Lynnwood Undressed

Blogging for Google and fame

 

I still remember being at the Washington Realtor Ed Con three years ago and listening to Dustin Luther of Rain City Guide go on and on about the wonders of blogging and how it could really change your world, yadda, yadda yadda. If any of you have had the pleasure of listening to Dustin speak, you ‘ll understand why it took me almost three years to catch up with him. He is a force of nature to be sure. I met Larry Cragun by chance  about five months ago. Larry is the founder of the Undressed Network of Community Blogs and has been in Mortgage and Real Estate for many years. I stumbled upon Larry while scratching my head trying to figure out why people would blog on Active Rain. 102,000 self professed Real Estate Gurus trading cheap shots and meaningless platitudes with each other and not really doing much real estate.  It was to become a defining moment for me as I pressed on in my effort to create the ROCS Alliance. Larry understood that blogging on a network such as AR does a lot for AR, not so much for the blogger. When they created the Undressed Network, they engineered it completely backwards, promoting the blogger first and giving the community blog the googlejuice leverage of the network. People blog for many reasons, to be sure. But for the majority of those blogging regularly it is done specifically to catch the eye of the google gods and get some free advertising in hopes of snagging a weery traveler on the internet highway. There was a period of time when culling anonymous leads from the internet was an exercise that paid handsomely. Kind of like trading beanie babies and Pokemon cards on Ebay back in the late 90’s. As a practicing Realtor, I needed a method of promoting myself and my business of course, but I have always sought to do that by promoting others first. It just seems infinitely more interesting. As it turns out, the Undressed Network gave me a forum and a track to run on. Blogs are for the moment the mechanism by which we are all attempting to reconnect after a ten year run of trying to conduct commerce anonymously on the internet. I don’t know about you, but I am getting more and more leery of giving away my e-mail and personal information while plugging my credit card number into the computer in exchange for whatever it is I want. I understand the convenience and I do it quite often, but I am more and more looking to actually connect with someone who can give me just a little more assistance and reassure me about what I am going to get when the box arrives. Maybe it’s just me, but more and more, what was once considered a pesky salesperson, is now a welcome face who can answer a question or two if need be. This whole thing got so crazy, it seemed for awhile that people were actually heading in the direction of buying and selling real estate on the internet. Find a home here, press the button, find a mortgage here, press the button, turn in all your financials (real or imagined) press the button and voila! You are a proud homeowner. As I survey the carnage that is the current real estate market, I have to think that for many people that model didn’t work out so well. In the process the real estate industry has managed to marginalize itself somewhat by more or less buying into the trend. Now we have a lot of work to do to repair the damage. Blogging, the way it is being done in some circles, is a form of overcompensation. An attempt to regain relevance on the cheap by professing all sorts of expertise in matters that don’t really matter to the consumer. When done properly, real estate blogging can provide a window into the heart and soul of a person and the  community they interact with, making the author much more relevant in the context of providing helpful information upon which to make a buying or selling decision. At the ROCS Alliance we have embraced blogging, not merely as an attempt to cheat the search engines and get free advertising, although admitedly that provides some incentive to keep posting, but as a means of becoming relevant within small communities that we interact with. Hopefully this gives the consumer something to hang their hat on when choosing professional representation. A chance to engage with someone who is actively involved and knowledgeable about the community one is considering becoming a part of. It takes a little work, but blogging makes you smarter. It reconnects you to the community and it once again positions you as a dependable resource. It can make you famous, but more importantly, it makes you relevant once again.

Come see what we’re doing at ROCS - and the Undressed Network - we can help you find yourself and the community you speak for through meaningful blogging.

ROCS - Realty Operating and Control Services - offers Tech Support, Marketing Solutions and Business Development Services to Real Estate Agents and Micro Businesses.

Contact Jim Warner, Realtor - for more information 425-939-1010