Tag Archives: RCG

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:

Picture 5

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!

Join us this Friday for a Tweetup at Elysian Brewery

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Elysian BreweryI’m going to be in town this week and thought it would be fun to organize a tweetup this Friday at the Elysian Brewery in Capitol Hill… and you’re invited!

More than likely, there will be more than a few real estate folks, but everyone is invited to join us.  Here are the details:

  • Date: Friday, October 23, 2009
  • Time: 4:30pm – 7:30pm
  • Location: Elysian Brewery
  • Street: 1221 E Pike St.

And while there’s no need to RSVP, I would love to know if you’re planning to show up!   You can either leave a comment, or use the tweetup and/or Facebook invites to let us know you’ll be there as well as invite others:

The RCG meetups of the past have not only been a blast, but I’ve always ended up meeting great people.  In particular,  I’m thinking of the Ballard one where a huge number of people who became contributors showed up, and the last-minute event we put together with Sami Inkman of Trulia when he dared show up in Seattle (Trulia definitely didn’t have many supporters among agents back then!).   There was also the meetup last January, which I totally missed out on.  (Don’t let that be you this time!)  🙂

I’m sure we’re going to have a fun evening and hope to see you there!

RCG: Now with Seattle listing goodness

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It may be late in the night as I start to write this post, but I’m so excited because I just flipped the switch on some pretty big changes to Rain City Guide.  They include both a complete redesign as well as one of the coolest features I’ve ever added to RCG:  A very, slick home search tool!

You know when you meet up with someone and you almost instantly bond with them… Well, a few months ago, I had one of those bonding experiences when I met with a broker out of Portland named Garron Selliken who gave me a demo of the custom home search tool he had built.  Our conversations reminded me of the good ‘ol days when real estate search wasn’t nearly as stale and was actually pushing boundaries. Not surprisingly, we immediately started hatching a plan for launching his home search tool on RCG!

Hatching a plan to launch something interesting on RCG happens all the time, so I wasn’t too surprised. However, I became a bit concerned a few days later when I realized that Garron was serious and this idea had legs.  And just a few weeks later, the new site has been launched!

It just so happens that Garron and I are meeting up this week in San Francisco (for only the 2nd time in person) and I’m positive I’m going to take some time aside with him to talk about why we’re so excited about the changes to RCG! As a broker and software developer, Garron really does rock. He has an awesome team and we have some interesting ideas for improving the site over the next few weeks and months.

But for now, it’s way too late for me to continue writing, so I’ll end the post by asking you to play with the revised site, kick the tires on the home search tool and let us know what you think.   If you see anything that looks broken or just not working like you want it to, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Top 3 Reason to Love Facebook Pages

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We already know the folks at RCG love twitter, and while I like twitter, the marketer in me has completely fallen for Facebook Pages (note: these are a very different beast than Facebook profiles)… and if you’re running a small business, there are many reasons you should be interested in FB Pages too.

The three main reasons I’m been putting a ton of energy into building out Facebook Pages for my clients lately are:

  • Traffic: at this point traffic from social media feeds (like twitter’s stream and Facebook’s newsfeeds) are generating more traffic than RSS feeds for almost every website I run.
  • Engagement: For new sites, it’s becoming harder-and-harder to build a “community” on your own site without tapping into the communities where they already exist (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
  • Reach. Unlike Twitter, Facebook Pages allow you to get into the highlights and recommendation sections of fans… allowing you to reach the often elusive “friends of fans.”   For most small businesses, the friends of your fans are a ridiculously relevant audience and even more relevant than traditional SEO traffic.

rain city guide on facebook

By the way, I was inspired to create this post because I JUST created a Facebook Page for Rain City Guide and of course, I’m hoping you’ll join up and become a fan.

Similar to the Rain City Guide blog, I’m going to be using the page to engage with folks about Seattle real estate.   It’s not that we “need” another place for a conversation, but rather an experiment to see what it will look like when we take the typical RCG conversation to the Facebook audience.

Of  course, many of the stories on the Page will be about RCG articles, but truth be told, I’ll be looking to link out to any real estate articles I think will interest people interested in Seattle real estate.  So, if Facebook is the place you’d like to engage, join the conversation by becoming a fan of RCG!

And if you’re interested in a seeing a more developed implementation of Facebook Pages, check out the business page I created around my social media consulting and speaking.  In just a few months, it’s grown to over 1200 folks who are consistently engaging in ideas around using social media to generate business.

Why Connect with Facebook?

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connect-with-fbIf you’re been to RCG recently, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that I added Facebook Connect to the sidepanel.   I really want to invite you all to use this feature, so I thought I’d let you know why I added it:

  1. I’m a Facebook addict, love the service, and enjoy connecting with others.  I’m thinking there’s at least a few other RCG community members who would enjoy connecting via the service
  2. I’ve been looking for a way to give a “carrot” to folks who properly identify themselves when they leave comments. I don’t want to “punish” anonymous commenters, I just want to give a bonus to those who aren’t anonymous.

The carrot we’re now offering is two-fold:

  1. Your comment will bypass almost all of the moderation filters that occasionally slow down a comment from showing up immediately on the site.
  2. Your profile link will be of the “dofollow” variety.

For most of the folks in the RCG community, I’m positive you’re here because you love the conversation and could care less about the positive link luv RCG can give you.   Nonetheless, if you’re willing to identify yourself with your “real” identity, then these two things are just two small carrots we’re now offering…

So, please consider taking advantage by clicking on the “Connect with Facebook” button to the right and follow the simple instructions.  As a bonus, after you “connect”, you’ll be able to update your profile on RCG with a few additional fields that will make it easier than ever to connect with others from the RCG community.

And finally, I launched FB Connect on the site despite the fact that I’m not 100% happy with it yet. Here are some problems I’ve found and/or things I’m working on:

  1. FB Connect plays funny (or doesn’t play at all!) with early versions of Internet Explorer, (especially IE 6.0 and below).  This might sound harsh, but my solution is to beg for you to get and use Firefox (or even Chrome),  but if you’re not willing to do that, at least get the latest version of IE
  2. The feature that let’s you “add your comment to your Facebook feed” was giving some folks some problems, so I disabled it.  I really like the idea of this feature, so I’ll work on troubleshooting exactly what was causing problems, although I think it had something to do with old versions of IE (see previous comment!).
  3. I really want the avatar that shows up next to users to default to the “gravatar” instead of the FB avatar.  My thought here is that many folks have a “fun” avatar on Facebook, but might prefer to have a more consistent avatar on a business site like RCG.  I spent some time trying to get this work and while I made some progress, it’s still not working well enough for me to feel comfortable launching… but hopefully soon.

I have a feeling there’s going to be lots more to come in terms of taking advantage of Facebook tools within RCG in the future. Hopefully, you’ll play along and if there is something that doesn’t appear to be working right or a feature you’d like to see, please let me know!

Reminder Rain City Guide MeetUp Tonight

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Where: Crossroads Food Court (behind 1/2 Price Books)

When: 6:30 P.M.

Crossroads is at 156th Ave. NE and NE 8th Street in Bellevue

We likely will be at the street entrance end of the Food Court, where there are all tables and no food booths.  We will have RCG signs on the tables in the area.

I put (behind 1/2 Price Books) as it is easier to see that from the parking lot, then to describe the exterior entrance to the Food Court area to the left of 1/2 Price Books.

If you are in the Food Court and looking for us, just call my cell 206-910-1000.

If anyone has been to a MeetUp and has any advice for us, that would be great.  I know Redfin and Seattle Bubble have had them and they just hang out together and people find them.  I expect we will talk about just about anything loan, real estate and anything else related.  Blogging.  Whatever.  I expect if anyone NOT RCG has a topic, their topic gets preference.  If no one suggests a topic, I’m sure even if it is just Rhonda, Jillayne, Robbie, Craig and me plus a few agents, we’l have plenty to talk about 🙂

Hope you can make it!

Raining Updates: Ads on RCG, Contributing Update, Footer Candy, New Feed, Email Tools, the HUGE list of RCG plugins and more!

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There are so many updates to give, I decided to record a video to describe them all:

In the video, I talk about a number of changes and updates I’ve made to RCG recently including:

  • Rain Drop Ads on RCG… and if you’re one of the first five who signs up, then I’m willing to offer you a particularly good deal!
  • New page on how to get involved in becoming a contributor to RCG
  • Update to the theme by putting the active contributor information at the footer
  • Added MyBlogLog widget to the footer (as well as a few buttons)
  • Switched the main RCG feed over to Feedburner
  • Made it easier to email articles to others. Look for the “Email this Post” prompt at the bottom of every post
  • Speaking of email, you can know subscribe to RCG by email
  • Cleaned up the categories and hopefully made them more useful

And finally, because I haven’t done this in a while, I thought I’d list out all the plugins I’m currently using on Rain City Guide.

Plugin Description
Akismet Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. By Matt Mullenweg.
All in One SEO Pack Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By Michael Torbert.
Exclude Pages from Navigation Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. By Simon Wheatley.
FeedBurner FeedSmith Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Get Recent Comments Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar. By Krischan Jodies.
Google XML Sitemaps This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. By Arne Brachhold.
Maintenance Mode Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. By Michael Wöhrer.
Photopress Photopress adds some image handling tools to WordPress, including a popup upload and browse tool, a random image template function, and a simple album. By Isaac Wedin.
Post-Plugin Library Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.  By Rob Marsh, SJ.
Register Plus WordPress 2.5+ ONLY. Enhance your Registration Page. Add Custom Logo, Password Field, Invitation Codes, Disclaimer, Captcha Validation, Email Validation, User Moderation, Profile Fields and more. By Skullbit.
RSS Footer Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles. By Joost de Valk.
Seesmic Enables Seesmic video in wordpress. By Seesmic Inc.
Similar Posts Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. By Rob Marsh, SJ.
Subscribe To Comments Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.  By Mark Jaquith.
WordPress.com Stats Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
WordPress Database Backup On-demand backup of your WordPress database.  By Austin Matzko.
wp-cache Very fast cache module. By Ricardo Galli Granada.
WP-EMail Allows people to recommand/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP Ajax Edit Comments Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments. By Ronald Huereca.
WP Status Notifier Sends email notification of posts pending review. By iDope.

With the exception of just one plugin that will remain nameless for now, that’s the full list. If you have any questions about why or how I use any of the plugins, feel free to ask away!

UPDATE:

  • I JUST realized I also forgot to mention the “new” RCG search box.    I added a Google custom search box that searches not just RCG, but contributor websites and blogs as well.   It’s pretty slick and I was even able to integrate it with the site so that the search shows up on right on the page.

Rain City Guide Eastside MeetUp

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We’re planning a Rain City Guide “Meet Up” at Crossroads in Bellevue on February 4th at 6:30 p.m. 

I know Rhonda, Jillayne and I will be there.  Possibly Robbie and/or Galen, and others from RCG.

Pretty informal, as most “MeetUps” are.  No pre-planned “agenda” unless someone wants to submit a few topics they would like covered.

I picked Crossroads vs. “a pub”, as I don’t like to encourage drinking and driving.  It will be in the food court area, so people coming from work can grab a bite to eat. 

Hope you can make it, and we will post a reminder the day before or day of “the event”.  Anyone from RCG who is planning to attend should send me an email.  It would be nice if readers could RSVP in the comments here, so I could “reserve” tables as needed, but RSVP is not required.

We’ve never done one of these before (or I haven’t) so if anyone has any suggestions based on their previous experience at “MeetUps”, advices would be much appreciated.

RCG's New Look!

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So, it finally happened.  After a few years of the same theme, I gave RCG a new look last night.

There are more than a few changes to the site, but the one that will probably stick out the most are:

  • New theme.  I based it on the Andreas theme by Andreas Viklund.  It’s the same theme I’m using on 4realz.net, although I modified it a bit before launching it on 4realz and even more modifications before launching it on RCG.
  • New header graphic.  I switched out the photos.  As part of the process, some of the contributors gave me some photos to use.   Deborah Burns was extremely helpful and sent me dozens of photos of which I used both the farmers market and the space needle.
  • Updated the color scheme! (If you’re curious, I based the color pattern on color combo 220)
  • Author mini-bio at the bottom of ever post. I replaced the one photo that was at the top of every post with a “About the author” section at the bottom of each post.  Not only will this make it easier than ever to learn more about the RCG contributors, but it will also mean we won’t have the funny formatting issues that sometimes came with having a photo at the top-right of ever post.
  • Page navigation.  By moving the page navigation from tabs at the top to the left side, we’ll be able to do a bunch more with page navigation in the near future on the site.

I’m sure there’s even more, but I just wanted to pop off a quick note to get everyone up to speed.

Interestingly, in the process of looking at photos for the new theme, I came across this screenshot of the original RCG site (back when we had only 2 posts!).  My how times have changed!  😉

Rain City Guide's original theme!

Rain City Guide's original theme

Update:

Just realized I should have added that if you have feedback of any kind, especially if something is not working as you’d expect it to work, I’d definitely appreciate hearing about it!

Update #2:

I also wanted to mention that we added “avatars” for all people leaving comments.   If you want your own avatar, it’s as simple as signing up for a free one at gravatar.com (and explained in a bit more detail on 4realz).