realweenie

Who Influenced me in 2007?

I thought I would wait awhile before I posted this.  I am honored to have been included in the Inman News to 25 most influential bloggers in 2007.   

I read Todd Carpenters post, Todd is also one of the 25, and he listed people who influenced him.  Greg Swann, another of the top 25, wrote a post about how he was influenced by Dustin Luther.  I agree with Todd and Greg that these real estate bloggers are influential but they are not the bloggers who have had the most influence on me.  When I started my blog I did not know about them.  It is understandable, considering I am here in fly-over land and never heard of many of the greats until I was well established and not as easily influenced. (I am not easily influenced)

There are two women real estate bloggers who have influenced me the most this past year, and I don't think either of them has been writing a blog as long as I have been writing mine.  It is who they are, what they do, and what they write that I respect.  I see them as positive role models for real estate bloggers and for real estate practitioners.  I am first and foremost a real estate practitioner.

Our industry is fairly male dominated as is the world of blogs, which is one of the many reasons I decided to write about two women who have a positive influence on me and on many others.

Lenn Harley
Lenn has and does influence many.  It is because of her expertise in real estate, her amazing writing skills, and her willingness to share her knowledge with others on blogs and in forums.  One of the things I admire the most about Lenn is that she is not afraid to say what she thinks and what she thinks, is usually dead on.  She is smart, entrepreneurial and knows what she wants.  I called her one day last spring and told her that I am a major fan.  I asked her some questions and she gave me some great advice.  My goal is to take my own business to the same level as Lenn has taken hers. 

  Linda Davis
Linda is special.  It isn't just her wit and sense of humor that I appreciate.  Linda like Lenn is a true professional.  She spends time educating and helping other agents.  She not only has a blog about her market area and home town of Ledyard, CT, but she is also on the city council.  No half way for this lady, she is committed all the way and gives selflessly to her community and to the Realtor community.  She seems to have an unlimited amount of energy has she attends conferences, speaks on panels and takes a leadership role in several organizations.

There are others in my life who have influence, if you don't see your name here it is becasue I started with a list of 12, tried to get it down to 1, but ended up with two.  We all need to find inspiration and positive role models in our lives.  I am lucky that I found these two.

Ladies I do apologize for putting you on this evil blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand but Linda you do use the word "crap" in blog posts and Lenn,  . . . nah I had better not . . . :)

The seven stages of real estate weeniedumb

By: Todd Carpenter

Stage one: Contribute to your own, independent blog. Stage one, being more like stage zero. The is real estate steak compared to real estate weeniedumb. If you want to waste time, money, and effort on the Internet, you're going to have to move beyond stage one.

Stage two: Contribute to someone else's blog. If your name is Chris, Paul, Mike, or Gina... move along. No need for you to read this stage.  :) I'm a proud stage-two weenie myself, blogging for the Inman News Blog, and occasional here at the Weenie. Do I get as much out of it as I put into it? Probably not. But at least two people bought me a beer when I told them I blogged for Inman at the Blogger's Connect parties this summer. So that's something. Blogging for others can be good, just make sure it's driving your own personal brand as well.

Stage three - Blog for Active Rain, and only Active Rain. Eventually, you want to drive your own customers to your blog. Do you really want to send them to a site with 50,000 other real estate agents?

Stage four - Blog for The Man. Who dominates in Google for real estate queries? Move.com. Who charges you to be a member of this merry club? Move.com. Who want's to let you blog for "free", thus boosting their own search engine relevance of their network of real estate domain names? Yep. Move.com. I don't know, it seems to me that bloggers who blog for The Man are helping Move to justify higher and higher membership/advertising rates. What does Move give you that Wordpress.com does not? Stage-four weeniedumb is starting to not make sense to me.

Stage five: Blogging for Google Love. First off, have you seen the two guys who created Google? I don't care how much money they have. The term "Google Love" grosses me out. Anyway, blogging for Google love is when you go type a bunch of words and stuff on a well ranked site like Active Rain for the sole purpose of creating some Google Juice (oh, wait, that sounds even worse) back to your blog. It's one thing if you are using a site like Active Rain to advocate a cause among your peers. It's one thing if you are writing good content for Localism. But if you are simply phoning it in, you are a stage-five weenie, and I'm officially starting to not like you.

Stage six - Leaving weak comments, or spam comments. "Great post man" is pure garbage. I know it, you know it, even Daisy knows it. At least try to add to the conversation. "Visit my site for more articles like yours" is pathetic. You're one step away from a spammer. All you are going to do is irk the blogger who's giving you the opportunity to comment in the first place. "Great investment opportunity in Costa Rica, costa rica real estate, real estate beach, costa rica condos. Visit us for more information at www.jaco-bay.com" is full fledged stage six weeniedumb. Leaving spam like that is liable to get you a serious case of Google Hate.

Stage seven - RIS Media ought to be ashamed of themselves for even putting this out there. If you are really willing to pay $2000 a month to commit stage two, three, four and five weeniedumb, then let me tell you about a well ranked mortgage industry blog with just as much Google love as RIS could ever give you. I also have a bridge in Brooklyn and some land in Florida that you might be interested in.

Thank You!

Todd Carpenter
mariah.com | bizomi.com | rembex.com | lenderama.com

Do you have something to say?  Put it on the Weenie, the evil blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand where anything goes . . . well almost anything . . . I really resent the term "weeniedumb"

Found in the Re-Blogoshpere

"I own several red shirts, but only one of them is a dress shirt for a tie.  I have a red flannel shirt, two red T shirts one is the incredibles and one is Thing 1.  Finally there is the red winter fleece shirt with a zipper at the neck for those cold Arizona days when it gets under 70 degrees." - Dave Smith

Now we all know more about the man in the red shirt. Does he have shirts in other colors?  Is red his favorite color?  Does the shirt match his eyes?  Will he tell us more?  Why is his face so small?  So many questions so little time . . . .

Got Bob?

I just want to tell you about Got Bob.   He  seems to always be there on the internet leaving kind, and funny comments and has often made my day, such as it is.   He has a great blog:  Focus on Frederick, and in addition to his wonderful sense of humor he is a fine writer.   His tag line is "Got Bob?"

Even after saying all this about Bob, I still have to put him on the weenie.  He left the graphic below as a comment to a post that I wrote on Active Rain.

Bob and I view the re-bloggoshere differently.  If he got to the end of it he would rewind, if I got to the end of it I would get a life.   Just the same I am sending him some link love from MN.  I think he is also one of my facebook, linked-in, twitter, digg friends so we must be pretty tight.

A Rose for Lani

Still laughing.  Sometimes I get interviewed.  OK, I have been interviewed a few times. Yup more than once is too much but you don't have to read it. . . . .  and no I don't get it either. 

I recently participated in Lani's bubble gum interview at Re Revealed.  It was different from the rest, I think Lani is too.  Different is a personality trait that I respect, admire and maybe even identify with.

None of the usual, what got you started blogging?, how long?, what kind of camera?, where do you get your ideas?, how much time do you spend? . . . .  can you give us some tips? . . . . stuff.

Lani asks important questions about hair and make-up and kittens, and puppies and movies.  Tough questions for me, but probably easy for most.   

Lani took the important information from the interview and wrote a summation.  She did such a good job that I am going to add it to my Bio:

"So, there you have it. Teresa is a kitten loving Realtor with a toddler’s attention span who makes up for feeding her dog lipstick by being able to effectively describe her job to a small child or dumb person."

Lani has several interviews on her site, see "Bubble Gum Interviews".  When she asks you for an interview, please say yes. 

Thank you Lani.

Plan A Head

Stop by the St. Paul Real Estate Blog on Friday October 12, 3007 for a special announcement.

Plan a head . . . plan a head . . .plan a head . . . plan a head . . . plan a head . . .plan a head . . .plan a head . . .plan a head . . .

Upgrade Your Real Estate Blog?

I know I am supposed to have a picture of some food or weenie related product here on this weapon of mass destruction cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand.

The hat is not edible but it is something I would wear to a weenie roast.  That's right I did wear it to a weenie roast. 

I found something on the internet this morning that is going to rock the real estate blogoshere:

* Upgrading to TypePad just got easier  One of more popular feature requests lately has been a way to make it easy to upgrade from a Wordpress blog to TypePad. So yesterday afternoon we enhanced the Import / Export functionality to support importing your WordPress blog to TypePad via the WordPress eXtended RSS export format. There's…

Real estate blogging experts recommend WordPress .  Most have never tried any other platform and some even admit it.   Just as I will admit that I don't have a clue which platform is the best but I have tried several and have blogs on Typepad, Blogger, the free version of WordPress, and the self hosted version of Wordpress.  Now that I think about it I guess I am a real estate blogging expert too.

Each platform has a lot to offer.  The TypePad platform has just about everything already built in that the WordPress bloggers install plug-ins for.  WordPress users have entire blogs dedicated to WordPress plug-ins which is cool because as bloggers we all know that finding topics to write about can be tough. 

On TypePad we can install widgets for added functionality.  I could write about widget installation and functionality but the the idea makes me want to yawn.   I guess I am not a true geek, just the worlds laziest real estate blogger.   Not lazy enough though to use some of the dumbed down products created for Realtors, or to take advantage of the massive sites where I can spew vast amounts of content that will appear on pages with the spew of hundreds of my competitors.

The Blogger platform  is just plain cool.  Yup that is a technical term.  I post to blogger by taking pictures from my phone, writing a few words and sending them to the blog.  The picture of the hat is part of a blog post on my blogger blog.  I can do the same thing on my TypePad blog and am positive that they make a WordPress plug-in for that too.

My business blog is on TypePad, along side many other great business blogs.  Am I crazy?  Yes I am totally  insane, but that isn't why I won't be upgrading to WordPress.  I can't because WordPress doesn't have a Plugin for that yet. It would be hard to start over and would take too long to transfer over 700 posts to another platform.

This is an opinion, but I think it is the content that is posted on a blog and how it is set up have a greater impact on the success of the blog than the platform being used.  A couple of my blogs are highly customized with the features that I want for my business internet presence.  None of the platforms I have used have everything that I want without some customization. 

My wiki is the only site I currently have up and running that is self hosted.  I don't host it because I can, I do so because I don't know any other way to use MediaWiki.  I make this comment only to prove to the world that I too can enjoy installing a good bug-fix. 

I consider myself fortunate.  I live in Minnesota, so I can do anything I want to.  I am such a non-conformist . .  Ah the freedom . . .

 

Collegiate Cliques on RE.net

When Teresa Boardman floated an invitation to me to contribute a guest post to the weenie, my thought was, "How could I possibly add to the conversation? I don't have any hot dog pictures". Then I remembered Jabo's Bar Be Que. This is how the weenie rolls in Denver yo. That's a quarter pound hot link covered with half a pound of slow cooked pork and topped with a secret recipe BBQ sauce strait out of Kansas City. Even my man Chris  would be impressed. I'm on a diet, but was compelled to eat the entire thing anyway. I felt I owed it to the loyal weenie readers. The heartburn suffered as a result reminded me of the general tone of RE.net over the last few weeks.

If you read a lot of RE blogs, you may have noticed the alliances, rivalries, and camp mentality that's taking seed. In many humorous ways, these cliques remind me my days in collage. It's still early, and there's plenty of time to take sides, so here's a quick rundown on who to position yourself with in the growing soap opera that is RE.net.

RSS Pieces  and The Real Estate Tomato . If you have a blog built by either of these companies, sorry, you don't get to choose which camp you're in. By birthright, you are sworn enemies. Stop trying to leave friendly comments on each others blogs. It's like Buckeye Fan breaking bread with Wolverine Fan. What are thinking?

Remember the "in" crowd? Cheerleaders, jocks, Gregg, Babs, Neidermeyer, and the rest of the Omegas? If you want to be "in", BloodHound Blog  is the camp to join. Here, one can feel unencumbered by the bonds of social niceties usually present in the business world. Tell it like it is, and don't worry about making friends because everyone already loves you. If you do decide to join this camp, make sure Greg gives you the Super Secret Odysseus Decoder Ring. Otherwise, you are not truly in. Kind of like the nerd who does the quarterback's homework, and gets invited to some parties, but not the really good ones.

What campus would be complete without a socialistic, communal clique where thousands of worker bees all contribute to the greater good ?  Most people are assimilated through indoctrination invitation, but you can join on your own as well.

If you don't have anything good to say, but want to say something anyway, try hangin' with the goth bloggers. This one is easy, Just start pining about fraud, the real estate bubble, or sub prime lenders.  You'll be in the clique before you know it.

Then there's the Corporate Sell-Out camp. To join, just start contributing to GeekEstate, the Zillow Wiki, Trulia Voices , or best yet, get yourself a gig blogging for Redfin! Watch as your efforts lead to actual business and take solace in the notion that the rest of us are secretly jealous behind our mantra of "keeping it real".

Finally, there's the Sellsius camp. I consider myself a proud member. We are the Deltas to Bloodhound's Omegas. Can't we all just get along? Let's sing kum-by-ya, smoke a bowl, and have another Jabo Dog. Togas are optional, but highly encouraged.

So there you have it. The Blog and the Beautiful of RE.net. I've been blogging for two and a half years now, things are finally getting interesting. Make sure to pick sides soon. Maybe we can all square off (West Side Story style) at Inman Connect this winter.

BY: Todd Carpenter - REMBEX Blog Fiesta!

We welcome guest posts from both Deltas and Omegas, don't be shy.  Find my contact information on the St. Paul Real Estate Blog

A bit disappointed

I had some time last night to surf the internet and look at my favorite blogs.  I actually found some that have not mentioned the iPhone.  I am not sure if I should contact the authors of those blogs and tell them they need to do a post as soon as possible or if I should just keep quiet about it.

I had considered listing the offending bloggers on this blog disguised as a hot dog stand but that seems a bit harsh.

So let's leave it at this, fellow bloggers if you have not written a post about the iPhone in the las six months or have not used the word iPhone in a blog post, you may end up in the weenie hall of shame.  Your name will stand out because it will be a very short list.  Do you want to be remembered as the blogger who did not write about the iPhone?  Is that the legacy you want for your children?  What will the neighbors think?

Speaking of blogs, I have not ever mentioned the iphone on any of mine.  Please consider this my iPhone post and forgive me for not posting it sooner.

While you are here have some brownies, don't worry they don't have any marijuana in them this time, just nuts.

This just in - Norm Fisher, Real estate blogger of some renown,  of Saskatoon Saskatchewan, that's in Canada, reports that they do not have the iPhone in his country.  I like Norm, I always have.  I'll leave him off of the weenie hall of shame, even though his excuse is a bit lame.

Should I be worried?

The graphic does not work real well with the hot dog motif but I need it for the post.

A comment was left on the Active Rain network that caught my attention. A  lengthy comment and very kind. There was one sentence in it that stood out: 

"Reading Teresa's blogs is like entering the twilight zone."

Can this be true?  Please don't make me read my own posts to find out.
This could be a problem.  Not the reading but the twilight zone thing.  Should I be worried?