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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.
Posted on August 28, 2009 09:32:45 by  Mark Eibner
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