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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great resource for real estate professionals, January 3, 2007
This review is from: Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition (Paperback)
Real estate agents certainly have a much harder job today than they did in the pre-Internet days. I often wonder how so many of them continue to make a living when there are a variety of online solutions for buying and selling a house. How do they justify their commission? Stand out in the crowd?
One way to become better known as the local real estate expert, and a very good one, I might add, is to consider getting into the blogosphere. Become the well-known real estate expert in your community. Offer all sorts of great insight on how to prep your house for sale or what to look for in your next home purchase.
If you're in the real estate business or know someone who is, Realty Blogging is a "must read." The authors do a fantastic job of putting everything you need to know about blogging in general, but aimed at the real estate market, in a book that's less than 200 pages long. Much of their advice can also be applied outside of blogging (e.g., positioning yourself as the expert and exploiting niches). Another nice touch is that they not only offer coverage of the more popular blogging platforms, they also set up their own, where readers can start a blog in an environment that's very realtor-friendly.
The best real estate agents also seem to be outstanding at personal networking. Blogging is a natural networking extension, but with the added benefits of being much broader and offering 24/7 access. I know a lot of the real estate agents out there are "old school" and all, but I think any agent without a blog is really missing a huge opportunity. If you're the new real estate agent in the area, what better way to build brand recognition and a following than starting a blog to share your real estate wisdom and advice?
I also like the form factor of this one (small trim size, less than 200 pages, inexpensively priced) and wonder what other vertical segments might be right for a blogging book like this...
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A focus on all the wrong things, March 25, 2007
This review is from: Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition (Paperback)
I delayed buying this book, hoping that it wouldn't be as bad as it proved to be.
It's a muddled brain dump of both good and bad advice about blogging, but with a focus on all the wrong things.
The single biggest problem is that it panders to the standard real estate agent thinking that there's a magic bullet out there that will give the agent an edge over his or her competitors. The current magic bullet is blogging.
Left out of the books is any serious discussion of what should have been the starting point: a blog can't attract an audience without a focus on delivering something of value to a targeted audience.
The authors pay modest homage to this concept, but virtually everything they write undermines it. They encourage agents to write about anything and everything, and tell them what they want to hear: you can be an expert simply by claiming to be one and having a blog.
Agents should spend the time learning something substantive that consumers want to know instead of reading this book.
The popularity of this book will do much to undermine any potential value that real estate blogging has to those agents who want to pursue it as a way of developing, honing and communicating real expertise. An army of idiot brokers will, on the advice of the authors, be babbling on with no focus and will discourage anyone from even looking at the occasional good real estate blog.
Real estate blogging, if the authors of this book find an audience that follows their advice, will be just as useless a field of garbage as real estate agent Web sites have become.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Latino Niche, January 19, 2009
This review is from: Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition (Paperback)
1. The market is splintered into millions of pieces
2. People are inundated with disruptive messages.
3. Blogs help focus on a small subset of people. The blog content reflects what you are good at; what you enjoy; what are your strengths.
4. Blogging at its heart is an exercise in openness, "speak from your heart".
5. A blog in the Blogsphere should be a place to learn and not be sold; a place to provide timely information to the public; a place to entertain your web guests.
6. Create you personality online. Loyal fans will communicate with, as if they know you. Blogs are a retention tool. They use pull marketing rather than push marketing. Give the customer information they want and they will return.
7. Long-term relationships are established through strong interpersonal communication skills.
8. Effective blogs are good lead generators.
9. Effective blogging is characterized returning loyal readers; controlled flow of relevant and niched information; strong promotion of business events; and the establishment of unique character and writing style.
10. The Latio niche represents one of the fastest growing market segments. By 2050, there will be 103 million Latios in the US. In 2007, Latio buying power was $200 billion. By 2010, Lation buying power will by $12 trillion, more buying power that all of Mexico.
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