oh yeah?

it all started with a comment from one well intentioned realtor to an agent that had been posting listings on facebook without using the state required information for real estate advertising (brokerage name, etc.). the well intentioned realtor pointed out, nicely, that the posting agent should consider adding that information so as not to run afoul of the authorities. the response back from the posting agent was less than polite, spurring other agents to jump in and respond in agreement with said well intentioned realtor. after some discussion (public, no less, on each party’s wall), the final response from the posting agent to one of the commenters amounted to a very public insult, likely a violation of a standard of practice from the realtor’s code of ethics.

if you can’t say something nice about someone…

my mother always told me, “if you can’t say something nice about someone, at least wait until they leave the room.” well, social networking sites like facebook are big rooms, and even though we may think we’re talking directly to someone there, we need to remember that other ears may be listening. conversations or posts placed on walls and through status updates are very public, and can be used against us if we’re not careful about what we say. to air a personal beef in such a public forum not only tarnishes the image of the person hurling epithets, but brings the rest of us down to that level, lumping us all into the back-biting, opportunist, i’d-step-over-your-body-to-close-a-sale image that many in the public have for our profession.

leave me outta this

i’d just as soon not be categorized into that group, thank you very much, so for those of you engaged in this type of “smackdown engagement,” please stop showing your lunacy and childish behaviour in public.  take your disagreements and petty arguments offline.  pick up the phone and yell at someone in private if you must, just don’t malign the rest of us with your antics.  we’ve already got enough of an uphill battle to convince the consumer we’re not crazy.

and sometimes that’s not an easy task.

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given the fact that the upcoming stewart title success series class is on the topic of advanced blogging, and my man derec shuler (@derecshuler on twitter) has tasked me with the section on publicizing and registering a blog, i figured i’d make this an interactive example using technorati to claim your blog.

some that follow me on various sites (@bradhanks on twitter by the way) probably thought this blog was abandoned, since nothing’s been posted for awhile. but i assure you, i was mulling over lots of ideas to write on.  really.  it’s just that preparing taxes, authoring courses, parenting and traveling halfway around the globe kinda got in the way.  ok.  busted.  whiney, sniveling excuses for no blog posts. enough.

claim your blog. now.

surprise!

so imagine my surprise when i log onto technorati (i know, i know – some time has gone by…) only to find that i hadn’t registered my own blog, real estate dementia.  this, after another twitter friend of mine, @stevenstearns, repeatedly drilled into my head the importance of registering my blog with multiple directories.  did i heed the advice of my jedi master?  umm … no.  which is exactly why i’m featuring my own addled-headed behavior in this post.  it’s downright crazy.

register today. or get lost.

not that registering your blog is going to make it an overnight success, bringing traffic by the boatload.  in a sea of sameness in the blogosphere, it’s hard to be found among all the other fishing boats bobbing about in open water.  rough and expansive open water i might add.  some statistics place the number of blogs at over 120 million.  that’s a lot of damn boats. and most of them look the same.

good quality, high value, community driven blogs attract readers (you have been paying attention, right class?). these qualities are what help your boat stand out in that expansive sea. but tools like technorati also can put a light on your boat.  it ain’t magic, but it’s a good start.

the vast majority of blogs out there go unregistered with blog directories, and even more go abandoned after a short time. now that’s just crazy. and in the words of jack nicholson from the movie ‘as good as it gets‘ – “go sell crazy somewhere else; we’re all stocked up here.”

so here goes everyone: Technorati Profile

one last thing…

for those of you wondering about the whole “interactive” experience i referenced at the beginning of this post: this is where irl comes into play.  ask the students who were in the classroom.

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albert einstein is credited with the quote defining insanity as “…doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  a lot of people refer to the real estate business as “insane,” but most are referring to the dramatic cycles of the market and the frenetic pace at which business is conducted when making that reference.  personally i’m wondering if the use of that term in explaining the real estate industry isn’t an apt use of einstein’s definition.

Photo from www.istockphoto.com

i’m not suggesting that the real estate industry is rife with lunatics, but i’m often perplexed why so many agents (and companies) in real estate cling to old, unproductive methods in plying their trade, especially in light of the market in most parts of the country.  yet so many agents, brokers, lenders and other service providers continue to do business the same way it’s been done for many years – same methods of prospecting, same methods of marketing, same manner of dealing with transactions.  and somehow, many of those same individuals and companies expect they’re going to see different results from those efforts.

insane to think consumers will continue to respond to the same old marketing tactics. crazy to ignore what consumers want or how their buying behaviors have changed. demented to think that, in the new world order of doing business in a streamlined, efficient fashion, the byzantine and plodding real estate transaction as it’s now carried out will continue without challenge by consumers.

it can’t continue.  the real estate industry has got to move beyond the old methods and embrace the new, paying particular attention to what consumers want, where they congregate, what messages are relevant to them.  stopping the madness of the property flyers stuffed in real estate agents’ mailboxes, submitting a property to the mls and praying that it will sell, using web 1.0 to market in a web 2.0 world.

unless there’s a change in the thought process, the methods of interacting with consumers, and a willingness to engage consumers through blogging, social networking and the other tools of social media, many in the real estate industry will slowly go mad, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

if you’re in the real estate industry and reading this, my hope is that you are not one being fitted for a long shirt with sleeves that tie in the back.

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