BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Inmanically Incorrect (page 1 of 2)

March 10, 2011

Sane People Don’t Comment on Real Estate Blogs, You Don’t Need 1,000 Facebook Friends & Other Valuable Lessons Learned From 3 Years Slinging Stuff Online

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

The real thing that pissed me off about the well intentioned jackals at Agent ReBoot was not what was explicitly taught: it was what was implied.  Somehow you need oodles of traffic to be successful.  Somehow, you need oodles of Facebook Likes.  That somehow all being able to be at the center a tepid and tense noisy murmur was what it takes to be Real Successful in Real Estate.

And I’ve made the mistake too.  For a long time, I thought it was simple math: converting a tiny percentage of mostly indifferent people would scale.  You would LinkIn a bunch of people on MyTwitFace and voila! Winning!

So you take every friend request you can, and you add the pople you connect with, as force of habit.  If someone has 6-7 friends in common, you add them too.  Winning.

You fire up a blogpost or two,pass it along and your new friends and strangers dutifly comment something often indistinguishable from the stuff that winds up on the wrong side of your akismet filter.

“Nice post, you laid it on me.”  they dutifly say. And you in turn go through the WP dashboard to their sites.  “You make nice post to, I love to hear you on this topic! ” It’s all about the dofollow, baby.  Getcher linkbacks here, and on to the next one.

Winning.  You have a metric to measure: friends, contacts, twitbacks, clicks and raw traffic.  Woot.  Winning. You’re winning that game, the war for comments.  You’re marching your army of 12,000 Twitter Bots, 2100 indifferent Facebookers, and another few hundered people that are still shuffling around the empty halls on LinkedSpace.  Duh, winning!

Bad contacts- just  like bad money –drive out good contacts.  You had a Facebook full of300 friends, coworkers and neighbors.  You were connected to these people.  You were warmed when you saw the pictures they posted.  Now?   You have 300 of your friends.  But now your Facebook had been “improved” by the 700 Realtors from across the country, the 200 vendors that follow them, and just recently a herd of zebra showed up.  Now, instead of the people you love and know, Read more

November 9, 2010

Attention Brad Inman: I don’t want your dipshit “most influential” citation again this year, either, but it is beyond obvious that I am by far the most influential voice in the on-line world of real estate.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Let’s start with some music, just to set the mood:

So: If you run in the wrong circles, these are the kind of “arguments” you can expect to hear about me:

  • Greg Swann is mean.
  • Greg Swann is rude.
  • Greg Swann is vulgar.
  • Greg Swann is angry.
  • Greg Swann is cynical.

Here is an argument you won’t hear anywhere, except possibly at BloodhoundBlog:

  • Greg Swann is wrong, and here’s why…

You won’t hear the latter argument for two reasons: I don’t take positions I can’t defend with an impervious impenetrable invulnerability. And: If I should happen to discover that I have been wrong, generally I will be the first person to figure that out and I will announce my error to the world immediately.

What explains all the ad hominem arguments cited among the first set? You figure it out.

These are the kinds of games that some folks are running while making these persuasively useless claims about my character:

  • They piss and moan to each other about me behind my back.
  • They campaign with each other to try to damage my interests.
  • They pester contributors here to try get them to abandon BloodhoundBlog.

In each of these cases, I think they’re doing me favors — which assertion will probably just piss them off more. People who run in mobs don’t like me, and I don’t like them. Anything dominating personalities can do to recruit those folks to their own side of the table can only save me time in the long run.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this song summarizes my position on this kind of behavior — along with every other kind of behavior:

Recent events have made it more than obvious that I am by far the most influential person in the wired world of real estate. People are wasting irreplaceable hours and days of their lives obsessing over me, topping each other with tales of how ardently they don’t pay any attention to me.

Why would this be so? Again, you have to figure this out on your own, but my take is that they know I’m right and yet they don’t want to be right.

Witness:

November 5, 2010

Facebook Works If You Work It. If You Won’t Work It, Just Play Farmville

by

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

Author website

Let me restate my case about Facebook; if you’re not using Facebook as a prospecting tool, you are most likely wasting your time and engaging in the ultimate procrastination scheme.  I don’t begrudge folks fun and Facebook can provide much joy.  You can reconnect with old friends and make interesting new friends there but if you plan to use it for business, you’ll most likely end up wasting hours that could have been better spent standing in front of a supermarket, handing out your business card.

Like this, from Agent Genius:

You don’t need a business page.  In fact, a business page is just one more time suck.  People rarely go to a business page to learn about real estate on Facebook; look at the metrics offered to prove that.   The author’s offered advice is just plain wrong:

You shouldn’t be using your personal profile page to promote business. It is against the guidelines on Facebook and just rude, regardless. I will share with you how you CAN use your profile effectively, but blasting out your market reports and new listings is a big NO-NO on your personal profile.

Huh?  I have no idea where the author found the “rule” about doing business on personal pages but can tell you, from a few years experience on Facebook, that telling your audience about your business is not only desirable but effective.   Posting listings isn’t rude, it’s your stock-in-trade.  If you’re only posting listings on your Facebook page, you’re likely to be branded as boring but listings are real estate porn, designed to slow down the gawkers and encourage a reaction from them.  Your “friends” will most likely be gawking at your listings if you’re interesting enough to be in their Facebook stream.

I have what I think is a low key way of occasionally including real estate into my status without it being obvious. I share parts of my day that include real estate in a personal light. For example: last winter I was showing REO property and put as my status update: “Showing Read more

September 26, 2010

My take on real estate bar camps: If you want to learn how to sell, you’ll learn nothing by “studying” with enthusiastic amateurs.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jeff Brown wants to know if real estate bar camps are a waste of his time. My view is that they probably are, at least in terms of making maximum productive use of time taken away from money-making work. Jeff is a chatty guy, so I expect he can have a good time with any random group of real estate practitioners, but in terms of epiphanies major and minor — or even just an a-ha! or two to cover the cost of the gasoline — there’s just not that much there there.

First a caveat — thus to give you a chance to dismiss me if your mind runs easily to thoughts of thoughtlessness: I’ve only been to one real estate bar camp. Brian Brady and I did a half-day BloodhoundBlog Unchained event at Zillow.com’s headquarters in Seattle, and the first (I think) Seattle REBC was held the next day. Brian and I did a session that day with Ardell Dellaloggia, then I used Al Lorenz’ Windows laptop to do a session on Scenius — with the latter being of benefit to no one, I think. I spent much of the day in a conference room, conferring with anyone who would dare to talk to me, and that was reasonably productive. I taught much more than I learned, but I got to spend quite a bit of time with Al, and that man knows a lot of interesting stuff.

But: The event was opened by a vendor, and the vendorslut influence was an oozing slime everywhere. It was obvious to me that the ordinary punters were completely lost, and it was equally obvious that the vendors were “befriending” folks who had learned nothing — except that they were scared and clueless — picking them off like drunken sorority pledges at a fraternity mixer.

I’ve not done anything with the bar camps that have been held in Phoenix, second because the wired Realtors in town seem to want to have nothing to do with me, but first because the wired Realtors in town don’t seem to know very much that I’m interested in learning. If Read more

December 18, 2009

Unchained melodies: Real Estate’s 50 Most Inconsequential Online

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Apparently I have been voted onto the Inman “News” list of Real Estate’s 50 Most Inconsequential Online. I have no direct evidence of this, just a bunch of tweeted twaddle that Tom Johnson turned me onto last night. Needless to say, I don’t plan to spend $80 to feed my already quite corpulent vanity.

This is my third or fourth year on the receiving end of this evolving “honor,” and, with some exceptions, Inman’s list is comprised of a company I am less and less comfortable keeping. BloodhoundBlog has always been about the consumer for me, and about practitioners who know how to put the consumer first. Alas, the RE.net by now just looks like more of the same — more sleazoids looking for ways to sucker broke-ass agents into paying three bucks a pop for rotten eggs. Deadwood was a fun TV show, but I don’t want my name soiled by the real estate equivalents of Al Swearengen.

I do want to take a moment to apologize to Brad Inman, though. I have offered up what I thought was sound business advice to the man — coated, to be sure, in what might seem to be a bitter pill. But I had assumed that Inman was a grown-up, and, as a demi-billionaire, presumably capable of dealing with a certain amount of acerbic wit. It turns out though — as certain lyrical twitterbirds have pointed out to me — that Brad Inman is in fact an infantile encephalic retarded paraplegic with a harelip — and thus my jibes aimed at him were not sporting. This, at least, is the only conclusion one can draw from the plaintive tweeted bleatings about my criticisms of Big Bad Brad that have emerged from other names on Inman’s list of Real Estate’s 50 Most Inconsequential Online.

Which is, just by itself, a good reason to say to hell with the whole magilla.

Meanwhile I can think of only one tune so perfectly suited to the occasion, Big in Japan by Tom Waits:

If you want to do right by your clients, you have no need to lean on me as Read more

October 2, 2009

Is it time for a second Vook at Brad Inman’s latest brain fart?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Believe it or don’t, just yesterday I was telling Cathleen that I felt remiss in not having made fun of the Vook lately. The Vook, as you will recall, is Brad Inman’s latest attempt to prove that he stumbled onto half a billion bucks by accident. The trouble is, as he is discovering, pissing away that kind of dough isn’t easy, no matter how clueless you are — and Inman takes a back-seat to no one at cluelessness.

Even so, I need to issue a mea culpa of my own: The Vook has actually made it to the marketplace, a feat I would have bet against. Simon and Schuster — which has always made all of its profits from crossword puzzle books — turns out to be possessed of its own Inmaniacal cluelessness: The New York publisher is issuing Vook content, apparently because its printed books are not already selling badly enough.

But: Don’t despair. Even though there are very few people who are stupid enough to buy this stupid gadget, the Vook will still serve a purpose in the history of marketing: It will make the Zune look popular by contrast.

April 2, 2009

Should Blogs Enjoy the Same First Amendment Rights as Traditional Press?

by

Database Marketing Expert

Author website

Aaron Krowne, Founder of the Mortgage Lender Implode-o-Meter, posted the following article yesterday.

New Hampshire Judge Orders ML-Implode To Divulge Identities of Anonymous Posters

Questions:

1)  Should blogs/consumer advocacy websites enjoy the same First Amendment protections as traditional press?

2)  Does Justice McHugh’s decision disturb you as much as it disturbs me?

3)  On the other hand, how is a company like The Mortgage Specialists  (innocent until proven otherwise) protected against an insider leaking confidential documents, the validity of which is yet to be substantiated?

I am a proponent of the ML-Implode-O-Meter and a believer in Aaron Krowne.  So I’m afraid I could be biased here.  However, if you share my opinion regarding the sanctity of the First Amendment:

a)  Aaron has created a few advocacy groups on Facebook so please look him up if interested.

b)  Here’s a list of volunteers helping Aaron.

Perhaps Aaron himself puts it best:

“If the order stands, a flood of similar lawsuits filed by corporations against ‘whistleblower’ and consumer advocacy web sites could appear across the country”

More negative coverage of “The Mortgage Specialists” can be found here.  I actually called them prior to publishing this article – fully expecting for the phones to be disconnected.  Instead, my call was taken on the first ring.  During our 2-minute conversation, the TMS employee told me that “all that had been taken care of”, it was a “compliance issue, not fraud”, and that the guilty parties were no longer with the company.

December 26, 2008

The Case Against Paid Reviews: Why Agents & Vendors Should Never Use Them.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

First a disclaimer:  I’ve done fine on the web.  Made great money connecting with clients that don’t know, used to know, and kinda know me.  A lot on LiveJournal till I left, and even more on Facebook.  I’ll make more money in 2009.   A second disclaimer:  I hope that this post makes me tens of thousands of dollars by attracting to me the type of person I wanna do business with.  So this post is written for perfectly selfish reasons, but we all have that on the table now…and can move forward.   I guess with that said, every single post I write here or elsewhere…I write with the intent of connecting with someone cool.

When I first joined BHB, no less than 3  ‘vendors’ that currently advertise elsewhere on the RE.NET looked at me and assumed that I’d be the type to shill their products.  I wasn’t ever offered cash, but I was offered to use the product and see if I like it.   I was too busy at the time, and didn’t give a shit about those particular products. I don’t know if I would have taken cash, I wasn’t asked, so I can’t answer that question.   What I do know is that I blew it off because the products didn’t seem interesting.  Who cares about some new CRM that manages your showings or whatever…

Vendors invariably harm themselves with paid reviews.   When you coopt a voice like Agent Genuis with ad money and reviews, you short circuit your ability go gain feedback.    If you’re trying to make anything better and different, you must be able to rely on places like AG to give you honest feeback on your product.  You either want to advertise it–which is what Todd at Lenderama does transparently and honestly…or you want to improve it.   Co-opting the people that have influence is not the way to get actionable feedback. It’s also an insult to them: it basically says hey, we like your readers, but we will give you money instead of listening to your ideas.

The RE.NET is packed with bright people.   More valuable than the Read more

December 18, 2008

Inman “news” has always been a FUD-driven vendorslut cesspool — that’s not new — but what is it doing to the Web 2.0 ideal?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Can you read this?

It came this morning in a piece of spam from Inman “news.”

Spam — unsolicited commercial email from vendorslut central.

And: Spam with FUD, InmanStyle: “If you can afford to ignore breaking real estate news and emerging technology trends, then Unsubscribe.”

That’s creepy, sleazy, slimy and repugnant — which is to say it’s marketing as someone from Brad Inman’s epoch understands it. Like all the relics Inman “news” tries to shove down our throats, Bran Inman is a dinosaur — a giant, thrashing reptile incapable of discovering his own irrelevance. Holding someone like him to Web 2.0 standards of behavior is like expecting an actual dinosaur to regulate its own body temperature — it’s more than he can ever do.

But remember that Inman “news” is now allegedly run by people from “our” world.

Do you wish to claim that they don’t know what spam is?

Is it your contention that they don’t know what FUD is?

Evil is doing something you know in advance is wrong. Is there anyone who believes they didn’t know that issuing this treacly piece of spam was morally wrong by standards they understood perfectly well, in advance of their acting?

I’ve been telling you this for a long time, but, sadly, we could not have asked for a more telling example:

When exponents of the vendorslut cesspool — Inman, vendors, the NAR — tell us they want to be a part of our world — what they always mean is that they want to suck us into their sewer of lies.

The things we call surprises almost always result from our failure to pay attention to stone obvious manifestations of reality occurring right before our eyes.

My advice, always: Mind what goes into your mind…

October 30, 2008

Twenty-five most influential bloggers? Influence upon whom? Toward what objectives? Or: Why collectivism makes my skin crawl

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Brad Coy sends news that I have been named as one of the Inman News “25 Most Influential Bloggers” for 2008. I don’t know this first-hand, since you have to be a member of the Inman Secret Handshake Club to gain access to the “Special Report.” Not quite true: You can also buy the thrilling “Special Report” for only $79.00. That’s only $3.16 an influencer.

But wait: The price just went up to $3.29 an influencer, since, as with last year, I am renouncing this denomination.

I’m sure the people who named me to this list thought they were offering me some sort of distinction. To the contrary, I see it as a diminution of the work we are doing here. Among the influencers are people I see as being active exponents of knowing evil. The rest are decent-enough folks, but I don’t see them, for the most part, as being stout advocates for anything that I regard as being good or vital or important. Nice people, but they’re just people.

Influence by itself is a meaningless standard of value: Fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one. For the most part, the people in the RE.net whose opinions matter most to me already write here — and, of course, those great minds are all but entirely omitted from Inman’s list, even though their influence is more-positive and more-consequential than many of those included.

But none of that matters. What matters is this: I am either right or I am wrong — as are you. Agreement means nothing, endorsement means nothing, beauty contests mean nothing, dipshit lists like this mean nothing. All that matters is the quality of your thinking and and quality of your writing. The world is made by minds, not mobs, and I don’t want my name to be used to contradict that proposition.

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October 28, 2008

Fire Up the Echo Chamber, This Time It’s Hot.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

If you can’t yet make the grade as an Inmanically Annointed Blogger, there may be a place for you.   All you have to do is to Twit enough ass, and you too can be part of sepia tones and the best use of the Impact font on the RE.NET.   Come one and all, and sit at the cool table.  Daddy issues?  Who cares, we want you here, in the land-where-no-idea-is-too-stupid to be published, and no agent is too lazy to be anointed as the next superstar.

Just join the land of no dissent!  Crazy micromanaging?  Check!  Comment quotas, Check.  Are you keeping up?  Make nice.  Oh yeah, a search function that gives you no useful data, but lots of images?  We have that too!   We’re way ahead of you.   Keep up, chop chop!  Geniuses skip your apostrophes, it’s time to boogie.

OH, I’m talking about the newest and stupidest offer by a once great blog.     It wasn’t that long ago that the ‘nice’ folks at AG were an ideasphere, a  kickass content focused blog with good writing and great ideas. Is it still even navigable?  Hmm.  I guess I must not be keeping up.

But now, no dissent is tolerated, and everyone is an echo…and the writing that makes up weblogs is no longer featured.  Nobody’s saying we should be at the bilous level of dementia that Barry Cunningham’s at, but let’s crack some skulls and reason together.  It wasn’t that long ago at all that the folks there were contributing to the body and pushing ideas–not people–into the forefront.

But, when you feel like you’ve arrived, and insist that you’re cool (get out of your reader, we’re so cool here), nothing good happens.  Ego takes over, and we’re talking egotism, not egoism.

Remember: when you don’t agree with us, you’re being disagreeable.  Our paper-thin-sense-of efficacy can’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.    See, we have some really stupid time wasting ideas that aren’t well suited to an individual agent trying to sell 30 houses a year, or a loan officer who is surviving this business.  We’ll live twit it all though, and every conference-turned-hookupfest Read more

August 5, 2008

Truth, Damn Truth, and Consumer Reports

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

Consumer Reports has released a survey that shows that the national RE companies have successfully wrung every drop of meaning out of their so-called brands.

I haven’t had a chance to read the report, but there is enough on Inman today to get the gist:

  • Even though Indie agents were said to offer fewer services, “…sellers who used them were just as satisfied” as the sellers who used name-brand agents.
  • Customer satisfaction scores for Real Estate companies ranged from 79 to 81. A 3 point spread. Homogenization complete.

Translation: Sellers don’t mind when an indie agent fails to show up with a folder full of Home Warranties, and they don’t care which logo adorns the business cards of the brand-name agents who do.

I am looking out my window at a Hostess delivery truck with a picture of a split-open chocolate cup cake next to the Hostess logo. I want one. I want to peel the frosting off, set it aside, eat the decapitated cupcake and chase it with the frosting just like I did when I was 10. I have an emotional attachment to Hostess Cupcakes that started the day my Mom brought home a box from the supermarket, and its been reinforced every time I have had two (you have to have two) ever since.

Every time I open that cupcake wrapper, I know what I am going to get: The plastic peels off of the frosting even (usually) if the package is warm and they taste *exactly* the same every time, even if they have been sitting on a shelf for six years. Mom brought home cheap, store brand chocolate cupcakes once….Once.

That’s how branding is supposed to work. The ad man Jerry Bulmore said that “Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon.” Bulmore’s sticks and straws are interactions, and what he left out is that the strongest nests are built when the building materials are consistent.

Branding a service is inherently difficult. Unlike cupcakes, its a lot harder to control the quality of the end product, and something as fragile as the emotional Read more

July 22, 2008

What’s the difference between BloodhoundBlog Unchained and a trade show like Inman Connect? Nothing but the chains…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In a comment to my Parliament of Whores post, Erion Shehaj asks:

I’m having a hard time differentiating between an event such as Connect and BHB Unchained[….] Is there any real difference between them charging for a conference and you doing the same?

Now that’s an excellent question.

Have you been to events like Inman Connect, StarPower or the NAR Convention? Are they charging you for a conference? You bet.

Is that their sole or even their primary objective? To the contrary.

A trade show exists to deliver you to its sponsors. The conference curriculum will consist of sponsored presentations, with the sponsors attempting to sell you their products. Are these the best tools for your business? No. The sponsors you hear from will be the highest bidders, and the hosting organization — Inman or StarPower or the NAR — will actively prevent anyone from pointing out that the sponsor’s products are inferior to others available. In other words, a trade show like Inman Connect, StarPower or the NAR Convention is nothing but a shillfest, a carnival for bilking dupes, who come there to be bilked on their own nickel.

I know you haven’t been to the one Unchained event we have had so far, but what we do is nothing like that. We had one sponsor, Zillow.com, which bought nothing but naming rights — practically speaking as a much-needed subsidy. No other sponsors, no sponsored presentations at all, no trade-show booths. The bulk of the program was Brian Brady and I teaching the theory and practice of Social Media Marketing. We interviewed a few vendors as a means of pinning them down and putting the screws to them. Everything about Unchained is contained in that one word: Achieving the greatest possible independence for the grunts on the ground.

You highlighted this text:

rather than strive to find new ways of milking Realtors and lenders of their income

Everything that Brian and I do is aimed at helping working Realtors and lenders hang on to every cent they earn. If you come to see us live, you’re going to pay. Electrons are almost free but atoms cost money to move 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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