Hmmm... now, carry the two... square root of mouse...
From the lovely and talented Sara Bonert (@sbonert) over at Zillow blog, I learn that Zillow gets 55% of all California buyers:
Over half (55%) of those who reported using the Internet as a tool in the home buying process used Zillow. Realtor.com continued to be the most used site as 89% of buyers used it; with individual real estate company sites at 81%; individual real estate sites were used 66% of the time. Yahoo! Real Estate scored with 53% and Craigslist was at 49%.
I wonder (aloud) on the comments and on Twitter whether this is a good thing for Zillow, seeing as how they’re coming in fourth out of six options, behind Realtor.com (89%), individual brokerage sites (81%), and individual agent sites (66%).
The dashing and charismatic David Gibbons (@davidgibbons) responds:
@robhahn dude, you are not serious … try answer this … if you own a broker site do you get 81% of buyers? [hint: no, but Z does get 55%]
David does have a point. But I fear 140 characters can’t do justice to my point. So here goes. CAVEAT: MASSIVE UNSUPPORTED SPECULATION FOLLOWS BELOW THE FOLD.
I believe in zeitgeist. Things seem to happen in groups, where one conversation is followed by another on a similar vein.
Last night, I have a great conversation with Stacey Harmon about a presentation she’s giving to realtors on the value of social media for real estate. We explore the difference between branding and lead generation, based on this post of mine on branding and social media that Stacey found interesting.
Then today, I see this epic video blog by David Gibbons of Zillow — a response to this post by Courtney Cooper — on the topic of whether “Blogging is Dead”. The video itself is below:
The gist of David’s video — which, sadly has no transcript and no bite-sized snippets I can post — is as follows:
- It isn’t enough to have a blog in 2009; you need to have a remarkable blog.
- Blogs require customers come to you in order for it to be useful as a marketing vehicle.
- Are home buyers and home sellers spending their online time on your blog? If not, rethink.
- Most realtors aren’t great writers.
- The status-sphere, specifically twitter, is more important for conversation. Photos, videos, and status updates on Facebook are becoming more effective.
- David’s noticed that starting around February of 2009, conversations on Twitter and Facebook started to exceed conversations via blog.
- Think way beyond blogs; look to other channels elsewhere on the Internet for people with real estate problems to solve.
There’s actually a lot more so I urge you to watch the whole thing.
David is a smart guy and he knows the Internet and social media marketing, so when he declares blogs to be 2008, and the “statussphere” to be more important to online marketing and conversation, it’s something to take seriously. I happen to think he’s right in many respects, but due to a critical confusion, taking David’s advice at face value could be a bad thing. The key is to understand the difference between branding and lead generation in your marketing efforts.
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