Time Suckage
Blogging isn’t the Holy Grail, a magical Silver Bullet or a Savior. For some, it really is a time-suck, a distraction or a poor idea. For others, it’s like Sunshine for Sweet Success.
Sunshine for Sweet Success
Think of everything you do to attract, uncover and discover listing and selling opportunities as your personal real-estate-business-solar-system.
You and your blog sit at the center of your business-solar-system. The planets and moons in your business-solar-system are the networks, tribes, niches and online communities that orbit around you. I’m talking about your In-Real-Life (IRL) spheres like past clients, suspects, neighbors, your Bunco crew, Yoga classmates and other places you live, love, play prospect for business. Additional planets and moons in your business solar system are the online communities you share and interact with. For example Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, Youtube.com, SlideShare.com, Twitter.com, Flickr.com, etc.
Because competing real estate agents live and work within common solar systems, it’s important that you position yourself as the MMIC (Main Mistress In Charge) of your solar-system. Authoring a blog is like owning the Sun for your real-estate-business-solar system. When you own the Sun, you rule. Like our real Sun beams sunlight to all the planets in our solar system, your blog beams your personal brand of sunlight to all your important prospecting communities, tribes, niches and networks. The intensity, illumination and warmth of your sunlight is determined by the quality, relevance and frequency of the things you share on your blog. If you’re beaming sweet sunshine and your competitors aren’t, you’re going to win, right?
Your blog is where you can show (instead-of-tell) others who you really are and what you’re about . What you stand for and against. How knowledgeable and helpful you are and the emotional and logical reasons why someone should choose you to help them with their real estate needs. You accomplish all these things by sharing stuff on your blog (aka creating sunlight). Specifically, shared stuff includes things like; neighborhood news, photos of neighborhood parks, Festivals and Art Shows, real estate market updates, local restaurant reviews, answers to commonly asked real estate questions and the like. If you’re sharing and your competitors are not, you have a advantage, right?
Another blogging bonus, once you hit the “Publish” button on your blog post, your “Share” becomes part of the Online-Information-Ocean and becomes sharable via perma-web-link. Once you’ve shared (published) something on your blog, you and your friends and friends of their friends, can now rebroadcast-share your stuff (sunlight) around the inter-webs and within your/their social circles (planets and moons) using your perma-web-links. For example you and others can share and cross-post your permalinks with your/their tribes on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, etc. This is what ReTweets, Facebook Likes, Shares and Comments is all about.
Your blog also provides you with a powerful opportunity to further enhance your online presence by incorporating share-tools in your blog posts. I’m talking about using share tools like Flickr.com for photos, SlideShare.com for presentations and Youtube.com for video – all for free.
Bottom Line
Blogging beams your personal shade of sunlight to your IRL spheres, networks, tribes and niches. As a bonus, it makes your stuff sharable by others. Which is a beautiful thing. Of course their are other compelling reasons to blog too. Blogging makes you Findable, Discoverable, Sharable, Choosable and Referable. In my next share, I’ll expand on the Findable, Discoverable, Sharable, Choosable and Referable idea. Till then, grace, speed and success.
PS.
I was wondering what you think about blogging? If you do, what keeps you doing it? If you don’t, why not. Like I said at first, I know it’s not the right idea for everyone.
Thanks for reading. Cheers.
David Pylyp
February 7, 2011 at 8:29 am
Writing a great blog!
Having people comment!
Engaging your perfect target audience!
Never answering their phone calls or emails, Priceless!
The point of all this is to make the phone ring; we are in a belly to belly, provide the details show the Property business. When your phone rings, answer it. It is a prospect holding up their hand saying “Help Me Please”
Living in Toronto waiting for my phone to ring with referrals
David Pylyp
Ken Brand
February 7, 2011 at 9:50 am
I hear you, it’s like baking a bunch of cupcakes, but forgetting to add frosting. To win these days requires connecting all the dots. Thanks David.
Eric Hempler
February 7, 2011 at 8:34 am
I think if you really want to leverage your blog correctly it takes a fair amount of time out of your day.
Story ideas come from everyday experiences, such as making calls, door knocking, open houses, deals going great or going wrong, etc. After you get the idea you want to write it down somewhere and then expand on it later. Then there’s the last component of the post, optimizing it for search. If you put all of the steps together it does take some time to write a post. So I guess I’m not that surprised if top producers don’t blog. Although, I still think it’s a great addition to your business because you’re demonstrating your knowledge and expertise a lot more than what a website can do.
(Even writing this comment took a little time. I wanted to make sure I put some thought into it.)
Ken Brand
February 7, 2011 at 9:57 am
I’m with you, it takes time. Stephen King, yeah that Stephen King said, “Writing is refined thinking.” We don’t get much time to sit and think these days, authoring a blog provides that quite-time-thinking that crystalizes our thoughts, beliefs, angels of approach, etc. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not doing it right. I can spend 5 or 6 hours on one blog post. Not all at once, but over time with rewrites, edits, deletes, start overs, adding and crystalizing my thoughts.
Then again, sometimes and some subjects flow like water. I’m thinking the way to tackle the time issue is to not necessarily add a new time suck commitment, but redirect time that’s currently wasted on things or activities that don’t work so hot. And let’s face it, there are very few real estate agents who are working 50 – 60 hours a week. If you want to earn 100k+ it’s hard to do in 20 – 40 hours.
The universal law remains so, the people winning are doing what others won’t.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment Eric. Cheers.
Greg Lyles
February 7, 2011 at 11:41 am
I think blogging acts as a “silent salesman”, enabling others to find out about your level of expertise – and to some extent, your personality, before they engage you one-on-one.
If you’re looking at blogging simply as an SEO tactic, or you’re not a gifted writer, I believe there are easier ways to go about it. For example, using your smartphone camera to take photos that are posted via posterous.com. You’ve always got your phone with you (don’t you?) so taking pictures of new listings in your area, neighborhood attractions, etc. can also serve to establish your knowledge of the market.
Ken Brand
February 7, 2011 at 3:42 pm
You’re right on the money Greg. Great points. Thanks
BawldGuy
February 7, 2011 at 1:50 pm
All activities in our business take time, some more than others. Results, or lack thereof tend to dictate what survives. It’s always seemed nonsensical to me when folks say blogging takes so much of their time. Compared to what? They wouldn’t be considering a blog if their current efforts using other strategies were producing adequate, you know, results.
I liken farming, that is, knockin’ on the same doors each month, with blogging. Slowly but surely they got to know me in the 70’s when I farmed. I got invited in for coffee, a donut, and conversation on cold, damp days. After awhile the neighborhood more or less thought of me as ‘theirs’. The experience has been eerily similar for me with blogging. I have folks tell me all the time how they’ve been readin’ me for months, even years, then ‘bam!’ something I wrote, maybe a strategy, maybe a case study, hits ’em between the eyes.
It all takes time. It either produces results or it doesn’t. Your banker doesn’t know how you earned your money. He just knows you’re there a lot — or not.
Ken Brand
February 7, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Too true. When you’re a cool person, in real estate, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, it breed trust and connection – which leads to being chosen and referred – which leads fatter bank books. Cheers.
PS. Knocking on doors was so easy. I marched up and down the hills of Bay Park and it worked as reliably as the sunrise…as long as I did too.
MH for Movoto
February 7, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Blogging in thoughtful, readable ways definitely is a time commitment. When you create and curate a blog, you’re basically creating an artifact/time-capsule/hand-print in cement/whatever you want to call it. It’s a static record of your/your company’s thoughts and attitudes at a given moment in time – in fifty years or so, well-known blog archives will be like the fossil record of the internet age.
Ken Brand
February 7, 2011 at 7:50 pm
It’s an amazing time. Imagine people 100 or so years from now wanting to delve into the family tree/history. It’ll all be there, text, video, pictures, audio – everything. I’d love to do that for what was going on 100 or 200 years ago, wouldn’t you?
Liz Benitez
February 8, 2011 at 11:52 am
I think my blog falls under the discoverable category and not the sunshine one. Right now I am just hoping to become more findable. I enjoy it so I continue. Maybe someday I will be sunshine 😀
Ken Brand
February 8, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Being discoverable is HUGE. I believe that every blog post is like sunshine, so whenever whoever is reading your blog, they’re sun bathing in your shared stuff. The more you share, the more findable you are….keep on keep’n on. Thanks Liz. Cheers.
Cindy Marchant
February 9, 2011 at 8:27 pm
Hi Ken, I normally write fairly lengthy comment here on AG; but your blog says it all well. For me it is sunshine…I’ve been blogging for three local communities for years and it doesn’t take much time at all…15 minutes to write it. And best of all, it forces me to become the expert in my area. I can tell you how many houses are listed right now, how many we sell in a year, what the price per sq ft is, how many sold in January of 2010 and 2011, etc…the list goes on. Why? Because I write about it every month. And best of all (really best of all this time)…there is nothing more thrilling than hearing, I’ve been reading your blog and want you to help me find a home in “x” city.
Guess it is still a lengthy comment!