Tag Archives: blog

Starting with Community Outreach

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Even before we were done building out the InsideBu website, I recommended that Madison start doing some research. And I started by advising him to fill up his sidepanel with links. My logic is that the process of building up a blogroll forces a new blogger to read other bloggers. The fact that it also also has the benefit of building up some good will with prominent local bloggers is just icing on the cake!

Here is the advice I gave him:

In the first week, there is no need for any blogging (although you should be writing a few posts just to get the blogging muscles exercised!). My recommendation is to spend a few hours this week researching the online competition for your area. At the end of Week 1, I would expect for your sidepanel to be filled with a bunch of links! (For background, see this blog post on Linkation!).

To give you an idea of where I’m going, I recently revived a bit of the neighborhood focus on RCG, which resulted in these Neighborhood Roundup posts. You simply will not find as many neighborhood blogs in Malibu (any?), but that doesn’t mean you should slack on the links… In terms of where to start, here is where my gut says should be the order of importance:

  • Local Bloggers
  • Celebrity Bloggers
  • Project Blogger Participants
  • Local News sites
  • Local Real Estate Professionals
  • Los Angeles bloggers

Some places to start looking for bloggers and other sidepanel links:

To see how Madison has implemented these recommendations of Project Blogger, check out the sidepanel of InsideBu!

Steps to Hosting Your Own WordPress Blog

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It has been so long since I initially set up a blog on a new server that I had to pretty much re-learn everything in order to build InsideBu. The process isn’t all that hard if you’re comfortable with terms like FTP and database. If not, there are many great blogging options for people who will host your blog for you (The Top Producer team I work with will happily host a WordPress blog under your URL as part of their real estate website product!) and both WordPress.com and Blogger offer good, free blogs (hosted under their URL).

BTW, I feel compelled to mention that this blog post is LONG LONG LONG overdue as I promised it way back on December 15, 2005, but never could put together all the steps into a blog post and never had the need to build a new blog from scratch.

Here are my running notes taken directly from a Google Doc I used to document the process (but cleaned up to add links and delete out usernames/passwords)…

We choose to use Yahoo Hosting because I’ve heard good things from other bloggers about the service. I was less concerned about the price (good hosting options for a blog differ by at most $5/month), and really focused on ease-of-use. I’d heard that Yahoo has a really easy install for WordPress (WP) blogs and that definitely appealed to me!

However, I was immediately disappointed that the blog they install was an old version of WP and not in the root directory. This would mean that I would need to do a manual upgrade before even blogging! OUCH! Anyway, I ended up bypassing Yahoo’s “easy install” option and instead, I installed the latest version of WP from scratch.

The manual install required three extra steps:

  1. I needed to create an ftp user using Yahoo’s admin panel (easy!)
  2. I needed to created an “empty” MySQL database (which also required me to install PHPMyAdmin) and note the name of this database (again, all of this was done through Yahoo’s admin panel)
  3. I needed to install use an FTP client (I used the free and open source FileZilla)

None of these were particularly hard and I noticed that Yahoo provided help files for all three of these tasks should you need that kind of thing.

With the back-end ready, I simply followed the instructions for the 5 minute install of WordPress…

This required me to create an admin profile for the blog (again, pretty straightforward).

At this point, InsideBu.com was live and functional, but with a generic theme and no plugins…

Here are some of the steps I took to spice up the blog and get it ready for launch!

  1. I installed and activated some basic plugins.
    • To install I simply used FileZilla to drag and drop the files from my hard-drive to Yahoo’s servers. Once configured for a server, FileZilla operates somewhat like the Explorer tool on Windows.
    • To activate, I simply clicked the “activate” button within the “Plugins” tab of InsideBu’s Admin panel.
  2. The plugins were:
  3. I tried to update and optimze the permalink structure, but this screwed up something on the new version of WordPress and I couldn’t find the .htaccess file to update (long story!), so I gave up on this one for the time being and used the generic linking structure (i.e. “?p=33”)
  4. Installed and activated the appropriate theme! In our case, Madison choose Orange Sunrise. This required me to
    1. download the theme
    2. unzipp it
    3. ftp the files to the “themes” folder on Yahoo’s servers
    4. activate it on the wp-admin panel
  5. Create a tagline
    • For SEO reasons, I included the words “Real Estate” and “Malibu” but my phrasing could easily be improved!
  6. Unselect “comment author must have previously approved comment!”
    • Want to do everything possible to encourage comments early and often! 🙂
  7. Organize sidebar items via the widget feature (very slick!)
    • I’ve put links at the very top for now closely followed by comments. As the site gets more comments, I’d flip this order in order to encourage community participation!

Those were my steps to creating a brand-new blog using the free and open-source tools available from WordPress. It is probably too complicated for most agents, but probably not too complicated for many of agents that are reading this blog.

Choosing a Name for Your Blog

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The perfect time to name your blog is after you’ve blogged for a while and really developed a personality around your site. Only after a few months of regular blogging will most agents be ready to give their website a name.

However, the time necessarily to develop a personality (before a name!) doesn’t coincide with the reality of Project Blogger or Google. While it is kind of like putting the cart before the horse, the reality is that the first thing we had to do was develop a name (that included an available URL!).

So, how did we end up at InsideBu.com?

Here are some of the ideas I planted with Madison to pounder:

  • First brainstorm on ideas, and then (after you’ve assembled a bunch of ideas!) check to see if the URL is available.
  • Make sure it has a community focus (i.e. we’re building a community destination website!)
  • Take yourself out of the URL… Make sure that you’re creating a site that others will want to take part (Don’t name it after yourself or your business!)
  • Think of the niche you want to create with your blog… who are you trying to reach?
  • Are there any local names you can capitalize on? (things like local high-school mascots, community nicknames, community centers, etc.)
  • Keep the URL short and sweat

A good name for a community blog will make a “local” think, this website “get’s it” and at the same time, won’t alienate people who are not local.

After many emails back and forth, we decided to capitalize on the name for Malibu (“the bu”) that is used by the locals (as in, “we’re heading back to the bu”).

However, TheBu.com was already taken (and doesn’t convey any “actionable words” that really tell you what the website is about), so we started thinking of other ways to connect the website name to the community. In Madison’s case, our plan is to have the blog focus on the unique aspects of Malibu. I happen to think that the beautiful beaches and the celebrity element of Malibu are going to be huge drivers of traffic and links into the future.

We tried a whole bunch of different words like “connect” and “community”, and combinations like “BuLife” and “LiveBu” but I happen to think that “inside” conveyed both the exclusive nature of the community along with the opportunity for insight that only a real estate agent can convey. Hence: We decided to go with InsideBu.com.

Maybe the blog will change focus into the future and the name will “feel” wrong, but thanks to the fact that we’re already seeing some LinkLove (in particular from celebrity bloggers), we’re going to have to live with the name and URL into the future!

Next up: Setting up a WordPress blog from scratch… (I’ve been taking thorough notes! 🙂 )

Neighborhood Roundup: Seattle Uncovers a Funny Bone

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Due to the success of last week’s neighborhood roundup, I thought I’d make another attempt…

After a confusing vote on the Viaduct replacement, the Need to Know Seattle Condos blog lets us know about the grassroots movement to replace the viaduct with condos… This type of mixed-use development is sure to please the folks at City Comforts (temporarily, known as Viaduct, the blog)…

[photopress:pizza_bike.jpg,thumb,alignright]The Capitol Hill Seattle folks are shocked to get fast (and dry) pizza delivery in Seattle. “Because the Pagliacci delivery guy refuses to purchase a fender for the rear tire of his bike (he claims the tips aren’t that good), our pizza not only takes a long time to get delivered, but the cardboard box arrives soaked whenever it rains! The fact that Palermo’s delivery guy uses a car is a big plus (even if it doesn’t please our social sensibilities!).” Do you think it would help the Pagliacci delivery guy to know that he could get free maintenance advice for his bike at the Garfield Community Center on Sunday afternoons?

Seth over at the Seattlest loves the rain. (He obviously doesn’t order pizza from Pagliacci very often).

A much more prominent Seth seems more than a little concerned that Ballard’s Archie McPhee is selling Cap’n Danger Stunt Monkey’s for kids. The photo says tells the story…

The West Seattle Blog lets us know about the “West Seattle Pet Rodeo and Snooty Walk”. Seriously, here’s a link to the event…

Others in West Seattle are looking to return a missing fowl.

Ballard Avenue uncovers this (I’m not sure how to describe it!) video from Finland. Thanks to the fact that my wife loves this video, I’ve watched it more times than I care to admit…

Today’s saddest news in the Seattle neighborhood blog scene… Rumor has it that the writers behind the Seattlest and Metroblogging Seattle decided it would be a fun April Fool’s prank if they switched blogs for a day. However, the joke backfired when readers couldn’t tell the difference…

And finally, this post just missed the entry time for the Carnival of the Cities that is going to be hosted by The Seattle Traveler… (there’s a carnival for everything!) What a bummer!

Real Estate Blogs That Answer Questions

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[photopress:Blog_Cola.gif,thumb,alignright] Searching for answers to your Real Estate Questions? Here are a few tips to make finding answers a little easier and more productive.

Try to read blogs that are written by real estate professionals who are licensed in your State, or at least in an area with similar agency laws. Instead of Googling all night to find a blog what just happens to go into detail about the topic you want to know more about, find Real Estate Blogs That Answer Questions. Ask a direct question in the comments section of several blogs, and remember to bookmark them to go back and retrieve the answers.

Of course here at Rain City Guide, rarely does a question go unanswered. We are very attentive to comments and try to answer questions best we can. Unfortunately, Real Estate is one of the few professional arenas that does not permit getting second opinions. If your doctor wants to cut something off or out of you, you get to go get a second opinion from another doctor. But Realtors, by their Code of Ethics, are not permitted to give advices if you are the client of another Realtor. So if you ask a question like: “My agent told me this, but I want your opinion”, there’s a strong possibility that the Blogger will not be able to contradict the advices of your agent.

That being said, let’s find some Real Estate Blogs, besides Rain City Guide, that answer real estate questions. If you are in New York City, it is very difficult for you to get info from blogs that are not written by agents who operate there, because NYC is unto itself regarding the rules of play in real estate. Mainly because the contracts and closings are attorney based, they have no MLS system AND they don’t have Buyer Agency. So for New Yorkers, Best Real Estate Blog that answers questions is: Noah Rosenblatt’s Urban Digs (he even has a live chat feature). Curbed is a popular NYC site, but it looks like your questions will be answered by other readers, for the most part. Christine Forgione’s NYHouses4Sale doesn’t seem to get many questions, but I’m pretty sure she’d answer them if she did. So give her a try.

Where are the California Blogs that talk back? You’ve got Kris and Steve Berg down in San Diego. You’ve got Kevin Boer in the Bay Area You would think with a State as big as California, you would have a slew of good blogs. I see a few people blogging away, but they are just blogging at you like a flashing billboard. Luring the search engines and not allowing comments, or just plain old selling and not providing real info. Oh well. Maybe someone out there has some suggestions that will show up in the comments.

Of course Arizona is just crawling with blog talent. You’ve got BloodhoundBlog where you can pick who you want advices from, but if it’s Arizona real estate you want to talk about, I’d be asking Cathleen. Todd Tarson is so up front and out there, he’d probably tell you what color underwear he has on if you asked him. If I had real questions about real estate in Mohave County, Arizona I’d be talking to Todd on his blog.

Charles Turner’s doing a decent job over in Portland. When he gets a comment, he answers honestly and openly. Teresa Boardman’s blog in St. Paul Minnesota is good, but the comments seem to be a bunch of agents talking to agents, and not much from consumers. If you are buying or selling real estate in St. Paul, try asking off topic questions on any of Teresa’s posts. I’m sure you’d get a good answer. Here’s a great blog of bloggers talking to other bloggers. Who is Tom? What does Tom do? I’m stretching a bit with Francis Flynn Thorsen’s Realty Gram, but throw some questions at her and I think the answers would come.

In fact, if you are in a state where there are real estate blogs that aren’t answering consumer issues and questions, I strongly encourage you to just start asking those questions. You can help develop more Real Estate Blogs That Answer Questions, simply by ASKING some questions on any blog that you can find. Maybe they will get the point that “Enquiring Minds Want to Know”.

Two Years and Still Learning…

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Mind if I reminisce a bit?

When I started Rain City Guide two years ago today, I honestly didn’t see the big picture.

I built the site because I *knew* I had to market my wife’s budding real estate business and I didn’t want to spend any money… (Even if I wasn’t a cheapskate at heart, my job as a transportation planner didn’t provide a lot extra money to begin with). Blogging was cheap and interesting (and I’ll admit it helped that I was familiar with the technology having hand-coded travel blogs going back as far back as 2000), but most importantly it would allow me to focus my wife’s marketing energy on something that wouldn’t siphon money from my family’s bank account.

But then I started doing some research and I realized that I could probably still make an impact because of my first-mover status. There were a few Seattle agents blogging at the time (Jim Reppond and Beau Betts come to mind…), but I could tell that neither of them were really harnessing the power of blogs to function as a local newspaper on a very niche topic.

It has become cliché to mention that in this latest incarnation of the internet (web2.0 for lack of a better world), the user has become the content creator. One of the lessons I try to drive home in my seminars is that this same “user” is you. Thanks to the power of blogs, you can now become the publisher of your own newspaper (What would Abbie do with wifi?).

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 skill 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.

So, what is the big picture? Enjoy the journey because the destination is unknown!

My advice? Enjoy yourself, make friends, get an education, invoke change in yourself, ask questions, play hard, experiment, and, most importantly, be prepared to fail.

But I’d be doing myself and everyone else a big disservice if the best I could do after two years of blogging was pontificate for a few paragraphs. The reality is that the thing I most value in RCG is the community. Through 1,010 posts (1,011 when I hit publish!) and 9970 comments, I’d like to think that we’ve not only created one hell of an interesting conversation, but that we’ve managed to learn a few things along the way. Thank you for participating!

Subscribe to Comments via Email

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I just installed a long requested plugin that allows a user (YOU!) to subscribe to comments on any given post. The idea is that after you’ve written a comment you can opt to also be notified via email every time a new comment is added to that post. It is not for everyone, but if this is your cup-of-tea, then try it out and let me know if you’re having any issues…

Inman has Gone Blog Wild

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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.

Use Your Sent-Items Folder as Inspiration

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It was so much fun to stop off in Seattle last week to give the seminar in downtown. Meeting up with Rhonda and Jillyane (and potentially a new contributor I’ll introduce soon!) was awesome!

One of the tidbits I share with the real estate professionals in the audience that seems to resonate well (at least based on the feedback I’m getting) is when I explain to them that even the non-bloggers in the audience are already writing blog posts, but they are not getting credit for it. Here’s my logic in a nutshell…

Assumption #1: Writing a blog post is just like sending a webmail (via Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, etc), except that it is one step easier. With a webmail you need to (1) click on “write” or “compose” message, (2) fill in the email address of recipient, (3) fill in the title of email, (4) write your message, and (5) click “send”. Blogging is one step simpler because you do not need for step 2, i.e. fill in the email address of the recipient since a blog post is essentially an “email to the world.” Otherwise, all the steps are essentially the same with the final step being “publish” instead of “send”.

Assumption #2: The sent-items folder for most real estate professionals is already filled with good stuff that they are already experts on… For most real estate agents, the sent-items folder of their email program is likely to find information on neighborhoods, mortgage and closing process, local events, etc..

Because most agents are already sharing lots of their knowledge via email and because a blog post is nothing more than an email to the world, hopefully, you’ll start to see how I can say that most agents are already blogging… The idea that they are not getting credit for their knowledge stems from the fact that if a professional has a lot of stored up information in their “sent items” folder, then the search engines and other bloggers can’t give them credit for this knowledge. The last bit is critical to the seminar, but not necessarily to this blog post… 😉

Interestingly, both Steve Rubel (Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center) and Greg Swann (Feed guarding: Protecting your weblog content from theft — or worse fates . . .) wrote articles today that either demonstrate the blurring of email and blogging (i.e. blogging via email) or take it for granted (i.e. RSS syndication).

By the way, I’ve been taking my own advice about unleashing the “knowledge” from my sent-items folder over on the seminar blog by publishing answers to many of the questions that I’ve been getting from seminar participants. I’ve been inundated with email questions lately which is great for providing me blog content, but not so good in terms of providing me time to answer everyone quickly! 🙂