As I mentioned in my previous blog, I recently attended the Keller Williams Family Reunion in Atlanta, GA. The featured speaker was author Seth Godin who spoke about his book, The Dip. He made some great points about the current market and I would recommend it as a good read. Seth recently posted a blog of his own where he spoke about a new service from Squidoo called "Mayor of Your Zip Code".

The idea behind "Mayor of Your Zip Code" is that agents can create a small site using Squidoo's servers with lots of links to information about the towns they work in. You can post links about the town's history, the local government and schools, etc. Basically, it's a free and instant branding opportunity for agents. What could possibly be bad about that?

Well, apparently a lot of things...

It has been reported by many e-PRO certified agents through the e-PRO forums that people have seen a "significant" spike in their spam mail to the address used to register for this service. I know that I get enough junk email already that I do not want to have to deal with more.

Also, the mini-branding websites generated have advertising for competing companies all over them. Squidoo uses Google AdSense advertising to help defray the cost of offering the "Mayor of Your Zip Code" service to agents in general. The problem is that they allow any real estate related ads to appear on your site. Many people have complained that they have links to their direct competitors or limited service companies at the top of their page.

It seems that in this situation, the benefit of a free branding site is outweighed by the appearance of heavy, competitive advertising. Sometimes it's better to limit your branding opportunities to the ones that you can directly control. I know that I wouldn't want my clients to get a mixed message of who I am and what I stand for based on third-party advertising that I have no control over.

Free? Sometimes it just isn't worth it...

This will serve as my introductory post to this blog. I'm relatively new to real estate having received my license in July of 2007. I joined Keller Williams Downtown in beautiful Chattanooga, TN, on August 1st. Since that time, it's been a nearly constant learning experience. My team leader and co-workers at the office have been incredibly helpful up to this point helping me with all of my many questions.

As for my personal life, I am married to a wonderful woman, Lindsey. She's a Pediatric Physical Therapist at T.C. Thompson Childrens Hospital. We've been married for nearly 5 years and live in Hixson, TN, with our 2 black labs Sadie and Hannah.

I recently attended the Keller Williams International Family Reunion in Atlanta, GA. It was 5 days of learning, networking, and fun with KW agents from all over the country. I learned so much from attending the various classroom sessions involving marketing, listing presentations, the mortgage process, and gaining traction in a slow market. I cannot wait to put some of these things into practice!

My focus is to grow my business as much as possible while maintaining a very high level of customer service/satisfaction. I feel that I am a bit different in that I strive to personally talk with each of my clients on a weekly basis and make sure that they understand everything that's currently going on in their transaction. I am continually looking for new clients to serve and depend on referrals and recommendations for much of that business. If you have a need for a real estate professional or know of someone who does, please visit my website: http://www.StevenSharpe.net and let me know about it.

That's about it for now. If you want to know more about how I can fulfill your real estate needs, please contact me.

- Steven