by gill4kleuren

Community events like the Carnival of Real Estate and the Odysseus Medal are, on the surface, great ways to share new blog posts and highlight great writing from within the real estate blogosphere.

But let’s be honest for a second, the real value to all of these efforts is that they are great linkbait and help generate inbound links to your blog. Here’s how it goes… Publisher sends links out with the posts of the week, authors link back announcing the link post is live, and around and around it goes every week. Everybody boosts their Technorati authority, everybody gets to sip on the Google Juice.

I’ve participated in these to a small degree in the past, but haven’t spent much effort recently. Mostly because I’m lazy and it’s usually late on Sunday night (and past the submission deadlines) before I remember to submit anything.

But I wonder how effective these link parties will be now that Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms. From Techcrunch:

A major Google page rank update has punished large scale blog link farms and similar sites indulging in heavy cross linking by dramatically cutting their Google page rank scores.

Some pretty major blogs were penalized in this latest adjustment of the PageRank algorithm, sites like Engadget and Autoblog. And while this go round was primarily targeting the big blog networks, I wonder how long it is till Google shifts its sights to traffic boosting efforts like the carnivals.

At the very least, it seems to me that bloggers are going to have to be a bit more judicious in their linking behavior moving forward. It seems like Big Brother really is watching.

Share on Facebook

Zolve, the real estate networking site dreamt up by Iraqi war vet and GeekEstate Blog contributor Brian Wilson, launched today, Techcrunch reports.

Honestly I haven’t spent much time on the site over the last few weeks, like Mike Price I found myself quickly annoyed with the talking head that kept coming back to the home page with every refresh, so I didn’t hang around long.

A cursory inspection reveals the basic idea of the site looks solid enough. The premise is to help connect real estate professionals and ancillary services (lenders, service providers) through a community and then help them manage their referrals to and from each other. The whole process is automated and Realtors earn “eBay-like rankings” on each of the transactions.

There’s no doubt that referrals are big business, and there is certainly room for the Internet to help streamline the whole process. I’m just not sure a social network is the way to do that.

Zolve faces two bigger battles on its launch day however. The first is social network fatigue – I’m not sure that the real estate community is ready for yet another destination to build a profile and start blogging. This is a big red ocean, to use a much over-used term.

That said, the timing of the launch could be timely; people may be looking for an alternative to popular blogging destination (who’s come up bloodied in its spat with Move.com). If I were Wilson, I wouldn’t be banking on that however. ActiveRain members are a tight-knit bunch and are fanatically loyal and I suspect that they won’t be dislodged easily.

The second is an even bigger hurdle to overcome. Cost.

Zolve charges $395 for the service, with an annual renewal of $995. The service currently has over 2000 members in their Beta (presumably pulled in from their Realtor Magazine Ad) but it’ll be interesting to see how many pony up real dollars to have access to the site once it’s live.

Unlike Techcrunch blogger Erick Schonfeld who writes “Brokers are so desperate to keep their commissions these days, they might just pony up the subscription fee without a second’s hesitation,” I think Realtors are going to be evaluating their marketing spends much more carefully these days. A thousand bones is a lot to throw at an unproven idea with questionable ROI.

In any case, Zolve’s launch means the real estate social networking playing field has just gotten even more crowded. ActiveRain now has some direct competition chomping at its heels so should be even more focused than ever building out a clear business model. As they’ve proved, a successful social networking site is very much about “catching lightning in a bottle” and these days there’s a lot more folks heading straight into that storm.

Share on Facebook

Inman News released it’s annual report on the 100 most influential real estate leaders (PDF Version) today. (Disclosure: I work for Inman News). As usual, it’s a pretty comprehensive look at some of the key players who make this industry tick.

Two folks that didn’t make that list (at least not this year anyway) but who I expect to become very influential around these parts however, are two new contributors to FOREM.

Erik Hersman

You probably know Erik from his past work at eppraisal.com and his blogging at Realty Thoughts. He now works as an independent blogging and social media consultant, operating out of Florida. He practices what he preaches on an Orlando-focused real estate blog called Roofable, and in addition to FOREM he is blogging at AfriGadget and White African.

Kelly Roark

Kelly has more than 17 years in real estate, and was formerly Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Inman News. Now she is VP of Industry Development with Trulia and is responsible for outreach to Trulia’s broker partners. She definitely understands how to connect the online and offline worlds in real estate.

I’ve asked each of them to share their thoughts here because I respect their opinions greatly and I think their perspectives will add a lot of value to our readers.

So as not to re-invent the wheel, I’ve asked them both to follow the Rules for Rain City Guide Contributors (once again Dustin has laid down the canon) – as well as asked them to refrain from commenting on any direct competitors and to continue to disclose any obvious conflicts of interest in their posts.

That said, please join me in welcoming them both to FOREM.

Share on Facebook

Another new blog to keep an eye on – 1000watt Blog. They’re also watching Facebook and real estate.

Share on Facebook

An update on Rancho Santa Margarita Lifestyles.

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

I had a chance to chat with my apprentice Kelly Kilpatrick from Rancho Santa Margarita Lifestyles this afternoon – we spent quite a while talking about the competition and our strategy for the contest. I’m really impressed with the quality of her posts and she’s definitely shown a real passion for blogging. Please have a look at her site if you haven’t already.

Reading tonight that Automattic has released a new Stats plugin for WordPress, reminded me I had been meaning to add some more plugins to Kelly’s blog, so I got to work.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I added tonight:

Statistics

*NEW* Automattic Stats – I’m interested to see how well this works out of this… currently using Clicky to track visitors.
Popularity Contest – keeps a count of what pages and posts are most popular.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO Title Tag – optimizes RSMLifestyles’ title tags.
Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Fina – create a Google Sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of RSMLifestyles.
Wordpress WWW Redirect Plugin » Justin Shattuck – redirects rsmlifestyles.com to www.rsmlifestyles.com.
Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin | FuCoder.com – ensures there is only one URL associated with each blog entry.
Head Meta Description – adds dynamic meta descriptions to each post.

More here WordPress Plugins needed to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines

Functionality

WP-Polls – Nice AJAX poll for Kelly’s site so she can add some “Sticky” features.
Kramer – adds inbound links to a post as pingbacks by checking Technorati and monitoring incoming referrers.
WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.
WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection- drop in form for users to contact Kelly.
Subscribe to Comments – allows commenters to subscribe to e-mail notifications of subsequent comments.
Related Entries – displays related posts on single pages, based on keywords.
Brians Latest Comments 1.5.5 – displays threaded and weighted comments in the sidebar.

More later as we begin to modify Kelly’s template.

Share on Facebook

Week 2 update of the Project Blogger competition is up on the Connect SF 2007 Blog. I’ve been traveling a lot the past week and so I’ve seriously lax in my updates. My apprentice Kelly has been doing a fantastic job on her blog Rancho Santa Margarita Lifestyles, and has been very forgiving of my absences. Thanks again Kelly!

If you haven’t been over to visit yet, go check her out. She’s done a bang up job developing a great local blog. Stop by and say hi, and better yet – add her to your blog roll and subscribe to her feed in your newsreaders.

Share on Facebook

I’m a big fan of Formula One racing. As a kid, my grandfather worked for Mobil Oil and one of my proudest possession was a scale model of “King Nigel” Nigel Mansell’s Williams race car that he’d given me. It still sits proudly on my desk today.

So ActiveRain and Inman News‘ Project Blogger competion kicks off today – and I thought the F1 analogy was kind of appropriate. The green flag has just been waved and each team’s drivers have just set off on the big race.

Team ORCA

Just to refresh your memories; my apprentice (or driver, as it were) is Kelly Kilpatrick, a REALTOR® with Gold Coast Realty in Ranch Santa Margarita (for more see Go Team Orca).

Her personality and enthusiam for the project was what made me pick her out of the field and I’m confident she’ll do extremely well; but the key to any winning F1 team is not just having the best driver or car, but also having the best team there to support them. I’m happy to say I’ve pulled together an incredible team to support Kelly.

Loren Nason, of the Future of Real Estate Technology blog and Your Local Tech Consulting, stepped up to be my Crew Chief and has been Kelly’s goto guy for all questions relating to email, hosting, Wordpress etc. As per the Project Blogger rules, the participant must be responsible for all costs; but Loren was very kind and provided the hosting space to Team Orca for free.

Between the two of us, we’ve spent the last few weeks getting Kelly up to speed on blogging; familiarizing her with the Wordpress platform, helping her out with any technical questions and just letting her concentrate on honing her writing skills while we took care of the all the preparations.

To that end, we set her up with a test car to take out before giving her the keys to the race car. She put together a hosted blog at Wordpress.com where she could spin her tires a little – Rancho Santa Margarita – Key to the City.

But now that we’re ready to roll, please check out Kelly’s new blog – Rancho Santa Margarita Lifestyles.

The Strategy

Our Race Day strategy likely echoes many of the other teams – that is, we are pursuing a “hyper local” approach and focusing specifically on Rancho Santa Margarita (known as RSM to residents).

We’ve specifically downplayed a hard sell real estate angle and decided to focus on building the site as a valuable community resource. This will ultimately allow Kelly to broaden the scope of what she can write about in her blog and position herself as a resident, mother, citizen as well a respected neighborhood expert.

The Sponsors

Of course, the end goal is ultimately to drive business so I also broadened the scope of this project a bit. To me blogging is only one component of a successful online marketing strategy and is really just the front door to your business. And so, just like an F1 team, I found some sponsors that could help bring ALL of Kelly’s Internet marketing efforts to a whole new level.

We wanted readers to be able to search for homes in the RSM area so we built an IDX search into the blog itself as a way to build some stickyness to the site and keep readers around and keep them interested.

Diverse Solutions gave Kelly a free subscription to their dsSearchAgent product (for more see New Real Estate Search Mashups), an IDX search interface ‘mashup’ which we have placed on a separate page on the blog.

The result is the Real Estate Search at Rancho Santa Margarita Lifestyles. Read Loren’s post on how he implemented this.

Of course, if we’ve got interested clients, we need to send them somewhere and Kelly asked me early on about upgrading her existing web site.

Ubertor kindly gave Kelly a free 1-year subscription to their real estate website software (for more see Get on the Net: Ubertor) which you can see at www.kellykilpatrick.myubertor.com – our goal will be to push clients to Kelly’s site from the RSM blog.

Net cost – less than $20 for a few domain names from GoDaddy.

Promotion

Getting to the starting line doesn’t mean much unless people know you’re competing – so a couple of things I did right out the gates was create a Real Estate Blog entry on the InmanWiki Real Estate Blog Directory and add it to Zillow’s Directory of Local Real Estate Blogs.

There are many more ideas we have for promoting the blog which I will be sharing in upcoming posts.

Race Day

So now that the day is finally here and the flag has dropped, I’m reasonably comfortable that Kelly stands as good a chance as any for a podium finish once the checkered flag is waved this summer.

I’ll see you all at Blogger’s Connect, August 1st in San Francisco, when the winners are announced.

[This post was cross posted on the ActiveRain Project Blogger group]

Share on Facebook

Paul at Blogging Systems writes about Bring the Blog (see ‘Bring the Blog’ Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be) today, a new service by BloodhoundBlog contributor and Mortgage Reports Blog owner Dan Green.

Ostensibly, Bring the Blog is a simple blog platform but they take it a step further, they also provide a ghost-writing service – for $300 a year you can get your own real estate blog and not have to lift a finger.

The pitch from their web site:

Every business day, we post new, consumer-focused content to your blog for you. That way, you never have to worry about your blog going “stale” when you don’t have time to write. Heck, you never even have to write at all!

This is not a new idea, K2Bloggers has been offering to write real estate blog posts for a while (see Too Busy To Blog? Pay Someone To Do It For You) – what is surprising however, is that two well known REBloggers, Green and Teresa Boardman from St. Paul Real Estate, would be offering up their writing services so brazenly.

I’m troubled by these types of services, largely because like Paul, I believe the power of blogging hinges in the transparency and authenticity that the medium offers.

Clearly, blogging can be a money making opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t begrudge anyone the ability to earn a buck off their blogging efforts. (Full disclosure: the meager ad revenue I get from FoREM funds my raging gadget addiction). Paul’s company also sells a competing blogging platform, so even he has an economic interest in getting people to blog.

But there’s a difference between enabling someone to blog, or encouraging them to do it, and then flat out doing it for them.

Of course, one can make the supply and demand argument. These services exist because people want them. In that sense, blog writing services are no different from the essay mills that offer to write your college papers for you (see Slate’s How to buy a good college term paper online). But heck, why stop there? Why not skip college all together and just go buy a degree? Sure would be cheaper.

Shortcuts abound in all areas of life. But should you necessarily take them?

sellsius likens Bring the Blog to “skydiving strapped to someone’s back” – I think that’s being a little Pollyannish.

I doubt very much the people buying this product are going to use it as a way to dip their toes into blogging waters. More likely it’s the people who just want “a blog” with their name on it and don’t care how much it costs.

And, I’m sure Bring the Blog will rope in a few suckers who just want an easy way to jump on the blogging bandwagon. But they are the one’s being fooled. They’re the one’s buying degrees online.

The bigger question, is, just like PayPerPost (for more, see Techcrunch’s PayPerPost.com offers to sell your soul), services like Bring the Blog may be a way to bring short term financial gain to bloggers, but ultimately at what cost?

Are they legal? Sure. Ethical? Borderline. Something I’d get involved with? Absolutely not.

Share on Facebook