This is from email I had earlier this week:
Jim Cronin from The Real Estate Tomato and I were just talking about real estate blogging being what real estate websites will begin to morph into. He sent me to your blog and I was wondering if that has been productive for you as a lead generator.
For the first point, I’m with Jim wall-to-wall. In every second of my spare time, I am preparing to repurpose all of our content to weblogs or weblog-like pages. Last weekend my son Cameron reformulated our content engines to make them site-independent (and therefore appearance-independent), and I want him to take a second pass at everything to build content that will look like an Ubertor site to people but will search like friendly old HTML 3.0 to Google. There are other weblog-like things we’re doing at the transaction-management level. It would be reasonable to say that in due course weblogging will be the defining metaphor of our internet presence.
For the second point — has weblogging been a productive lead generator? — I don’t know. A fuller answer is more complicated than that, but the whole issue is trumped by an even larger point: I don’t care.
I want to approach business as a vendor in the same way I approach it as a customer. In other words, I don’t want people treating me as a lead, as a link in their food chain. As soon as I start to feel like a salesman’s prey, I get creeped out. I don’t have to feel that way for very long to get gone. On the other hand, if I feel that you are looking out for my interests, offering me the sage counsel I have sought — and perhaps the advice I hadn’t known to ask for — then we have a sound basis for going ahead with a transaction.
There’s a lot of mercenary weblogging advice out there right now, and much of it strikes me as being doubly-dysfunctional. Yes, weblogging has huge SEO advantages, but if you go out of your way to write SEO-attractive copy, you will have created a reader-repellent weblog. You will score high on searches and no one will ever come back without a Googlenudge. If, instead, you write with the reader and not Google in mind, you can build an audience of people who respect what you have to say even if they don’t always agree with you.
Is the purpose of doing that do generate leads? No. Is the purpose bread cast upon the waters? Even that seems too mercenary to me. Inside my own skin, I think that the purpose of excellence is excellence. Out in the world, I believe that if you do right by people, they’ll do right by you. But the reciprocity of the thing doesn’t matter, what matters is doing the right thing, and doing it as well as I can do it. Everything after that is a secondary consequence, entirely welcome but not fundamentally necessary.
The complicated answer is this: People touch our web pages so many times, over the course of days or weeks, that I can’t say for sure if the weblog has been the procuring cause, as it were, of someone filling out one of our forms or emailing or phoning me directly. I know that many of our long-time clients enjoy the weblog, because they have told me so. It’s plausible to me that some people who have found us through our weblog may become clients — or refer people to us — in the future. Even so, all of that would be nothing more than a secondary consequence, a happy accident.
What I’m saying is this: Real estate weblogging is not about leads, it’s about a conversation that builds relationships. If some of those relationships turn into business — that’s a bonus. But if you approach weblogging as a net for capturing prospects, you will fail. People will see your weblog as just another splog — a spam-blog — even if it is a hand-crafted splog. In the long run, it could be worse for your business than doing nothing.
But if you approach weblogging as what you can give, what you can share, what you can learn, what you can teach, what you can delight in and what you can aspire to — if you approach it as a customer and not as yet another vendor — you’ll find all the riches money can never buy. If you happen to make a buck or two in the process, so much the better. But if you make yourself a better person, and make the world around you a better place, the money will find its way to you on its own…
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Maureen Francis says:
Would it be rude of me to forward this to a friend who is obsessed with jamming key words into her blog? The pearls of wisdom get lost in the clutter.
Isn’t a bad blog worse than no blog at all? The ‘sell’ in a blog is a long,long conversation, not a whack over the head with seo-friendly copy.
September 15, 2006 — 8:26 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Would it be rude of me to forward this to a friend who is obsessed with jamming key words into her blog?
Be my guest.
September 15, 2006 — 9:03 pm
Cathleen Collins says:
Greg may thump me on the head for saying this, anticipating that it may look too self serving to inlookers, but I’m going to comment anyway. And since we have a policy of freely allowing comment, restricting comments only if they really are spam or so filled with profaninty that we wouldn’t want our mothers to see it, I know that when I put this in a comment it will get posted even if Greg would rather it not. But I want to say that I am so proud of this man, and this article speaks volumes about why I am. We may not have any of the trappings commonly associated with wealth, but we have a wealth of joy created by always striving to do our best. Fall out from doing your best should be that the best comes back to you. And I’m the kinda sort who likes justice. But for Greg it really is simply about doing your best, always, even without looking for that favorable fall-out. And so, I’m marking this as an article of enduring interest.
September 16, 2006 — 8:52 am
Cheryl, Broker in L A, CA says:
Greg Swann has written a brilliant, poetic, truthful and wonderous post, that should be required reading for all real estate agents, and salespeople of all flavors.
http://www.nelalive.net/nelalive/2006/09/required_readin.html
September 16, 2006 — 9:08 am
Mark Sconce, ABR, e-PRO says:
Add this Arizonan to Greg Swann’s camp followers. As the rookie agent in an old retirement community’s brokerage, I’m on the cutting edge of e-realty but still struggling to find the right formulae for marketing (my ho-hum website doesn’t interest me much). My fellow residents are typically much older than I and don’t like being patronized. They just want the facts but well-stated. The Blog, as envisioned by Greg, is just the right medium I think, marketing motives to the contrary, notwithstanding. Thank you, Gregg.
Mark “The Poet Realtor” in Mesa.
September 16, 2006 — 11:56 am
Jonathan Dalton says:
Interesting post, Greg. I’ve not agreed with you on multiple subjects but do admit to bending my brain around the idea of the blog as a public good as opposed to another marketing avenue. The challenge comes in the business side of life, where ROI is an all-to-harsh fact of life.
I too prefer building relationships over completing one-time transactions, but the reality of an existence where money is a factor leads me to perform in both capacities.
September 16, 2006 — 2:29 pm
Geri Sonkin says:
Greg, you have certainly made my day. I’ve been attempting to blog for quite awhile now, first with http://LongIslandsBestHomes.blogspot.com and more recently with http://BloggingLongIsland.wordpress.com . I also have an Ubertor website. My problem has always been the conventional wisdom colliding with my own instincts.
Everything I do on the web is consumer centric. I want them to find what they’re looking for and hopefully come back for more. It has worked for almost ten years with my web sites but I have had no clear indication where my blog(s), blogging should take me. You’ve defined it for me. The truth is I don’t care. I’m doing what I’ve always done and my gut instinct was to continue down this road.
Thank you so much for the light to guide my path.
September 16, 2006 — 4:40 pm
Michael Daly says:
Thanks for the inspiration, Greg. md
September 18, 2006 — 8:19 am
Greg Swann says:
Bless you all. Thank you.
Regarding this:
> The Blog, as envisioned by Greg, is just the right medium
The circumstance you describe might be ideal for a community weblog. Open it up to anyone willing to register, Let them start as contributors, so you don’t have any kiddie porn or fair housing violations, then work with people to become editors. I find the phpBB style of forum inherently off-putting, but the post and comments format of a weblog could work very well.
September 18, 2006 — 3:40 pm
Bonnie Erickson says:
Reading this today is really timely for me. I just linked your entry to a blog I wrote in response to my broker telling me the “problem with my blog was I had no call to action”. I knew he was all wet and doesn’t understand blogging and also know him well enough (we’ve been business partners for year)to know it wasn’t meant as a criticism but as a help. The “call to action” is not my way. I believe in equipping people to make informed choices. Even when I was an EBA I informed my customers at their first meeting that they could get exclusive representation through a listing company IF they asked for it and were willing not to see that company’s listings. It’s an informed choice that way, and if I lose because of giving information, I have still won!
October 20, 2006 — 10:02 pm
Patricia Gross says:
This is so inspirational. I am an infant “blogger”….just got my “training wheels” site from Ubertor and can’t wait to find my voice. Entering the blogging world feels like its Christmas and I have just recieved a wonderful gift…. but it is under 1000 sheets of facinating wrapping paper. Reading your blog was a particularly heart warming one.
Thank you!
February 1, 2007 — 9:05 am
Sue says:
In retrospect, you really knew the true purpose of blogging even two years ago! Very insightful and great advice.
September 2, 2008 — 9:12 pm
Greg Swann says:
> In retrospect, you really knew the true purpose of blogging even two years ago!
I love it that you spend so much time quarrying these older posts. There’s a lot of valuable stuff in our archives, and I hope lots of people are following your lead.
September 2, 2008 — 9:45 pm
Sue says:
Yes, I do alot of reading till the wee hours of the morning…trying to make up for lost time. I have an endless thirst for learning and there is so much right here! Many thanks to you and all the amazing contributors here.
September 3, 2008 — 2:43 pm