Saturday, November 22nd…
This morning I skipped my usual dart straight from bed to the shower grab a quick cup of coffee and head out the door for my Saturday rounds. I opted instead for a Sunday kind of morning. It’s been a full week of meetings, deadlines, expense reports, marketing projects, 2009 goal setting, internet strategy round table discussions, website updates, and an awesome company awards banquet.
I needed quiet time. I skipped the shower, went for my bathrobe, brewed up a cup of Joe and nestled in at my desk. I fired up ‘Old Moe’ my home computer to catch up with a few things of personal interest online and just quietly drift awhile in ethereal cyberspace.
Over the past year or so I’ve spent time on the Rain looking around. I signed up this past summer. I have a blog on our website but was feeling a desire to do something in this community. After all, I’ve spent the past 23 years working primarily with real estate agents and thought; “Hey, there’s plenty here and I know several, why not chime in?” Then I caught Pat Kitano’s entry in Transparent Real Estate 11/18/08… Is Blogging Dead?, then I tracked back to the Wired Magazine 10/20/08 article I missed by Paul Boutin… “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook make blogs look so 2004”. He makes some valid points.
But I asked myself, what now? Is this yet another example of the internet surfing channel flipping world we live in? I check the wind in my sail? Just when you have that flash of inspiration to boldly go… you almost instantly discover half the planet has been there, done that, is bored and moved on. Hmmm… I’m not going there now. Today, it’s my adventure.
Blogging and the internet are changing and rapidly, no doubt. Not long ago (just last year) you could Google a zip code like ‘homes for sale 98055’ and get a list of individual realtors. No more, now you find mostly big box franchises, corporate landing pages, and media sponsored search sites.
For today’s agent it is pretty impossible to compete against the big box media professionals. So I say, don’t… Be yourself. The blogs I most enjoy are those by realtors on a very local level. They’re like your personal neighborhood reporter on assignment. It’s used as a community participation tool. They write honestly sharing their interests and views. They give you a lens by which to view the neighborhood that goes beyond market statistics. (And I happen to love numbers.) This is a much more intimate life style experience than any mega corporate site can give you with their globally amassed databases, aerials, charts and graphs, trend reports, demographics, school information, and economic indicators. (And I like these kind of sites too.)
Many realtor writers I think are really maturing and finding their voice. To blog is a personal and introspective endeavor and it can often be quite humbling. It’s not about instant sales results and/or competing. It’s not about preaching a never ending ‘it’s all about me and how good I am’ sermon. It’s more about participation, being of value, sharing a point of view, and making an observation with some expertise.
Because of the internet, we have (as never before) the endless instant opportunity to discover, to share, to market, to learn, to entertain, and to sound off if we wish. We can participate in a never ending array of online communities where our neighbors (across the planet) spend time and hang out. The Rain is a great example of that. Local is now so very redefined. Yet no one knows ‘the neighborhood’ we live in better than you.
I think honesty, humility, authenticity, and good old fashioned passion for communication will always be attractive and prevail. Is blogging dead? I say not. It’s now a niche and we have choices. The internet, I think, is still somewhat of a gleeful toddler running through the front room with a poopy diaper chasing the dog kind of medium. I love the whole web 2.0 transparency thing and all the gadgets, widgets, and solutions that come with it. We’re still in the beginnings of this adventure. Let’s play and enjoy watching it grow up. Blog on!
René
Ps... I opted for two Sunday kind of mornings this weekend…
Comments(6)