Yeah, this was a great way to start 2010!
Sometimes when the truth is ignored for long enough, it almost renders it untrue. I blew the whistle on the lack of creativity and ingenuity from some of the 32,000 of the people that I work with, and I was chastized by a large portion of my industry.
In the weeks that followed, I was issued apologies, asked to lunches, and offered jobs by seven brokerages!
For the record: I’m fine where I am. I work for the best brokerage in the City of Toronto and I’ll back up that claim any day of the week.
Maybe I owe my career to my good buddy Galen, who suggested in 2007 that I start a real estate blog.
On the way to golf in April of 2007, he raved, “There’s no real estate blog in our city! This is a huge opportunity!”
He told me that there was a whole sub-culture of computer-users who read blogs every single day. Celebrity-blogs, tech-blogs, sports-blogs, travel-blogs, shopping-blogs….anything-blogs.
Galen boosted my self-esteem by telling me that I’d be a good “blogger.” He knew that I enjoyed creative writing in my spare time, and he said I’m witty, funny, sarcastic, cynical, and wildly-opinionated – all good qualities if you want people to hang on your every word, every day.
The Toronto Realty Blog was born in 2007, and my life changed. It really did.
Now in 2010; a new decade and a new era for Realtors, agents are jumping up and down like a kid on a sugar-high as they talk about “the future of real estate and social media.”
Everybody in real estate has an ego, and I am no different.
But I found it incredibly hard to sit through a meeting last week and listen to people who just heard the term “blog” last month essentially regurgitate everything that they heard at the INMAN conference in New York and pass it off as their own thoughts.
I didn’t want to divulge my “secrets” in front of a room-full of my competitors, but since I know most real estate agents can’t find their way to the “in-ter-net,” I have no problem explaining my thoughts on this public forum…
Most Realtors don’t understand how the “in-ter-net” actually works.
Every Realtor in the city has a cookie-cutter website provided by a shall-remain-nameless company, who charges them $40 per month for the same website that every other agent has.
The problem with these websites is that they are static, and have only one actual web-page. The Internet doesn’t know that these sites exist, and there is nothing for search engines to pickup on. There are literally trillions of web-pages in existence, so how hard will it be to find your one web-page with zero content other than what this nameless-company provides for you and 8,000 other Toronto agents?
Most Realtors can’t get past the sight of their own FACE on their website to realize that they get zero business from that website.
Have a little humility! I pride myself on the fact that my name and face don’t appear on my home page. I like being somewhat “anonymous,” in that a reader only finds out who I am with some poking and prodding around on the site.
These other sites are boring, uninformative, and don’t contain any information whatsoever. They’re full of “click here for more info” fields that re-direct you to a contact form, and the content on many of these sites hasn’t been updated in years.
And when I watch my colleagues spend time “working” on their websites, I feel bad for the amount of time they are wasting.
Try this…
Open up a new window, and go to Google.
Type in “4K Spadina.”
What do you see? Third result down…
There is an article I wrote about the building two years ago. Google loves blogs because they are updated constantly and there is a high amount of traffic. There are incoming and outgoing links, email-to-a-friend, RSS feeds, and a host of other features that makes a blog perfect for those search engine spiders that crawl around the Internet to see what’s popular.
I have never spent a penny on search engine optimization, but after three years and 527 articles, my blog has been found by Google.
Moving on from blogs…
What is LinkedIn?
Does anybody know?
Okay, we know it’s a “networking” site for business-people-types, but what is it actually?
Because despite the fact that we’re all on it, I don’t think anybody knows what it is! I’ll be honest – I have no clue! But that doesn’t stop me from accepting “Invites” every week from dozens of people who also have no clue why they are on the site.
But nobody actually knows WHAT it is, or WHY we’re on it!
Is LinkedIn just the Facebook page for business-people? If I want to know what my good buddy from 2nd year university, Seth Smithfordson, is doing for a living – can I find him on LinkedIn? And are Seth and I going to have lunch? Probably….not….
How is this going to help Realtors get business?
You should see these people buzzing around, “Are you on LinkedIn? What? You’re not? What are you waiting for?!?”
What the heck is ActiveRain? Why are we on it?
How many real estate inquires do you get from being on ActiveRain? None? Really?
Why do we want to be your “Fan” on Facebook?
Sidney Crosby deserves a fan page.
Jessica Alba deserves a fan page.
But John Smith from Re/Max does NOT need a Facebook Fan Page.
Why are we his fan? Is he going to sign autographs for us? Should I bring my sharpie pen or my silver paint-pen so he can sign an black-and-white, 8 x 10 glossy?
Become a FAN of David Fleming on Facebook
Why? What for?
What will you get out of this? Is there anything on my “fan” page that you can’t find on my regular Facebook page?
And better yet, what will I get out of this?
I’m of the mindset that the only people who will become my “fan” are the same 200+ people that are my “friends” on Facebook. And let’s face it, we only add people to Facebook so we can spy on them and look at their drunken photos and/or bikini shots from their trips to Punta Cana (and he looked really weird in a bikini…)
I’ll say it right now – I’m not starting a “fan page” on Facebook.
But two days ago, I overheard two agents in my office talking: “Have you started your fan page yet? You have, eh…well good. I’m working on mine now. Yeah I’ve made about 25 contacts on LinkedIn during the past few days.”
WHY?@!?!?!
Call me naive, but I think you have to offer people something of value if you want their business.
The old way of real estate was to go out and get business. Work open houses, pound the proverbial pavement, make contacts, and look for people who want to transact in real estate.
My way is slightly different. I offer the entire world my thoughts, opinions, experience, and knowledge on real estate on an open forum, and I do it for FREE.
In turn, some people use my services to transact in real estate. Others don’t. And some people hate what I write and email me about it!
I’m creating something and putting it out there. And I’m trying to create some informative, innovative, and intelligent dialouge among the commenters who post their thoughts and experiences along with mine.
I’m not just starting a Facebook Fan Page and saying, “This is the future of social media in real estate! People search on the In-ter-net now and that’s how you get business!”
As for Twitter, I still think it’s stupid….but I see its value.
Jon Stewart weighed in the other night and read Jessica Simpson’s tweet: “LOL JUST BROKE ANOTHER HEEL OMG.”
But I do see the value in Twitter as it pertains to real estate. It’s a quick way to get the word out: “JUST LISTED: 230 KING STREET, 1-BEDROOM FOR $249,000.”
But again, most Realtors think it’s about themselves and not their followers/readers. Who wants to hear, “PICKING UP MY OAKVILLE CLIENTS. HOPE I SELL THEM!”
Social media in real estate is about exposure, but it doesn’t just end there.
You have to give people something they want, and in my case, it’s my very distorted view of the world on issues like plastic bag bans, traffic in Toronto, night-life, and I suppose real estate as well…
This rant is born out of frustration, but also because I can’t stand up to the real estate peons and say, “You’re doing it all wrong!” I can’t because they are my competitors, but I want to because I have an ego, just like anybody else.
These people all have massive egos! They eat Ego Waffles for breakfast! And they think they know best!
But for now, I continue to sit with my hands firmly pressed over my mouth while the ego-of-the-day shares his or her thoughts on social media and real estate with a roomful of eager ears.
Have a great weekend, everybody!
(CLICK HERE for the original blog post from 1/29/2010 and the 20 comments from readers)
