribed to text and that’s sent to Cindy Client’s phone as a text message.

I know I’m behind the times… as long ago as last month blogs were abuzz with the cool ways the cool people at the NAR convention were mashing up Jott and Twitter and Utterz and WordPress. And here I was, like my dad when he was questioning texting: Why use Twitter? How will that help me, my family or my business? Since last night, when I signed up on Twitter, I’ve connected in a different way with people whom I’m already reading and feel kin to by blogging. And I’m not sure yet whether this Twitter-difference is better. It’s not as though I’m going to save any time by reading a 140-character version of Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Another way of understanding the unchained idea is to envision a world (I call it yesterday) where marketers avidly sought ways to tie down consumers — with tricks, with lies, with a lack of alternatives. Consumers have broken those chains. That world is gone.

Here is Seth Godin talking about what will replace it:

The defectors know something you don’t. The defectors know that if they hurry, they can build a new monopoly, a monopoly you don’t control. They know that they can build a direct and long-term relationship with the end user, one that will survive competitive incursions and will last a long time. If they hurry.

And so, learn from these folks. You should hurry. You must hurry. If you understand that the game is radically and permanently being changed, you can go out today and start building mutually beneficial relationships with your listeners/readers/watchers. You can offer these folks something of value in exchange for their attention. You can then build a new monopoly.

More:

You have a relationship. You understand that every interaction has to benefit BOTH of you or the relationship is over. If you’re going to build a monopoly on consumer attention, you’ll need to do the same thing.

Here’s how I boil it down to as few words as possible:

• 1. Make it easy for your happy users to tell as many of their friends as possible.
• 2. Give away free samples early and often.
• 3. Get permission from anyone who likes what you do to follow up with anticipated, personal and relevant messages that benefit both of you.
• 4. If this requires changing what you make and what you charge for, fine.
• 5. If steps 1,2, 3 and 4 mess up your current business model, fine.

The article is about the mainstream media monopolies, but it’s directly apposite to the real estate industry. Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is a Teri and Greg mash-up, which is appropriate. It was Teri who first brought up the idea of musical themes for Unchained. At that time, I wrote this to her in email:

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.

Teri cares about dancing, though, so we start with this, Fred and Ginger, George and Ira and all that jazz:

I like that talented-nebbish-gets-the-girl thing, and I like the idea of people growing into their own moral authority, and who better to express those ideas in dance than… Jim Carrey…

Finally there’s this, from the King of Soul, James Brown:

Teri found a better version, but it can’t be embedded.

Are you dancing to a different beat? Tell us what we’re missing — but be patient. I have dozens of tunes on queue and it will take a while to get to them all.

Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Someone suggested Positively 4th Street, but that’s much too cruel. These clips all come from the deluxe edition of D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back.

Johnny Cash’s cover of It ain’t me, babe is used to huge advantage in the Cash biopic, Walk the line.

It’s all over now, baby blue is another one that gets covered a lot.

Here’s a tune that no one covers: It’s alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you’d just be
One more person crying.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know Read more