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Build your portfolio of positive reasons to purchase a home in this real estate market. Discover the most positive news in real estate.Submit your own positive stories. Or build your arsenal of positive reasons to buy now.
From politics, to markets, to opinion. The web can and does influence.
The web is a syndication machine as distributed computing allows networks to talk with one another with ease. It is what has given us Google and their huge computing power. It is what RSS is about.
This ability to manipulate the perceptions of the crowds is what I alluded to in my early 2008 http://www.positiveonrealestate.com mission as a way to take back the news and in fact change perceptions thru multiple syndications.
Pat Kitano (listen to our social media interview/podcast with Pat Kitano) is employing similar techniques by getting "armies" of micro bloggers. What I would call at its core content publishers that are building pages of juicy content to drive traffic to their home base.
As a SEO professional, I think I could add some strategies that would help them get social traffic and organic as they can coalesce, but will often have to be received independently.
Another way of thinking about this is to employ the social networks as a propaganda campaign.
Does this stuff work? You bet otherwise how can stupid rumors like the Yahoo Microsoft be passed off as news this past weekend:
The Times of London reported that Microsoft may acquire Yahoo’s search business for $20 billion dollars. While the Times report included detailed information, named parties, including Velocity Investment Group founder Ross Levinsohn, said there is “No truth to it.”
So how does one go about propagandizing the web? Stay tuned and sign into http://www.realestateguerilla.com as we are about to open it back up for more membership spots.
How can this web propaganda work?
Ask Obama. Or any politician of late. The Dems have done it especially well online the last two elections.
Why is it that buyers won't buy, even though all indicators are that the market has hit bottom (notice my own pre supposition here? This is used allot in propaganda)? The web can rapidly deploy ideas or memes that spread across multiple channels and change perceptions and beliefs. Exactly what you want as a marketer.
Pownce, one of many alternative Twitters, is now about dead. Six Apart, owner of TypePad (which powers HouseBlogger) just purchased them. And it seems they will disolve it into the Vox ap.
This is the problem with new media. In a reccessionary world of reluctant investors and no revenue, the idealism of the Social Web is getting full court pressed to survive. It will be interesting to watch to see who is gobbled up and who survives.
Much like those of the Dot Bomb times, I believe many aps will be bought for the technology and names. For those poor souls who invested their time into Pownce? Tuff luck hombre.
This is why I tell anyone who will listen to spend most of your time on building your brand on YOUR own URL. Use the other stuff to attract people into your URL.
Meanwhile, catch me Tweeting at http://www.twitter.com/timokeefe
Happy Thanksgiving to all the HouseBlogger readers and friends.
God Bless! and enjoy your time and please do consider for all that you have to be grateful. Thanks....
Last Saturday the team I Coach of 8 to 10 years olds played one of the most inspirational games I have ever watched. There was tears of grief in the stands and tears of joy for our side.
In what was one of the most grueling games I have ever watched, my El Segundo Eagles won the PCC Championship for the Mitey Mite Division.
I am the dude closest to the pole.
So why would I write about my team on a marketing blog? First off I am breaking my own rules and taking that rare moment of indulgence. While I am at it may I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving?
This team won a game that was won on pure desire. Heart. In other words it took three overtimes to win this game. I kid you not only were the teams and staffs drained, the parents and fans were wiped out.
I have not experienced this kind of noise on the sideline since my days of playing in College.
Three overtimes is not easy and I for one have never been put into that kind of pressure cooker as a player or Coach. Imagine 8 and 9 years olds. These kids on both teams got experience that will serve them for ever.
In a way the students taught the teachers(Coaches and Parents).
Yah we adults face a world currently that seems a bit bleek. It is the Over Time on some of your business futures. Taxes are due and some of you haven't had a deal in awhile.
Kevin Hogan discusses the current Survivor show on NBC as a game of will. Much like my football players victory, this show is a battle of "who wants it more?"
Hogan compares success to a rocket:
The fact is that she broke the earth's gravity and that took a LOT of fuel. A TON of energy. But once you have momentum, once you have established the ability to control the self, amazing things happen.
Like the team I Coach who paid dearly in sweat and practice all season, constant improvement is necessary for success that most will say is easy and instant.
As Woody Allen says,"The secret to success is showing up. How many ever do actually show up and are present when faced with adversities? Honest assessments of self are necessary for growth.
Todays market is crazy. But I promise someone in your marketplace is succeeding right now as I write. Someone is tearing your market up. Transaction City! Why can't it be you?
Much like 8 and 9 year olds who frankly may not know any better than to give their best effort...Why can't it be you who gets the deals? Or are you too adult to keep persevering?
In the Pre internet days of the last real estate recession, an old pal of mine Phil Gilboy went head to head against his Multiple Listings Service. It seems ole Phil was looking for new and exciting ways to prosper during a down market and he started a new phone service called something like 1-800-cal-lmls (I made that up as I cannot remember the exact number).
Well the Westside MLS came down hard with their legal beagles claiming infringement. Except one thing was wrong. The ones owning MLS as a trademark are Major League Soccer. They eventually let Phil do his thing.
Now besides this legal issue of who owns what. The real issue of course is why would an entity that Phil helped support attempt to take away his right to make a living?
The Realty Associations of course have a long history of this type of dumping on the ones who brought them to the dance.
At the dawning of the World Wide Web, NAR made a desperate plea for higher fees to help fund Realtor.com. If the site was not built it was argued then that Microsoft and others would take over the MLS. The site made by NAR for its reason for being was built to much fanfare. It quickly sunk from the notion of protecting the MLS and into a new revenue stream. Thus charging its members to participate in the site built on their behalf.
Ironically, a few years later and now we have Trulia who many in the public might argue is the defacto online MLS.
This whole issue was brought to the forefront of late as a Florida MLS has not only used the traditional means of regulating their members, but many bloggers believe that they have gone so far as to compete with the very people who pay them for help in their business.
This story begins with a Realtor who owned a domain with the word MLS in it, some strong SEO and link juice. And then a Multiple Listings Service who in this authors opinion went to extreme measures to use their power.
Who is the Realtor? Marc Rasmussen of Sarasota, Florida. The URL was TheSarasotaMLS.com, and the Board? None other than the Sarasota MLS.
Archive.org show the url going as far back as Sept 2003. So why now in 2008 would this Association feel that they could impose an ethics violation?
According to RealEstateWebmasters:
Article 12 of the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics".
".. the NAR adopted a new stance on the use of the acronym "MLS" in a Realtor's domain name – basically stipulating that "at their discretion" MLS boards could adopt new policies prohibiting the use of MLS in a Realtor's domain. In my opinion, the NAR did not practice any measure of responsible due diligence before adopting this addition to the COE and it was extremely poorly received by its membership as evidenced by the extreme negative reaction by the Realtor / webmaster community as a whole.."
John Allen a Sarasota Realtor and competitor, defends Marc Rasmussen. He turns the issue on its head when he asks if the Sarasota MLS is going to claim ethical violation for the use of their name in the website The Sarasota MLS.com. Then Allen asks about the SAR owned domain Time2BuySarasota.com:
Alex Perriello, CEO of Realogy, gives advice to Realtors on dealing with the times:Be positive, persistent, And tell people houses are selling, there is not reason to sit on the fence.
The following was inspired by an email thread that went back and forth between myself and the President of a Web Design House. the project mentioned is in the very beginning stages of an SEO project that we are fulfilling for one of their clients.I thought you might find this of interest.....
At the start of a project brand increases because of linking. Often times a client thinks that this was built in, when in fact some of it may have been but Google does not necessarily care about your brand. They care about mentions and citations of your brand. Google cares only what links to the references of your brand across the web on your site or not. As your links increase to your pages of your site, your brand references (keywords) within your analytics should go up.
So what you get last month in your original, pre-seo campaign "brand traffic" spreads out to larger derivatives of that word and more searches as it gets links to the pages with brand words. And links that carry those branded words in the anchor text increase. In the case of brand it usually is not very competitive if at all, so a few links can really get the brand out there.
Reputation Management
This by the way is what reputation management is about. One can easily
steal your brand by creating pages about your company on many web pages. It can even be done anonymously on free sites. Its easy to do because
there is 0 competition for it until someone actually does it.
The idea being that you can get crowded out totally or partially from the SERPS (search positions) for your own name!Thats why it is important for companies to do more socially and thru syndicates to populate the web with references to their brand.
By the way we often will get an agent site to come up higher in the SERPS than a broker site online (if the broker is not our client). Its very easy if the broker isn't working for in bound links.
This reputation thing is not as bad as it is hyped up to be yet. I have seen few attempts by malcontents but not done very well. But I do think it will be a major problem down the road not just in the real estate business. But I see this playing out in how news and politics can be perceived.
For a glimpse of the future and managing reputation and perceptions,
study how the Obama and McCain campaigns have run their online
marketing for the past election.
Election Special: Whatever You Do, Do Not Vote For This Candidate
Even McCain used online Video masterfully. Obama used the web better than any one politician or business yet.
Confessing Your Sins Will Get You Traffic!
A site can be SEOd all day long, but if it does not have links it does
not fully or even in some cases partially exist to Google. On many
templated real estate sites there is not much one can do as far as
onpage optimization.
So how does one get high rankings?
Links. Links make up for the sins of the site. They are the absolution from the priest called Google.
So right now a month into the project what we see is a start of a wider span of brand words. And even a small start at seeing real estate search words giving traffic.
We can do that by comparing the search strings from last month before
the SEO launch to now. This month is almost double brand based visits.
(names changed to keep the client private)
The list is longer (width) and many words are getting more visits compared to last month.
ie. TOTAL BRAND visits are double last month
27 century 21 franchise name
26 url.com
19 century 21 franchise name realty
14 franchise name
6 century franchise name
6 www.franchise name.com
4 city century 21
4 century 21 in state
etc.....
Today's vote is historic. And I assure you that no matter who you voted for,your guy in some way manipulated you. Once you found yourself making your choice, most people will defend their choice logically. Although as we know in sales 101, we buy for emotional reasons and justify with logic. 
.
Some interesting lessons for us online marketers have been revealed of late by political experts.
Mark Nagaitis, CEO of 7 Billion People, said “This analysis demonstrates how the design of a website and the use of language can influence the effectiveness of that site in communicating the desired message. Too many web designers underestimate the power of language in reaching the complete audience, not just their base.” Key findings from the analysis include:
The Gopac knows this and as such shows us some interesting language patterns that politicos should use:
Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!:
Continue reading "Election Special: Whatever You Do, Do Not Vote For This Candidate" »
... in My Head
Years ago my College Football Coach, Tyrone Sperling, an ex USC footballer introduced me to one of my favorite Lines.
"Opinions are like *******, everybody has one."
Ty was a special man. He definitely did not follow the herd and was more interested in results than opinion.
Over the past month I have participated in, and witnessed a number of website critiques thru email, at Inman, and Top Ten Lists. A recent list by Real Trends and 1000 Watt made me wonder what criteria might prompt them to rank a real estate website higher than the other.
The title is called: "The Top Ten Real Estate Brokerage Websites in America." Here
The report lists some pretty "cool" websites with "neat" features. However, as a web marketer my siren went off when someone claims superiority over anything else without some sort of attempt at supporting evidence.
So to read the reports intro I see that “The Top Ten Brokerage Websites in America” are thus so because:
" ..a detailed examination of the corporate websites maintained by the 500 largest brokerage companies in the Unites States as established by Real-Trends’ annual RealTrends 500 list. Every website was reviewed based on several criteria including Real Trends 500 companies franchisor websites in this report as their basic requirements place them in usability, content, features, and design. ...The results are placed in the context of a larger discussion of brokerage Websites, which notes that good brokerage websites are few and far between. The report offers reasons why this is the case, and suggests a pathforward. ... The websites discussed within this report stand out as excellent examples of how a real estate brokerage company can use the Web to connect with its marketplace, drive business and enhance its brand equity."
Huh? Says who?... and based on what? So if they are really the top ten at usability, content, features and design, then how is that defined and really how meaningful is that?
The implication being that these are good things without explaining why. I thought the title said the Top Ten. I assumed it means they are the best. Which in business means they make money. Otherwise the fuzzy dictates of design can only be opinion, subject to context and identity.
Jerry Maguire Where Are You?
When did a good business tool mean anything other than it makes the business money? Which would have been in my humble opinion the better place to start this report. And just because these are big brokerages does not mean their site makes an acceptable ROI.
If in fact the discussion centered on the almighty dollar then the criteria would have changed from usability to commissions. Not far from commissions would be number of leads and lead capture. Further down the slope would be lead followup and conversion to appointments and to sales. These have a much higher attachment to a home sale than does usability. All those elements as defined by the report are in the end meaningless unless surrounded by the context of dollar generation. Otherwise it is nothing more than a beauty contest.
Where is Substance Over Style?
The reports title implies that these real estate websites are successful at generating leads or sales. Are they? I cannot tell from the report. We can get some idea by looking at compete.com or alexa.com. But that is only a guessed measure of traffic. Anyway at best just an implication of success. Because we all know traffic is only one of the steps to a successful website. So are these sites successful? The best I can gleam from the reports criteria is that they are successful at achieving high 2.0 design standards.
Unfortunately, that does not put food on the table. In the real world the salesman that comes back to the office wearing his $2,000 Armani suit and Double 00's for sales is soon to be interviewing for a job. While the C&R special guy who comes back with leads and sales will be a rising star.
The Best Free Analytics...
Links are like a healthy addiction. And if you are to survive in the online marketplace you need lots and lots of links. 
Injecting Links!
But links are like the U.S. Dollar (especially lately!). The Treasury keeps printing dollars and what happens to the value of the dollar? It goes down. Simple supply and demand right?
So if Google bases its valuations of link value on who links to who link to who links to you (ad infinitum). And that is related to how many total pages are on the web. Then we have to consider the fact that the minute you get a link, its value has diminished almost instantly.( If only fractionally). Just last year there was close to 1.5 blogs created a second! So your links over time diminish in value. Thus, your linking must continue on a consistent basis.
Therefore linking is an addiction you should never quit if you are to succeed online.
Get Your Link ON!
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