This is how it would work.  You would pick some area that seems ripe with a financially viable, tech savvy group of people in need of information and hopefully a new home.  What type of information would you feed them?….oh…everything of course.  You see, you would figure out everything your ‘peeps’ are interested in and pipe it to them fresh by blog and RSS feed.  High School player bios, the latest track results, and who’s cat had kittens….people love that stuff right?   All the good stuff.  They wouldn’t be able to get enough, so they would come back without having to be prompted by other means.  Of course you would go neighborhood viral worse than like little Johnny fresh out of kindergarten.

 People would stumble across the site on Google and many others would find it on flyers/mailing that would eventually be phased out once the web presence took over.  Then,  your constant craving for the information I have would keep you coming back like some sort crack head.  You wouldn’t be able to get enough.   Of course all the while I would be subliminally establishing myself as an expert in your area.  The perfect person to sell  your home and the best resource for a buyer.

While all of this sounds great, my gut feeling on this is that it’s not quite possible/likely yet.  I personally am not pursuing this approach to blogging locally.  I am working on some approaches to this but an online newsletter it shan’t be.  I can imagine a client being a little put off by the fact that you just decided that your going to insert yourself into their lives.  I’m on record as saying I don’t think you jack black bencasino gratuites frcasino island blackjackblack jack daveycasino bonus de bienvenueregle jeu roulettewww traiteur casinobonus gratuitsjeu roulette casinojouer video pokerbonus gratuites de casinojack black spider mancomment gagner à la roulette en ligneregle de la rouletteslot machine gametelecharger jeu poker texasjouer seven card stud gratuitesle poker en ligne en françaispoker en ligne bruelentrainement poker gratuitesjouer au poker sans telechargerle poker apprendre à jouerpoker le jeujeux de poker sur internetpoker gratuites sans telechargementworld poker gratuitesjeu de pokerjeu poker freewaretelecharger poker holdpoker en ligne argent virtuelpoker holdem gratuitesjeu de carte pokerjeux poker tour en lignepoker online argentjeux 7 card stud gratuitespoker en ligne francaistour de pokerjouer au poker onlinejeu javalogiciel poker texas holdemjeux pokerjouer poker en ligne gratuitementtournoi texas holdemtelecharger jeu poker gratuitesstrip poker gratuitementpoker sans internetle jeu du pokersalle poker onlinepoker source onlinepoker texas gratuites can be a successful hyper-local blogger unless you live there, have kids, grew up there or have some other attachment that people can use to relate to you on a personal level.  Maybe you should open your office there.

I have some concerns about the hyper-local approach because it seems to be a house of cards built on a card table. 

The card table is the premise that you are filling a need.   The idea that people will continue to choose area experts since everyone charges the same.  The idea that an agent that sells in one subdivision is not qualified to sell in another.    Can you imagine the tedium involved in putting this together?  Tedious as it is, it is possible it could pay off.  Especially if you’re making the comparison to established agents who are using the old fashioned methods successfully but will that transfer well to the Internet? 

Here’s a few more random thoughts, questions and observations that should be considered before starting down this path.  I wouldn’t say you shouldn’t attempt this approach, but rather, I would attempt to resolve these conflicts or plan ways to address the potential issues early in your development process.

1. Brokers need the people,  but people don’t need you.  Is what you got fresh enough to be news to them?  Would they even care to read your stuff?
2. There’s a small matter of trust and privacy. “I don’t want you taking pictures of my kids or anything.”
3. Who Voted you Mayor?  Would they feel you need their permission?
4. This sounds like an incredible amount of work.   Is it sustainable?
5. Will this create a steep barrier to entry?
6. Who is better positioned to do this same job?  Will they take you out at the knees next year?
7. Will the shrinking real estate margins crimp your projected profit?
8. Will this work if you’re competing against an established farm agent?
9. Where do people currently get the information you will offer?
10. How much will it cost to market the blog or will you rely on Google to deliver people to you from the subdivision you’re targeting?

Correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve seen lots of attempts at local blogging but haven’t seen anyone suggest that they’re ‘killing’ it with this method.  A deal or 2 here and there doesn’t deem the method an absolute success.  Even the most successful national bloggers don’t put up numbers that match top farm agent numbers.  While there might be 20 agents makeing the high 6 figures in a big city, the big time local bloggers aren’t among them.   It makes me think the hyper-local approach is over-hyped and merely a new topic for a real estate conferences to ponder and theorize about. 

I personally have researched many of the agents locally that blog as their primary rain maker and it really isn’t that impressive.  It’s a living.  It’s not a surprise really,  I feel they get a fair return on their invested time and money but I’m personally willing to trade money for time if it gets me to the same point or better.   

  The method doesn’t approach the numbers that standard farming brings in.   I’m left with the thought, that if you don’t have any ideas to generate business and you have a very limited budget, this can’t hurt.  I’m sure there are tons of agents out there that have the time to focus on this.   The 2 biggest problems with this is that the Internet hasn’t achieved a true hyper-local capability yet though I would expect that to change.  Second,  I’m not convinced that people would be any more likely to use you than the other guy that got some face time with the potential clients. 

As for the house of cards analogy, once you have it all built and up and running, people using you and all…how easy would it be to knock down.  Will you be able to keep up or will competition take over where you left off.

  Here’s a tip.  Your clients probably Googled you.  Blogging is key to your business because people use the Internet for research.  Especially so when it comes to real estate.  You have a chance to create your own spin, your own buzz.  Potential clients get to know you anonymously  and make decisions about your expertise and qualifications prior to making contact.  Even after meeting you they may want to learn more about you.   

 Just a few thoughts.  Here’s some further reading on the subject:

• Seth’s Blog – Advice for real estate agents (quit now!)
• Jeff Brown – House Agents — Wanna Start the New Year Kickin’ Ass? Here’s How  - My apologies to Jeff for not getting back to the subject sooner.  I had to ‘wrap my mind around it’ some more.
• Life that Pops – Everything new is old

 There is a lot said there and in the comments that might trigger some new thoughts on the subject for you. 

But with the rush to the Internet instead of to the library to do research these days, the issue needs to be considered. Young people especially tend to ignore the library and focus on googling the Internet, and I confess I have done the same when I could not get to the library. But, depending on the relative importance of information accuracy, this may not be the best thing to do.

An excellent article, “Evaluating Credibility of Information on the Internet”, by Ronald B. Standler, gives some good suggestions to those doing general research. I will not belabor the points he makes about trusting what you read.

An experience I had today, though, highlighted for me the importance of validating information that is of importance. I was researching the small town of Pratt, Kansas, about 70 or 80 miles west of Wichita, population a little over 6000, with regard to a possible move. I was using Neighboroo, a very interesting Web site that gathers information on life, people, housing, environment, and real estate development for American cities. For example,

“Environment” considers the level of crime, the likelihood of natural disasters such as tornados and hurricanes, weather, air and water quality, even the number of physicians per capita.

This last one caught my attention, particularly since my family has health issues. Neighboroo said Pratt had 1.2 physicians per 1000 people; not a very high number, and not very comforting if you had a medical condition that required a specialist’s care, since the doctors there would more likely be family practice.

If I accepted what I read without question, I would quickly rule out the town as a possible place to move. However, I had earlier been on the Pratt Web site, where it described the Pratt Regional Medical Center, which serves south central Kansas with a full range of medical services and is in fact the largest employer in Pratt, employing 400 people.

Why was Neighboroo wrong? The age of their information? The method they used to gather their information? Who knows? Using Google Maps, I was able to find at least 12 physicians in Pratt, not counting other medical offices where the individual physician was not identified.

The point is, the importance of accuracy on this subject was high for me. I have a family, and I am in the older end of the Baby Boom generation, so health would be of importance to me. If I were 25, single, and in good health, the number of doctors per 1000 likely would not be worth deep investigation.

It would be very time-consuming to verify every possible piece of information in Neighboroo’s Pratt description. (And if I were to contact Neighboroo about this, they would likely quite freely admit that they could not vouch for the absolute accuracy or currency of every piece of their information, for very valid reasons.) Multiply this by the number of cities and towns in the US, and the task of verification becomes nearly impossible.

But if the accuracy of a particular piece of Internet information is really important, try to verify it. Try to find more than one witness to testify on the subject (Google is helpful to find them). Use “official” sites, where possible; if you do that, you likely can easily contact directly the human source of the information if there are questions. And try to get the original source of a fact; Wikipedia and a blog or article quoting or referencing Wikipedia count as only one source. (You can sometimes tell this is happening if the article uses the same phraseology or the same extremely precise number as the original Wikipedia article.)
Don’t hesitate to go to the library. Most of them have computers too, these days, so you can enhance your Internet research with the book and magazine resources of the library (or, if you are older, the other way around).

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Don’t be gullible. Don’t take their word for it.

Contributed by: Curtis Barron (Computer Programmer Analyst) 

People love the anonymity of the Internet. They don’t want to be sold. They just want something that you’ve got. They hate to leave their information, so they will not, if they can avoid it.

‘They’re not that into you’

Unfortunately for agents, real estate is rarely an impulse purchase.A person will spend a few months thinking about it before they even make a move to contact a broker. It’s far more likely to believe they already have someone in mind to use. Someone they know personally. They could easily know a friend who had mentioned someone they had worked with on the purchase of their own home. Perhaps they already have a family member who is in the business. They may just want to try to FSBO the property or work with a seller directly. Maybe they want to use the agent who’s selling their neighbor’s house. Whatever the case, everyone has a website and it’s unlikely your website sets you apart from the crowd.

It’s really about the initial contact. Where did my clients come from? I mean, there is a difference between someone hearing of your company because of your strong presence in the area, then ending up at your website, and them showing up at your website after an Internet search. Your website is a much stronger tool when it’s a landing place for interest generated by the buzz you’re creating in the neighborhood. But as far as an proactive business tool, it comes up a little weak. Relying on the Internet alone is imagining that if your client had a rolodex full of thousands of business cards, yours would somehow be pulled out consistently enough for you to make a living. Even if you’re in the front of the great Google Rolodex, that doesn’t guarantee you’re going to get more business.

How do I know?…well, I look up all the agents with top 10 listings in Google for the main keywords for Denver. I then see how much business they do. Its usually pretty average and sometimes even below average. When I look up the top producing agents, though, it’s quite common that they might not have a top website. They have no top 10 listings on Google and very little web traffic.

A website isn’t the key to an agent’s success.

Most agents will admit that there is little in the way of a positioning statement on their website. It’s likely there is nothing in the way of price mentioned there, so there is usually very little in the way of a benefit to a client mentioned there. Oh I know we all have the usuall rhetoric about how we are experts in some area, we can get top dollar and are masters of the universe. But there really isn’t that much that makes what one agent does different than the next one. People know this. To be successful, you need to sell benefits. Selling 101, right? What is the benefit to your client? Personally, I prefer, ‘I’ll save you more money’ or ‘I’ll make you more money’ as opposed to ‘I work for the largest company in Colorado’ or ‘Here’s my…

If agents want to be successful, they need to be realistic about where their leads come from and how can they get in front of more people for the least amount of money. While a website is an important tool to relay information, it will never replace the value of a face-to-face visit. The money that you could blow trying to generate leads from the Internet is phenomenal.

So, I’m sure you’re asking, why do I have a website? I still see a website as a key component of my business, but I doubt it will ever be the storefront I had hoped. It’s destined to be a card in a Rolodex. Who knows, I might get a few people that show up organically from the sea of Internet users out there looking to transact some real estate in the Denver area. Far more likely though, they may see my yard sign, postcard, door hanger, newspaper ad, my first time buyer seminar or have a friend drop my name and wonder who I am. By the time they reach my website, they’re already on their second contact. If it looks good at that point, and they’re ready, I might just get a call. But I’m not going to wait for it or rely on it.

I will try to spiff it up a little this year though; it looks pretty bad. One day, people may change. Maybe one day having a top ten listing on Yahoo or Google will be just like having a brick-n-mortar location right next to the supermarket. Just in case, I’ll keep trying to improve the website. Besides, I want to be part of the top 10 crowd on Google simply because I like to win.

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