Ken’s Sandbox

I just had a report of an old listing showing up on realestateoregon.com. I have confirmed that this listing is not in the current feed.

I suspect that their listing agregator at some point failed to delete old listings when importing new data. I would like to see how wide spread this problem is.

Since most of you are feeding your listings from RealWorld to this site, I would appreciate it if you would visit http://www.realestateoregon.com and check to see if any sold or expired listings show up in your listings on their site. I want to continue to feed your listings as many places as possible. I am currently working on expanding the list of sites available to you to send your listings. However, I intend to hold these sites to the same quality standards you expect from RealWorld.

Seth Godin is one of my favorite writers. Yesterday he posted an article titled “Advice for Real Estate Agents (quit now)“. The “quit now” advice is directed at the order takers who sit by waiting for the phone to ring. He goes on to lay out a plan explaining how to position yourself as THE person everyone wants (needs?) to go to in your selected niche of the market.

Follow the link above and read the post. Then, if you have time, do what I did and go back through his archives and read everything he has written in the past year or two. He won’t disappoint you.

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It’s interesting, that when something surfaces it seems to start poping up everywhere. That is how it seems to be for me now with e-cards. I’m hoping to spark some discussion on the subject. I hope you will take the time to give me your feedback.

A newsletter I receive regularly was talking about sending out Christmas (Holiday for the PC among you) cards and mentioned that she had found a site where you could send very nice classy business type e-cards for several occasions.

Then at lunch today, out of the blue, my mother mentioned how she hates all of the typical e-card sites out there but that she discovered one that was so simple an nice that she just had to subscribe. She said the site was by an artist in the UK who was using the e-cards to promote her art.

I checked out the site mentioned in the newsletter and the cards are beautiful. Their site focused strongly on the environmental benefits of sending e-cards. I believe this significantly helped overcome the “cheapness factor” of sending an e-card over a paper card.

However, when you use their free service, the page with the card is more advertisement than card and the only option to get rid of the advertising seemed to be having them build you a custom e-card site. Fine (maybe) if you are a large company but I believe I can do better.

Normally, at this point I would run off and throw together a proof of concept of what I think a site like this should do. Then it would sit in the drawer (or on the shelf, whichever metaphor you prefer) never to grace anyone’s web browser.

Here is my criteria for what a nice but simple e-card (suitable for use by a business professional) should do or be:

• e-cards have become a vehicle for viruses, spam and other ugliness. The card must arrive as an email from the sender with sender defined subject line.
• Preferably, the card would display in the recipient’s email program without them having to follow a link. No “so-and-so has sent you an e-card click here …”. Just display the damn card. The recipient may have to click a button to show images in their email client but nothing more. Of course, if they opt to not receive HTML email there would be a link to display the card in their web browser.
• Finally, I believe many business people (especially sales and marketing types) would like to have their photo on their cards.

I would really appreciate your feedback on this. I believe a tool like this would be a great relationship building tool. Give me your ideas, suggestions, objections. Is it something you would use and why or why not?

Thank you in advance.

Ken

From Tom Peters This I Believe:

32. Branding is for … EVERYONE.

Whoever has … THE BEST STORY … takes home the most marbles. “Branding?” “Branding is a character issue. Next question?” It is almost that simple. And, thus, that hard. (more…)

My favorite weekend morning pastime is catching up on my on-line reading. This weekend having read everything Seth Godin has read in the past 8 months or so I wandered over to ChangeThis where I found a manifesto (that is what ChangeThis calls them) on personal branding. (more…)

I just discovered one of the best essays I have ever read. Although it talks specifically about software development and marketing but I can see how it would apply to almost any business. As you read the essay, think about your role in your company. Is your job to support someone else’s (the company’s “programmers”) productivity or are you a producer of your product? What is your company selling and how can you make your product or service more transparent to your customers/clients?

Do you need an abstraction layer? I now know I do.

Power is back on. I was out of the office when it went out (my office neighbor said it was about 9:00 AM). The city said it was a fire on a pole near a substation.

The battery backup carried everything very nicely for the expected 45 minutes but that was about 45 minutes short. Guess I either need to beef up the battery backup system or buy a generator.

Note to Joe Whitsett: The modifications to my cpe worked great. Both internet and phones stayed up fine. But you need amend  my testimonial ad to say no unplanned downtime due to Comspan.

Right after I posted about hosting video tours, I see where Marc Andreessen posted this about how the real estate downturn may be permanently changing where and how agents advertise their listings. Read it here.

The other day Hope MacManus at Old Town Realty in Florence asked if I could (would) host a video tour for her. It seems that linking the tour from the office web site was in violation of the RMLS rule about branding tours (more than a little ridiculous but I don’t make the rules, I just have to listen to the complaints ;-).

So far, this is the second video I have seen that client agents have had done for their listings. Now, two video tours out of 2,400 listings does not necessarily make it a trend. But throw in a couple of comments from other agents and there may be some interest. Maybe a few others would like to try it. Add the fact that I take pride in keeping ahead of other real estate sites in areas such as this* and well … you never know where an idea is going to come from.

So, beginning immediately, RealWorld will host your video tours at no additional charge. If it looks like we are going to become the youtube of real estate, I may have to rethink things. But for now, I would like to encourage the use of video as much as possible.

A couple random thoughts:

Video tours will have the virtual tour icon on RealWorld. If videos become popular enough, I will add a video tour icon and add an upload function to the on-line menu.

I recently purchased a Cannon digital camera that takes beautiful 640 X 480 video. A camera like this would allow you to shoot your own video. It would be great if someone offered the service of editing raw video into a nice looking tour with music and or voice over.

If you have a video produced, you should ask for two versions. In Hope’s case she had to have her producer go back and cut out the title segments with the office name and contact information. This unbranded video is the tour she will enter in RMLS.

Are video tours a good idea or a waste of time? Post your experiences and thoughts in the comments below.

If you know of someone who produces video tours or can help with production, post their contact information in the comments as well. I would like to provide a resource list.

* The end of August RMLS will be expanding their photo capabilities to allow 16 photos per listing and the photo size is being increased to 640 X 480. RealWorld has supported up to 25 photos and 800 X 600 for over a year.

I ran across this blog post this morning. I love “knock their socks off” customer service and since this was real estate related, I thought it would be worth sharing:

The best realtor in the East Bay, Bar none, an unsolicited testimonial.