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Name: Dustin
Nickname: Dustin
Member since: 2009-07-30 02:01:45
Website URL: http://www.raincityguide.com/
About me: As the founder of Seattle's Rain City Real Estate Guide, I love to talk, discuss and implement social media strategies that drives business in real estate. In following this passion, I founded 4realz.net Social Media Strategy and regularly speak about social media strategy to real estate audiences. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, become a fan on Facebook and follow me on twitter at @tyr.

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User comments

Join us this Friday for a Tweetup at Elysian Brewery

October 24th, 2009 at 10:29 am

Agreed completely! What a fun night! It really was great to see everyone!

Join us this Friday for a Tweetup at Elysian Brewery

October 20th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

Everyone is definitely invited… and no twitter account needed. As a matter of fact, if someone doesn’t have a twitter account, but is interested in learning how twitter is being used by professionals, this would be a great place to find out!

FTC Considers Total Ban on Upfront Loan Modification Fees

September 17th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

No doubt… It really is about time to clean up the loan mod mess.

Are you going? REBarCampSeattle and more...

September 9th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

I”m positive you’re gonna make the Bellevue REBarCamp rock! ;)

Are you going? REBarCampSeattle and more...

September 8th, 2009 at 1:55 am

For people like yourself who already have a good grasp of blogging and social media, I’d recommend an REBarCamp because it can be a great way to meet and learn from people from the local real estate community. Considering it sounds like it’s a bit too late for tomorrow’s REBarCamp (or rather today’s REBarCamp!), I’d recommend you should shoot for the Bellevue event.

Where is the King County Housing Market Going?

August 28th, 2009 at 9:57 am

Whoops… When I wrote my previous comment I hadn’t realized that you emailed me the graphic. I just stripped out the “plus” sign from the name and the uploaded didn’t give me any issues!

Where is the King County Housing Market Going?

August 28th, 2009 at 9:44 am

Ardell: I just checked and none of your new graphics actually show up when you uploaded them. (They’re on the backend, but they’re blank). When looking at these “blank” graphics, I see a bunch of odd characters in some of the URL strings (plus signs and things). When you get a minute, try changing the name of the photos to something really simple (like “aug-update.jpg”) and reupload the grahic. That might solve the problem. In the meantime I added your previous graphic warts and all. :)

An Introduction to M Realty and HomeQuest

August 26th, 2009 at 10:54 pm

Rhonda: In terms of the new comment issue you’re having, I noticed that the theme was just updated a bit (I think it was updated because it was an issue for me a few days ago) so that the comments anchors now work. In other words, when a comment is made (you can click on one of the recent comments below for example) it should take you directly to the comment. Does that help?

The Fed's new GFE Helping to Insure Consumers Get 'It'?

August 25th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

Adam,

Thanks again for putting this post together! Truth be told, however, I’m just testing out the followup comment notifier plugin… :)

An Introduction to M Realty and HomeQuest

August 20th, 2009 at 1:12 am

Jillayne:

I’m not meaning to be elusive on your questions, but I’m not sure I have a great answer to your question at the moment. In order to have IDX listings on RCG, the site needs to be a “brokerage” site, so much of our phrasing is to ensure that the M Realty broker, Garron, feels comfortable we’re not only within the “text” of the rules, but also within the “spirit” of the rules… You might find this comment I just left to respond to one of Rhonda’s questions both relevant and interesting.

An Introduction to M Realty and HomeQuest

August 20th, 2009 at 12:31 am

Rhonda,

Not sure how to answer that because I don’t know.

For the majority of the site’s life, we’ve always had the logo of Anna’s brokerage in the sidebar… and probably more relevant in terms of competition, we’ve had a home search tool at the top of the sidebar of RCG for the majority of the site’s life that led directly to Anna’s IDX page hosted at annaluther.com (Including when all of the most active contributor’s started blogging).

I guess I don’t see much changing in that RCG’s endorsement doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot compared to the endorsement of the readers. Despite the search box in the top-right panel, Anna got a fraction of the clients that Ardell did because she simply wasn’t as compelling of a writer (nor nearly as prolific!)

As others have noted, if someone’s writing compelling content, then they’re the ones more likely to pick up the readers as clients. That’s always been the case with RCG and I’m positive will continue to be the case going forward… If agents write posts that are compelling to consumers, they’ll get clients on the site.

I hope the M Realty folks won’t be too surprised to hear this, but I don’t see them being able to out-compete the existing crop of contributors to RCG. You guys are simply too darn good! :) The main place I could see them helping out RCG (and the only place I really see then earning clients) is on creating focused landing pages that do well in the search engines. Those pages, which for the most part are out of the flow of the blog, could tap into a huge audience of people we currently don’t reach (because we’re simply not relevant with a good IDX search) and will (hopefully!) bring even more people into the blog.

I could definitely be wrong about how effective this strategy will be, but I honestly wouldn’t do it if I thought it was something that would be bad for the existing contributors.

An Introduction to M Realty and HomeQuest

August 18th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

Thanks for the feedback Cam… I totally agree that Rhonda and Jillayne are a huge reason that the RCG community rocks! ;)

Just to be super clear… Garron (of M Realty) and I are both completely on the same page that agents from all brokerages and businesses will always be welcome as contributors to RCG (assuming, of course, they have something of value to add to the community). There’s no plans to require businesses to be affiliated with M Realty or RCG because that simply won’t happen.

I’m trying to word it so that there’s no wiggle room in my phrase, but feel free to let me know if it’s still not clear!

An Introduction to M Realty and HomeQuest

August 18th, 2009 at 1:44 am

You make some great points about how important the design elements were to the site… I talked with Garron for at least an hour this evening and we discussed a few changes that I think will make a difference. now we just need to get them implemented! ;)

An Introduction to M Realty and HomeQuest

August 17th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Jillayne:

And I didn’t mean to be silent on this thread… My only excuse is that I turned off my computer for the weekend in order to take part in a mini-vacation, so I’m just now getting around to reading the comments here. :)

I totally see your point about the logo… We can’t remove the logo for if we’re going to keep listings on the site (and I really really want to keep listings on the site as I’ve always felt that was such a missing piece of providing a great resource for seattle real estate information), but I’m working with Garron to revise the site in two ways: 1) we’re working through a design that will bring the authors back on to the sidepanel and 2) changing the display of the logo so that it still appears on the site, but also conveys the reality that RCG is much larger than their company. Any ideas for what you think might work well here would be much appreciated!

My daughter's shoot for Smashbox Makeup

August 16th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

I thought I got away with something when you left last time and I didn’t have any tattoos… hmm… might not happen this time, huh?

Friday's Rates Up Following the Jobs Report

August 9th, 2009 at 7:30 pm

That’s funny… I didn’t know messages could be too short! Must have to do with the new spam filter. I’ll look into it!

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

As usual… I’m the bottleneck! ;)

No kidding Tim… It was totally my fault. I never did load up my computer for three days as I played, talked and coordinated at the Real Estate Connect conference. I can’t remember the last time I did that, and I didn’t expect to be so out of the loop.

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:47 am

yeah… I liked the old annaluther.com site as well, but after Robbie took the job at Microsoft, I couldn’t get him to update it! ;)

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:46 am

Yeah… it’s interesting because our thought was that it’s just not worth it to follow the “letter of the law” as far as these things are concerned, but rather stay within the spirit of what the NWMLS rules were asking… With that in mind, we may have gone a bit too far in making sure M Realty is prominent, but those are rules we’re still figuring out.

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:44 am

Nice… I remember when the folks at realtor.com decided to launch a “green home” search, but it was implemented in a pretty lame way, so I’m glad to see others playing with the idea. Are you determining “green homes” simply if an agent checks the box on the NWMLS backend or is there something more to it?

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:40 am

Kevin: M Realty manages the customers that get sent through the search tool… but that’s always been the case, except they used to go directly to my wife (through annaluther.com) where she would manage the customers. I’ve made sure that the author contact information (including links, phone numbers, etc.) is, and ALWAYS will be, attached to every post, which is the primary way that contributors have always been contacted by potential clients and will likely continue to be contacted well into the future.

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:35 am

It’s a really interesting point you bring up…

For the majority of RCG’s life, we’ve been affiliated with a brokerage. For the 1st year or so, I had the Keller Williams logo on the site and then for the next 2 years, I always made sure to featured the LTD brokerage logo on the site (after my wife switched brokerages). We have also included a link to a real estate search run by my wife (at annaluther.com) for almost the entire time.

The big new changes are: 1) more prominent brokerage info and 2) the search tool is located ON RCG and 3) a much more prominent link to the search tool.

I had more than a few conversations with Garron (from M Realty) about how to minimize the effect of RCG “looking” like a brokerage site, while at the same time not making him feel like he was in danger of getting fined by the NWMLS for breaking IDX rules. He feels very strongly that we need to have the logo and contact info is prominently displayed, i.e. “above the fold”. And while I can totally see if that makes some folks uncomfortable (it makes me uncomfortable!), I feel even stronger that the RCG community will never reach our potential unless we figure out a way to be more relevant and helpful to people looking for homes, so I decided to move into that uncomfortable zone! ;)

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:07 am

I agree that Galen’s stuff is awesome, and definitely enjoyed when we teamed up in the past. However, there’s a bunch of things I want to see in a search tool and my ability to work with the M Realty Seattle team to implement custom features is so exciting to me it’s ridiculous…

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

August 7th, 2009 at 11:02 am

I was thinking the same thing… I’ve always just grabbed a free theme and modified it myself, to obvious “rain city guide” results, so it never did look too professional. I have so little faith in my design skills that I was simply impressed when I saw RCG posts on a theme that looked and felt custom designed! ;)