Category: Weblogging 101 (page 6 of 7)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Teri has a weblog. It’s just a prototype for now. She’s shopping for theme so that we can make something truly unique and Daytonacious. I am by now at the point where I can set up a WordPress weblog in my sleep, which is lucky because, with 23 hosting accounts still to be moved, that on top of the normal crush, I’m not sleeping very much.

Teri already owned the domain, so all I had to do was redirect the nameservers to our new semi-dedicated file server. I keep a standing folder of WordPress-the-way-I-like-it on my desktop, so I copied that in, created the database, plugged the files into the database and — Eureka! Done.

A lot easier to say it than to do it, for most of us. My experience this weekend taught me a new trick, and this is strictly for the propeller-beanie set: If you have a certain way of setting up WordPress weblogs, you can save yourself the effort of setting your preferences with each new installation. Here’s how: Get a prototypical weblog set up the way you like ’em — settings, plug-ins, the works — then save a back-up of that set-up to your hard disk along with all your set-up files. When you make a new clean installation, inherit that backup into your new database. The new install will be a mirror of your prototype, fully-formed and fully-armed.

If you’re a propeller-wanna-beanie, Dave Smith of The Real Estate Blog Lab has prepared a step-by-step tutorial on setting up a WordPress weblog from scratch.

But: That’s really the easy part. In my view, the hard part of setting up a locally-oriented real estate weblog is scaling things down to what Robert Mosescalled “the size of a good time.” Moses built Jones Beach, among many other enormous masterpieces, but he was always aware of the small touches that would make people feel at home within his immense vision.

So what are we looking for? Hmmm… There’s no place like it, and, when you go there, they have to take you in…

We’re looking for home, of course. If I could lay one blanket Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The potentially-canonical list of real estate weblogs has grown again. I tend to maintain it daily in my own surfing, but I’ve been dealing with emailed additions in batches. I keep meaning to have Cameron write a form to streamline that process. In any case, look it over when you have a chance. I need to hear from you in any one of three circumstances:

• A weblog should be on the list but isn’t
• A weblog is on the list, but its details are in error
• A weblog is on the list but shouldn’t be — it’s dead or a splog

There are 231 weblogs on the list right now, but I’m sure I’m missing dozens more.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth on SEO shortcuts:

The author said you should make sure that the keywords and title are perfect and limit outbound links so that you can be sure that people will only do what you want them to. Others spend time studying the algorithms of Google and Yahoo to figure out the very best way to jump ahead in the rankings for their blog or corporate site. Is it reciprocal links or careful metatags? What if I create some sort of ring so that the  spider won’t realize the scam?

Hey. It’s not so hard. If you make great stuff, people will find you. If you are transparent and accurate and doing what’s good for the surfer, people will find you. If you regularly demonstrate knowledge of content that’s worth seeking out, people (being selfish) will come, and people (being generous) will tell other people. It turns out that it’s easier and faster to do that than to spend all your time on the shortcuts.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m quoting from comments to BloodhoundBlog posts, so I’m not going to show the links.

Brian Brady to Teri Lussier: “Soon she’ll be winning carnivals.”

Not to put any pressure on the girl, but I think this is a fine idea. Won’t win us the contest, but it’s a testament of excellence that’s kind of difficult to dispute. I like stuff like that.

John L. Wake: “Have you ever noticed that a common strategy used by many successful Realtors is to become an area specialist?”

But exactly! I don’t know how large or small an area Teri wants to work (or you want to work, for that matter), but it pays to think small. For now, Cathy and I target a very small region of Downtown Phoenix, but the neighborhood names that pop out of that are legion: F.Q. Story, Willo, Encanto, Palmcroft, Del Norte, Alvarado, Campus Vista, Ashland Place, Fairview Place, Woodlea, Yaple Park. Believe it or not, that’s only about half.

But we can get even smaller. If you search for Culver Street, the first two hits should be us. There are other streets down there for which we will pull very strong results, and, in the long run, we will tend to be category-killers for the names of the streets we list on.

Isn’t that the opposite of what I said the other night? Yes and no. We are looking for Long Tail search results on very arcane search terms, but our objective is not to capture random leads but to attract, enchant, delight, enlist and convert people who have a very strong interest in those same arcane search terms. How do we know they have a very strong interest? Because they’re searching for terms no one with a casual interest would ever use.

“Phoenix real estate” or “Dayton real estate” are difficult keywords to dominate, but neither would be all that useful, anyway. The Greater Metropolitan Phoenix-area is bigger than Rhode Island, maybe bigger than Vermont. I have to drive to make money, but I don’t get paid by the mile.

There’s more: By focusing Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jim Kimmons at RealEstateBusinessSuccess.com Blog has come up with yet another simple solution to the issue of using local real estate weblogging content as bait for leads. That makes four of these, by now, I think.

Okayfine. Jim may have the better mousetrap for two reasons: He’s linking directly to the blogging Realtor’s IDX search page. And he’s teaching his wanna-bloggers how to scour Google News for local content.

Do we want to declare static-content real estate websites dead? We just might. Do we want to declare real estate weblogs ascendant? If we do, can we take a moment to count how many Realtors we expect to be local-blogging (in some form) in any particular locale? How many spots are there on the first Google page again? Is it plausible that, a year from now, local-blogging Realtors will have traded static-content Google-obscurity for blogged (or pseudo-blogged) Google-obscurity? Have I made a mistake in my arithmetic?

I do not like the trolling-for-leads model of real estate weblogging. Local real estate weblogs that deliver real value are treasured resources. But the more people focus on SEO tricks or copywriting tricks or quid pro quo tricks, the more real estate weblogs start to look to me like just another form of advertising.

This is not the end of the world. It’s just the end of weblogging. It’s arguable to me that commercial weblogging, in se, is abhorrent. BloodhoundBlog doesn’t take advertising because I never want for anyone working here to feel that they might need to temper what they have to say for a pecuniary reason. I have no objection to real estate weblogging that is presented in such a way that readers ought to choose to become clients. But when roping up and tying down clients becomes the overarching objective, I don’t see the difference between that and an Adwords campaign.

At a certain level, it doesn’t even make sense to me. As with an Adwords campaign, the people attracted are a random mass, mostly buyers, often relos-without-relo-packages or people who are sublimely under-qualified financially. Certainly that’s what’s going to emerge from Jim’s new venture: It’s target assumption Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dustin Luther on Rain City Guide’s second birthday:

The power of self-publishing (and the part that is easily overlooked) is that you do not have to create the news… You just have to report it (preferably in an interesting way!).

I see so many agents get stuck on their blogging because they are trying to say something novel, unique and/or brilliant with every post. Very few people are that talented and it is not a necessary skill to either selling real estate or successful blogging. As a publisher of content, it is much more important to add a little personal insight into the aggregated knowledge of others.

This is truly profound advice. As a reflection, this — this very post — is the archetype of a minimalist weblog post: Citation, quotation, commentary. Done.

So, what is the big picture? Enjoy the journey because the destination is unknown!

And here is my own extended commentary on that point.

I have thoughts on what might be the destination of real estate weblogging that I’ll get to in due course.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I replaced Teri Lussier’s photo this morning. I’m talking about the little thumbnail photos you see running down the sidebar. Guys are easy to crop, because our hair is short. But in my original crop of Teri’s photo, I left her too much hair — which left her with way too little face. No big deal. I went back into the original photo and made a tighter crop. Now her face is approximately the same size as the other contributors.

But that practical example comprises what may be the most important lesson of weblogging (or even of life): If something’s not right, fix it. This is an inherently revisable medium. Changes go down the memory hole, so there is always the peril that someone will change something in order to deceive or occlude. But we gain the corresponding power to chase a convergent series of minor corrections to something that just might blow a kiss at perfection. Most big things are accretions of little things, and, if the little things are right, the big things are that much easier to handle.

It might be Sunday, but I have a homework assignment — for Teri and anyone else who might want to play along. I’m doing a diagnostic interview with Teri to find out where she is on the weblogging ziggurat. Teri’s assignment is to write a BloodhoundBlog post defining what she sees as the challenges facing her as a new real estate weblogger, detailing her desired end goal from real estate weblogging and offering some ideas of how we might get from one to the other. This is really just a writing assignment, so no one should feel too constrained. If you’re playing along at home, you can post as a comment to this post or do something on Active Rain or on your own weblog.

Here’s a hint for Teri or anyone who wants a gold star on their essay: Revise yourself to within hailing distance of perfection. On the other hand, don’t kill yourself. Aim for the best work you can do in an hour. Why? If you’re spending hours trying to Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Last week, I wrote about my objections to webloggers being regarded as “the press”. My post was interesting, I hope, but the comments were fascinating (by which device I commend you thither).

But wait. There’s more. An important reason not to regard — or to affect to regard — webloggers as “the press,” is simply that the transparency of weblogging entails a vigilant oversight of “the press.” They don’t link. We do. There can be valid reasons for not linking — technologically impossible or ossification of writing habits. But again and again mainstream media figures are exposed as having taken tendentious positions, attempting to take advantage of the audience’s relative ignorance. James Taranto has made a career of exposing the self-destructive biases of The New York Times.

Occasionally, a deceptive weblogger will be exposed in the same way — but that’s the point. We live in a world where we expect every assertion of fact to be checked and challenged. For too long they (not all of them, but the worst of them), have lived in a world where they expected to be taken on faith — and where that faith was easily abused. They will be much improved, in time, by mastering our virtues. We have nothing to gain — and everything to lose — by enmiring our reputations in their vices.

And it is important to make the distinction between viewpoint and bias. A point of view is common — all but ubiquitous — among weblogs. We are not all about opinion, as is sometimes charged, but a weblogger’s opinions are never very far from his keyboard — nor should they be. By contrast, bias or tendency is an attempt to sway by underhanded means — by deliberately quoting out of context, for example, or deliberately ignoring a contrary point of view. Ideologues of all stripes shriek about bias in the mainstream media because the mainstream media loudly proclaims itself to be without tendency. It is very easy to discount for a point of view. It is virtually impossibly properly to weigh the influence of a hidden bias.

And still more: There can Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Let’s get the introduction out of the way first, a brand new BloodhoundBlog contributor:

Dayton, Ohio, is the life-long home and territory of Teri Lussier, the newly-minted Realtor become newly-minted real estate weblogger who is Greg Swann’s co-contestant in Active Rain’s Project Blogger.

I didn’t like the Project Blogger logo, so I made one just for us:

I wrote about this real estate weblogging contest nearly a month ago, but it’s taken a while to iron out all the details. You can read all the rules at Active Rain. I’ve already been building stuff as course material for the contest.

And this will continue. A great many very interesting people campaigned to compete with me in this contest. I picked Teri because she was game and fun, and because she was the greenest candidate overall, both as an agent and as a weblogger. But, even though I could only pick one co-contestant, everyone is invited to play along with the BloodhoundBlog team.

How’s that? Because we’re going to conduct the entire contest in public, of course. I’m sure Teri is aghast to discover that she is now a BloodhoundBlog contributor. I didn’t tell her I was planning this. Her charge, going forward, will be to talk to us about the challenges she faces as we build a weblog for her back in Dayton. Meanwhile, I cannot keep my own trap shut, so you can figure pretty much everything will get blogged about by one or both of us.

I don’t care if we win. Cathy will just give the prize money to indignant cats. But I do care that we do this job properly. Teri is her own person, and there is only so much I can teach her. But I will endeavor to teach her — and you — everything I know about real estate weblogging.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

The other day I was on the phone with Jessica Swesey from Inman News and 17 bigfoot real estate webloggers. We were discussing the plans for the Bloggers Connect event at this summer’s Inman Connect. Someone suggested that a panel could address how bloggers can come to be treated as “press.”

To which my instant reaction was, “Ew!”

I really like Jessica Swesey, but, to me, “media” or “press” or especially “mainstream media” suggest the worst kind of teacher’s pet, hall monitor, establishment toadyism. Support the blood drive! Adopt a puppy! Come to the Ladies Auxiliary Bake Sale! It’s not the intense fascination with bad news that riles me as much as the plastic-smiled saccharine boosterism. I am least comfortable when I don’t know if I am being lied to. When I lend my mind to the “press,” I feel like I am being lied to in one way or another most of the time.

This is exactly what weblogging evolved to eliminate. Love him or hate him, Charles Johnson is never trying to hustle you or pander to you. Webloggers say exactly what they mean, and they document every controversy with copious links. Doubt me? Please do! Here’s how you can find out everything I know, with links at each stop to further amend your knowledge. You will die trying to pursue all the links, but — unlike all the preening Read more