Category: Project Blooodhound (page 2 of 3)

September 6, 2008

We gather here to commemorate the dearly departed who’s passing we mourn today. I’d like us to take a few moments to dwell on the lives that were lived, the good that was done, and the ways we can learn from their excesses.

Fannie lived a good long life. She came to this earth during the Depression and spent many many years doing good and helping many many people live the American Dream and buy a house of their own and benefit from long term fixed and affordable mortgages.

Later in life, Fannie’s younger brother came on the scene. Freddie, beset with a case of sibling rivalry, attempted to outdo his older sister. First Freddie attempted to do the same thing that Fannie did and all was well. Competition was good, it kept the siblings honest and many people benefited.

But as Fannie grew older, she began to resent her younger sibling. He was younger, less experienced, but kept up with his older sibling quite well. As the sibling rivalry grew, more risks were taken. In their attempts to outdo each other, greed and corruption took over. Risks were taken and increasingly risky behavior was considered acceptable.

Over the years, the markets responded very well to Fannie and Freddie’s increasingly competitive and risky behaviors. More and more people were able to live the American Dream until the American Dream became too expensive. Suddenly, the risky behaviors that Fannie and Freddie were engaging in weren’t paying off quite as well.

Initially, Fannie and Freddie seemed fine, but later it was determined that the risky behaviors had caused significant internal damage. Many efforts were made to revive them and bring them back to full health. The medical bills have been staggering and the efforts were heroic. But, alas, it was too late.

Rest in peace, dear brother and sister. Know that you’ve done well and helped many over the years. Know that the lessons that we’ve all learned from you will echo throughout the years: Know your limits, be responsible, don’t let greed run rampant.

In Memory of our Dearly Departed, I ask that you join me Read more

September 3, 2008

Project Bloodhound: Are you talking to me? Connecting to your community and avoiding the echo chamber.

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

“I wonder who was your intended audience?”

A question from my inbox, and one I hear occasionally. I’m always pulled up short by questions like this, or this, because they tend to come unexpectedly and in this case, it greeted me first thing in the morning, and the writer, who shall remain nameless but knows who he is (and is, I’m sure, laughing right now) was by his own admission, a bit grumpy when he asked this question. So Good Morning to you too!

Actually, this question, or variations of it, has been on my mind lately because I forgot this intended audience for awhile, and the post to which this writer was referring was my way of going back to the beginning of my blogging days, when I was writing to the very same people to whom I wrote this post- local bloggers. How did I lose my way? Quite honestly, I think it was Twitter, but that’s another story for another time. Let’s return to my blogging roots.

Possibly the first piece of advice Greg gave me when I started blogging on The Brick Ranch was to find other local blogs and connect with them. Notice he didn’t say other real estate blogs, but local blogs. A Google search, and Google alerts, turned up only a handful of blogs back then- March 2007. Seriously, I think there were about five non-political blogs, and most had only been at it for a few months, which is a cool thing as I’ll explain shortly. At first I simply left comments on their blogs without a return blog url, because I wanted to be there as a participant, not as a spamming Realtor- there is an implied accusation when visiting local blogs, am I really there to sell them a house? Um, no. I’m really there because I like talking with people, throwing ideas back and forth, and I know that most bloggers like comments, so leaving a thoughtful comment, using my name, not “TimbuktuHomesForYou” in that tiny little blogiverse where everything was shiny and new, was an easy way to say “Hello! Nice to meet you.” It was about Read more

August 27, 2008

Project Bloodhound: If your web site sucks — fix it

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

As I’ve mentioned, I’m building a dedicated direct-response web site devoted to pre-selling listing clients. Our main Phoenix real estate weblog does a good job selling to buyers, sellers, investors and relocators, the four markets we target there, but it is my belief that I can build a sales engine that can pre-sell and pre-condition homeowners in such a way that, by the time they contact us, we will be completely Beyond Competition.

I talked about a number of these ideas at Unchained in Phoenix, and we’ll be doing quite a bit more on this topic in Orlando.

Consider this:

21:28:40 http://distinctivephoenix.com/
21:29:43 http://abetterlisting.com/
21:32:18 http://abetterlisting.com/Presentation/
21:46:29 http://distinctivephoenix.com/
21:50:33 http://abetterlisting.com/

That’s a set of visits from one unique IP address. I built minimal session tracking into the site, but I have Cameron working on a much more robust solution. But what you’re seeing is at least 22 minutes of someone’s life. Not counting search engine spiders, this site draws fewer than six unique visitors a day — but they’re all like this. Twenty-two minutes is a short visit. People have stayed for over an hour. Others have come back for three or four days in succession. The site is not converting as well as I want it to — yet — but I’m seeing exactly the kind of user behavior I want.

There are points I want to make, but I’ll have to be brief. This site and our others are converting well enough that I’m short on time all the time.

But let’s hit this much, at least:

Your web site or weblog is a perfectible selling tool. If it sucks now — and sucks only means something with respect to a commercial metric, not because of some emotional aversion — fix it. Good marketing is targeted at specific prospects, presents them with a unique selling proposition and rewards the desired behavior. It ain’t rocket science. It just takes effort and testing.
Your web site is potentially the most efficient sales tool you have in your sales toolbox. It might not convert at the same rate as other tools, but its cost per conversion is incredibly low, and it sells for you Read more

July 27, 2008

Do You “Knol”? Utilizing a new Google Offering

by Michelle DeRepentigny

Real Estate Broker

It looks like Problogger has mixed opinions on the launch of Google’s Knol. Meanwhile, Seer Interactive shows Knol already ranking for some keywords.

Search Engine Land compares Knol to Wikipedia and gives you step by step instruction on setting up your own Knols. I love the ability to have a collaboration but be able to moderate and control content edits. I have an ongoing feud on Wikipedia with someone who does not feel that a link to a hyper local blog full of community information belongs on Wikipedia – I put it on – he takes it off – one year later – 15 edits and I get incredible traffic to my local blog from Wikipedia. I just have to check it every few weeks!

For me it Knol is another tool in my arsenal of online marketing. I’ve got my start and am committing to adding fresh information at least weekly. Currently I’m ranked number 3 for the search “Real Estate” and the only one for “Athens, Georgia” who wants to join me? What content do you think will be most applicable and how do you plan to leverage this new tool?

July 19, 2008

Project Bloodhound: What’s A Little More Change? Choosing a New Broker Based on Social Media Involvement!

by Michelle DeRepentigny

Real Estate Broker

I made the decision a few months ago, that even though I could afford to maintain my current office space through this winter, that I really didn’t want to spend a fortune doing so! I’m paying a pretty pricey rent for about twice as much space as we really need.

After a little discussion with my top agents, my search began for smaller office space. I thought I had found the perfect space, only to find out that the telephone service that I wanted (that reduced my office phones cost from $350 a month to $150 a month) wasn’t available and would not be for quite a while! So, I started really looking at my/our options:

I already gave notice – I have to move by 7/31/2008
I hate the affordable space that is available
I hate to admit it, but I really miss being part of a franchise somedays

I put out a feeler to another franchise broker in town and he jumped all over it: “Come on over, bring your folks, and be part of our team”. Oh h*ll what have I done now races around my mind. After being a managing broker for 7 years of a large franchised company and an owner/broker of a small independent office for 4 years, this feels really weird! Sure enough, in a few days I’m being recruited – I forgot what that feels like – not by 1 but by 2 of the companies in town! I had a gut feeling, but decided to “google” my potential new brokers – one of them is at least on Facebook! Whoo Hoo – I think I’m going to choose my new broker to affiliate with based on his being on Facebook.. some research and my gut. Some of you know how I feel about Facebook, and other social networks, so it may be no surprise that I would never go to work for/with someone who had least didn’t somewhat embrace the Read more

July 19, 2008

Project Bloodhound: Great debaters: Making the most of comments with conversations, and controversy

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

My family’s heritage is German/Austrian on one side and Irish on the other, and I like to romantize that mix by thinking it’s a perfect blend that makes us both strong and passionate. Some of my favorite memories are of family get togethers over dinner. We talk through the dinner, we clear the dishes and spend an hour or more talking, sharing, discussing, arguing, laughing, loving, enjoying each other for the different views and voices we bring to the table. Everyone is welcomed and encouraged to take up a position and defend it strongly; the devil’s advocate is a frequent guest- fence sitters garner no respect. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? Yes, in that respect Bloodhound Blog is like family to me.

I wrote a snarky little post on ActiveRain about point whoring- leaving insipid comments for the points. I wrote a more thoughtful companion post as well, but the snarky post got some link love from Maureen McCabe and her post sparked more discussion (both Maureen’s post and the snarky post are member’s only). The nature of AR is that members get points for leaving comments on other posts. Okay. Fine. Whatever. While this encourages comments, it doesn’t encourage actually reading a post, and does nothing to encourage thoughtful comments.

I love comments, but I don’t love all comments. I love the give-and-take of conversation that is created in a good comment thread. I love discourse and discussion and yes, even disagreements. I’m not fond of the “Great post, thanks for sharing” comments that are so ubiquitous on ActiveRain, and I’ve since created an abbreviation, GPTFS, that I think point whores and lazy commenters should use. If you use GPTFS, then I’ll know that you are commenting for points or because you want to leave a link, but not because you really give a damn about my post.

Apparently I’m in the minority about this on ActiveRain and the question came up “Would you rather have no comments…?” and my answer is yes. Yes I would rather you didn’t use my time, my blog, my thoughtfulness, as a place to deposit your big signature, your spam, your point whoring… But forget Read more

July 17, 2008

Project Bloodhound: Passion, Authenticity & Connecting with Others

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

OK, I will confess.

Up until we started Project Blogger, I had NO idea EXACTLY what being a green REALTOR was all about. I mean, I understood the general concept, in a promote conservation and sell the benefits of green housing sort of way… But I really did not understand HOW a green real estate blogger would connect with a GREEN customer, until I was faced with the challenge of helping a NEW green blogger in Louisville–here in our office. It is a new challenge for me.

One of our agents approached me. She already was a beginner in our blogging group and she asked if I would help her get a DIFFERENT blog up and running. “What’s your niche or hyperlocal?” “That’s just it,” she said. “I want to blog about environmentally friendly housing. I want to be a GREEN blogger.” I instantly knew that this was a MUCH better fit for her than the niche she was in.

This was something that she IS passionate about. Her other niche was more because she found it to simply be attractive business wise. We have a saying in our little blogging group in our office: “Blog about baseball if that is what you are passionate about. You will sell more real estate that way.” The point is, by being passionate and authentic, you will ATTRACT more people to you. You will connect with others in a meaningful way. And Dawn, the agent in our office will connect and sell and enjoy the process more because her voice will be authentic.

When you CARE, your writing emits an almost magical quality that it doesn’t have when you are writing for money alone. Stephanie, I don’t have her blog up and running yet. She is on vacation with her family for a week or two, but if you don’t mind, I’d love to get the two of you together via email or whatever. I have already sent her to your blog and she came back going.”..wow….”. (That’s a quote.)

I guess every day here at the office just reinforces the point to me that authenticity and passion Read more

July 17, 2008

Project Bloodhound: Writing for the archives: “See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Here today; gone tomorrow? I have no clue what happened to the original post and the once dead link, but it did make me think about the importance of a blog archive.

One of the first things I noticed about BloodhoundBlog was the tremendous amount of useful information in the archives. It’s very possible that back then I spent more time poking through old stuff then keeping up with the first page, and still today, if I need to jump start my brain with an idea about marketing or I’m looking for an example of how to tackle a complex real estate issue, BHB is the first place I look because of it’s extensive archive.

TheBrickRanch archive is always in the back of my mind when I write for my blog. I want to build a complete real estate-pedia for the Dayton area on TBR, so I try to make the work there vital and useful enough to provide content for the future. I sit down and write with one person in mind, but I want to write for the person I don’t know; the person who will find this a year from now, or two or three years from now. Is the information timeless? I understand that not everything we write can be pertinent to the future, and sometimes I just want to have fun, but when someone uses the search box, please, I hope there is some there, there.

Blogs are an ever evolving medium- organic, fluctuating, there’s an ebb and flow to blogging that lends itself to change. I’ve changed a few things on TBR lately, and some of the posts I wrote last year needed to be updated accordingly. As I’ve grown, both as a blogger, and as a real estate agent, I’ve gone back into my archives and changed posts to make them stronger, added pingbacks from one post to another to make each post more relevant and provide more information. It’s general blog maintenance that encourages a more dynamic and beneficial use of the blog.

I want my posts to converse and link with each other, just like a conversation. When we Read more

July 9, 2008

An introduction from the banking “Pup”

by Tom Vanderwell

Mortgage Officer

Hi,

First I want to thank all of you for making me feel so welcomed as one of the newest members of the Bloodhounds. I’ve felt very welcomed and I appreciate that. I’ve also learned a lot.

As Greg said when we kicked off Project Bloodhound, he’d let all of the pups take the opportunity to properly introduce themselves. I’m going to attempt to do that.

First the basics: My name is Tom Vanderwell, I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart and best friend for 23 years (well it will be 23 years in 11 days). We have 5 children. The oldest (21) is living and working in Ohio as a call center rep. My 18 year old will be attending Calvin College in the fall to pursue a nursing career. She plans on going into third world nursing, specifically at this point in Haiti. Our 16 year old will be a junior in high school. Four years ago we adopted two more kids from Haiti (www.glahaiti.org). They are currently 6 and 7 (the 7 year is the only boy besides for me in the whole family!) Let’s just say life is never boring at our house!

One of the questions that I enjoy asking others in the real estate world is “How did you get into the real estate business?” So here’s my story. In 1988, I was running the showroom of a local furniture rental store (not a rent to own, but a temporary leasing store) and got let go because I refused to lie to the customers (go figure?). One of my customers was a Realtor and she made a comment to me, “You should think about selling real estate.” Well, after a couple of months looking for a job, I decided to pursue the idea. I ended up selling real estate for 3 1/2 years. I don’t know how many of you were around during the first Persian Gulf War, but I didn’t sell a house for 6 months during that. Needless to say, it was time to look for something else.

In 1991, I made the switch to mortgage lending Read more

July 3, 2008

Project Bloodhound: Opening Windows to Vent Some Steam

by Stephanie Edwards-Musa

Realtor, Certified EcoBroker

I’m going to share a story with all of you first. Yes, it’s true, although I hate to admit it.

A few years ago I decided that I needed a website. Not just a template website, but a website that was custom to me. Branded. One that I could call my own. So, I contacted a company that was referred to me by another agent and started working with them. All I can say is CA-CHING! Lots of money. At the end of the design process the designer said “I really think you should sign up for our SEO package”. I’m thinking to myself, what the heck is SEO and why would I need it? I declined the service. I knew absolutely nothing about anything internet, just that I needed a website, right? I was ok with using these designers for everything. After all, I’m a Real Estate Agent not a web designer. It didn’t hit me until I started blogging what SEO was. I then went in to this almost livid state wondering why they didn’t explain it to me back then. What’s the point of designing a site if it is not optimized in the least? My AR blog showed up on Google in 2 days, surely it couldn’t be that hard. LOL.

The popular question for PBII seems to be about platforms. Which platform should I choose? WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com, etc. This post is really just to put my opinion out and share a little of my experience so far with my fellow litter mates that may still be deciding.

I have mentioned that a year ago I started my Blog on a GoDaddy Quickblog. It was easy, showed up well in Google, that is what I wanted. At the time, I felt that I did not know enough of the techie guru type anything to do WordPress. Today, I’m wishing that I could have found some more confidence on that topic. It has been much easier than expected to set up a WordPress.org site. (Must note here the Queen of Kludge and DaBlogMother has helped out tremendously. Along with Greg, Read more

July 2, 2008

Project Bloodhound – a question from one of the pups….

by Tom Vanderwell

Mortgage Officer

Okay, I need some collective wisdom. Here’s my dilemma, I’ve been operating on blogger for quite some time and I thought it was doing me well, but I’ve learned I can do better. So, I’ve got things set up at www.straighttalkaboutmortgages.com with wordpress.com and it’s 90% of the way I want it (I can get it there in a day or two).

My question is essentially this: When you are ready to make the switch from one platform and domain name to another, what’s the best way to do that so that people can still find you etc?

Thanks in advance for the wisdom, you guys (all of you) are awesome!

Tom

July 1, 2008

Not to beat a dead horse…

by Hunter Jackson

Real Estate Agent

I began reading this blog last year right after I first received my license. I took the class, the follow up class, graduated, found a brokerage, got the signature, then got my license. After all this I realized I knew nothing about Real Estate. I knew nothing at all. Where do I start? Google of course.

I found BHB. I began reading, reading, reading, and reading some more. I read Greg and what he does after he lists a property in Phoenix. I asked myself, “Would this work in Columbia SC?” I took it to heart and pondered it for several days. I finally came up with the answer. Some will, some will not. Thus is life. At this point, I began to slowly implement these ideas (though I didn’t grasp the ideas and honestly still don’t).

Tonight, I was writing a blog post on my personal blog about the most expensive houses in my market. Naturally, they do not resemble the prices that several of the Bloodhounds are used to. The average price in Columbia, SC is $145,000. I’ll take them all day long and sell every one I can. I like that price range personally.

I felt a little gluttonous this evening and decided to write the post. Of course, I pull up the MLS, do a basic all areas search for houses above $1 million in my markets. I was surprised to see a $5.75 million dollar property. I was more surprised to see the pictures. This is the headline image for the house (remember, this is the most expensive house on the market in Columbia, SC)

Lovely house I am sure. However, with this picture, I am going no where near it.

Now, ok, it’s not horrible…however, this is the 3rd most expensive house’s picture coming in at $3 million even.

Remember, the title of this post is ‘Not to beat a dead horse…’. I know this goes on all the time. Horrible pictures don’t sell houses, IDIOTS sell houses…apparently.

I do not claim to be a photographer by any means. I continuously cut my little sister out of photographs. If I stood to Read more

July 1, 2008

Project Bloodhound: Picture this: A big wall of text.

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Yes folks, it’s the question that never goes away: Why don’t you post more images? Short answer: I don’t like to read posts with images. Unless we are talking about specific property, images rarely add to the writing, and to me, they almost always take away from the writing.

When discussing property, you do need photos, and I do post images- now I post them in engenu. I take a lot of photos, I post a lot of photos of real estate, however, since they are used for buyers and I’m not the listing agent, they don’t always get posted on my blog. But this email wasn’t refering to real estate photos, the writer was lamenting my lack of just, ya know, images in general.

Here’s the thing: Real estate bloggers ask me about my lack of photos, but other bloggers never ask me this question, and I don’t see a lot of images in the blogs I read. So the way I see it is that since I’m not writing to other real estate bloggers, I’m writing to consumers, some of whom are in fact, non real estate bloggers, and they aren’t bothered by my Walls of Text, why do something that doesn’t make any sense to me?

I’ve been accused, and am occasionally guilty, of being stubborn, I suppose there is the tiniest, itty bitty chance that I’m wrong so I’m willing to listen to reason. I’ve heard and heard and heard some more from the RE.net about this, but I’d love to hear from the anyone outside the industry- are images a help or a hindrance to reading a blog?

And, because I love a good compromise and I love multi-tasking, I’m sharing a video- an image! The sentiment of this song is for Vance Shutes and Tom Vanderwell. We have begun sharing ideas about living a full life in the Rust Belt. And I suppose this song could be considered another Unchained Melody. But mostly, it’s here because it’s a very clever compromise between text and image. I’ve been told that a picture is worth a thousand words. Read more

June 30, 2008

Project Bloodhound speaking in tongues: To whom am I speaking?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I had a lady phone me the other day who would rather have emailed. She was on our Phoenix real estate web site and she couldn’t figure out how to email me. In fact, my email address is associated with every post, just like here, but that wasn’t obvious to her. I revisited the sidebar, which is a topic to which we will return. But for most real estate weblogs, there is an ever more exigent problem: Who the hell am I speaking to in the first place?

If you’re the only person writing on the weblog, you might think you can get away without a byline on your posts. I think this is a mistake. Yes, people can go to your About page, but your job is to make connections, not to make people work. I think our way of doing things — an avatar plus every which way of grasping onto more content — is a better way of going at things.

We do our avatars with custom PHP, but I know they can also be done with the Gravatar software — I just don’t know how. I’m going to show you everything we’re doing at BloodhoundBlog — not because you should do all this, but just to show you how to do it.

The theme files you will want to edit will be named index.php, search.php, archive.php and possibly some others. You are looking for files that contain “the loop,” the means by which WordPress extracts posts from its MySQL database and displays them. The code for “the loop” looks like this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : 
while (have_posts()) : 
the_post(); ?>

Any files that contain that code will need to be edited.

Edited where? Look for the div that already contains posting information — usually the date. You’ll be editing within that div. You can start with index.php, working iteratively until you get to something you like, then copy that code over to the other files you need to edit.

Important: Work on copies of your theme files! If you screw something up, you can always go back and start over.

This is what BHB is Read more

June 30, 2008

How I avoided deleting 23 different cliches for an introduction by taking the easy road and just saying Happy Birthday.

by Brad Coy

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Allow me to further the B-day round of toasts at Bloodhound by introducing my relationship to these very pages.

It is with great pleasure that I’m allowed to share thoughts on the pages on Bloodhound. You see, I have been a long time reader of the posts that put thought to action in Real Estate the way no other blog does. My interest go back to turning to the web to try and find clues to help with marketing as a newb to Real Estate. The requisite “Realtor type” mags et al did not cut it for me from the begininng. Already finding success with buying and selling merchandise, reading the Times, and do I dare say dating through the web, I knew that at least trying to leverage the power of my trusty notebook to crush the competition was worth looking into. What I found at the time were plenty of shiny buttons to poke at and play with. I must have bookmarked upwards of 500+ pages of plans, actions, and helpful hints on RE I thought might be of interest.

When it came down to it, the one thing that mattered is what I found on the blog pages of the Real Esate community. No one did it better than those here that howled. Aside from shadowing my broker as he wheeled his vehicle throughout the hills of SF and walked and talked the business, reading and getting involved in the discussions that take place on these very pages are what motivated me to win. The creative thinking and ideas that we come up with when we are challenged to the fullest is what gives birth to opportunity. The contributors that currently write here and have passed through have given me giant shoulders to stand on. They are passionate entrepreneurs of the new medium of Real Estate technology. We are still far into the early days of blogging, and we know how slow our industry has been to keep up.

With all that said, I personally know my way pretty well when it comes to all things social media and the like Read more

Category: Project Blooodhound (page 2 of 3)

A Eulogy….

by Tom Vanderwell

Project Bloodhound: Are you talking to me? Connecting to your community and avoiding the echo chamber.

by Teri Lussier

Project Bloodhound: If your web site sucks — fix it

by Greg Swann

Do You “Knol”? Utilizing a new Google Offering

by Michelle DeRepentigny

Project Bloodhound: Great debaters: Making the most of comments with conversations, and controversy

by Teri Lussier

Project Bloodhound: Passion, Authenticity & Connecting with Others

by Eric Blackwell

Project Bloodhound: Writing for the archives: “See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

by Teri Lussier

An introduction from the banking “Pup”

by Tom Vanderwell

Project Bloodhound: Opening Windows to Vent Some Steam

by Stephanie Edwards-Musa

Project Bloodhound – a question from one of the pups….

by Tom Vanderwell

Not to beat a dead horse…

by Hunter Jackson

Project Bloodhound: Picture this: A big wall of text.

by Teri Lussier

Project Bloodhound speaking in tongues: To whom am I speaking?

by Greg Swann

How I avoided deleting 23 different cliches for an introduction by taking the easy road and just saying Happy Birthday.

by Brad Coy

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