Interview with Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato

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[photopress:jim_cronin.jpg,full,alignright]This past summer Jim has came out of seemingly nowhere to quickly become a leading voice in teaching agents how they can use blogging technologies to better market their business online.

With a flair for fun (he has a tomato theme after all!), Jim is always entertaining and has become a daily read for many of us in the real estate blogosphere…

What inspired you to start blogging?

I have been in the online real estate marketing industry since 2000 and have always made an effort to keep an ear to the ground as to what actually works. I started my first real estate marketing blog in mid 2005 as a platform for a potential book. Two posts in, I lost my drive. Then I started to realize that I was getting the majority of my own news from blogs; baseball, politics, entertainment… it was all being read on independent blogs. Suddenly I felt that without my own blog, I was falling behind when it came to utilizing the internet as a marketing tool. In late June of this year (2006) I jumped in with both feet, determined to be heard. Never looked back. In fact it has so consumed me that I started a business to consult others how to leverage the business blog as the ultimate online marketing tool.

Are there any special topics or issues that you enjoy covering?

I found my topic niche just as I started to gain a consistent audience, or was it the other way around? It has always been my style to educate, and once I had a grip on why I was gaining readership and search engine success, I was compelled to share it. In turn this changed the landscape of the Tomato’s content, and I chose the path of “real estate blogging consultant”. This choice has helped me separate myself from other great real estate bloggers whom I admire so much: Sellsius, FutureOfRealEstateMarketing, RainCityGuide, Bloodhound to name a few. I still enjoy uncovering a new web 2.0 tool, breaking some news, or picking on the bigger media types (read: RISMedia, NAR etc), but I most enjoy delivering an article that examines the real estate blogger’s concern or challenge and (hopefully) provides some solution.

What have you done to personalize your blog?

Every stitch you see on the Tomato was placed there by me. I have considered redesigning it many times, and in fact have done so in Photoshop, but like the emotional letter you write and never send, the effort itself has been satisfaction enough.

[photopress:realestatetomatobannersm_1.jpg,full,alignright]Do you have any favorite posts?

I am proud of all the educational pieces I have done in the ‘blogging advice‘ category, but there are two posts that, for me, stand out more than any others. The first post I ever wrote, on that first failing blog appears in its original form on the Tomato – It’s called Understanding Your Audience. I feel that this is a subject that anyone marketing their business needs to master. This particular article won’t apply forever, but its concept will.

The other post I can’t ignore is titled ePro Is A Tinfoil Badge. This piece my first attempt at “stirring the pot”. The results we fantastic. Half my audience loved it the other half wanted me hanged. I really feel that it represented the catalyst for my success; I was able to engage the audience that agreed with me and those that weren’t so sure.

What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

I mention real estate blogs I like all the time, and most of them are probably covered in your interviews… so here are a few personal favorites (non real estate) that I consider the cream of the crop.

Soxaholix. Above and beyond the best sports blog, evah! It is a peak into the Red Sox fan psyche through the dialogue of clipart characters. Hart Brachen (pseudonym, Heart Breaking, get it?) masterfully weaves Boston Red Sox culture and news with pop culture and literary reference into a fabric so entertaining that I actually miss his strip on weekends. In fact it is so good that Yankee fans are actually jealous.

MichelleMalkin. Simple design. Powerful. Attentive. Reactionary. Every political blog should learn from her command. You don’t have to be a republican to recognize her wizardry.

Gizmodo. Gadget Pr0n. ’nuff said.

What tools/websites do you find most helpful in putting together your blog?

iStockPhoto, Wikipedia, Technorati, BlogJet, docs.Google.com, Photoshop, Toshiba, Firefox, Jim Beam and Sonos.

How does blogging fit into the overall marketing of your business?

It is everything. 100% of my business has come from my blogging. In fact, blogging has eclipsed what I did for a living from 2000-2006.

What plans do you have to improve your blog over this next year?

Where do I begin?… Let’s just say that the education we deliver will be bigger, better and more comprehensive than ever. In addition, we look forward to showcasing more guest authors that recognize the Tomato as their personal soapbox for expressing their knowledge of embracing technology as an effective marketing tool.

What is the one tool or feature that you wish your site had?

Number one item: Comments email notification. It is ridiculous that TypePad blogging platforms do not offer the “notify me of new comments” functionality with their software. This is nearly a deal breaker. I have been able to ‘work around’ many other TypePad deficiencies (trackback weakness for example) but this one just drives me crazy. Maintaining the conversation that develops in the comments is crucial, and to not offer it as a standard blogging feature is just ridiculous if not stupid.

What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now?

The unfathomable amount of content that is generated because of this (gold)rush to blog will persist longer than you and I, no doubt… but in 3 years the blog will no longer be the tool that “gets it done”. TheVlog (video blog) will be the most effective marketing platform for real estate. As the internet, television, Xbox, music, etc. merge into one console, and we sit 15 feet from the flat screen with remote in hand, browsing through channels/websites/whatever do you really see us reading? Video will be the most effective form of marketing (it already is, duh), and learning how to embrace it on an independent basis (like the blog) will be crucial to real estate agents in 2010.

Thank you Jim for this interesting insight! 🙂

Want more? Here are the other interviews I’ve done to date:

Survivor! – The Active Rain Edition

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[photopress:survivor.jpg,thumb,alignright]I have spent the last seven days in the Alter-Blogosphere known as the Active Rain Network. Dustin had a few days off and “knocked on my door” and said “Mr. Harris, Can ARDELL come out and play?” and off we went, hand in hand to Active Rain.

Now I am not a big fan of the Survivor TV show, and so I need some help here from those who are. Basically the “Active Rain Island” permits participants to knock out their “competitors”, and I am stumped at what to do about it. I can’t seem to get any good advices from within, because the sabotaging of my efforts is not transparent enough for me to deal with on my own, and the kind people who are trying to help me have never seen this kind of behavior enacted toward them. So I’m at a Crossroads.

When Dustin and I started out over there, we studied the “rules”. OK you post five articles a day. You get 200 points for each article, 25 points for up to 10 comments on other people’s blogs per day, so forth and so on.

OH, and before I forget, I got 600 starter points for putting a message in my own blog’s sidebar saying “I am a PROUD MEMBER of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network.” Time to pop that baby out of my sidebar, unless someone can explain to me what is going on in better definitive terms.

For seven days I jumped through all the hoops, as far as I could ascertain what and where the hoops were, like a video game. I climbed from #11863 in the Network to #227 in just 7 days. From #644 in the State of Washington to #19 and in King County from #264 to #9. In an other than straight points format, I was up to NUMBER 4 in the State! I was a proud member, I was happy, I was working my butt off in true Survivor Style!

And then the other participants, or a few of them, can’t tell who or how many (though the administrators of the site can apparently see who is doing it and what they are doing) started whacking down my points! Holy Crap, Batman. What is THAT! Now I wish I had watched the Survivor show…I’m more like a Trump’s Apprentice type where you give it your best and the chips fall where they may. You try different images, different article styles, spent the week experimenting when all of a sudden I noticed something.

Twice I read “You get 200 points per article and that score rarely goes down, but it does grow upward based on poplularity and comments”. I’m looking at the hard work I put into my five articles a day and watching the points on most of them drop from 200 to 179 to 142 to 128…what the $*^%$)(*% is that! It’s Survivor tactics. Apparently “the system” permits some mean spirited people or some overly competitive people the opportunity to steal away my points. Not quite sure how, and I was assured they were being warned not to do that, and was further assured it would be corrected the next day…but, I wouldn’t be writing this if that were the case.

Not really sure what all this point stuff is about. But I am sure that I am NOT a PROUD member today. Question is, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” I hate to give them the satisfaction that they got the better of me. But by the same token it is almost as much work as the freakin’ Sellsius 101, and in many ways even harder, especially with people pushing me down while I am climbing up. Do I want to be involved with a group that permits such petty and nasty activity?

Not sure what to do. Maybe a show of hands will help me here. Thanks.

Is HouseValues really gaining traction or are they just churning agents?

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I don’t know how many of you on this site have dealt with HouseValues as one of their subscribers but I saw some recent postings on the RE/MAX International message board (RE/MAX agents only) where they were getting hammered by agents for what they saw as predatory practices, lies, and now combative collections processes. Having written them off some time ago I am curious what others in the industry think of them and their business plan. I get their concept but I think their execution is heavily flawed – particularly when they hire lots of folks without training them on what life as an agent is like – particularly as it applies to how an agent is compensated.

[photopress:684401_buy_a_house.jpg,full,alignright]I’ll give you an example of a pitch I was given a couple of years ago, I’ll paraphrase it for brevity:

(salesperson) We don’t have the territory that you’re interested in available at this time but the whole Eastside has recently opened up.

(me) Oh, really, how many areas?

(salesperson) There are about 9 areas that one person had but he’s dropped all of them as of a few days ago.

(me) Hmm. That’s interesting. Do you know why he dropped them all? Oh, and how much were you charging him per zip code?

(salesperson) [she gives me the numbers but I’ll tell you they added up to over $5000 per month] I don’t know WHY he dropped them all because he made around $100,000 in commissions on these territories in the past year. However, he was using about 15 credit cards to pay for them all.

(me) Do you know what firm he was with and how long he’d been an agent?

(salesperson) Yes. [she tells me the firm] He was a new agent, maybe one or two years in the business.

(me) Ok. I can probably tell you why he dropped them all. He’s likely gone bankrupt.

(salesperson laughs)

(me) No. It’s not funny – if the guy owns a house he’s probably being foreclosed on now.

(salesperson is now very quiet and listening intently)

(me) The firm this guy works for likely has him on a split commission schedule. For our purposes let’s say he’s on the high side of a new agent split and he’s got a 60/40 going on. You say he’s made $100k on his leads from HV so if he is giving $40k to his broker and he’s only got $60k and he’s got to pay your firm for roughly $60k in lead generation he’s not got $0. And we haven’t even accounted for his quarterly taxes that need paying, his other out of pocket expenses or the cost of interest on those credit cards he’s using to pay for all of this. That poor SOB has probably lost everything or is about to.

(salesperson) Wow. I didn’t realize that’s how agent pay works.

(me) Well, it’s not the same in all cases but it’s common with new agents. Your firm should be training you on the various models so you guys (meaning salespeople) understand what you’re dealing with when you talk to agents and so you can have an intelligent conversation with them about what the long term contracts mean to them. I also HIGHLY recommend you never tell that story again – this poor guy is not a success story for using your program.

This was a REAL CALL I had with a HV salesperson in summer of 2003 before they went public. I had an investment firm contact me several times asking me what it was like to work with HV (I did use the service briefly and dropped it after realizing it was still too early to adopt the program because of kinks in it and the service/leads wasn’t great for what you pay), I told them what I thought about the service and I told them this story. I don’t believe in complaining for the sake of complaining. When me and the VC guy talked I gave him feedback that was clear and had good business basics behind it and how I related that to HV’s model. Basically, I told him that they’ll just churn through agents as long as there are lots of newbies in the industry that aren’t told to steer clear of them and there are plenty of those. With over 1,000,000 REALTORS(R) alone you’ve got a big pool to go after.

[photopress:leach.jpg,thumb,alignleft]Most stockholders (meaning the public) don’t know much about the inner workings of real estate compensation either so they’ll think there’s plenty of blood to suck so they’ll buy into it regardless of market highs or lows. Heck, they’ll likely get sold on the idea of HV because they’ll think that in a hot market we’ll need leads to compete and in a slow market we’ll need leads to survive. Whatever. While a few have done okay with the HV program (and good for them!) overall I consider it a less than adequate lead provider to agents on whom whose back they ride on and depend since the service is free to the public who uses it.

Please review the Resale Certificate

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[photopress:cancelled.jpg,thumb,alignright]My client and I reviewed the Resale Certificate and cancelled his purchase today.

When you buy a condo, or condo-townhome, you do not know everything there is to know before you make an offer.

After you are in escrow, after the contract is “signed around”, you get a resale certificate within ten days. I’m not talking about new properties here, but resale properties. It’s amazing how many agents just hand that big packet over to the buyer and then hope and pray for five days that the buyer won’t open it.

Sit down with your agent and go through that resale certificate. Don’t rely on verbal representations made prior to receiving the resale certificate. I was told by the listing agent that the Association had money in reserves. She volunteered that information, as I would never expect an agent to know that. The Resale Certificate comes and it says ZERO in reserves.

How could anyone have a balance of Zero anyway? Did you ever have a Zero Balance in your bank account? It’s either $2.00 or it’s overdrawn…but flat out ZERO?! Is that even possible? Oh and the “Good News” is that the monthly HOA dues were being decreased beginning 1/1/07. No reserves, so let’s reduce the monthy dues…that’s ripe!

Maybe the lawyers can answer this one. I haven’t seen the Reserve Study Summary in many of these packets and have to hunt it down. It really is not possible to know if the monthly dues are adequate, or if the amount in reserves are adequate, without having a copy of the Reserve Study Summary page. Is that not required here in Washington? If not, someone needs to fix that. How do I help make it mandatory that this vital info be included with/in the Resale Certificate? Who do I call? Who do I write?

Well luckily, in this case, I didn’t need to look at the Reserve Study to know that ZERO wasn’t good enough. The agent kept telling me how much BETTER things were NOW than they USED TO BE. That may in fact be true. But better than it used to be is not necessarily, good enough.

We interrupt your regular programming…

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[photopress:tin_soch_1.jpg,full,alignright]First, my sincere apologies for those not “into” this kind of thing, but I just got these in the mail and had to share.[photopress:cowgirl.jpg,full,alignright]

The little “cowgirl” lives at the beach in L.A. Mom as shown, is my eldest daughter, Tina.

Well, I know Anna will like them 🙂

Maybe we can get Anna to say a few words.

Interview with The Greg Swann and his Pack of Bloodhounds

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Last year around this time, I published a series of interviews with the real estate bloggers that most influenced me of which I was really proud because I learned a lot and it felt like it helped bring the real estate blogging community together in a new way… This year, I’d like to continue that tradition by publishing the same set of interview questions with a new set of influences. With that said…

Sit down, take a deep breath, and prepare for a wonderfully long and informative interview with the top-notch crew over at the Bloodhound Blog.

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Q: What inspired you to start blogging?

A:

  • Greg Swann: I’ve been writing all my life, but my goal in trying to start a workable real estate weblog was the same as other Realtors: I thought it would scare up business. We tried and failed with two other weblogs. We didn’t know what we were doing — in the sense of “linkation!” — but, by being overtly promotional in content, they were boring to me, anyway — contributing greatly to their failure. BloodhoundBlog works, at least for me, because it is fundamentally indifferent to the idea of milking the readership for leads. I’ve come to believe that a real estate weblog with a large, regular readership is a lousy way to generate leads, in any case, but I don’t care anyway. I want to write what I want to write, come what does.

    Rain City Guide has always been a guide for us, of course, but when I decided that we needed to become a group blog to get where we want to go, we pushed for coverage national in breadth. If our luck holds, we’re defining a new idea in real estate weblogging: Commentary by, for and about real estate professionals on a national level.

    I can’t speak for the other contributors, so, in bald-faced defiance of the form you have established for these interviews, I have invited them to speak for themselves. Five took up the challenge: Kris Berg, Brian Brady, Dan Green, Doug Quance and Russell Shaw. Many of them have their own weblogs, and the answers they might give you there could differ from their answers here. But I want to hear — and I thought your readers would be interested to hear — their thoughts on this real estate weblogging cabal we are building here.

  • Russell Shaw: I have been interested in blogging ever since I read the book, Blog, by Hugh Hewitt. It really got me to thinking about how mainstream media no longer controls what is “worthy” and what is not.

    What got me started was Greg was gracious enough to invite me.

  • Dan Green: I began blogging to educate my clients about home loans in a way that they’d never hear from major news outlets. Two years later, I remain true to my audience and I think about The Mortgage Reports like a TV channel. I joined BloodhoundBlog because it exposes my loyal readers to broader issues in real estate and financing as a whole that wouldn’t fit TMR’s “broadcast” menu. BloodhoundBlog is a different channel. My readers may not agree with everything that BloodhoundBlog’s bloggers write — I know I don’t! — but the site’s aim is to present a perspective that readers may not otherwise hear. In this way, BloodhoundBlog is very similar to The Mortgage Reports — the information is not meant to persuade for sales, it’s meant to educate for understanding. The affiliation was a no-brainer to me.
  • Doug Quance: I was getting ready to redo my website, and I felt that a blog format would allow me to get personal with my visitors. When Greg invited me to contribute to BloodhoundBlog, how could I refuse? That’s like the President asking you to serve your country — you can’t turn that down.
  • Kris Berg: My original motivation to begin blogging was slightly less than noble. It was my attempt to keep up with the Jones’. In my business, I have always tried to keep things fresh and innovative. In a business where competition is fierce, it is essential to constantly reevaluate and reinvent. I have seen too many agents with the potential for greatness deliver mediocre results because of their inability to distinguish themselves as leaders. When Greg tagged me from my own baby blog, I saw it as an opportunity to gain additional exposure and a wider audience.
  • Brian Brady: I wanted to write with the best of the best. I started reading Bloodhound about three months ago. I was impressed with the collaborative authorship. When I noticed that we wanted new authors, I decided to “test my mettle in Yankee Stadium.”

Q: Are there any special topics or issues that you enjoy covering?

A:

  • Russell Shaw: Yes. Making my fellow agents more successful. Helping them to navigate the real obstacles and also to recognize those that exist just because someone “created them.”
  • Brian Brady: My efforts are mostly aimed at Realtors about mortgage lending. I find that by educating them about how to do better business with lenders, I can make a contribution.

    I like to write about hard money loans because it is an under-served niche in my industry.

  • Doug Quance: I enjoy myth-busting the best. Most of the public gets bamboozled by what goes on in the real estate business.
  • Dan Green: Many Americans don’t care about European politics or Chinese monetary policy because they don’t make a connection between international news and their personal life. By contrast, I am fascinated by it. Economics is truly a global game and any event — no matter how small — can have drastic consequences on the lives of everyone in America. My favorite topics to cover are those that show the connection and help people to understand how something buried on page 18 in the front section of a newspaper can cause their retirement portfolio to gain (or lose) tremendous amounts of value.
  • Greg Swann: I like technology and the comical kind of hypocrisy. Although I work in residential real estate, I have a deep interest in certain kinds of innovation in commercial real estate development, and I may devote more attention to this in the future.
  • Kris Berg: Ironically, unlike Greg, I never particularly enjoyed writing — until now. It took me several months to find my voice, which finally happened the day I stopped blogging for business and began blogging for kicks. Somehow, my role has evolved into that of the resident humor columnist, the Real Estate Mom if you will. The most successful agents have a hard time separating their work and their life, and this is where I find the lion’s share of my inspiration. I have the most fun relating those silly, everyday events in my personal life back to the business of real estate, because it is all about people.

Q: What have you done to personalize your blog?

A:

  • Greg Swann: There are two answers to that question. In terms of appearance, I took a theme designed by DL2Media and rewrote the Cascading Style Sheets to fit our look and feel. I can hold my own hand in PHP, so I was able to make the modifications I wanted without breaking anything. For example, our Frequent Contributors list runs out of a PHP program using the WordPress Users database. If I add a user, or change some detail, the change is reflected instantly on the web page.

    But taking the question the other way, when we added those Frequent Contributors, I went to some pains to remove my own (very) peculiar personality from the weblog. I built the weblog originally as a subdomain of BloodhoundRealty.com, and there’s nothing I can do about that, by now. We’re too well known, too well linked. But I’ve done what I could to avoid giving our own brokerage an unfair advantage on the weblog. Six of our ten contributors are Realtors, and, if there is any lead-prospecting benefit to real estate weblogging, I want for us all to share in it.

    I own BloodhoundBlog.net and BloodhoundBlog.org, but I didn’t have the wits to buy BloodhoundBlog.com when we started this weblog, last June. That domain is owned by a software company in Texas, and, had I known that at the time, I probably would have called the weblog something else. I may end up owning that domain in due course, and, if so, I will set it up to redirect to our current sub-domain. I’m already using BloodhoundBlog.net, redirected, for our nascent podcasting overtures.

    The point of all this is, we’re big and getting bigger. My goal is to promote the people who have joined us as much as I might promote myself.

Q: Do you have any favorite posts?

A:

  • Kris Berg: I am my own worst critic, and I am never totally pleased once I have hit the “publish” button. If I have to pick a favorite from my short time with the Bloodhound, it would be a post I did on Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution. The title words actually came out of my 14-year-old daughter’s mouth, and I was somehow about to relate it back to Zillow and real estate marketing. I absolutely love it when, as Jeff Brown once said, I can stick the landing.
  • Russell Shaw: The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.
  • Brian Brady: I like Greg’s Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie stories because Willie and I share some similarities in background (I think) and ideology.

    Any Russell Shaw post is bound to attract the whackos; I like reading their aimless rants.

  • Greg Swann: My all-time favorite is Apprehending Realtor 2.0: Seven essential skills of the 21st century real estate agent… I can take both sides of that argument, but the long-run trend is in the direction I take in that post: If you are not moving up the technology tree — and fast — you are moving out of the personal-services real estate brokerage business.

Q: What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

A:

  • Greg Swann: Totally unfair question: I have over 160 weblogs in my feed reader. From the RE.net, you can bet we like the weblog if we’ve recruited its author as a BloodhoundBlog contributor. There are people we can’t approach (such as RCG’s very talented talent pool), and some we love — such as vendors — who would compromise either us or their employers by working with us. By now, a significant part of my attention, in reading real estate weblogs, is devoted to recruitment.

    Away from the RE.net, I read a lot of weblogging blogs, marketing blogs, SEO blogs, Macintosh-fanatic blogs and techno-geek blogs in general. Lately, TechMeme gets a lot of my time, simply because it links to such interesting content.

  • Brian Brady: Active Rain Real Estate Network. I’ve developed online friendships and a reader following there. I love Freakonomics Blog because of the off-beat hypotheses they formulate to otherwise explained problems.
  • Doug Quance: BloodhoundBlog, of course… and I have many others, but I wouldn’t want to offend those who, because of brevity, wouldn’t make the list.
  • Dan Green: My non-real estate blog list includes a strange mix of PopSugar, Olson’s Observations, Sabernomics, and Copyblogger.
  • Kris Berg: At the risk of sounding gratuitous, Rain City Guide was the first blog I encountered that really made sense to me. Since then, I have discovered many, many others that seem to strike the same, often elusive balance of having local and national appeal, of being instructional and entertaining, and of speaking to industry professionals and consumers. My first stops each morning include Sellsius, The Real Estate Tomato, 360 Digest, 3 Oceans, Bawldguy Talking, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Real Central VA, RealEstateUndressed, Blue Roof, and (of course) The San Diego Home Blog, to name but a few. My feed reader includes about forty blogs at the moment, which is far fewer than for a lot of bloggers I know of, but barely manageable for me. I have been slumming over the holidays and currently have 433 feeds to catch up on.

Q: What tools/websites do you find most helpful in putting together your blog?

A:

  • Brian Brady: Reading other blog stories inspires some of my topics. Articles in “Broker” or “Mortgage Originator” magazines help to a lesser extent. Real life issues that face me everyday are fun to write about.
  • Kris Berg: I subscribe to Inman News, which I find essential. And, of course, a good feed reader is a must.
  • Russell Shaw: Google. 🙂
  • Doug Quance: Google… but I could always use more tools…
  • Greg Swann: I think like a programmer. I write in TextWrangler, the free version of BBEdit, a Mac-based programmer’s editor. I’ve been writing in versions of BBEdit since the betas of version 1.0, coming on twenty years. Tremendous search power, including GREP, so I can reformat just about anything in scratch time. This group interview is being put together from multiple email files. The end-product will be assembled, a file at a time, in TextWrangler.

    As a front-end to WordPress, I use Ecto, which allows for multiple accounts on multiple weblogs, with categories and Technorati tags implemented. A number of the BloodhoundBlog webloggers use Ecto.

Q: How does blogging fit into the overall marketing of your business?

A:

  • Doug Quance: It hasn’t, yet… but I believe that the blog will be the preferred way that the public will determine how compatible a particular Realtor may be for them by reading their posts. You can learn a lot about someone by reading what they write.
  • Dan Green: BloodhoundBlog has a different audience from The Mortgage Reports so it has a different place in my broader marketing plan. BloodhoundBlog helps me gain “name recognition” in the real estate space. BloodhoundBlog fills a unique role in that even folks who disagree (or even dislike) the writers still come to visit just to leave comments. There is no other real estate blog that makes as big a footprint at this point in time.
  • Kris Berg: I have never seen blogging as a lead generator in the strictest sense. Any good marketing plan includes a wide variety of activities. In my case, it is unusual when a new client can tell me precisely where they got my name; it is the marketing effort in its entirety that was responsible. Blogging is but one component. What I have found to be most valuable personally is the knowledge I gain from being in touch with issues on a broader, national level and through exposure to varying perspectives among agents on these issues. Of course, improved search engine rankings don’t hurt.
  • Russell Shaw: I don’t believe that blogging has much of anything to do with me “getting business.” I don’t think the general public is reading BloodhoundBlog every day. Other agents and people in the industry are “the public” I write to and for.

    BloodhoundBlog has a much larger audience than I would ever have on my own. All of the technical aspects are handled by an expert, and, if I don’t post for three or four days, people coming to the site still always have something interesting to read.

  • Brian Brady: Blogging has become the “X” factor in my marketing plan. What started as a hobby has become the leading contributor to our loan production, either from direct response to a post or an indirect referral from the real estate blogging community at large. I commit no money but do commit 2-3 hours a day. I’m still figuring how to fit it into my 2007 marketing plan.
  • Greg Swann: Practically speaking, it doesn’t, but I don’t think that way. What we’re really up to is an idea I call The Third Career. Most of us came to real estate from something else, and, as we are wise, we know this is not our last stop in the world of work. My immediate goal for BloodhoundBlog is to make it the best-read, most-rewarding real estate weblog in the RE.net. Further out, I want for our contributors to be so well known that they can pursue other opportunities: Public speaking, freelance writing, books, seminars, television shows, etc. I don’t know that we will attain this, necessarily, but the goal itself is definitely attainable: Witness Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.

Q: What plans do you have to improve your blog over this next year?

A:

  • Greg Swann: We’ll be adding both audio and video podcasting, and we’ll be doing a lot more original reporting. We’ll add new writers as we find them or they find us. BloodhoundBlog has 334 Technorati links right now, which is nothing to sneeze at, but one of the things I want to do in the coming year is to swim our way upstream, to become the authoritative real estate resource for technology, political and general interest weblogs. Like RCG, we’re a given in blogrolls for new real estate weblogs. I want for us to be routinely blogrolled higher up the Technorati food chain.

Q: What is the one tool or feature that you wish your site had?

A:

  • Brian Brady: I don’t know… a live chat button? I think a live chat button would help a reader ask a question to an author. I think some readers are hesitant to post comments or questions because of the “Jim Rome” type environment that exists. That said, the “Jim Rome” environment is effective, though, and shouldn’t be replaced.

    The “sanctity of the confessional” sometimes inspires honesty.

  • Doug Quance: A killer mash-up page.
  • Russell Shaw: A list of killer post ideas. 🙂
  • Dan Green: Actually, I am happy that BloodhoundBlog has only a few features. There is a fine line between useful add-ons and gimmicks and I am happy that Greg Swann lives by one of the basic rules of technology: Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. Junked-up Web sites remind me a lot of the Flashing Text Syndrome on Web sites circa 1997.
  • Greg Swann: I’d love to know how many RSS subscribers we have. Our on-site traffic is very impressive, but I’d like to know how many people are seeing us through their feed readers.
  • Kris Berg: Spell-checking — and a laugh track!

Q: What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now?

A:

  • Dan Green: There will be distinct dichotomy in the blogging world and it won’t be limited to real estate blogging. One group will be defined by community-based blogging, complete with deep and engaging conversations about anything and everything; the other will be defined by presence and access to good information for readers. Both groups will feature high quality writing and that will benefit readers immensely. It’s the latter group, though, that is the most intriguing to me.

    Blog-For-You services such as Bring the Blog are removing the roadblocks to blogging and allowing non-technical (and time-crunched) salespeople to include blogging in their marketing plans. Even though their blogs are updated for them daily, these salespeople are adding to their blogs when they have something important to say — this may be once a day, once a week, or once a month. These blogging entries would otherwise have remained hidden from the world if not for Bring the Blog.

  • Russell Shaw: More and more real estate blogs will exist. There will still only be a select few that are actually being read by a wide audience. As more and more companies that sell blogs to agents come into existence more agents will “blog.” Most of the blogs available are not interesting to anybody, including the people who post on them. The exceptions are those writers who have something worthwhile to say and those who post relevant information (that others want).
  • Kris Berg: I said it a year ago, and I say it today. Blogging for the real estate agent will become as necessary as a website and, as in the case of agent websites, there will be some terrific, unique blogs with great appeal to the consumer and there will be many more canned, static blogs with little value. Blogging takes an extraordinary amount of time, energy, creativity and thought. The agents that choose the easy route, that hire others to do their writing and simply throw their checkbook at a template blogging platform with no customization, will find the exercise as effective in generating business and credibility as door-dropping notepads. I believe that those who make the effort, however, will find that they are more knowledgeable, better respected and more effective as agents. And they might just have a little fun along the way.
  • Doug Quance: It will be far more prevalent… perhaps 10-15% of the mainstream agents will have a blog — though far fewer will take the time to keep it current. Even then, so many agents write such boring drivel… and others use each post as if it were an advertisement.
  • Brian Brady: I think blogging will follow the MySpace popularity curve. That is, a HUGE increase in 12-18 months (as in exponentially increased readership to the 15th or 20th power) followed by a tapering off. I think we’ll have 10 times as many eyeballs on BloodhoundBlog in 3 year as we do now. That number should be consistent for years to come.
  • Greg Swann: It looks to me like there is going to be a strong trend toward local content this year, and, obviously, we intend to buck that trend entirely. Day-by-day, month-by-month, we’ll push more in the direction of an on-line magazine — original content presented in arresting prose. In three years, there may be zero, one or two real estate weblogs like BloodhoundBlog. The rest will be something different, I hesitate to guess what.

    I do think the webloggers’ ideal of transparency is at huge risk in the RE.net, not alone because too many of the people who will come on the scene in coming years will want to avoid the time commitment that good weblogging requires. To the extent that the RE.net gets flooded with for-pay or overly-promotional content, it will tend to self-destruct. Consumers may not always be able to tell a hawk from a handsaw — or a Bloodhound from a Bichon Frise — but they will never fail to spot — and switch away from — yet another commercial.

Thank you to all the Bloodhounds for this wonderfully informative interview! Once again, Greg, you’ve outdone yourself! Thanks again!

And if you can’t wait until tomorrow to read another interview, check out these posts from last year:

The Value of High Quality Photos for Real Estate Listings

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In previous writings for Rain City Guide on the subject of real estate photography, I’ve emphasized more of a ‘how to’ or ‘how to improve’ approach for Realtor’s who photograph their own listings. I want to shift my emphasis toward raising awareness regarding the value of high quality photography for listings and actually learning to recognize the difference between a bad photographic presentation of a listing and a really good one. Or to put it another way, acknowledging a poor photo presentation when it is and hopefully doing something about it. As a photographer who works almost exclusively with Realtors, I am continuously mystified by the disregard by so many Realtors locally and nationwide who seem to be clueless regarding the photos used to market their listing. To simply purchase a ‘point and shoot’ digital camera and walk around your seller’s home snapping away and expecting a satisfactory result is simply not going to cut it. In most cases there is more to it than that and unless you consider photography a hobby and worth time invested in the necessary skill development, you might be much better off hiring a professional photographer to shoot your listing. Many of the best Realtors do use professional photographers and they’re not fools.

This is a comment from my previous article by a St. Louis Realtor that deserves a more prominent view.

First time poster here: Glad to see some recognition of this problem! The most important thing an agent can do for their sellers today is to get lots of superior images up on the web. Here in St. Louis I am continually astounded at the plethora of dark, awful images, and “what were they thinking” photos of toilets, ceiling fans, etc, or NO PHOTOS at all! How do these [realtors] even get listings?

For most of my listings, I take a lot of my own photos, as I have a background in photography and image correction, so I have hi-res images for color flyers, but I ALSO have a great local photographer who comes in and shoots a batch of wonderful web-ready wideangle shots and virtual tours…

It’s worth the investment (typical agent–“you mean you actually PAY someone to shoot your listings? That costs MONEY!”) My business would be a lot less successful without quality photos.

And this is taken from a follow up email from Shannon. “It would help the profession if we all did better than this, although I’m happy many of my local competitors are still so bad at it! ”

This is really a great article by Norm Fisher, a Saskatoon realtor, with a virtual tour of some of the photos that were taken from the Saskatoon mls. “The Unbelievably Bad Real Estate Photography Hall of Fame”. Click on the links in the article to be taken to the virtual tour page. Norm’s humorous audio narration of the tour are really worth a visit.

A typical comment from a friend who have done an internet search for a home makes comments like, “I sure see a lot of dark, out of focus, awful photos’. Are they hiding something they don’t want me to see?”

I am getting calls from Realtors with listings from low end houses and small condos to spacious multi-million dollar homes. One might think that even a very basic home that is in decent condition deserves to be marketed well. If I’m the seller of a modest home, the sale of my home and the potential price is certainly important to me. I’d like to know that my Realtor is doing a professional job of marketing my home and taking care of the details. Lousy shots do not inspire confidence in the agent and the points a Realtor might earn by producing a good photographic presentation, or in many cases, simply hiring a professional photographer, are going to make it more likely that I’m going to be a happy customer. Happy customers equal referrals. And where are Realtors without referrals?

I’d like to conclude with one of my favorite photos of 2006, taken from a listing near Greenlake. This is one of the most ‘kid friendly, family friendly’ homes I’ve ever seen and it was a delight to see and photograph this whimsical, artsy abode. Doesn’t everyone wish they had swing and a chalkboard wall in their living room when they were kids?

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Mark is Radically Re-thinking “Lead Management

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Mark Lesswing just published an interesting article on thinking through how to treat online customers. Here’s a highlight:

In person-to-person interactions, negative intentions are easy detect. People leave long lines at the bank in disgust and dislike “pushy” sales clerks. The challenge of detecting gestures on the web lies in the anonymity of the medium. We fall into the bombardment mentality because we are trying to identify the consumer.

For those interested in the direction of online marketing, the whole thing is definitely worth a read…

NWMLS sets its sights on violators

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(Editor’s Note: I always get excited when I get the chance to introduce a new contributor to Rain city Guide! Today, I get to introduce Reba Haas who I’ve been following for quite a while over on Judy’s Book. She leads a local real estate team in Seattle and through her comments on RCG, she has proven that she can provide some always welcome insight into the local market! You can learn more about her at Team Reba, contact her directly at reba@teamreba.com , or simply leave a comment below!)

For those that are thinking I’m bringing back up the topic of NWMLS forms, I’m not. What I am interested in bringing up is the topic that the local MLS seems to be cracking down on violators of various rules. Not only are they cracking down and following up more on violations but they’re not providing as many “get out of jail free” cards – meaning they are doing less suspensions on fines even for first time offenders.

[photopress:handcuffs.jpg,full,alignright]Am I the only one who has noticed this? Is anyone familiar with the reasons why they are starting to get tighter on policies now? I’d LOVE to know but that is secondary to my delight in that it is happening. California recently enacted some changes to licensing requirements for new agents in an effort to improve the quality of agents entering the field and Oregon has done so as well – but rather than decreasing new applicants they’ve gone up, most likely because Oregon is still doing well with respect to real estate values increasing. If the local membership groups that we all belong to want to help bring up the standards I am all for it.

An '07 Resolution: Convey quality

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The opposing messages are crystal clear

Everyday I drive to work I see the sign on the right competing with the sign on the left.

The original traditional real estate post and sign on the right was knocked down nearly every week due to our blustery weather. Finally, probably in frustration or embarrassment or both, the owner or agent drove two treated 4×4’s into the ground, nailed a piece of plywood up and nailed or stapled the “For sale sign” on top along with the special features cascading below. To boot, if you look closely at the grainy picture, you can see the actual for sale sign down on the ground again.

Both of these homes are high end properties. Both are listed well over a million. Perhaps Robbie’s prior post regarding Realtor/Broker budgeting on technology and marketing is quite true.

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