Monthly Archives: October 2010

Enough With the Talking

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Thanks to my friend Jack Miller, I read this post by Drew Burks of Web Real Estate Marketing in which he laments the lack of leadership in the MLS and Realtor Associations:

You see the associations are focused on the wrong things!  The real estate industry is focused on growing membership and collecting membership dues; whereas, in my humble opinion the better thing to focus on is innovation!  With innovation we can move the industry forward in a competitive manner.

And so on.  There are, as of this writing, 143 Facebook “Likes” on this post, and 15 comments with all of the commenters agreeing with Drew.

I have now heard this familiar refrain time and again in just about every other conversation about the industry, with REALTORS, with MLS executives, with MLS board members, with Association leadership, with broker/owners, with managers, with vendors… just about everyone agrees that the industry is broken. I’ve taken part in a lot of those conversations myself.

Here’s the thing: Enough with the talking already.  Time to step up or shut up.

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SEO, the Real Estate Blog, and Competition

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Sun Tzu: The Art of War

At REBlogWorld 2010, I moderated a panel discussion on whether the real estate blog was dead or not.  My friend Garron Selliken, a technologist and broker in Portland, wrote up a post that stemmed from a long discussion he and I had with several others in Las Vegas, in which he argues that the “real estate blog” as he defines it is indeed dead as the Monty Python parrot:

When it comes to generating leads from search, the past, present and future of real estate sites is SEO, not blogging, transparency, authenticity and finding your voice.  The way to get clients is to show up where the most concentrated group of most motivated buyers/sellers are hanging out and ask for the business. This is why SEO focused content kills blogging…it is targeted directly at the relevant phrases and lands on pages designed to satisfy needs AND convert into conversation.

Then the brilliant Gahlord Dewald, a SEO consultant and an all-around smart fella, chimed in with his own post on the topic.

Both of them are worth reading in full.

While agreeing with both Garron and Gahlord in terms of what works for lead generation, conversion, and actual revenue generation for a real estate professional… this whole line of thinking raises a couple of questions for me, so I thought I’d puzzle them out with you all here.

Basically, the question is whether a SEO-focused strategy is viable competitive strategy for a real estate agent or small brokerage.

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