The word “listing” completely devalues the work of an effective real estate professional.  Anyone can list property.  A minimum wage worker can list a home for sale.  My assistant can list a home for sale.  Heck, a computer can most likely list a property for sale through an automated system.

A listing is essentially a commodity.  A listing can be done by anyone.  That is why I am not a listing agent.  Listing agents get their commissions reduced.  Listing agents can be replaced.  Listing agents are all the same and must compete on fee.  Listing agents are most certainly not worth the many thousands of dollars they are often paid.

I am a marketing agent.  Marketing agents create strategic plans to have the greatest influence on price for their home seller clients.  Marketing agents have unique ideas that create real value.  Marketing agents are worth more than their pay.  Great marketing agents are irreplaceable.

Think about this and make a change in your language.  The change will make your presentations more compelling and your value undeniable.  It is a winning mindset that you must either adapt or you will inevitably become just another real estate agent.  You decide.

* Photo via be-virtual-assistant-wise.co.za

There are many benefits to reviews and ratings, but to expand on a few:

• Authenticity – Reviews provide a level of authenticity that simply cannot be duplicated via other methods. Long gone are the days when placing ‘Testimonials’ on a site were the thing to do, which only brought skepticism from visitors. To have genuine, verifiable reviews by past clients/consumers goes a long way towards establishing credibility in the eyes of potential clients.
• Value – Reviews give agents a quantifiable value that cannot be achieved by past awards, long resumes, accolades, testimonials, etc. Potential clients can see what’s in it for them, they can relate other’s experiences to their own and how they can gain value from an agent’s input/expertise.
• SEO – From an SEO perspective, the type of link diversity from authoritative domains is a golden opportunity. The fact that most of the review sites have do-followed links is the icing on the SEO cake.

It may seem counter-intuitive to put oneself in a vulnerable position whereby reviewers can (up to an extent) leave anonymous reviews for the world to see. However, the benefits far outweigh the risks and agents should take this opportunity to further differentiate themselves from the competition.

Review on!

Like it or not, with critical mass comes targeting. With targeting comes spam and with spammers come fraud.

To that end, with the slew of recent facebook privacy changes, we need to make sure that our profiles are accessible to the level that we want them to be – not some default setting that fb decided was right for us.

For me personally, I try and lock things down, that’s just my choice. You might be different, but that is what’s right for me. Well, I thought I was pretty locked down but after running the Facebook Privacy Scanner tool, I was alerted that my friends could actually share my pictures and other data pretty easily via third party apps. Say What? I thought I had locked all that down. Looks like I hadn’t.

This is what the Facebook Scanner tool alerted me to:

From there, I was able to click the ‘fix’ link and I corrected the settings inside my facebook privacy settings.

Some of you might want full and complete open access to your profile, pictures, content, etc. so that it’s indexable and accessible to the entire planet. Or, you might want to really restrict what data is shared and not shared accordingly.

No matter which side of the fence you are on in relation to data privacy, Reclaim Privacy will alert you to what level of data sharing with the world (either on purpose or inadvertently) you’re currently distributing into the social abyss.

Special thanks to Shane Pike for alerting me to the Reclaim Privacy open source initiative. I hope it’s as helpful to you as it was to me this morning.

Here’s to locking down your data to the level that you want.

Cheers, Matthew

Related Articles:
7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook


Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative


Facebook Privacy Scanner

Ok, so I’m hosting “The World’s Best IRL Meetup” for VREBC (Virtual REBarCamp) yesterday in Costa Mesa w/ The talented Ms. Stacey Harmon (and a Cameo appearance by Everyone’s Tech Guy, Loren Nason) when during a break in the action a fantastic, intuitive, spontaneous discussion breaks out! (that’s why we do the IRL Meetups for VREBC, so people can talk to other people, instead of “Vegetating” in front of their laptop in Jammies!, but I digress)…so anyway, Stacey answers the very real question from one of our attending Realtors, Jerry Reed of First Team Real Estate…”How the hell am I supposed to have the time to read all the damn blog posts in my stinkin Google Reader?!” (ok, so I spiced it up a bit)…Then the “PEARL” comes wafting from her lips…

“I don’t even use a Reader anymore, every time there is a really good post, somewhere in the REnet world, someone in my Twitter Follwers “Tweets” about it!

Then, OMG…wait for it….Another (highly intelligent) Attendee, Paul Mobley, MBA -CEO | Broker of Infinite ROI, Inc., “Blurts” out…wait for it again…lol…OMG…”Kinda like a “Human Aggregator” huh??? PEARL #2….OMG! “Human Aggregator” I LOVE it!

So look….

A few examples of some of my favorite Bloggers errrr “Human Aggregators”…(relax Nik_Nik, I still love you more than Reggie, just couldn’t find one of your Tweets while I was writin this…lol)

ReggieRPR RT @mattdollinger: Apple Tablet to Ship in March for Around $1000 [REPORT] http://ow.ly/T6Pm 10 minutes ago from web

blogboy2 Must reads (for SPR agents) including Cap & Trade Will Destroy Real Estate, Everything Twitter & more: http://ow.ly/T0kK 33 minutes ago from HootSuite

FrancesFlynnTho RT @JohnDMcClung: Five Key Housing Issues to Watch in 2010 http://bit.ly/60Nn6V about 1 hour ago from HootSuite

Who needs Google Reader???

The Center of all things Real Estate! Happened to drop by the olde iPhone Twiiterific ap today to save me an hour or so….TY

InmanNews New FOREM blog post: Building Brand and Influence Through Social Media – don’t miss LIVE LABS @ Connect NYC! #ICNY http://ow.ly/T6q7 about 1 hour ago from HootSuite

Who needs RSS Feeds???

Sometimes, I feel like “Geekin” (check out my series of posts on Web 3.0 for more details of Geek Needs. It will make your brain bleed!). So when I feel like Geekin, I get a Tweet from this “Lunatic” (jk Boris, jk)

Boris Most Anticipated Betas of 2009 http://tnw.to/11PnI about 2 hours ago from Tweetie

Heck, The Director of Social Media for N.A.R. has time to fill me in on what’s important! Saved me about 3 hrs on this one…SWEET!

tcar RT @mattdollinger: RT @kitmueller: RT @SPARKt Have you signed up for the info on #SPARKt3 coming on Feb 26th? http:/SPARKt.org about 2 hours ago from Seesmic

Who needs Email Updates????

How about this? One of my favorite RENet regulars, Pat Kitano of Domus Group (with another one of my favorites, Kevin Boer), does my dirty work! Looks like I got more time for the beach!

pkitano On Active Rain | 10 Real Estate Predictions for 2010 http://bit.ly/5nYqRi about 2 hours ago from bit.ly

Who needs …..? (Damn, I couldn’t come up with anything clever here! But you get my point =})

I even know when something good hits Zillow Answers!!! Right from “The Man” himself!

spencerrascoff Buyer interested in Venice CA home, Zillow Advice: http://ow.ly/T6mK about 1 hour ago from HootSuite

Thank you Mr. president, I won’t let you down!

So to recap… put your “Human Aggragators” to work for you! Save yourself about 6-8 hours a week, and GET A TAN! Ha!

BTW – Since I am saving you 5 hours a week (Minimum), and the average Orange County Realtor makes…hmmmm..about $175 per hr, please enclose a check for $875 (about 1 weeks savings) in a plain mannilla envelope, and send it to:

Eric Bryant

TheRECoach

69 YouDaMan Lane

ThankYouSoMuch, Ca. 90069

See ya next time Kiddies!

“The Coach”

Good thing you have done here, Thanks!

Simon Salloom LA Times: Southern California home prices and sales improve in November
Southern California’s real estate industry, decimated by the mortgage meltdown and housing bust, is stirring to life again — even making hiring plans — as home prices bounce back.
Find more information about Santa Monica and Brentwood Real Estate here

What does this have to do with the topic of the post he commented on? Nothing. It’s clear as day Simon obviously didn’t review my presentation prior to commenting, nor did he read the Anti Comment Manifesto Justin posted last week. The comment is pure SPAM. Here is a short statement to Simon if he is reading this post:

Dear Simon:

I’m guessing you simply hired the wrong SEO firm to build links for your site and this was their mistake. However, this comment reflects extremely poorly on you and I strongly suggest you fire that SEO company immediately. Spamming blog comments is clearly NOT the way to build links to your site and is going to severely damage your online reputation in the process; any SEO shop that engages in these tactics is not worth the time of day. Hiring the wrong SEO firm is a mistake many others have made, so don’t dwell on this mistake. Instead, do a bit of research prior to hiring your next SEO consultant (you can start here) or decide to dive in and do your link building yourself. One of the social media survival tips listed in my presentation is a quote by Napoleon — “Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence“. I’ll try to give you the benefit of doubt on this one — I sincerely hope that you simply don’t know any better and are not purposely trying to SPAM Geek Estate with crap.

Though Disqus makes moderating comments easy since I can do everything via e-mail, I’ve still been getting extremely annoyed with the volume of spam comments over the past few weeks. It just never seems to end. As a result, I’ve been contemplating writing a “Blog Comment Policy” for Geek Estate Blog so I have something to point to if people question the moderation policies on this blog, and to point to spammers in the future if they ask why I deleted their comment. This comment tipped me over the top and you’ll be seeing a Comment Policy here on Geek Estate later this week.

RepMgmt-VREBC

It was definitely a new experience doing a presentation to an audience that I could neither see nor hear with my own two eyes and ears, but live and learn! Thanks to Jim Cronin and the Tomato gang for organizing the 2nd Virtual RE BarCamp!! If you got value out of today’s sessions, please consider donating to the Warmath Charity.

After signing in once at Deed Street, one can start using the “^” to organize tweets they post either on the site or simply from their Twitter account.  For example, if I want to post about a news article in Atlanta, I would simply use  ”^ATL” when I post.  Doing this aggregates the tweet within Deed Street.  This is better than traditional Twitter search because the specific posting will not be confused with “party tonight in the ATL!”  This might all sound a bit overwhelming at first but the site has many suggested abbreviations for geographic areas as well as commonly used words such as “mortgage” and “shortsales”.

Sample recent conversations taking place about Atlanta:

I’ve used Deed Street off and on over the last month or so but other times, admittedly, I’ve forgotten to use the ^ or the ^^ when posting about real estate on Twitter.  This is solved by simply logging into the application and managing your Twitter postings from Deed Street.  In theory this makes sense since the application gives you a pretty beefy profile.  It allows you to show more data than Twitter including your; blog feed, Linkedin URL, Facebook URL, and a short description.

As you can see with the example below, setting up your profile has some distinct benefits to it:

The micro-blogging profile on steroids might be originally intended along with the remainder of the site to be business to consumer focused, but I think the real value is in meeting other real estate professionals.  In fact Lazovic calls it e-harmony for real estate professionals and consumers.  From my experience so far 100% of the conversation has been B to B.  The site may end up working better as a community portal for real estate people to satisfy their social networking hunger.   Adoption is going to be the key element as it always is.  The assumption is the consumer will find the site via Twitter search as I did.   From the real estate professional side, Deed Street should get a good mention at Inman Connect in January where Lazovic is speaking on the panel:  Tweet This! The Business Case for Twitter.

Overall I think Deed Street has the potential to be a good filter for real estate conversations on Twitter with this community approach. Currently they are pretty much alone in this category although I recently checked out another more B to B focused one called CoBrokeNation (little activity as of this post).  Real estate professionals can use Deed Street to connect with others in their local communities or carve out a niche for their specific geographic area if consumer adoption takes place.

]]> http://www.geekestateblog.com/real-estate-tweets-aggregated/feed/ 7 http://www.geekestateblog.com/the-paralyzing-effect-of-analyzing-web-2-0/ http://www.geekestateblog.com/the-paralyzing-effect-of-analyzing-web-2-0/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:35:58 +0000 Drew Meyers http://www.geekestateblog.com/?p=3041 I thought this video from Matt Dollinger was worth sharing — the takeaway is to “FOCUS” on what really generates business for you and not get sucked into spending unnecessary time and effort on tasks that don’t lead to real business.

Paralysis by Analysis – The story of Web 2.0 from Matthew Dollinger on Vimeo.

[via YouFactor]

There is no faster way to alienate someone you don’t know well than to bring up politics or religion.  There are typically two sides to any political issue, and by taking a side, there’s usually a 50% chance that you will disagree with the person you’re speaking with, or people listening in.  The more issues you discuss, the greater the chance that you’ll disagree with your listeners on some issue.  While that doesn’t matter much to an engineer, to a salesperson, it’s quite poignant.  If you publicly debate politics or religion, you’re probably alienating potential or current clients.

Over the past year or so, a few minor events have made significant impact on how I manage my web presence:

About a year ago, my business partner & I hired a development team to begin work on our RETS mapping system.  After the initial meeting with the main contact, I googled him and found his twitter page.  Scanning through his tweets, this guy was very politically & religiously opinionated, and I disagreed with him a lot. A few months later, we were approached by another development team, and we moved our project to them for a number of reasons.  While only a subconscious part of the decision, I would be lying if I said that his twitter account didn’t influence me at all.  I now protect my tweets from public viewing. Check it out.

About six months ago, I was working with a couple buying a home in Austin.  We’re roughly the same age, and we really hit it off.  After our second or third appointment, one of them mentioned a blog post I’d written on “my personal blog” that he thought was particularly entertaining.  While it entertained this client, I looked at the post and realized that it could have just as easily offended another, and I very well could have lost clients over it.  I audited the blog and buried everything potentially offensive (by changing the dates to 2007.)  There’s no such thing as a “personal blog,” as you have no control over who reads your blog posts, or comments.

Very recently, a local colleague forwarded ~100 of her closest friends & me a politically charged email that I highly disagreed with.  As I see email as a bit more personal than other forms of social media, I’ve always restricted anything potentially offensive to family & friends (who I don’t care if I offend.)  However, I don’t want to continue receiving email like this from someone I’ve done business with, and will do business with again, as I want to perform my job at the highest level.  I emailed her and ask that she refrain from sending me any political messages again. I’ll reply in this manner to any colleague that emails me political or religious messages, no matter if I agree or disagree with them.

The internet, and recent social media innovations in particular, have helped us get to know each other a lot better.  There are many people that I consider friends who I’ve never met, or spoken with on the phone.  If one of my friends would like to discuss politics or religion via IM, email, over the phone, or over beers, I’m game.  Friendship should be stronger than political or religious differences.  Professional relationships, however, rarely are.

As agents who use our web presence to find new clients, and ultimately pay our mortgages, we should be hyper-conscious of our online personae.  The next time you get the urge to write that post or comment about how great or horrible the latest political move by your favorite or most hated politician is, think about all of the potential clients who probably disagree.  Half of them do.

Retaggr.com allows you to create a profile, add any Social Network site, add custom links to your websites and Blogs, and then expose them to your visitors and Internet traffic.  I use Retaggr just so I can keep track of myself, and all the places I’ve created a profile, blog, or website.  LOL~

Having joined over 20 different social networking sites in the last 2 years, and running numerous Blogs and websites, I can’t imagine not having Retaggr in place if I ever needed to change a phone number, an address, an email address etc.  Would you be able to remember all the places you’d need to update or edit?   This is just one of the great values Retaggr brings to the Social Media Phenomenon.

There are many ways to use and benefit from your Retaggr Profile.

• Publicize your Retaggr Profile addresses

• Let your Followers and contacts discover you

• Add your Retaggr Profile to your site or blog

• Create a Retaggr Email Signature

They  have three different widgets you can add to any site or blog that will enhance your social networking visibility.  The first one is a chicklet that is very small, but then expands when you hover your mouse over it.

The second is a sidebar widget that can be placed on your Blog or on your customized website.

The third is like a large business card that displays all your information and can be used on any location that allows HTML code to be embedded.  They even have an e-signature card for your Outlook, Yahoo, or Google email.  If you are on more than 5 social networks or sites out there, you’ll need to keep track of them, and what better way to let others know which ones you’re on.  Retaggr really is the Ultimate Social Media Profile.