Did he just say what I think he said?
Yes, I did. Let me make it clear. I mentioned “profiling in real estate.” Are you scared of what’s about to come out of my mouth? You shouldn’t be. I’m talking about your profile. The little blurb about you on every site you join. The “Bio.” The “About Me.” That “Profile.” As I have settled into my ideas of how I want to present myself, I got to a point where I realized my profile wasn’t cutting it. I had tied myself to old ideas of what I needed to say in a profile (as a real estate agent) – I’m great, I’m here to help, blah, blah, blah. While I don’t disagree that you need to say those things…its all about how I wanted to say them. I felt my old profile was drab and a bit too stiff sounding. It was “just the facts ma’am.”
Let me lighten things up.
A few days ago I joined ActiveRain. I thought it would be good for me to help cut my teeth on blogging some more. I want my writing to improve and the best way to do that is constant practice and of course, some feedback. After entering my basic info and uploading a photo, I stared at the “My Profile” page forever. I hate writing about myself. It feels awkward to me. Especially because I am basically trying to sell myself through that profile. No matter how you look at it, that is the goal of a good profile. You want to be interesting enough to draw someone to look deeper. Its kind of the goal of everything we do in real estate…trying to get someone to look deeper into us and our services until they say “that’s the agent for me!”
So I sat and stared. Forever. I wrote a few words, deleted them, and wrote a few more. I’ve learned that writing is a weird thing in my head. I feel I’m decent at it, but when I sit down to do it, my mind often goes blank. Then a funny thing happens, I begin to channel William S. Burroughs (minus the opiate addiction, self-severed little finger, and murder of my wife), and the words flow. I am not a great planner when it comes to writing, but when I get going, the words seem to take on a life of their own. That’s what happened with my profile. I wanted to explain to the casual reader why I got into real estate and why I intend to stay here and make it a better place for all involved – consumers and agents. Yeah, I’m still crazy enough to want to change the world!
Who are you and what do you stand for?
I whipped up what I feel is a letter to the general public. Its my “who I am and what I stand for” letter to them. I wrote it in one go. I went back, fixed some spelling errors, and made sure the words made sense, but overall, I didn’t change much. I wanted to be honest, upfront, and myself. I think I achieved that, but I’d like you to be the judge. I also used it as my profile on rerockstar.com, so feel free to let me know what you think. What do you think is important in a good online profile?
