{"id":452,"date":"2006-09-26T13:26:24","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T20:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=452"},"modified":"2007-01-25T00:16:55","modified_gmt":"2007-01-25T07:16:55","slug":"blogoff-post-75-the-power-of-an-online-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/452\/blogoff-post-75-the-power-of-an-online-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogoff Post #75: The power of an online tool . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource<\/a>, how to use a unique web-based tool or service to attract readers to your real estate weblog:<\/p>\n

Ingredients: A service that you can code into a tool to save someone time, effort, money or, alternatively, provide entertainment (plus a solid developer, preferably skilled in AJAX).<\/p>\n

Process: Tools aren’t always able to attract visitors independently, so much like mashups, you’ll need to do some promotion. Fortunately, there are dozens of online tool lists and plenty of folks blogging about their creation (like the aforementioned Ajaxian). The tool itself needs to serve a real purpose (or make people laugh) and it needs to be unique. If you’re in the retail industry, imagine a tool that could be used to help visitors custom create a product, or organize a set of products in a useful, humorous or fun way. For B2B, cost calculators for customers can be useful, but are often un-exciting. Imagine how you can expand the use of your services to fit a wide audience, then make it fun and interactive.<\/p>\n

Results: Tools can generate traffic slowly over time, or they can have huge bursts. Often, they spread virally through email and social networks if they’re built right (and look great — so pay attention to #4, too).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I gave one of these to my dingleberry son, but he hasn’t done anything with it. It was an idea I had over the summer, and I didn’t have time to write it myself.<\/p>\n

It’s not difficult: What I envisioned was a PHP utility that would take a marked-up text and return it without the mark-up, but with each marked-up term or phrase having been recoded as a Wikipedia look-up. For general webloggery, Wikipedia is fiercely useful, but coding a lot of links is a pain in the butt. This, by definition is what software is for.<\/p>\n

If you want, you can bug the little booger<\/a> to get busy on this project…
\n<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: blogging<\/a>, sellsius 101<\/a>, real estate<\/a>, real estate marketing<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource, how to use a unique web-based tool or service to attract readers to your real estate weblog: Ingredients: A service that you can code into a tool to save someone time, effort, money or, alternatively, provide entertainment (plus a solid developer, preferably skilled in AJAX). Process: Tools aren’t always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-technology","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":299,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/299\/bed-time-real-estate-blog-bytes-a-hammer%e2%80%99s-a-great-tool-until-you-have-to-paint-a-wall-right\/","url_meta":{"origin":452,"position":0},"title":"Bed-time real estate blog-bytes: “A hammer’s a great tool until you have to paint a wall, right?”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Rey Estate: Make things simple! In The Trenches: There's gold in them thar data! The Property Monger: Scuse me while I Zillow the sky... Hamptons Real Estate Blog: Home prices are stable, but the Zestimates are surging. Rubbing elbows with Nubricks gets Real Central VA, The Real Estate Tomato and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2963,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2963\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-26\/","url_meta":{"origin":452,"position":1},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We have 17 entries on the short list this week, out of a long long list of 60 posts. 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1049,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1049\/in-praise-of-an-insanely-great-idea-todd-carpenters-rembexcom-becomes-the-search-engine-of-the-renet\/","url_meta":{"origin":452,"position":2},"title":"In praise of an insanely great idea: Todd Carpenter’s REMBEX.com becomes the search engine of the RE.net . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometime very soon I am going to eviscerate another Cheez Whiz Prize winner, but here is a function I would much rather undertake: Delivering praise without limits to an amazingly, outrageously great idea in real estate weblogging. Todd Carpenter runs REMBEX -- Real Estate & Mortgage Blogger's Exchange. It's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2558,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2558\/a-new-way-to-howl-announcing-the-long-list-of-odysseus-medal-nominees-the-weblog\/","url_meta":{"origin":452,"position":3},"title":"A new way to howl: Announcing “The Long List of Odysseus Medal Nominees” — the weblog","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Apart from the normal crush of business, I've been hammering away for the past few weeks on a huge project -- which I'll be announcing shortly. In the mean time, I've wanted to make a further elaboration on the Long List lister I made a few weeks ago. That tool\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2268,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2268\/the-odysseus-medal-the-most-powerful-two-way-internet-communications-tool-so-far-developed\/","url_meta":{"origin":452,"position":4},"title":"The Odysseus Medal: “The most powerful two-way Internet communications tool so far developed”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's talk about real estate weblogging, shall we? By an accident of synchronicity, that seems to be what bubbled up to the top this week. The Odysseus Medal goes to Gary Elwood for Naked Conversations: The Lynchpin to Your Real Estate Marketing Blog:In a nutshell, blogging is one of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":855,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/855\/tomato-soup-in-the-rain-the-real-estate-tomato-at-rain-city-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":452,"position":5},"title":"Tomato soup in the rain: The Real Estate Tomato at Rain City Guide . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Dustin Luther at Rain City Guide interviews Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato:What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now? The unfathomable amount of content that is generated because of this (gold)rush to blog will persist longer than you and I, no doubt\u2026\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}