Here is a simple checklist for you to do before you leave for your "extended" vacation:
- Inform all your past clients/ current clients about your vacation. It is a good opportunity to build rapport. - Set your Out-of-Office reply with an appropriate message. - Get yourself someone you can trust/ an assistant to handle your escrows/ phone calls and emails while you are gone. - Change your greetings on your voicemail. - Make sure everyone involved with your escrows are aware of your absence. - Set up your phone for international calling (if that's where you are heading). - Back up your computer. (If you dont have time for any of these, make sure you do this one!) - Scan all your documents that are currently in escrow. - Scan your Seller's Disclosure notices for your listings and all other related documents about your listings. - Make sure all your bills will be paid on time, set automated payments if needed.
Now as a blog-aholic, make sure you have your blogs covered while you are gone. Pre-write if you have to.
Last night, with little fanfare, we launched a concept on ActiveRain called 'reBlog'. In fact, there was such little fanfare I didn't even know it was live until I woke up, reached over, grabbed my iPhone and started reading my emails. (yes, I am addicted to my iPhone, my job, my family and golf). This feature was meant to be tested and have some bugs worked out, but it accidentally slipped through to the live servers. In the first few hours, there were some components that were just not right. We are fixing those right now and the next time you see the 'reBlog' button, things will be in much better working order. Not to mention, we got some GREAT feedback right out of the gate. Sometimes being caught off guard can be a blessing in disguise.
A reBlog facilitates the process of filtering and republishing relevant content from many other Blogs. reBloggers subscribe to their favorite blogs, preview the content, and select their favorite posts. These posts are automatically published through their favorite blogging software."
This is a feature that will be available for members who have an ActiveRain Outside Blog. When you 'reBlog' an article, the post will be sent to your ActiveRain outside blog and not to your internal ActiveRain blog. Minimal points will be awarded when you reBlog an article. There will be a weekly cap on the amount. And reBlogging for points isn't going to provide your readers with a very valuable experience anyway. However, if your blog post is reBlogged by someone else, you will get 25 points every time up to a maximum of 500 points per post.
Every member will have the option of deciding whether or not they want their content to be available for reBlog. In your 'my settings' page, there will be an ability to opt in or opt out of the reBlog platform. If you choose to opt in, then your posts will automatically be included for reBlog. However, you will be able to opt-out on a post by post basis. If you choose to opt-out, then on each post you will be able to opt-in on a post by post basis. then you will not be able to opt-in on a post by post basis.
When you post a blog and make it available to reBlog, then a little reBlog icon will appear on the post on ActiveRain to any member who is logged in. If someone chooses to reBlog your post, they simply click on the reBlog button and they have the ability to write an introduction to the post. They may choose to write an intro or not, but once they reBlog the post, it sends that post only to their ActiveRain Outside Blog. The post is not reBlogged on their ActiveRain blog or Localism.
Member's only posts will not be available for reBlogging
Duplicate content issue: Any time someone reBlogs your post, there will be a link back to your original blog post. If you fed the post to your outside blog, the link from the reBlogged post will be a link to the original post on your outside blog. If you didn't send it to your outside blog, and the post went to Localism, the link back to the original will be a link to the post on Localism. If you only published the post to your ActiveRain blog, then the link back to the original post will be a link to your ActiveRain blog. Matt Cutts, the Google webmaster on SEO spells out that content syndication is OK if you make it clear to google who the original author was. reBlogging on AR does this by linking back to the original source.
reBlogs are useful to individuals who want to maintain a weblog but prefer curating content to writing original posts. They can also enable organizations to tap the contributions of their employees, members, and communities-at-large in order to easily redistribute relevant content."
Successful blogging is all about informing your reader. Over and over you will hear that business blogging is not about you, IT IS ABOUT THE CONSUMER. Providing relevant informative content should be your goal. reBlogging gives you the opportunity to bring the best content to the reader of your ActiveRain Outside Blog. Not everyone can be an expert in everything. However, in the halls of ActiveRain we have experts in just about anything real estate related. Being able to utilize the expertise of other members to inform your readers and your clients will be beneficial for everyone, especially your clients.
Think of this scenario: Little Jimmy Loan Officer is an expert on FHA. He blogs his little heart out about FHA. You just got done taking a client out for the day and they just told you that they don't have the 10% they originally thought they had, they only have 5% down. You think FHA is the way to for them and you want them to read up on FHA mortgages. You tell them to go check out your blog later tonight when they get home. You know that Little Jimmy has the best stuff on the web about FHA mortgages in his AR blog. So you jump in and grab two or three posts Jimmy has written and you add a little message to your client at the top........now your client is on your blog, reading the best info out there from LIttle Jimmy Loan officer about FHA mortgages. Not only does your client appreciate the fact that you are finding the best info on the web about FHA mortgages and delivering it to them, they associate you with Little Jimmy Loan Officer, the expert on FHA.
This could play out for information about staging, home inspections, the escrow process, or even information from a local competitor about market conditions. Delivering solid content to your readers should be the goal. You shouldn't have to know everything about everything......but your readers should be able to have that information at their fingertips......on your blog.
Would I reBlog a blog post written by a competitor in my market? Yes! If it was good information that my clientele would be interested in. Real Estate 2.0 is about client centric thinking. Your clients don't want to work with you because you are the source of original information, but because you are the source of good information that they need when they need it.
The benefits of allowing other's to reblog your posts:
In case you haven't figured this out, the name of the game is DISTRIBUTION!!! How wide of a net can you cast with the content you provide. It's the reason many blog here, so that google will pick you up and your reach will be wider. reBlogging gives the person who is an expert on certain topics an ability to have a much wider reach.
If you are a loan officer, stager, inspector, or anyone who works with agents, THIS IS A NO BRAINER. A great post by someone about FHA mortgages could be reBlogged by 1000 agents. if you don't see the power in that, then I don't know what to tell you.
From a real estate agent perspective: just imagine the power of having a hot new listing reBlogged by all of your local competitors, and don't forget about the SEO power of the backlinks you'll earn. Or imagine writing a post about negotiating contracts. If a couple hundred people picked up the post, you could instantly become a recognized expert on the subject (and get a few hundred backlinks to your outside blog).
IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ:
Some people will never buy into this and that's fine. Those that do will soon see their reach expand much further than they could hope for on their own. If you don't want your blogs reBlogged, simply go to your 'my settings' page when the feature is turned on and turn it off. Initially, all members have their global setting set to opt-in. However, all past posts will be set by default to opt-out of reBlogging regardless of your global setting, however you can go back and retroactively make them available on a post-by-post basis.
Once the feature is live (again) you can go and change your setting to opt-out. You will also have the ability to opt-out on a post by post basis if your global setting is set to opt-in. In the same way, if your global setting is set to opt-out, you can opt-in on a post by post basis.
Friends, followers, and connections are the way of the future.
Make sure you check out some of our Facebook Fan Pages Too!
Being mentioned in business publications and blogs is always nice, but nothing equals the sheer joy of having a developer/geek, who's in the know, write about your company in his blog. Developer/geeks have an uncanny ability to measure the pulse of the up and coming, and I've found that if you can please this sub-sect it's usually a very good indication you are on the right track.
So it is with great excitement that I bring to you Localism's first hard core, non real estate industry related, geek blog write up. I highly recommend clicking through and reading the complete article.
"The ideas i’ve been mulling over, hacking on, and playing with are how to share things i’m personally interested in doing. Places where you see somebody is already sharing, but in a broken way. An example i like is Localism, it’s a real estate website, but instead of sharing property listings, it creates a space for agents to share information about communities. It’s the hidden knowledge that real estate agents have, and creating a site for it helps some agents show off how damned well they know their beat.
"In 24 months Localism will have more traffic than Trulia and Zillow combined." Jonathan Washburn July 28, 2008
Here are the month one results. In all honesty I expected the first month traffic for Localism to be a down month due to Google having to reindex the entire site. Turns out I was wrong; Localism grew by over 50%!
But we still have a long ways to go. Good thing both Trulia and Zillow shrank this month.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to analyze the Century 21 brand position, and to let you know what I think you can do to position Century 21 as the real estate brand for this era. First let me congratulate you and your team for building Century 21 into one of the largest and most recognizable real estate brands in the world. As you can see in the Compete.com graph below the term "Century 21" is the third most commonly searched real estate brokerage keyword, and seventh overall keyword phrase for the real estate industry.
With this strong base and some other key brand assets that I will address later in this letter, I believe you have an opportunity to win the brand loyalty from the most important new segment of home buyers and sellers: the twenty and thirty somethings: Generation Y, and Generation X.
Winning over this market segment will take a lot of work, innovation, and most importantly courage, however I believe that the financial rewards this group offers will be worth the effort. Lastly, I know your time is valuable and limited so I will not mince words in this report. I promise to deliver my opinions to you straight, but please remember these are my subjective views and do not represent any formal polling.
Brand position, historical/corporate: Century 21 was founded in 1971 and named after the 1962 world's fair: "The Century 21 Exposition", aka "Seattle World's Fair". The major themes of Seattle's World Fair were space, science, and the future. The naming heritage is and has always been an important element in establishing the Century 21 brand and culture. The focal point of the brand over the last 37 years has been "the future".
*Screen-shot of the current Century21.com home page. Notice the black based "futuristic" motif.
Current brand position amongst Generation Y and Generation X: Most of my peers have yet to buy or sell a home, so at this point they hold little to no brand loyalty. In fact even more elemental than brand loyalty, most of my peers have very little brand awareness and are rarely able to name more than one or two real estate brokerage companies. Usually Century 21 or RE/MAX are listed, along with possibly a regional real estate brand. Some of my peers found it difficult to name even one real estate brand when questioned! Most were able to recall RE/MAX's balloon when prompted, but none were able to connect Century 21 with any meaning or brand image.
Current brand position from an industry insider perspective: Having practiced real estate almost exclusively in the Seattle real estate market, and being shielded from most television advertising, my perspective of the Century 21 brand is very limited and I am sure skewed. However with that disclosure, I must say that Century 21 is amongst the bottom on my list of the most respected real estate brands.
Here's why:
Every Century 21 real estate office I have visited has been large, dated, and lacking almost any culture.
I equate Century 21 with flat fee desk rent for lower producing agents. (It is important to note here that RE/MAX is positioned in my mind as flat fee desk rent for high producing agents.)
Realogy's step child to Coldwell Banker's first born.
Technologically lacking.
Dying brand, slowly being phased out.
It doesn't have to be this way...
My brand recommendations for Century 21:Go Modern!
Century 21's brand was built around being "futuristic". This worked in the 70's and 80's when, "Back to the Future" was the #1 movie, and we all thought of the 21st century as the future. Now it comes across as dated and out of touch. The most hip brands of today (W Hotels, Ikea, PinkBerry) are tapping into the modern theme; a theme that Century 21 is positioned perfectly to capitalize on.
Making this transition is the right long term decision for your company. Whereas Futuristic design is constantly changing and evolving, Modernism is timeless and will allow Century 21 to create a brand feeling, or culture, that can be built upon for the decades to come. As an example view the black and white video below where the Eames Lounge Chair was first introduced in a 1956 NBC television broadcast. Then notice the picture below that where the same chair fits in perfectly to it's stunning new and "modern" surroundings.
The good news is that secretly, and perhaps inadvertently, Century 21 has been cultivating this brand position since the beginning. For example notice the architectural elements of the house in the Century 21 logo? The lines are recognizably "mid-century modern":
It is this element that you should build your re-branding initiatives on.
Other things to consider:
1. Color: Please, please, PLEASE drop the black from all of your marketing, and tweak the shade of gold. Modern design is all about being clean, and simple. Look to the modern house above, or the Eames Lounge chair, and design your marketing to reflect them. If your designers don't understand how a website or a flyer can be designed to reflect the look of a house or a chair, get new designers.
2. The Gold Jacket:
I like the idea of the Gold Jacket. It is a visual cue that can help to differentiate Century 21 agents from the herd.
It is most effective as a branding tool within the industry and should not be highlighted on consumer facing advertising campaigns. Establishing national/worldwide consumer brand recognition is one thing; connecting that brand recognition to a gold jacket is not necessary or cost effective.
Go back and get the jacket redesigned. I know that you just had it redesigned by "fashion futurist, Geoffrey Beene". However the jacket is not cool. Aligning with Geoffrey Beene will not win you any points unless you are a member of AARP. (I know, most of your agents are older and like the comfortable fit of the Geoffrey Beene jacket. I don't care and you shouldn't either. A true leader will take their followers where they need to go. Your agents don't need you to lead them to the status-quo. They are already there.) *The suit pictured below (right) is Ralph Lauren Black Label.
The most important element of the Gold Jacket is that it means something about the person that's wearing it. What it means is a topic for a different letter.
3. Authenticity:
Generation X and Y buyers value authenticity above all else. They do not want to be marketed to or sold. They want to come into relationship with your brand: your people. The easiest way to do this is stop trying so hard, be yourself. Realize that they are smart and can make good decisions. Generation Y especially has a profound ability to sniff out the unauthentic. As an example I would like to draw attention to a recent Century 21 television commercial that goes through all of the motions, and yet still fails to connect.
It is difficult to explain why this ad doesn't work. I think a Will Smith scene from the first Men In Black movie can explain best what I am getting at here.
[in a shooting range, confronted with numerous menacing-looking targets, Edwards shoots a cardboard little girl]
Zed: May I ask why you felt little Tiffany deserved to die?
James Edwards:Well, she was the only one that actually seemed dangerous at the time, sir.
Zed: How'd you come to that conclusion?
James Edwards:Well, first I was gonna pop this guy hanging from the street light, and I realized, y'know, he's just working out. I mean, how would I feel if somebody come runnin' in the gym and bust me in my ass while I'm on the treadmill? Then I saw this snarling beast guy, and I noticed he had a tissue in his hand, and I'm realizing, y'know, he's not snarling, he's sneezing. Y'know, ain't no real threat there. Then I saw little Tiffany. I'm thinking, y'know, eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books? She about to start some shit, Zed. She's about eight years old, those books are WAY too advanced for her. If you ask me, I'd say she's up to something. And to be honest, I'd appreciate it if you eased up off my back about it.
4. Web Presence:
Hire Jonathan Hicks to do your graphical design, and find a way to get Galen Ward to build your home search. They are both proven producers and will deliver to you a product far superior to all of your national competitors.
Please do not hesitate to call or email me with any follow up questions. I have been thinking about your company for a long time and wholeheartedly believe in what Century 21 can become.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Washburn
*Please note that Tom Kunz, Century 21 Chief Executive Officer, did not actually engage me to write this letter. This is all my own doing and the opinions expressed on my blog do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ActiveRain Corp.
History of REALTOR.com (Excerpted from Realtor.org website) "In November 1996, the Board of Directors of the National Association of REALTORS® approved an agreement between the REALTORS® Information Network (RIN)—NAR’s wholly-owned subsidiary--and RealSelect, Inc. to take over the operations of NAR’s official Internet site, REALTOR.com. At the time, many business models were considered to finance the development of REALTOR.com. NAR’s Leadership Team decided against using dues dollars or asking for a special assessment of the membership to fund REALTOR.com. While Homestore and its investors have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate REALTOR.com, no NAR funds or NAR member dues dollars have ever been used for the creation or operation of the site."
It is now time for the NAR Leadership Team to issue a special assessment and buy the publicly traded Move corporation. Here is why:
1. Realtor.com is not supporting the National Association of Realtors stated mission "to help its members become more profitable and successful." Most Realtors I talk with hate Realtor.com. Or perhaps more accurately they hate the way Move monetizes the Realtor.com asset by selling extremely high priced marketing packages to Realtors. Prominent placement on Realtor.com should be a Realtor's right.
2. Move and it's leadership have failed to leverage the Realtor.com asset to reach consumers. Realtor.com has less than a 5% market share among real estate category websites, with most of it's top competitors boasting a marketing budget of less than 10% of that of Realtor.com's. Realtor.com had a huge first mover advantage, perhaps the most valuable domain name possible, hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing support, and the, at least initial, grassroots support of 1,000,000+ Realtors.
3. NAR cannot easily get out of its Operating Agreement with Move:
"Key Provisions in the Operating Agreement The operating agreement negotiated more than eight years ago contained a number of important provisions ensuring NAR’s control over the content and operations of the site. Those provisions remain in full force today and continue to guide the relationship between NAR and Homestore (NASDAQ: HOMS), which owns RealSelect.
1. The National Association of REALTORS® owns and controls REALTOR.com. NAR's subsidiary, RIN, also owns approximately 4% of Homestore's stock, and maintains two seats on the Real Select board, and one seat on the Homestore board. In addition to their fiduciary responsibilities to those entities, the NAR appointees also:
* Represent NAR and RIN’s interests in all matters pertaining to the agreement; * Assure compliance with all agreements with RIN and NAR, and report any non-compliance or other concerns to the RIN board and through them, to the NAR Board of Directors; and * Provide quarterly reports to the Leadership Team on all significant Homestore activities.
2. Basic real property ads on REALTOR.com, including the primary photo, are free to REALTORS®.
3. No “For Sale by Owner” properties may ever appear on REALTOR.com.
4. NAR remains the sole owner of the REALTOR.com site and trademark.
5. The use and presentation of property listings remain under the control of NAR. Homestore cannot market any property data or information derived from the data without NAR approval.
6. Advertising on REALTOR.com is strictly controlled. For example, no REALTOR® detailed listing will ever contain a banner from a competitor. Advertisers are limited on the amount of space they can occupy on the site at any given time.
7. NAR must approve changes to the design or text of the REALTOR.com home page.
8. Homestore must conduct all of its real estate related business in Real Select, where NAR has substantial control. Should Homestore ever be acquired by a real estate related entity, RIN has the ability to terminate its agreement for the operation of REALTOR.com.
Homestore operates REALTOR.com as a business. Its separation from NAR allows the company to make decisions that could potentially pose difficult problems for a trade association on business terms. These include the pricing of REALTOR.com products and services to REALTORS® and the development and marketing of new products and services."
4. Relatively speaking, it's cheap. Move's stock price is in the dumps along with the rest of the real estate sector; it's always best to buy in a down market.
Move's stock is trading at just about a three year low. It's market cap is roughly $350 million with Current Assets over $200 million, and a Total Equity position of over $100. This means it's Enterprise Value is under $250 million, or in otherwords under 1x of Move's last years revenue!
5. Move has lots of other assets that NAR could spin off to lessen the out of pocket acquisition price.
TopProducer: This is one of Move's biggest money makers, bringing in over 10% of 2007 revenues with over 65,000 subscribers.
Move.com: A top 10 most trafficked real estate site.
Rent.com: 5th most trafficked real estate website.
WelcomeWagon
Moving.com
Realtor.com should be controlled and operated by the National Association of Realtors. It is our namesake, and the internet is too important to Realtors to just outsource.
As Bob alluded to yesterday in his post about the Localism land rush schedule, we have been diligently following all of the conversations on ActiveRain about our members' likes and dislikes of the new Localism; we have taken your feedback and turned it into the "NEW New Localism" which will be launching before the end of August!
Without further ado here is a screenshot of what we are working on: (click the picture for a full resolution version)
Although it's highly unusual for a web company to reveal super top secret information like this to the public over a month before the expected release date, we believe that we need to share this design with our members now because it affects how their Localism sponsorships will be displayed in the near future. The primary component you should notice is that the sponsorship area was moved from the left side of the screen to the right side (as indicated by the GIANT arrow). We made this change primarily because you, our members, requested that it be moved to a slightly less commanding position. As a result of the reduced prominence on the page we lowered the price of the sponsorship from $15/community to $9. In retrospect I completely agree with our members that this new position is far better.
Of course you also notice that the graphical elements of the site received a major makeover. For example, resulting from another common member request, we added a lot more color to the site.
Lastly you may have noticed the different colored tags on the top of the page. Those I can't talk about, but trust me when I say that what they represent is AWESOME!
...the real estate industry leaders of old watch from their box seats with nice, cold beers in hand.
On Monday, I published ablog post drawing attention to the fact that the founders of Zillow and Trulia are known for successfully leading companies that dis-intermediate industries. My intention, by posting in such a sensationalist manner, was to draw attention to my belief that the long time leaders of our industry have not done their part to stay ahead of the innovation curve. Now, because of that lack of new innovation, outsider-led companies like Zillow and Trulia are among the most powerful and influential companies in our industry.
I have always supported the real estate practitioner's use of these outsider-led, venture-backed companies because I believed that the innovation and competition offered by these companies would compel the traditional real estate companies to step up their game and in the process, provide benefit to everyone involved: the consumer, the industry and of course, the businesses involved.
However, the issue traditional companies and leaders face now is that they have not stepped up their game and presented adequate new ideas to compete with these larger, new innovators who are encroaching on their territory. Instead, they have rolled over to these companies, given up their listings to these "newer and better versions of themselves", and in the process, created a power-shift to those who seek to change the real estate business as we know it.
Do these leaders have a genuine interest in the real estate professionals, or did they choose this industry solely because they viewed it as vulnerable to a major business model change?
To Trulia and Zillow: Continue what you're doing. The new empowerment and value you are bringing to the consumer is admirable.
To the Traditional Real Estate Leaders: Step up your game. Invest in in-house technological developments and force the new generation of real estate innovators to see you as serious competition. Give them a run for their money!
*It's interesting to note that Trulia moved from last place in the group to #2 in less than a one year time-frame.
**I've been working in this industry since I was 14 years old, and have been an agent since I was 18. I've written this post as a plea to my industry leaders, the people I have looked up to for more than the last 10 years, to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to their agents, and brokers, and re-enter the fight to create the most cutting edge real estate technology that our collective home buying and selling clients deserve.
Here is a simple checklist for you to do before you leave for your "extended" vacation:
