Month: March 2007 (page 5 of 9)

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