Tag Archives: blog

Twitter on a Real Estate Blog?

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Over the slow Christmas weekend, we added a new feature to RCG and it generated so many interesting conversations on Twitter, that I thought I’d bring the conversation to a blog post.

The new feature is the Twitter widget on the sidebar. Here’s a snapshot:

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The current implementation shows all the tweets from this Twitter list: @tyr/rain-city-guide, which takes all “original” tweets from current contributors plus “replies” to others on the list.

The type of feedback I *though* I would get from the other contributors was: “awesome! More Seattle people reading my tweets!” but instead, the reactions were somewhat more tame… with initial reactions being along the lines of Ardell’s reaction: “I have lots of fun on twitter and say things inappropriate for RCG.”

However, the contributors were kind to me and seem more than willing to play this out a bit, but now it’s time for feedback from the rest of the community… Here are some of the options I see for including Twitter on RCG going forward:

1. “Do Nothing” option. i.e. keep “as is”

2. Show all replies from contributors. If I add each author individually to the backend of the plugin (instead of use a Twitter list), it should include all their replies so the feed would include more people and not look like “RCG contributors talking to each other.” (However, if you check out my twitter feed, you’ll see that I talk with people from all over the country, so it will add a lot more noise to the list. Ditto for Ardell)

3. Remove the Twitter feed from RCG. (Kevin Tomlinson voted for this option when he said: “@ARDELLd mixing mediums ain’t the way to go. imo“

4. Include larger Seattle community. I could use a much more general list (i.e. more than just RCG contributors).  I’ve created a bunch of “Seattle” lists associated with the Rain City Guide Twitter account. We could modify one of these lists and include the updates from anyone on one of these lists, the benefit being the feed wouldn’t just show RCG contributors talking to each other, but the negative being there’s likely to be a lot more “noise” in the updates as more people are contributing to the feed.   As someone in the RCG community (yes, that’s you if you’re reading this!), would you be interested in being on the list???

Do you have a better option?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the best way to bring Twitter into a real estate blog!

Rain City Radio with Justin of the Capitol Hill Blog at 4pm!

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Capitol Hill Blog ScreenshotAs I mentioned last week, this next episode of Rain City Radio will feature Justin of the Capitol HIll Blog!  So, if you want to learn about the ins-and-outs of this great neighborhood in Seattle, then check in with us at 4pm today (July 8th).

And if you want to call in to ask your own questions of our guest, then you can follow the simple instuctions on this page… and if all you want to do is stream the conversation live, then a few minutes before the show, you should see that option on the talkshoe widget on our sidepanel!

One of the things I’m most excited to learn about is the new format that their using for this community site.   It’s got all kinds of ways for people to interact on a very local level and I’ll be curious to get Justin’s feedback on how this is working.

UPDATE!

The recorded conversation is now live and you can listen to it using the player on the sidepanel!    Justin was a most gracious guest and shared lots of great insights about Capitol Hill with us… including the best place to get waffles!  The new platform their running at Capitol Hill blog is extremely interesting and has spurred a lot of ideas for ways I might be able to add similar features to RCG…

Rain City Radio: A West Seattle Story

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I really enjoyed today’s conversation with Tracy Records of the West Seattle Blog.  Tracy shared a ton of great stories with us and I learned a ton…

Click here to listen to the entire interview!

And below are some links to some of the things we discussed:

We covered a lot of great topics in the interview including her perspective on the elements of the media that has fundamentally changed.  As someone with 25 years experience in the traditional media space AND a successful local blogger, her perspective was fascinating!

Click here to listen to the entire interview!

*Note: If you’re wondering why this post looks different then when it was originally published, I didn’t like the outline that I originally provided, so I changed it around a bunch.

A West Seattle Conversation!

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Screenshot from the West Seattle Blog

I’m extremely excited about tomorrow’s Rain City conversation!

I invite the entire RCG community to join us at 4pm on Tuesday for a conversation with Tracy Record, the local community expert who runs the West Seattle blog.

My plan is to talk with her about the vibe of West Seattle, what’s she’s learned running the blog and what some of her favorite neighborhood places.  In addition, I’ll open up the phone lines to YOU so please come with your questions for this person behind this wonderful local resource!

If you’d like to join the conversation, then please consider calling in.   All the details on our the Rain City conversation page of Talkshoe!

And to answer the most common question from last week: You can listen into the conversation by calling in using ANY phone… However, if you want to get on-the-air, then it really helps me if you log into TalkShoe so that you can ping me in the chat room when you have a question or comment! Again, all the details (and there aren’t many) are on the Rain City conversation page of Talkshoe!

By the way, I’ll announce our guest for next week’s show tomorrow on the show!   I have a feeling that this series of podcasts are going to turn into something really special so set aside 4pm on Tuesdays so you can always take part!   And if you haven’t tried taking part in a group podcast yet, I highly recommend logging into this show.  You might be surprised just how much you enjoy it!

UPDATE: You can listen to this interview by clicking here or going to the post where I outlined the interview about with Tracy from the West Seattle blog

A while back I spelled Seatttle with…

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three “t’s” on the sidepanel and was surprised just how much traffic it brought. Because I was more concerned with being professional than traffic, I fixed the type, but Mary just reminded me of the effectiveness of the error, so I thought I’d try it out again! 🙂

And if you are looking for Seattle real estate information, dont’ be discouraged if you landed on this page! 😉 We’ve got tons of great stuff on this site!

To highlight just a few: Ardell gives local condition stats ever Sunday, Rhonda provides mortgage rate updates every Friday, and I wrote a post about moving to Seatttle a while back that is loaded with questions, answers, insights, dangers, etc. from people. (There are almost 500 comments to date!)…

Wow! What a ride!

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About an hour ago I walked out of Move’s offices for the last time as an employee. For those of you who’ve been around RCG for a while, you’ll remember that I took a position as Director of Consumer Innovations at Move with great enthusiasm back in April of 2006. Taking the position was a huge deal for me and my family and now that I’ve decided to leave,

The amount I learned working with the people at Move was incredible. I enjoyed learning a tremendous amount about product development, marketing, PR, corporate development and much more in little over a year-and-a-half. I was laughing with another employee earlier today because we both felt we had gotten an MBA’s worth of education in an incredible short-time period.

Interestingly, I’m actually more bullish on Move now then at any time since I started getting my hands dirty at the company. The new members of the executive team are bringing on top-notch talent and starting to make some hard, but necessarily, decisions around product development and business models. My decision to leave had very little to do with the long-term prospects of the company and much more to do with the role that I would be able to play in these changes. (Plus, it didn’t hurt that some opportunities opened up in the world of consulting that were just too good to pass up.) 🙂

Talking of outside opportunities… Now that I’m no longer affiliated with Move, I plan to talk (a lot) more about ways that real estate professionals can engage consumers using online technologies. But rather than clutter up this perfectly good blog about Seattle real estate with my industry rambles, I’ve decided to focus those conversations on 4realz.net.

Please consider joining me on 4realz.net. I promise to be interesting enough that it will become a must-read (and a must-feed) for anyone interested in the future fringes of the real estate industry.

I have no intention of turning this into…

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a blog about southern California real estate, but I do have a non-fire related update from Southern California.

Brad Inman and I are going to be speaking at Beverly Hills REALTOR Association’s Head of High Office Tea this Thursday afternoon. From everything I can gather, it is going to be a pretty posh set-up at the Peninsula Hotel. The plan is for Brad to speak about the status of the industry for about an hour, myself to speak for about an hour and tea and conversation making up the last hour.

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Tickets are $40 and just about sold out.

Also, I shouldn’t admit this, but I honestly have not given much thought about what I’m going to say just yet… Conveniently, back in August I did a presentation on using blogs to build up an online brand for the KW Mega Technology Camp that came off well (and took about 45 minutes including questions from others who were on stage). I think I’ll adjust that presentation a bit but go with that general outline. If anyone who was at that presentation wants to give me feedback, I’d love to hear it! 🙂

One day every pothole will get its moment in the limelight

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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…