Texas Monthly has come out again with the list of best BBQ joints in Texas. It's a good list with many names I've seen or heard about. Unfortunately for me, I've never been to one of these places so I feel that I'm missing out. But that's beside the point.
First, here's a map to the places they've listed...
Now, the real question isn't why my favorite places aren't listed... but WHY DIDN'T TEXAS MONTHLY put something like this online in the first place? If you take a look online at their listing you'll notice that they provided a map link to every place... but they didn't go that one extra step to provide an additional level of detail... by putting them all on one simple map.
If they have... or they let me... the map could easily be updated with...
- the ranking they gave it
- a blurb about what they liked
- a picture of the building or the food
- a link to the summary within their article
- etc...
It's a missed opportunity to provide an additional service to the readers... as well as giving the readers something more interactive to play with... and share.
I've told plenty of other people this... but it's good to hear confirmation... Obeo helps you get listings.
Just yesterday I had an agent tell me that she got a new listing because:
1. The seller went online to research agents
2. The seller looked at different agents' listings
3. The seller found a listing by this agent that had StyleDesigner
4. The seller thought it was great!
It is NOT just buyers that are going online to look... sellers are doing their research as well... even checking up on those referrals they get from all the friends and family.
So - what would a seller think when they saw your site and your listings?
Kroger is celebrating green by having a contest to design a logo for their reusable shopping bags. Find details here .
In order to help a local contestant, I whipped up the following widget as an experiment...
This "widget" can be embedded in just about any website and social platform (myspace, facebook, etc...) and many forums allow them to be placed there as well.
If you want to help out "momof1" from the Atascocita.com forum ... click on the link to go and vote for her design... and better yet... click the share button and copy the widget to your own site or profile.
While we are here... I applaud Kroger's marketing department for developing this competition... the next step they could've taken to help spread the word was to develop a viral widget like this one that would enable any contestant to showcase their creation.
The Real Estate Center over at Texas A&M has some great info on the Texas market.
When you get over there, sign up for the RECON newsletter (top left of main page). It aggregates the critical news items and gives you the key details in a short summary for each item.
I think the Tierra Grande publication is useful as well.
If you are looking for real estate news for Texas... be sure to go by the Real Estate Center and take a look around.
I mentioned earlier how I spent some time one week playing around on Facebook... well, it was time to revisit and get further into it and look at one particular aspect...
How can Facebook help a real estate agent spread the listing?
Facebook can be a great tool for networking and keeping up with various contacts, but the matter at hand is how to get a listing a greater exposure.
After looking at how the default marketplace listings work and playing with every application I could find that dealt with placing and searching for property I've come to this conclusion... CribFinder (non-FB site ) is the best tool for the job.
Here is why:
Enter in data once - You can enter listing information in the Marketplace or in CribFinder... once they sync your listing will be in both.
It's got a map - As simple as it sounds, having a map to the property is great and CribFinder was the only one I could find that did it.
Lead tracking - Wanna know how many and who looked at your listings... they've got the report. However, you have to invite 5 others to CribFinder for it to become active.... but that's easy.
As a buyer, I'd use it - If I was on Facebook looking for homes... this would be the app that I would install to my profile. It has a good search structure and overall visual layout gives me the relevant information.
Of course, the last one is the most important one... because no matter how great an agent may think something is... if a buyer isn't there... it doesn't matter.
Come back soon for a simple how-to video so that you can get up and running quickly with CribFinder.
I've got in front of me right now a post card from a local agent.
I've never done business with her and it's addressed to "Postal Customer" so it's obviously been sent to everyone in the area. On Side A, I've got an uninspired message... "I've moved to... to better serve you!" and it continues on with a phone # and some other crap. I quickly flip it over and am now presented with "I've moved!... and Maybe you should too!" along with something about interest rates at a low and home builders offering incentives... blah blah. There's the token agent photo and brokerage logo as well as a phone number, office address and email.
Since you can't see the postcard and I didn't give you every single line item on the thing, you might be thinking... "well, so what, why are you calling it a failure?"... and here is why...
The agent's name is not on the post card... except after the @ symbol in the email address as it goes to a vanity domain. Even with that... a LOT of people won't even think about looking at the email address to figure out who this person is.
There is no website address shown. I've got a phone number (listed twice), an email, and an office address. There's no place for me to go and see what this no-name agent is all about. I've got to call her directly and say... "ummh, I don't know your name, but I got your post card..." NOT going to happen.
There is no "call to action". I don't know what this agent wants me to do with this post card. The only reason it's not in the trash is so that I can write about it here and talk about it with other people. It looks like the point is to tell me that she's at a new brokerage... great, I don't even remember who the other one was, so who cares?
How would this been better? Simple, answer these three questions...
Who are you and why do I care?
What do you want me to do?
Where can I get more information without actually talking to you?
Do you know one of the things we used to select... or should I say de-select agents from possibly listing our last two houses that we sold?
It was what they wrote, how they wrote it and if it was correct in spelling and grammar...
- on the listings they had on HAR.com
- on their websites
When we got a referral from a friend about an agent, the first thing we did was go online and check them out. Fortunately for our last agent, we didn't find any issues... and she got to sell our existing home and helped us buy the new one.
I know we are not the only people that have done that... I've asked friends and they admit to doing it as well.
So, here's a tip. PROOF READ everything and then have someone else read it as well. Also, if you know one of your agent friends has some issues... please tell them. Which brings me to another issue for another day... if you can't get your site updated within a day to fix some spelling mistakes... time to get a new site host / manager / structure / something.
I spent about 1/2 a day playing around with some social sites this past week and it's close to amazing what you could do with some of them. I probably spent the most amount of time on Facebook... not in it's basic form, but mostly in looking at different apps that integrate in with FB and trying them out.
For real estate purposes... I think that those that are actively using FB, they'll use it when they start looking to buy or sell a home. I'm not sure someone that's never been on FB is going to sign up and figure it out in order to look at real estate though.
But, there's still a couple users (haha) using Facebook... so it's worth getting in there and figuring out how it can help your business.
I know... that's not some earth shattering news. Look at this as more of an intro to some other bits of information coming soon.
It just absolutely amazes me the current adoption rate that the real estate industry has for technology.
I'm not talking about the big internet companies that are servicing the industry or even what some of the local MLS boards are doing, I'm referring directly to the individual real estate agent.
Time after time after time... I go to look up info on a brokerage or individual agent and look at their website... and just gasp at the crap they throw up on the page... and then have the courage to actually say in their BIO page about how they use the latest marketing technology... or that they are using current technology.
And the SAD part is that so many of their customers used to not know any better... but there's a new generation of home buyers / sellers coming through that will see through that smoke screen.
