Death of a Blog, Part 2

Article from: http://www.stlagent.com

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By: Darin "Sid" Cameron, CRS
Sun, Jul 2nd, 2006 12:28 am

My background prior to real estate was in technology marketing and sales. And because I’m now on a team with people who do the "real work", I have the luxury of ignoring the day to day sales tasks to focus on the big picture technology and marketing tasks.

Since virtually all of the agents I know are effectively one person businesses being constantly pulled in a hundred different directions, I’ve met very few people in our industry who give as much thought to their marketing and technology solutions as I do.

So with that said, other agents routinely come to me for advice on using and implementing technology in real estate, yet I’ve found virtually no one I can turn to for higher level advice with MY questions.

Coming from the world of technology sales, I’m used to being able to turn to dozens of industry newspapers, magazines, and websites that rate, review, praise and skewer products, companies, and the people who promote them.

Thinking about opening up a computer store? Computer Reseller News and Value Added Reseller News (and their websites, crn.com and var.com) will give you the skinny on which company’s products to sell and which to avoid; where you can make the most money selling technology and where you will get the biggest customer headaches. As a sales person in that industry, you could be guaranteed poor products would disappear from the market- or suddenly improve- once the negative reviews started to come in.

Yet surf the web for products sold to support real estate agents and you will find a multi-million dollar industry has developed to sell mostly shoddy and in some cases near-fraudulent technology and internet services to unsuspecting real estate agents- and there's virtually no solid resources to help agents weed the good from the bad.

Our industry trade associations, franchises, magazines and websites spend very little time rating, reviewing, or covering the value (or lack of value) these products have- in many cases because they are the very companies bringing them to market.

Seem like a conflict of interest? Not in the real estate industry. Rarely will you find a real estate magazine article written by someone who isn’t trying to sell the reader their latest book or audio tape on how to be successful in real estate. It’s truly maddening.

So, this tiny little corner of my customer website is now dedicated to talking to other agents about the things I’ve done that have been successful and the products I used to get me there as well as my opinions on the products I’ve seen or used which were, shall we say, lacking.

It will be written to be read by other real estate agents- not because I have something to sell you (at least not yet) but because I hope that ultimately I will be able to strike up dialog with a few forward-thinking, technology-using agents who in turn might share with me their successes and failures to make me a better real estate agent. If you are the type of agent who’s afraid the guy in the next cube over will somehow gain your trade secrets, then this blog isn’t for you. If you believe there is value in networking and you have something constructive to share, then please post it below in the comments section.

So that’s how a conversation about a near-dead blog created an idea for this one.

And with that said, for my first topic I would like to tackle the very subject which I’m currently taking part in- blogging. Hundreds of you now do it. From a business standpoint, there are probably more real estate blogs than any other segment of business (besides the porn and gambling industries of course).

Yet thousands of you have started real estate blogs and then given up. More of you grapple with the very concept of what a blog even is, and I’ve even talked to agents that were convinced blogging could harm their business. So what’s my opinion on the value of Blogging? I’ll post that in my next article.