Mark Eibner: Ed welcome to Broker IPTV. My name is Mark Eibner and our guest today is Ed Kohler. ED is the author of Technology Evangelist and ED is the web strategist and Ed welcome to the show.
Ed Kohler: Hi! Mark how are you doing?
Mark Eibner: I am doing great, super to have you on here.
Ed Kohler: Thank you.
Mark Eibner: We are going to look forward to these weekly chats with Ed and Ed unique insight and I think one of the things we are talking about earlier today is may be addressing one of those areas you are still not seeing fulfilled by the real estate brokerage community which is perhaps localism.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, I think it's an area on the web that still has a lot of opportunity for growth.
Mark Eibner: And may be you could define what we think localism is and what type of growth...what do you mean by growth? What can brokers be doing to be more successful in their blogs on the web?
Ed Kohler: Sure, well as I see the real estate discussion as it happens off-line there are a lot of different levels of conversations that happen, but one really important level when people are kind of going through a buying decision is they are trying to figure out which neighborhoods or which developments or which condos they want to consider and while doing that now they are asking their friends and they are talking about what is it about a certain neighborhood that makes it very livable or an appropriate neighborhood for them to consider buying and you know maybe they are interested in being their trails or it's a certain commute time or they are wanting to have a yard that is large enough to have a dog, whatever it is a lot of discussions happened around that, but right now I online I haven't seen a really good transfer of that type of knowledge to the web, where you know real estate agents clearly have this information in their heads, but I don't see it being organized well online yet. So, there is an opportunity for people to...for real estate agents or for brokers to provide that type of information in a way that is easy to digest and figure out what will be the appropriate neighborhood to even consider looking for a home.
Mark Eibner: Right, what about some of the more community or social media based sites like say Zello and Trulia you have got Trulia voices, I have seen some brokers there interacting with the consumers stalking consumers etc.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, well I think those sites are probably doing a better job of with a lot of brokers are, but I think a broker that can do a job of organizing those type of information I mean, they are the experts in their local community and there is no reason you need to rely on a site like Trulia or Zillo to do this and if you decide you rather you know help them make money then that is fine, but why not become the source of information in your community, so...
Mark Eibner: So, you are really talking about brokers once you give a couple of examples of localism or things that they could be authoring that are really ultimately long and short tail words search words out on the internet.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, where I think a lot brokers get hung up is on thinking about the most high level terms that people may search for in their market. So, it's the terms such as homes for sale in Colorado or real estate in Arizona things like that, well when people start searching they may start at that level, but over a time their searches start to become more and more precise and one of those levels is when they start searching for the names of neighborhoods or for a small suburb names or the names of a specific condos that particular level is something I don't see it lot yet on a brokers website then beyond that people do go further down to when they start searching on stuff as specific as the address of the property and MLS number and lot of real estate sites if you get to a site do a very good job like that, but it's in-between there where there is a lot of opportunity of not just showing up, but having some information there that helps to explain what people are looking for and if they type in like I live in a neighborhood called Longfellow in minneapolis and if someone has searched for Longfellow hopefully they are going to move across the site that helps to describe why do people live in this neighborhood? What is it about this neighborhood that makes it livable? So that is where...it's information that exists in the minds of brokers, in the minds of the agents, but it hasn't really been organized well to guide consumers, neighborhoods are good fits for you know what they are looking for their lifestyle.
Mark Eibner: Yeah, so if may be somebody out here take Pearl street here down in Denver, to something as simple as great Sushi Restaurant Pearl street, Denver, or Sushi Restaurant 210 a blog post talking about including some video may be including some photos of just real brief what you had for lunch literally last week in that specific neighborhood right.
Ed Kohler: For sure and you know as far as you know, because agencies naturally are out in the road all the time and exploring neighborhoods it's possible that they may actually have more benefit from, if they are going to jump into a third party site and contribute information you could go to Trulia or Zillo, but you could also go to things like Urbanspoon or you now Yelp and contribute information there with you know and let people know they are an agent you know put that in your profile, but if you have knowledge and like say you are foodie and you go out and you are trying every new restaurant in town, if you wrote up reviews about that and people could tell like well this person obviously is a person who knows this town very well.
Mark Eibner: Right.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, it's indirect sale, but it can be valuable.
Mark Eibner: Yeah, I think it's one of those things we were trying you said a lot of brokers are pretty well versed in posting their listings, but they are not really well versed in being transparent to the consumer to actually prove that they really are an expert in a local area.
Ed Kohler: Yeah and I swear, because I...it actually I think off-line [Inaudible] that neighborhood expertise has still done better than this online, because if you go into a community and you look at the art signs, you can tell who is doing business there or if you look at the bus benches or may be the billboards things like that you know people... agents will own neighborhoods, but online they are not doing the same thing which is strange, because a lot of agents really do focus on specific areas, so they should try to own areas you know I see somewhere they are starting blogs around areas and they are trying to keep up in the news aggregates what is going on in their community and report on community meetings or things like that, that kind of stuff could be really cool, you know as a way to not just say that I am in this neighborhood, but to demonstrate your knowledge of that neighborhood.
Mark Eibner: Yeah, exactly in the past as far as geographic farming it really came down to how much money for how long you could spend to dominate an area and now the which is called the more Web 2.O transparent community it's truly more of the broker spending their time and knowing about short...long tail search words for dominating that same geographic neighborhood online.
Ed Kohler: Yeah, I think that is a big part of it just figure not all the ways that people are going to search for a community, the people get very...very...very precise and if you can have something that shows up on the more specific terms, they also tend to be cheaper like if you are getting into buying ads on Google Adwords and things like that. So, you know try to get past the most obvious dozen things that people may search for and don't just keep chipping it out over a time you know it's unfortunate it's kind of like taking your vitamins everyone knows that [Inaudible] exercise if you want to stay in shape, but you know to actually get out there I can write a blog post on a daily basis or weekly basis just provide some information that stuff just gets archived and it builds and builds and builds over the time and you have to put this showcase of information that proves your knowledge.
Mark Eibner: You [Inaudible] I think something is simple if people...brokers really understood the power of blogging and the fact that if you just wrote one small blog post everyday that is 365 post a year and they don't have to be long post they could be a photo post, they could be a video post, anything that's got the right title and a key word text to it, eventually it's going to get...start to get compiled by Google and all the other search box to give precedence to that broker and that neighborhood on those long tail short tail words.
Ed Kohler: Oh! Exactly and you can't do this in every community, but in communities where you can post yourselves online, I think that is also a good way to demonstrate where you have actually done business, because you know you could say that you work in a community, but if you can just show people not really I have done a ton of transactions in this community so I think that can help as well.
Mark Eibner: Any brokers you are familiar with Ed that you know that have had success or work in this area for being good on localism and local data.
Ed Kohler: I think it varies a bit I think, I see most of it being done today by agents on their...by their own, whether just they can move a little bit quicker and they are little more innovative at times where they are starting to own a community with their blogging for example there is a guy in Minneapolis [Inaudible] banker named Jason [Inaudible] he is a young guy he is about 25, works with a lot of buyers and one of the things he is doing is he is driving around development...some in the suburbs like Apple Valley or Mendota heights in different communities and he is explaining you know he drives around has his camera and shows the construction there, goes past the local retail and people can see what is walkable from the location, describes how far it is from Downtown, Minneapolis or St. Paul, stuff like that where you know in a couple of minute video he is really able to show people why people live in that community and that is something where if anyone is considering living there, they are going to find that very valuable and he was already there, so it wasn't a huge time for him to do that [Voice Crossover] not a big commitment.
Mark Eibner: Right Ed well once again, looking forward to talking to you with next week and I appreciate your input and the information for our brokers.
Ed Kohler: Thank you Mark.
Mark Eibner: And we will be...once again if you guys want to find out more information about Ed Kohler, just go to Technology Evangelist, Ed has got a lot of great information up there and things inside and outside of real estate, like I said he is the author and founder of Technology Evangelist and also he is the founder and owner of the blog Haystack In A Needle and he is our web strategist and we look forward to weekly chats on interesting topics and subjects as it relate to our real estate business. Well looking forward to seeing you all next week have a great day.
Ed Kohler: Thank you Mark.
Mark Eibner: Thanks Ed.
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