“Trulia Blogs” Rolled Out On The DL

Hey Danilo – Heather from Trulia here. Rudy will probably want to stop by too, but he’s busy Beering with Bloggers at the moment :). In the meanwhile, let me clarify…

1) We haven’t “launched” anything (yet). You are looking at a private, invite only beta that only a handful of people currently have access to.
2) Tags/searching/other really cool stuff – absolutely in the game plan. Stay tuned.
3) Discoverability – as with all things on Trulia, we think that someone searching in a specific location likely cares most about content relevant to that location. Again…stay tuned.

Tip of iceberg? Yes. Awesome feedback and have a great night!

Yay…..pull out some deflated balloons.

Another place to get people to create more content for someone else for free – so that THEY, not the local agent that created the content in the first place, can then dominate the search engines.

I realize the discussion about ROI is always an important one for real estate agents and rightfully so, we all need to succeed in our business or its just not a good business.

But here’s where I get a bit confused on all of this (and feel free to give me your thoughts, that’s why I’m here)…

Although sites like these may be getting your content for free…your name, personality, and knowledge are still attached. You may not be getting the SEO you’re looking for, but someone might see what you wrote and say, “hey, this is someone I’d like to work with…let me dig deeper.” You’re not getting the direct connection you’re searching for via your own personal blog or site, but you are getting an introduction to someone who may not have found you otherwise (I guess you could argue that it makes you harder to find, but even if you’re the number search, that does not guarantee you business).

A great example:

My band was offered to be in the movie “Fahrenheit 9/11.” They wanted to use a song that apparently was popular with troops as they blew stuff up in Iraq. The band usually collects a very high fee for this kind of use of our music. Plus, this movie was being highly anticipated and the publishing royalties would have added up to a lot of money (plus the initial payment). We all love money. Don’t let anyone fool you, everyone in a band wants to make money at the end of the day. However, we were all excited about the prospect of being in the movie and what it could do for us. The film was coming out in 2004 and the song was from 1996…this could revive an old song for us and bring about more sales of a record that was not in the public’s eye anymore. So we gave it to Michael Moore for free. We collected zero. But, the ROI on the release of this movie was incredible for us. More tours, better pay, more interviews, more exposure to fans and non-fans alike, more album sales for an older record, more spins of the song on radio…whether they hated us for participating in the movie or loved us for it, we got the exposure out of it that helped push us out of a long hiatus (we took off from 2001-2004 after nearly killing each other on a year and a half tour that was absolutely non-stop).

Don’t get me wrong, I see the benefit of having everything under your control, but I also see the potential for exposure…which can lead to those returns that we all seek.

Jennifer – Are there cases where this has happened? As someone who had to deal with the Napster/Intellectual Property debate constantly, I’m always interested in this topic.

Hi all!

I’m listening in on the first panel of bloggers connect where they are talking about what to write about and who to write to [your audience]. I haven’t heard them talk about where to write. That being said, our blog platform is is beta. We invited a number of people to test the platform and love the feedback we’re getting. And, as Heather mentioned, we will include many of the things that Danilo pointed to.

Trulia has a built in consumer audience. Our blog platform is an extension of our Q&A platform. What’s interesting is that consumers will be able to blog as well. It’s another place to connect with a consumer. We agree, the ROI is yet to be tested – that’s the exciting part. After we go live with the new platform, I hope that some of you here give it a test drive to see if it can work for you.

You never know where a consumer will look.

Thanks all for your feedback.

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

An excellent example Matt, but the big difference is that a) there were only so many songs in that movie and b) you got a credit at the end that everyone could see if they sat in their seat long enough.

The movie gave you exposure you could not have gotten on your own. That isn’t the same thing with Trulia, where, like AR, it is looking for a needle in a haystack.

Put a link to my blog on a Trulia page that everyone sees and I’m in.

Danilo Interesting post. And while I think starting a blog on someone else’s site is not the best long term move,I can understand where some people would choose to write a single post or 2 in a trulia or AR Environment, but in the long run , there is nothing free in the world. If they provide the environment and you use it,what’s wrong with their getting a benefit from it, They want Trulia to be THE place for consumers to look for real estate related stuff. If you’re OK with that, support it. If you’re noy OK with it ,write somehwere else

Actually I have gotten two leads from Trulia!

Let’s see the first one was from a nice young lady who needed help cashing a $500,000,000 check from her late father. The other one seemed like an actual customer asking about properties in an area I work, no phone # just an email. I responded within 5 minutes of her inquiry, followed up several times and never heard back from her. Yeah, I know, that comes with all leads…

These two came after participating in Voices for a bit, but for me, wading through the endless posts of agents asking people to check out their award winning websites was really boring. I can’t really imagine that the blogs are going to be any more interesting. Someone will ask about a neighborhood, or post a piece about an area and then get to hear from everyone who wants to be their agent talking about how great they are.

I am waiting to hear someone from Trulia weigh in on the no follow aspect of the signature links in the Trulia blog, but I’m not holding my breath. It seems simple enough, if you want agents to contribute some content to your website, how about paying them for it with a little link love? Afraid that too many will spam the blog? What do you think the agents are doing in Voices? If that’s not spam I don’t know what is!

Ken, you forgot “Just to clarify…”

Hey – Heather again…Rudy is busy paneling/socializing/causing mayhem at Inman Connect.

We’ve been listening over the past few months to agents, and know how important SEO is. The blog content will be dofollow. The blog comments (and prop detail pages) are nofollowed “as is industry standard” (shout out to Ken).

Joking aside, we agree with all of you that if we can’t prove ROI, we don’t have a product. We are working hard and listening to feedback… Trulia Blogs are meant to help agents and consumers connect with other agents/consumers/locals/etc. If you want to give it a test run, email me at heather [at] trulia to get beta access. Have questions? Same email.

Thanks!