Fireworks results

Just a quick update to my post about why real estate bloggers might want to take on the 4th of July:

With Independence day just a few days away, people are looking for some information on the upcoming fourth of July fireworks in Burlington. They found my post. I bet they’ll find it next year too, and the year after and the year after… If someone has a link to their blog post about the fireworks in Burlington let me know so I can help these folks out.

Now remember, this whole “blog the cool local events” thing is definitely a tactic that fits squarely in a long-tail strategy so if you aren’t into that, then this won’t convince you to bring your camera to the show.

As a side note, notice how the searchers use semi-natural language in the search as well. Worth thinking about…

Week in Review: 3 Block Quotes

Guy Kawasaki on viral vs word of mouth

Viral marketing is typically reserved for programs where the advertising is talked about as opposed to the product itself. A good example are viral videos, where the humor trumps the brand, ala Cadbury Schweppes drumming gorilla video—humorous partly due to the Phil Collins soundtrack, of course—and the parodies which followed). Word of mouth is the actual sharing of an opinion about a product or service between consumers. Your viral marketing only works if it gets people talking about the product itself. If it doesn’t, you might create some laughter and awareness, but there won’t be a change in sales.

Read the full thing.

Greg Swann on single-property sites

If we can do it, we want for buyers visiting one of our single-property web sites to move into the home in their minds — just from the experience of the web site. If we can’t get them that far, we want to answer every question they might have, passively, from the web site — both to satisfy their itch to know and to establish our transparency. We want for buyers to long, to marvel, to exult about the tiniest details in our homes, treating our single-property web sites like the Christmas Wish Book. At an absolute minimum, we want for our sites to dominate their time. The more time they spend on our site, the less time they have to spend looking at other homes.

Read the full thing.

Marc Davison on the development of the real estate web

I think we can all agree that building a relationship is the truest segue to creating a client. But when real estate emerged online over a decade ago it made a conscious decision to forgo that time honored method of building business. Instead, it lunged at the consumer. Baited. Switched. You know the rap.

Read the full thing.

My fave Bad MLS photo this week is for all you Harry Potter and/or fixer-upper fans.

Do you blog? Please take this survey.

VARBuzz is running a survey on the effectiveness of blogging/social media. Please take a moment to fill out the survey if you are a real estate blogger. Thanks to Mark Eckinrode for the heads up.

Want a Free Ticket to Inman Connect ‘08?

Daniel Rothamel, newly-minted Community Manager for Inman News, is giving away a free ticket to Inman Connect ‘08.

It involves using Twitter. But luckily you can find all the great Twitter resources you can handle over in the sideabar.

Long Tail, Fireworks and Real Estate Photography

Coming up with stuff to write on a blog is one of the constant challenges facing new (and even not-so-new) bloggers. Here’s one quick idea my US real estate blogging readers might be able to put to use within the next week: Fourth of July. Apologies to my non-US readers; please follow along and find the right synthesis for your country and let us know what that is in the comments.

Why should Real Estate bloggers write about the Fourth of July?

What does Independence Day have to do with real estate? How can you move property or get listings by writing about it and photographing it?

Read more

Week in Review June 20: Use It

This week I’m going to focus the WiR on posts that contain some directly applicable information. I’ll sort them out from easiest to use to more advanced things.

The Basics:

These are things you can do yourself, right now. Without paying anyone anything at all.

• Chris Johnson gives a quick tactic on “Getting things Done.” With Merlin Mann as the keynote for Inman Connect this might serve as a good warm up.
• As the regular readers know, I’m very fond of analytics, planning and strategy. I’m also fond of encouraging everyone to “participate in the conversation” of social media. Ines Hegedus-Garcia gives a great example of social media benefits and encourages us all to stop strategizing and start participating in the conversation.
• A week ago Dustin Luther put out a call for ideas on tools to help real estate professionals in a market downturn. I couldn’t resist giving him a list of some of my favorite free tools. Luther then used that list as the starting point for a podcast that evolved into an incredibly engaging conversation between agents, educators and vendors about who needs to know what about SEO, internet marketing and analytics. Use this conversation to start a conversation about internet marketing within your organization.

The Intermediates:

These are things you can probably do yourself. Have the courage to give it a go. Or if you’re too busy or anxious about it, call Amanda or me (or your own team). But get your feet wet by reading these posts.

• Joseph Ferrara gives a rundown of the pros and cons of the new Trulia Pro advertising platform. Use this information to decide if you’re ready to market via Trulia.
• Perhaps you read about Gen Y and real estate in USAToday. Well, Bernice Ross at Inman News gives you some practical information to use video to market to Gen X and Gen Y audience (though last I heard, Baby Boomers liked to watch video as well). If you need help getting started, read some of my tips for getting started doing video.

The Advanced:

Ok these might make your eyes glaze over. But give them a try anyway. Same as above, when in doubt call in the internet marketing team.

• You’re ready to do some Search Engine Marketing (or maybe you already are). How do you figure out bids and search queries and keywords and all that stuff? Read Alex Cohen’s summary of optimizing your Adwords campaigns to get the best clicks.
• Alright this one is a bit technical but be brave. We all know that this year really will be the year of the localized web (and I get my jetpack by fourth quarter). Here are some experts talking about working your SEO for local search. If you don’t understand the gobbledygook in this article, make sure the person working on your internet marketing does.

The Weekend:

I can never get enough of Bad MLS Photo of the Day.

Select Real Estate

Select Real Estate, specializing in vacation properties in the White Mountains of NH, launched with the complete set of real estate customer tools including saved searches, new listing notifications and saved search criteria. The site also features advanced real estate marketing tools such as one-click searches, advanced search, integrated MLS feed, content management system and integrated blog.

Understanding and Using AIDA (including 22 things you can do to improve your site performance)

The name Aida (made famous in Verdi’s opera) means “visitor” in Arabic and “reward” in Swahili. This post is about the marketing acronym, related to visitors and rewards, outlining consumer attitudes: Attention-Interest-Desire-Action. I’ll present the concept, orient it in relation to your site visitors and give you some ideas on how to use this conceptual model for your own marketing.
Read more

Week In Review

A whirlwind week, lots to read if it’s rainy this weekend.

Blogging

Pat Kitano starts with Om Malik for inspiration and gives some sound advice on positioning your blog as a wisdom resource. That’s what I try to do here so feel free to let me know how to do better.

Leverage the size of your office to make a focused blog that doesn’t overwhelm your staff. Benn Rosales gives you the game plan.

I’ve added Chris Brogan to my feed reader after Daniel Rothamel suggested him to me. Here’s some great tips on promoting your blog

Using traditional media to market your real estate business

A television/web cross-media marketing opportunity is opening in Chicago. Tipped off by the Real Estate Bloggers.

The Real Estate Tomato writes about receiving a print promotion with an offer as a way to promote a blog.

Managing your social media

Jott is one of those technologies that I love: You make a phone call, they transcribe it and email it. Perfect for when you aren’t near a computer but “need” to send an email (or post on your blog or send out a Tweet or…). MyTechOpinion gets you set up on your blackberry.

Lani Anglin-Rosales gives advice on how to manage online “friending.” Perfect for those of you who may be experiencing social media burnout.

For those trying to manage the constant chatter from their Twitter/FriendFeed/FeedReader, TransparentRE tips us off to an article about why noise is good for you.

Maybe you can manage your social media efforts by making use of one of the services in this laundry list of social media aggregation sites posted at Sellsius.

News around the RE webosphere

Realtor.com gets into “zestimates” (check comment threads as well on this one).

Matt Carter picks up on Craigslist’s HTML limitations over at Inman News. (See also my post with excerpts from the Craigslist community forum about the HTML changes).

It is now the weekend

Creepy mansion sales are down.

In the “funny writing about something that isn’t so funny” category: San Diego has a new MLS system.

Bad MLS Photo of the day, my pick.

There’s more to site optimization than SEO

If you read this blog you probably already know about search engine optimization. But there’s another kind of optimization. One that is just as important (maybe even more important) as being number 1 in Google. That other kind of optimization is performance optimization. Read more

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