Top 12 Women Real Estate Bloggers 2007 Podcasts

[photopress:top_12_2007.jpg,thumb,alignright]Oliver Muoto from vFlyer Blog wasted no time contacting the women Sellisius recognized as the Top 12 Women Real Estate Bloggers for 2007.   The podcasts are in nice easy to digest “bite size”  pieces with great bits of information to chew on about real estate blogging.   Oliver also includes a summary of advice from the interviews.

Yours truly is included and I am honored beyond words.

To listen to the interviews, click here.

One day every pothole will get its moment in the limelight

I think the running joke about blogs a couple of years ago was that belly button lint blogging was why most blogs would forever remain niche-y and unread. Today much of the “fantastical” thinking about locally-focussed blogs is that citizen journalists will report on everything (everything!) happening in their neighborhoods. When they look up from their navels, the online future gazers say (actually they blog) that we’ll all be served better local news by a cadre of unpaid neighbors noticing things in front of their houses and doing a little snooping. I tended to sneer at this concept until today, when I read every word of this blog post about a pothole in my neighborhood. Yes. A pothole.

Perhaps citizen journalism does have a place…

Riding the OC Wave…

I took a drive last night to meet up with the fine folks at Sellsius and more than a few others at the Rooftop Bar of La Casa del Camino in Laguna Beach. What an awesome spot with an amazing view (unfortunately, I arrived at the bar a little late for getting good photos from the deck and instead you’ll have to suffice with this photo taken directly below the bar to get an idea:

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I captured some of the people who showed up in this photo:
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(Back row: Laurie Manny of Long Beach, Kaye Thomas of Beach City, Heather, Rory Siems of Laguna Niguel, Joe Ferrara of Sellsius, and myself. Front row: Brian Brady of Amarica’s Most Opinionated Mortgage Broker and Rudy Bachraty of Sellsius)

Some others who showed up (but didn’t make the above photo) included Sarah Washburn of ActiveRain, Tisza Major-Posner of Route66, Loren Nason of Real Estate Technology, Kelly Kilpatricks of Rancho Santa Margarita and Morgan Brown of Blown Mortgage.

I’m a bit late to the game in that most everyone else has covered the event… Suffice to say, I had a blast and heard a ton of great stories! So many of the people in attendance have been living in breathing the RE.net for a while now that they were able to get me back up to speed with all kinds of juicy stories.

Thanks again to the Sellsius boys for organizing the event.

BTW, I’ve added a few more photos from this event on Flickr . 🙂

Inman has Gone Blog Wild

and it is a good thing!

Looks like they just published the first of a 4-part series on real estate blogging (only by subscription after today!). Lots of good stuff from some of today’s heavy hitters!

It was great to see Todd of Lenderama get some exposure for his (very cool) REMBEX search tool.

Also want to say thanks to Greg… I think he’s running one of the best real estate sites on the web, so it means a lot to me when he gives credit to RCG for some of his inspiration.

While I’m talking about Inman, I thought I’d mention that, like many other real estate bloggers, I’ve been invited to participate in their Blogger’s Connect at the very end of July. I’m definitely looking forward to it as I had a lot of fun last year in San Francisco… From the overview:

The content, speakers and workshops are being designed in the blogosphere. We have invited 20 leading real estate bloggers to use their blogs to reach out to their readers to invent the program.
Imagine the first “user-generated program” including panels, topics and sessions. Could be silly, could be interesting — certain to be fun.

Bloggers Connect will begin on Tuesday, July 31 with a party and then all-day sessions on August 1. Fun and crazy events are being built into the program including the Dive Bar Tour, the Haight Asbury experience and the blogging romp.

Getting Dirty with Your Feed Reader

Because I talk so extensively about reading other bloggers and using a feed reader in general in the Online Marketing Seminar, I decided to post about that topic over on the Seminar blog so that attendees can have one place to go to “get started” with a feed reader. However, some RCG readers may find this information interesting! 🙂

Rolling with Grow-a-Brain

I’ve been a little slow to recover from a wonderful weekend!

We had a little gathering for my son’s 1st birthday and I got the treat of meeting one of my favorite bloggers in the world.

Hanan (the magical man behind Grow-a-brain) showed up with his lovely girlfriend. I really had a blast catching up with Hanan and he helped make it a memorable party!

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Going way back… I can remember the first time he linked to RCG and it made me feel like I was on top of the world! He really is a great guy!

2000 Bloggers

I saw myself in a “puzzle” of faces here and there around the internet. Apparently you can add your blog, but I didn’t put mine there, so someone must have “entered me”.

Not sure where it originated. I’m still tracking it back.

It is an amazing display of blogs! and the photos are interactive so you just click on a face and you get to that person’s blog. Very cool.

If I can find the original source I’ll come back and edit this post. I recognize a few of the faces. It doesn’t look like 2000, but I guess it grows and grows until it reaches 2,000.

If anyone has any info on where this came from, and how my face got there :), please let us know.

http://www.trade-pals.com/2000-bloggers.asp this is the name on the link. I’ll go see what “trade-pals” is. Looks like it could be something like MyBlogLog.

Looks like it is Tino Buntic, just a whacky dude 🙂

Redfin's Maven of "The Mavens"

[photopress:hoffman__s.jpg,full,alignright] What a lovely unexpected surprise! When Kevin Boer of Three Oceans called to ask if we could have coffee during his whirlwind tour of Seattle, we “group dated” with Redfin’s Marie Hagman. Redfin’s new “Maven of the Mavens” I’ve already signed up to get an auto email with every new “Sweet Digs” entry. It automatically comes up as San Francisco, so be sure to hit the drop down menu and put in Seattle.

Marie assures us that the seven bloggers selected from the 300 or so that replied to Redfin’s Craig’s List Ad, just turned out to be ALL WOMEN destined to be in the running for next year’s Top Ten! Hey, that only leaves three spots for all of the rest of us.

Redfin’s Rule stated that none of the bloggers could be real estate licensees. Sweet Digs is very cool, and very much the answer to Galen’s prayers. As non-licensees they are free from all of the weight and chains of rules, rules and more rules, and they are just blogging away to their heart’s content. And I DO mean their “heart’s content” as all were chosen, Marie included, based on their passion for anything real estate and their ability to write with that same passion.

And OH MY GOD!…the Eastside Sweet Digger is Jessi Princiotto…cool enough to have her photo taken by cell phone while in the car…I can’t wait to meet her…I can’t wait to read her…and my side of town to boot!! How lucky can I get! My East Coast fix and local real estate reading all wrapped into one!

Congratulations ladies. Marie and Jessi, we’re calling ahead to Hoffman’s for that torte…just name the day and time.

Oh, and Kevin and Kim were there too LOL. My partner Kim Harris (far right in the photo) and Kevin Boer (left of Kim). Kevin is definitely going home with some stories, and hopefully some insight, into how very different the Seattle Market is from his neck of the woods.

Kevin asked, “What do you say when a ‘Redfin Buyer’ calls and says, “I want to see your listing RIGHT NOW!!”, LOL. I answered “Same thing I say to ANY buyer who says I want to see your listing RIGHT NOW!!” Redfin Buyers don’t exactly grow horns, by definition. We had a fun chat. This is Seattle, very few times do we meet people that are ornery, nasty or unreasonable. It’s a great town with a lot of great people…even “Redfin Buyers”.

Have a safe trip back to CA, Kevin! Great meeting you and thanks for the intro to Marie.

NARdi Gras Blogging

[photopress:nardi_gras_eventlogo.gif,full,alignright]The folks over at the Center for REALTOR Technology have made it a bit too tempting, so I’ve decided I’m going to blog the NARdi Gras!

Please join me over on the new blog platform on Move.com as I take over the site with a Mardi Gras theme for the next week. 🙂

By the way, if you are attending the convention and plan to blog, let me know! I plan to keep an extensive list of bloggers covering the event!

Also, I’d love to keep track of all the real estate technology products that are going to be announced at the event, so if you’re releasing something, let me know. I already mentioned my first product announcement yesterday (when I said that Top Producer recently unleashed a blogging tool available to any of their clients for FREE!!!), and I’m sure there will be many more to come over the next few days!