realweenie

Rhymes With Tomato

Every now and then day, someone gives me a post for the weenie.  I am not talking about the posts other people submit to this blog I am talking about the stuff that I find on the internet that is perfect "weenie" material.  It is as if the author, in this case her name rhymes with Mary McKnight, provided a perfect weenie post.

I am finding so much of the stuff these days that this bad old blog is just writing it self.  The only way I can prevent myself from taking the time to write a post a day is to stay off the internet.  Yah, right, like I can do that and stay in business.   

"As usual, I will not name names but let's just say it rhymes with steal plate clamato."

Where did I find this little tidbit?  on a blog, I don't want to point fingers but it rhymes with RSS pieces, which coincidently rhymes with reeses pieces.

Web 2.0, in the new web 1.0 way? No, Yes?

This just in from David Smith, the guy in the red shirt, Mr. Tucson himself.

Remember RE 1.0 and the push "It is all about selling you are the agent"  Then the battle cry of RE 2.0. "Transparency".

Realtor magazine (for Realtor magazine) does a better than usual take on RE 2.0.  But does the right hand know what the left hand is doing.

How many times do you count "MAX"?

http://www.rdcworkshop.com/video/index.html

At last a blog about real estate

Just heard about this site a few days ago.  I think it is so exciting that I now have a place to go to connect with the real estate community.  A real estate blog where we can get some tips and how-to's, why didn't someone think of this before?

The Cover of the Rolling Realtor Magazine

I dedicate this post to the hard working bloggers at the Bloodhound Blog.

Daisy Unchained part 1

You can tell by the title of this post that I am being bad.  Some days I just can't help myself. 

Daisy, my dog, the pup on the sidebar has never been chained but she does have a leash and when she is outside she does have to be tied up.  Beagles are smart dogs but they have the tendency to wonder away from home.  They are tracking dogs and will pick up a sent and follow it until they are hopelessly lost.

She is also very friendly and I know that she found a person or a dog person to talk too she would be out of here in a heart beat.

She would make a great blogger becasue she is so friendly and she doesn't quit once she picks up a sent.  She is like a machine in her relentless pursuit of people, dogs and small furry critters.

Daisy does not have opposable digits so she really can't have a blog of her own. She can't handle a camera either. Photos are such an important part of a real estate blog and so is having a kind of conversational tone.  Real estate blogs need to be friendly, yet they also need to have some solid information in them.  People like to look at pictures of property, and see neighborhoods, street scenes, public buildings and sunsets too.  Readers see the pictures and get a sense that they have traveled to a new place.

My real estate blog is "hyper local"  If you look at it you will notice that it really does cover a variety of topics, but the idea is to create a kind of atmosphere where the reader just knows that they are visiting St. Paul, and they are reading a kind of letter from some one who lives, and works in St. Paul.  It is highly focused on what I do for a living . . . but that is becasue it is a business blog. 

There are many different styles of blog that work.  The writer should chose a style that is natural and easy for them so that they can post on a consistent basis.  The consistency is a huge part of what makes a blog work.  It helps to write about something that you have a passion for.  Like historic homes, architecture, golf, fishing, there are a wide range of topics that can be integrated into a real estate blog and bloggers are only limited by their imagination.

I don't get why people think of blogs as being technical.  A ton of technology goes into producing the local newspaper, yet no one talks about having to be "techie" to publish a newspaper. The amount of technology used to create and maintain a blog is so little that I don't understand why we talk about it at all.

Blogs are about user generated content.  Users who can generate content can have a blog.  They are also social in nature, not anti-social.  To have a great blog there are only four things needed:
1.  Content
2. The desire to be social, or socialize.
3. Commitment.
4. An imagination.

When it comes to technical the best investment a blogger can make is to learn how to take photos and post them.  The most important skills for any blogger are communication skills.  Without them nothing else really matters.

When looking for educational opportunities think in terms of ideas, broad concepts, marketing, writing, photography and how to develop an online persona that is friendly, welcoming and social. . . . I guess bloggers don't have to be all that friendly, weird seems to work for me. . . . but in a nice way . . I hope.

This is part 1 of a series, a kind of intro.  If anyone would like to contribute a post they would be most welcome. I could use some more daisy's too, it will be months before it is warm enough to have flowers to photograph.   Future segments will include topic ideas, how to take pictures with a point and shoot camera and upload them, blog plat forms, mobile blogs, photo blogs, what is a wiki? social networks, property marketing, tools, tricks and widgets.

If you stumbled on this  and are not sure what a blog is, here is an excellent overview: "Blogs in Plain English".

RE.net cool kids

By: Todd Carpenter
Film critic Pauline Kael is infamous in her reaction to Nixon's 49 State 1972 landslide re-election. "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."

Pauline Kael's view of that election is a wonderful analogy for the group think that is infesting RE.net. Are we Sharing a Brain? IMO, this is Teresa's single best post on blogging. Unfortunately, I don't think many have taken it to heart.

Questioning the validity of Saul Klein's You Tube video, pondering who will subscribe, or unsubscribe, or racing to connect to the same 30 or so people on the latest social network are all worthy endeavors, and I'm guilty of all of them. But in doing so, I can't help thinking about Ms Kael.

I don't think it's productive to live in the "rather special world" called RE.net. By "live" I mean to let the ambition to be a RE.net cool kid consume you into thinking the way millions of other professionals earn a living is wrong because of the comparatively small success of a few hundred.

When it comes to Web 2.0, I agree with Teresa that it's a good idea to look at Web 2.0 perspectives from outside of the real estate vertical. I also think it's good to look at real estate perspectives from outside the Web 2.0 vertical. I don't think RE.net does enough of either. Lately it seams we do less and less.

Laughing

I always get a big laugh out of the top _____what ever lists with real estate blogs on them.  There is a new one made by someone I never heard of using some unknown criteria.  Geek Realtors  The list is a hodge pod of local real estate blogs like St. Paul Re, national multi author blogs like Agent Genius, and blogs that are not real estate blogs, like the real estate tomato.

It seems that this bad blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand made the list.  We did win our very first award when we were not even a day old, so it figures that another one would come along eventually. 

Real estate bloggers take these lists very seriously.  I am sure who ever made it looked at all real estate blogs and even though I never heard of the Geek Realtors blog I am sure they are experts on the topic.  I am enjoying the chatter about it on the internet.

I am always looking for guest authors so if any readers out there would like to write on an award winning blog, be my guest.

I Just Don't Understand

I like to call them big "Whys" and there are so many of them in my life.  Maybe I just think too much. 

One example of a big why is that hot dogs often come in packages of 8 or 10, and hot dog buns often come is bags of one dozen.  They can be found in bags of 8 but it is a relatively new concept.  It is easy to understand why buns come in bags of 12, it is because they are considered a bakery item and one dozen is a universal size for packaging and selling bakery goods.

It wasn't until people complained that the bun makers got the idea that their product goes with hot dogs and that maybe it would be a good idea to package hot dog buns to go with hot dogs, instead of packaging them like bakery goods. They were wrong about the always packaging them by the dozen, and they admitted it.

This post is not about hot dogs or about buns but it is on the weenie so my mind drifts. The colors are distracting and I can see my dog looking at me.  So are the hot dog buns.

There are a couple of big whys for me in my daily life. . . well actually there are many of them but I only feel about writing about three of them.

Why is it that the only time my phone rings is when I am in my car or when I am on another phone?

Why is It that my internet presence attracts new clients but  they call me on the phone when I am in my car and I have to ask them for their email address?  My email address is plastered all over my blog and can be found quikcly on the internet through Google.  Yet while I am in my car, and only while I am in my car I am talking to the people who read my blog and have a question or a comment or would like to use my most excellent services as a Realtor.  I can't look up property addresses while I am driving, I have to pull over, look them up and the only way to get the information to the caller is to email it, which is hard since I only have their phone number and not their email address.

Why is it that Realtors are worse than the general public when it comes to calling me while I am in my car, which as I mentioned is the only time anyone ever calls me.  They call because they saw my blog and they want to ask me a question.  To make matters worse they ask a question that I can not answer.

"I am going to start a blog, can you give me a few tips"  I always answer that question the same way, No I can not.  If you have a specific question I would be happy to answer it or if I can not I will point you in the right direction.  I also explain that I have written many posts on the subject of real estate blogs and where they can be found.  Often they mention that they are calling me becasue they read those posts.  If these people would just send me an email instead of talking to me while I am in my car I could just send them a links to the posts if they have not read them.

When I was interviewed for the article that was in the LA Times on Sunday they interviewed me while I was in a car.  Vflyer did a podcast interview a few months back and interviewed me while I was in my car.  My phone is not ringing now.  There are four of them in the room and they are all on, yet all I hear is the clackety-clack of keys as I write this post.  I think that is why I like to write blog posts.  I write them in my office and it is the only time I am not interrupted by phone calls from the people that live out there on the internet.  Maybe when business gets slow I'll bring my laptop out to my car and write blog posts.

Do people like to talk to me on the phone?  Maybe they think they would like to talk to me on the phone but I am sure that after they actually talk to me they change their minds.  I admit I get irritated.  There is a time and a place for a phone call.  If they would at least call me when I am in my office I could maybe find it in my heart to actually try to sound pleasant on the phone.  Pleasant is not easy for me but I could learn how.  Maybe there is a "how to be nice for dummies" book or something.

There is an answer to all my whys, it is the same answer that my parents gave me when I was a child and I asked questions that did not have answers, because is always the answer.

Oops! I have just been super poked, gotta go . . .

Food For Thought

If NAR doesn't get you your broker will . . well when they get internet access and learn how to use it they will . . but only if they can find you . . maybe you don't have anything to worry about after all.

When I was in grade school some times my parents would help me with my homework.  My dad used to frustrate me at times but he was right.  I would ask a question and instead of giving me an answer he would have me look it up myself.  he used to tell me that if he gave me the answer I wouldn't really remember it, but if I looked it up myself I would.

So here we go.  Many of the real estate blogs that I encounter are not compliant with NAR regulations that apply to all types of Realtor marketing. 

In some cases the blogs are designed by vendors who just don't know any better.  it isn't their job to understand the rules, it is the job of the REALTOR with the blog or website.  As the big behemoth soulless money grubbing corporations that are real estate companies start to lose profitability and have some of their internet traffic swiped by micro entrepreneurs like myself, they will want to fight back. They have been making money for years selling our own leads back to us.  Now some of us are able to compete head-to-head with big companies through our blogs.

The day will come when someone will start slapping non-compliant bloggers around and ask them to either make their site compliant or take it down.  Worse yet maybe the big companies will make policies against REALTOR blogs becasue agents can not be trusted to follow the NAR rules and the local guidelines set at the state level that apply to real estate marketing materials including web sites.

What the hell am I talking about you ask?  I am not going to give you the answer.  Go to NAR, look up the rules and decide if your blog is complaint.  Naturally it is password protected becasue they don't want to make it easy to find.   For vendors selling blogs to REALTORS it would not hurt you to familiarize your selves with these rules.  It would be a great way to add value and to become a true expert on real estate blogging.

The St. Paul Real Estate Blog has been compliant since day one.  This blog is not compliant.  Weather or not it needs to be is debatable.

Now I know I have arrived

Welcome to my bad blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand.  There have been theories as to why this blog exists.  To me it is important for several reasons.  It provides a forum for some and for me it is an opportunity to creatively express my ideas.  If no one read it I am not sure I would want to take it down.

As I have said more than a few times on my other blog, neither blogging nor real estate sales are for wimps.  In the 2.5 years that I have been writing blogs no one has threatened me with legal action and to be honest I was feeling like I am not much of a blogger.  Now all that has changed and I feel like I have arrived.

Don't get me wrong  being threatened in any way has never been my goal but I know from my past experience running a small newspaper that writing something that ticks people off goes along with being published most any where but only if the piece is controversial, or is strong enough to move someone to anger.  I did receive some threats when I started the blog but I stood my ground and it was worth it.

I strive for honestly and transparency.  I don't always hit the mark but it is my goal.  Some of my posts leave out names and other details.  If I included the details they would be more transparent but they would also attract threats of legal action.  It is a fine line and I try to walk it without falling off.  I do stand behind every word I write and take responsibility for it and there is a reasonable chance that I even make mistakes some times.  I am not the kind of person who is terribly risk adverse.

We live in a society where everyone believes that perceived wrongs can be settle through the legal system.  I often hear people say that they will take legal action.  Anyone can take legal action against anyone else anytime they want to, as long as they have the time and money to get the job done.   It can be frivolous or it can have merit, it is up to the courts to decide.   Google the word "legal " and get 1,280,000,000 hits.