Now I know you think this guy is smiling because washing his dog was so easy and because the dog loved it too.
But that would make you wrong. He is smiling because he has time to sell real estate and to blog. Actually, because of his blog marketing real estate is even easier.
Click here or on the photo to see a short demo video about blogging made easy.
You will need a video player such as Media Player or Nero which is a good thing to have anyway.
Email me if you want a copy with larger text size. Larry(at)realestateundressed.com I will send it in pdf form. Thanks
When I started my real estate blog there were not many real estate blogs around and no blogs about St. Paul. I was lucky. My instinct told me that if I wrote to consumers, and kept it local because real estate is local, that people would read my blog and that I would get to meet them, and maybe they would become clients. I learned to keep it real and to be myself and not to imitate others or try to be something or someone that I am not.
Then at some point, maybe about a year ago the real estate industry got interested in blogs. I started seeing them everywhere. Many of the bloggers would start out the way that I did. After a few months they would begin writing to other bloggers and giving advice on how to blog. I understand how this happens. It is hard to stay focused especially in the beginning. Writing a local blog can be a lonely experience, even more so for someone like me who does not live any where near Seattle, but in fly over land where blogs are not as popular.
In most cases local bloggers do not get national recognition. I have had national recognition but only because I was an early adapter. There certainly are better blogs than mine. The first time my blog was noticed was by the Chicago Tribune and the reporter wrote about it because she was not finding local blogs written by agents. She was finding blogs written by Realtors for other Realtors. When she came to mine she found pictures of houses because I was writing a series on local architecture that week. The other blogs she visited had pictures of iPhones on them because that is what everyone was talking about that week. Those architecture posts generated about a million dollars in sales, the iPhone posts got more traffic and comments and links.
My goal was and is to stay focused and if you read my blog you will see that I have stayed on track. It can be fun to write to other bloggers who will leave comments, but my goal is to write about St. Paul and about real estate and it is a lot of fun to come up number one in the search engines, organically for keywords that other companies pay for.
Why am I writing all of this? Mostly to explain the undressed network. The idea is to have a local blog because real estate is local. Blogs are not technical, they are about content. What to write and how to write it. The undressed network is not about getting national recognition or about seeing which blogger can have the most real estate professionals reading. It is about building relationships with the consumers who live inside of our computers, so that they will contact us and ask for our help when they need to buy or sell real estate.
I contend that the real estate industry does not yet understand local blogs or the power that we as individuals have on the internet. As an industry we reward bloggers by how many others in the industry read them and have not yet embraced the idea of writing to potential clients. It is about being real and local and giving consumers the information they are looking for. It is about honesty and integrity and yes even undressing. In writing we are undressing online. We are exposing our beliefs, values and ideas. That takes courage but it is powerful.
I guess I have just exposed my beliefs and values about real estate blogs. It is OK to have a national blog, I have one of those too, and I read them, but if the intent is to win business try a local or neighborhood blog. National bloggers have a lot more competition because there are so many of them. There is almost no competition for local bloggers making it a great opportunity for agents who want to have a strong web presence that generates business.
Pat Kitano writer
Last week on Transparent, I sounded the call to action to Realtors about blogging - there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that blogs can soon potentially lock up Google’s top page for local search keywords, i.e. “Your city real estate”, based on blogs’ powerful search ranking qualities. There are only 10 spots on that top page, and once they are taken, it will be tough for a new blog with little “Google juice” to displace a blog occupying one of the top ten. Those top ten Google spots per locale will in effect work like the “Yellow Pages” listings of the future, except they are organic and free
1- Is your website a fancy business card? Do you want to drive more traffic to your site? Do you want natural traffic, unpaid for, or do you prefer the pay per click machine?
Joining us brings solutions to these questions. Sure you can still pay per click, but the power of our network can drive even more traffic to your site. Even in the early stages of IssaquahUndressed.com we bet it had more links to it and a better Alexa rating than your website. Why? Because of the way we market locally and because of it belonging to our network. See post on Power of the Network.
We are here to drive traffic to your website and to you.
2- We are here to help you become the local agent everyone remembers and wants to do business with. You will OWN YOUR TOWN. This is another important ‘why us’ point. We are implementing procedures in our local area that we will teach and share with you. You can see immediate results.
3- For many real estate agents it is a problem to be disiplined and have the courage to get in front of people and make contacts. Blogging YOUR town will help you in meeting new people, potential prospects, in a favorable, non-threatening way.
We talk about the network, why? There are different types of important reasons. We call it, “the power of the network”.
Combining our website traffic into one: There are various important measurements and rankings. That science will be ever changing and evolving. All of our Undressed neighborhood sites forward to a subset of neighborhoodsUndressed.com, partially for this reason. Instead of your site being looked at as a lone ranger, it is seen as a large site with many links and much content.
Understanding the concept of “the long tail” We did not invent this term, Christ Anderson did. We do focus on the concept. “The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head.
Your neighborhood site is a nitche. Our networks mission is to drive people into the network and out to you. Getting a few targeted hits is more productive than paying to buy the main words. The long tail in the network comes from all of the articles we write together. Even before we officially launch the undressed network has thousands of links from Google, MSN, Yahoo, and the many other search engines databases.
Instead of competing for the one hot and expensive search term, we are found with thousands of search terms and phrases. (watch the effect as we grow) Blending all of our sites lengthens the long tail exponentially, bringing people into our network and out to each others sites.
The Long Tail, in a nutshell.
Brand Recognition: We already know that put an undressed site on a page with nine other search results, our brand is selected by the viewer. As our brand has more communities the more this will be. Consider the power of the golden arches. A glance tells you there is a McDonalds there.
Uniformity: As consumers recognize the network and we succeed, consumers will trust that each site will have the same fundamental parts; agents –MLS search – loan officers – G rated sites – Great local contents – agents that know the market, etc.
Website management: We have technicians working on the next four upgrades as I write this piece. These are to be definable benefits to your ability to get customers, listings, or just make your site alive with state of the art feature. An important power of the network is that as we go live with an upgrade it automatically will be installed on your site. This allows us to focus on technology while you focus on real estate, When a new feature is installed you will be trained on how to use it.
Benefiting from the efforts of each other: Frankly, those who blog quickly discover the enjoyment of the community. There is a thread of courtesy among most bloggers toward each other. We take this to a higher level. We train you in groups on line, we provide a forum for you to share questions or ideas with each other, and best of all as one of us becomes a stronger site the entire network members benefits to be stronger.
Costs: Without the network concept, we must do as our competitors do, charge more for less. To most, blogging need to be more than just buying a website. We deliver more for less, thanks to the power of the network.
1- Business. It is mostly about building your business. Closed sales that you can measure. Our expectation is that this will become your best source of business. Successful bloggers are usually able to give up open houses, drip marketing, eventually everything but the blog.
2- You will be provided training in all aspects of blogging. We provide a turn key, beginning to end solution.
3- The Network. We provide a domain that forwards into the network. The combined traffic of the group will increase important rankings. Click here for more on The Power of The Network.
4- Coaching from long term real estate bloggers (bonafide agents), those that are closing sales because of their blog. Learn from agents like you. The first month is included in your startup fee and the remaining is optional.
5- Feedback. Our model offers you feedback. We visit your site, point out the good and offer ideas to make you better.
6- The Brand. Benefit from the Undressed Network name, quirky, but the brand stands out and people will click through and find you.
7- Fun. What is by nature a fun endeavor, we will help make it funner, OK OK, more fun.
8- The Brochure. To provide a jump start we teach you how to use the brochure to get business now. We received our first listing the second day we distributed our brochure. It is a non-threatening approach from you to people and groups. Everyone accepts a brochure about their community. Link to picture of brochure:
9- Build your community image and foothold. You will quickly establish yourself as the go to person in the community. OWN YOUR TOWN!
10- Low cost. Your$375.00 startup includes training, coaching, licenses, and much more. It is a great value.
The monthly advertising fee is $50.00 and can be most any advertiser, not the agent.
A comment from Teresa when asked about numbers.
12 closed transactions a year from a real estate blog is a reasonable expectation and 20 transactions are quite possible. I would suggest that it takes an average of three months of posting before most blog writers see a contract or closing from it. It took me 5 months to learn from my readers and figure out what to write. Our market here has changed quite a bit and is no longer hot and is saturated with agents and listing that don’t sell. Several agents I know have taken part time jobs. I spend 6 to 8 hours every week working on my blog, most of the time is spent writing. My top source for generating listing appointments is my Friday fun post. I can attribute 2 listings to it so far this year, with another going on the market next week and another on August 1st. I have a closing on Thursday from buyers that found me through my blog and another in July. I do not get business from every appointment, and not every buyer buys, I attribute this to buyer angst brought on by listening to the news and by local market conditions because in prior years every buyer I worked with bought and every deal I wrote closed. Most agents are reporting working twice as hard for half as much business, I also find that to be true. My top source for meeting new buyers is the photos on my blog. So far St. Paul re has reduced my marketing costs significantly which is a great reason for having it.
My blog is also a life style choice. I detest open houses, and do not believe in cold calling. I choose to market my business by word of mouth, and limit the amount of business that I take. My goal has never been to be the biggest, I strive to be the best. I think blogs are a long term type of marketing that take commitment. I personally have not found any other method of generating business that I am as comfortable with and that works as well.
My goal is to make a comfortable living while having time to enjoy other things. I enjoy the blog and the people that I have come to know because of it. It has been a tremendous educational experience and has led to new business ideas and new ways of doing business. I am going to state that I have learned enough at this point to be able to take my blog to the next level. I feel as though I am only beginning to scratch the surface and that both my blog and I have a lot of untapped potential. My personal and business goals involve beating my own personal best, and I do not spend time comparing myself to other agents. I don’t want to get into a contest, but I do want other agents to know that blogs can generate revenue.
An opinionated opinion about realestateUndressed.com
I’m writing this post because I want to. I’m naming 5 blogs that I read daily. That makes them the best. I have absolutely no empirical data to support that claim, but it matters not. Read them now, or suffer the wrath of my killer band of real estate ninjas!
1. Steve Leung at the 1SiliconValley Blog. Steve went to MIT. How smart are You?
2. Athol Kay. The mad scientist himself over at RE Agent in Connecticut. Armed with a fresh new template and blogging platform, he’s only a step away from world domination. We’ve reached a contractual agreement for him to use my band of killer ninjas. In return, I get Europe when he’s world king.
3. David Williams is Sergeant Real Estate. If you don’t have a sense of humor, don’t bother with this one. You’ll probably just get offended. I happen to like it that way.
4. Jonathan Dalton at the Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Blog, mostly because we have a thing for beagles. Oh, the human is pretty smart also.
5. Larry Cragun from Real Estate Undressed and about 50 other blogs. We can’t keep them all straight, but we stumble upon at least one of them per day. Market saturation is the name of the game.
So, bookmark them all now, dammit. Or else!
From A terrific San Diego blogger - Kris Berg, The San Diego Home Blog
And to think I didn’t even prepare an acceptance speech!
This morning, Larry Cragun at Real Estate Undressed announced his Magnificent 7 winners for 2006. This was a long-term project for Lar, the idea being to choose the best on-line real estate and mortgage articles written for consumers this past year.
We were included among the four best real estate efforts for our Stupid People Zue Zillow piece. Also receiving the nod were the following Blogging Dignitaries:
Teresa Boardmans St. Paul Real Estate Blog:It’s the Community, Stupid;
Bonnie Ericsons Real Estate Snippets: Vacant House Smells; and,
Maureen Francis: MiOaklandCounty blog: Help. I Can’t Find Your Agent
Congratulations to all, and a big thank you to Lar for this award. It is going directly up on the mantel, right next to the empty spot where my Sellsius Top 10 Women Real Estate Bloggers award should be.
