There’s always something to howl about.
Incipient Real Estate Broker
Why is the NAR manipulating post dates?
Ignorance?
Stupidity?
To give the (false) impression they are meeting some stated posting schedule?
Do they think we are stupid and won’t know or care?
Should I care? Personally, I think it questions the integrity of everything else on that blog.
But maybe that’s just me…
Fair warning — opinionated rant ahead.
Yesterday someone I’m working with on a real estate blog sent me a link, and asked me:
Is this kind of writing – a blog stuffed full of key words – a good thing?
The blog post in question contained 19 references to “YourCity Realtor” or “YourCity State real estate”.
And no, I’m not going to link to the specific blog. My intent isn’t to point out one particular blog, but rather the practice of “keyword stuffing” that I see becoming more prevalent every day.
Reading a 557 word post that contains 19 references to “City real estate” is a painful excrutiating process. I can only assume that writers who do this think they are “doing SEO” on their blog posts.
Google is smart. It doesn’t need to see “Phoenix Realtor” (for example only) nineteen times to figure out your post is about a Phoenix Realtor. Once or twice should suffice. Better yet, write multiple posts with your choice of keywords scattered about.
Maybe the folks who practice this style should step away from the keyboard and and ask themselves this question — Am I writing for the reader, or the search engines?
Search engines don’t buy houses. Yeah yeah, I know — you have to be found in search engines to get readers. But there is something called balance people. You can be #1 in the universe for your chosen search term, but if people get to your site and see an obvious attempt to shove YOUR CITY REALTOR!! in their face over and over and over and over, said people are quite likely to run away screaming. And they won’t be screaming your name or running to the phone.
This particular blog was designed by the Real Estate Tomato team. No I am not here to bash Jim Cronin or the Tomato. For the record, I have a great deal of respect for Jim. He is very open and shares ideas freely. And the Tomato produces some of the most visually stunning blogs on the planet. They also provide extensive training to their clients. I’ve never taken the training, so Read more
As I peruse through the 338 blogs in my feedreader every day, I find myself wondering why some blog authors chose to provide full feeds, some partial feeds and even a few provide titles only.
(If you know not of what I speak, the first video in this post is a short and simple explanation of RSS feeds. A full feed is exactly that — the full text of the post is provided in the feed. A partial feed provides a “teaser” — a few sentences, and a title only feed provides just the title.)
Darren Rowse of the brilliant ProBlogger wrote a post about this back in September. He followed that up with a poll showing 75% of the bloggers that answered provide full feeds.
Personally, I don’t care for partial feeds, and I loathe title only feeds. I use a feed reader so I don’t have to visit individual blogs. That’s the whole point in subscribing to feeds. A feed reader allows me to manage reading almost every post of every blog I subscribe to. Being forced to click through to the blog is not only annoying, it’s time consuming. And let’s face it folks, time is money.
If one were to read through Darren’s comments, you’ll see a couple of general thoughts about full vs. partial feeds.
Those that support partial feeds have two basic premises:
1) Partial feeds result in more hard clicks and direct traffic to the blog. If you are attempting to monetize a blog with Adsense, affiliate links, etc. then I suppose it makes sense to try to increase your direct page views — in the hope that someone will click on a paying link and add a nickel to your “paycheck”.
2) Some seem to think that if you provide partial or title feeds, that the splogging snots out there won’t steal your content. To that I say, “Fooey”. My blog gets scraped all the time, and often the splogger only captures the beginning and end of the posts — and the end includes the copyright notice that says:
If you are reading this outside your feedreader or on any Read more
Last week Marcie Geffner, a real estate reporter in Los Angeles, penned an article for Inman News titled, “Web2.0: Where’s the beef?” (unfortunately, now behind Inman’s subscriber wall).
In her article, Geffner points out that, “an overly heavy reliance on blogs, social networking and video as a business strategy is a questionable proposition since no one has demonstrated that Web 2.0 works as a marketing tactic.”
Granted, there has been no large scale study or analysis of the success (or failure) of “Web 2.0” in real estate. I can attest from my personal experience that blogging has resulted in numerous prospects and more importantly clients — ie: closed transactions that resulted in food on the table and shoes on the children. Many other agents reading this have similar experiences.
However, many would also be quick to say, “I’ve blogged my ass off and received nothing.”
Is blogging/Web 2.0 the answer to all real estate agent’s woes? ARDELL, arguably the “Godmother of Real Estate Blogging” is on the record as saying that she believes that “all agents should blog”. Normally Ardell is spot on in her thoughts, but I have to respectfully disagree with her on this. Blogging is not a panacea, nor is it the right tactic for every agent. Yes, blogging’s Web 2.0ness results in transparency, it allows agents to see things from the consumer’s perspective and it is, bar none, the best way for an agent to demonstrate their personality and expertise to the masses. But blogging is hard work. Writing is an excruciating process for many. I happen to love blogging, I’m sick that way, but many people will despise the time and effort it requires.
That doesn’t make them any less an agent than one who does blog. Just as my refusal to door knock, cold call, or “farm” in more traditional methods doesn’t make me any less an agent. We’re just different, with different approaches.
I can’t begin to estimate the number of times I’ve been asked, “how many prospects/clients/closed deals have you got from blogging?” And I can’t answer that question. Yes, I could prove quantitatively SOME of the results. Read more
“Agent review sites” have been out there for awhile. You know the type — a directory / database of real estate agents where in theory clients of these agents submit “reviews” of their agent and experiences.
Amazon does it with books. IMDB does it with movies. Sites like IncredibleAgents and HomeThinking attempt to do it with real estate agents. These types of sites aren’t exclusive to real estate agents — UReview.net is for attorneys, RateMDs.com does doctors, RateMyProfessors.com…. well, you get the idea.
I’m not here to argue the viability of the business model of these types of sites. Nor will I address whether they even serve a purpose. Some will say they do, others not. I haven’t really formed an opinion either way.
But this morning, a post popped up in my feed reader. It was from the Incredible Agent blog and the title, “How not to get a review deleted off IncredibleAgents.com“, piqued my curiosity.
Apparently a not-so-flattering agent review was entered into their system. The agent on the wrong end of said review would seem to be rather, shall we say “displeased” at his name being attached to a scathing review.
So Mr. Agent fired off an email to the CEO, complete with lines like:
Son, and I think I can call you that, since I am about twice your age, you are in trouble.
What you are about to get into is certainly not worth it.
And my favorite:
I know all about you and your family.
You are in the process of making a serious mistake.
Where I come from, that last little nugget would be nothing but a threat. And a serious one at that. I could probably find a line in the Realtor Code of Ethics that spells out in detail that firing off a threat like this is wrong.
But the unwritten Code of Common Sense, Decency, and Being a Good Human is clear enough for me.
All this agent had to do was provide the facts that would dispute the reviewers claim (assuming such facts exist). The review site provides exactly that capability.
There are several ethically centered questions Read more
I’m a firm believer that you can often learn as much by a bad example as you can a good one.
Yesterday this little nugget slipped past my spam filters. Something, I don’t know what, compelled me to read it.
I need your help. Do you know someone that knows lots of Realtors and or Loan Originators that may be interested in earning an extra $1,500 – $12,000 a month?
The perfect person might be an Title rep, a Realtor, a rep for a Home Warranty Company, a Loan Officer, or just someone you know looking for an opportunity.
We need people to show folks how to get out of the ice age and generate business quickly using a new approach – especially in a down market.
<< Blah blah blah insert plan to dominate the world via CD ROM business cards here. >>
Just standard spammy crap we’re all inundated with on an hourly basis. Then came this part:
Forget the Caveman, our program is so simple even a Realtor or a Loan Originator can do it.
Huh? What marketing genius came up with this?
I can just see a bunch of people, sitting around an office (or more likely in a booth at Pauly’s Pub and Pool Hall) brainstorming how to market their wares:
“Anyone have any ideas?”
“We could buy an email list and spam people!”
“Excellent! Run with that one. Just be sure to leave out our web address and make sure if anyone interested hits ‘reply’ to the email that it will be undeliverable, OK? Let’s make it as hard as possible for people to contact us!”
“Oooh oooh! How about if in the body of the spam, we insult the intelligence of our target market group!”
“You are a freaking genius! That’s a fabulous idea!”
Now I’m sure no readers of this weblog would be as clueless as these folks appear to be. But it does point out that it’s probably a good idea to stop and think about your marketing materials.
Here are a few tips to keep you from pulling the trigger on something and setting yourself up to look like a fool:
In his post here earlier today, Jim Duncan said something I’ve thought since the day I stood up, raised my right hand and pledged to uphold the Realtor Code of Ethics:
I have argued before that if you need
89 pages to explain ethics, rather than a simple code of honor, you just might need too much guidance.
Adopted in 1913, and amended 31 times, the NAR’s Code of Ethics is 9 pages of double column single-spaced text. Seventeen Articles. Eighty two “Standards of Practice”. 7,373 words in 266 paragraphs.
It is loaded with gems like this (Standard of Practice 17-4, Subsection 5):
Where a buyer or tenant representative is compensated by the seller or landlord, and not by the listing broker, and the listing broker, as a result, reduces the commission owed by the seller or landlord and, subsequent to such actions, claims to be the procuring cause of sale or lease. In such cases arbitration shall be between the listing broker and the buyer or tenant representative and the amount in dispute is limited to the amount of the reduction of commission to which the listing broker agreed
Huh? Maybe it’s just me, but I had to read that 3 or 4 times just to make sense of it. And I’m not so sure I actually figured it out.
Do we really need 7,373 words to tell us how to act?
The United States Military Academy has an Honor Code. It’s no real stretch of the imagination to equate an “Honor Code” with a “Code of Ethics”.
West Point’s Honor Code consists of one sentence. 12 words.
A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.
It was derived from the Military Academy’s motto – the lengthy and convoluted, “Duty, Honor, Country”.
One of my old schools, THE University of Texas, adopted an honor code long after I left those hallowed halls. It is substantially longer than the Military Academy’s code, coming in at a War and Peace like 41 words:
The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is Read more
I’m standing in line at Starbucks this morning, in dire need of an eggnog latte fix (sinfully delightful, and good for you!). It was readily apparent that the guy in front of me may be the only person left on the planet who has never before ordered a drink at Starbucks. He was the rare and elusive Starbucks Virgin.
And he looked mortified when the girl ahead of him fired off her order:
“I’ll have a venti half-caf triple shot four pump sugar-free vanilla caramel macchiato.”
The barista, full of typical Starbucks holiday cheer — nose ring and all — approaches Mr. New Customer who has been contemplating the menu for the last seven minutes and says, “What can I get for you?”
“Um, I think I just want a cup of coffee. Uh, maybe with some flavor in it??”
“We’ve got vanilla, hazlenut, Irish creme, almond, mint, Valencia, toffee…”
“Uhm, never mind. Can I just get plain old coffee?”
“Do you want short, tall, grande or venti? With or without room?”
“I just want a cup of coffee.”
As I watched this exchange take place, I saw an overwhelmed customer being “helped” by an experienced worker bee. One too busy to truly help this guy through the process of getting what he walked in for.
Granted, the line behind Mr. New Customer was building rapidly. I’m sure Ms. Nose Ring felt compelled to speed this guy through the line and help waiting customers, most of whom probably knew exactly what they wanted.
Mr. New Customer finally got his coffee, and he walked out mumbling and shaking his head. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never sets foot in a Starbucks again.
And so my warped, caffeine deprived brain began to do what it often does — attempt to associate what I’m witnessing to the real estate business.
Connect ordering at Starbucks to buying a home? Are you nuts?
Not really, and it’s not that big a stretch.
Ms. Nose Ring Barista seemed oblivious to the fact that Mr. New Customer was exactly that — a Starbucks virgin. The guy was overwhelmed with everything happening around him. He was afraid of making a mistake and looking Read more
