Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Boulder Realtor Blog

Realtors are recognizing the need to market themselves and the need to build credibility and relationship long before the client approaches them. The transactional business model is very tempting, after all no one is going to buy or sell a house that frequently. But the customers can generate more leads if the realtor develops a relationship that involves more than sending simple newsletters. A relationship requires two way conversation and spamming the customer with email newsletters or glossy printouts of listings is not a conversation.

Conversations with customers start long before they are customers and continues whether or not they hired the realtor, made the transaction or not. Conversations are not direct sales pitches or requests like "would you tell your friend about me?". Conversations work when they add value without selling and allow the customers to participate. In the age if social media, a blog as a conversation tool is a no brainer. But how many realtors invest in conversations?

I found one realtor blog , The Silver Fern, a blog with little or no direct sales pitches and tries and succeeds in adding value. A quick review of articles show pointers to article in The Economist on Negotiations, market updates, meth contaminations. Great.

They are aggregating content and producing original content to help people make decisions. That is value added.

They allow comments in all their posts, that is conversation.

This is marketing and relationship building done right.

They give credit to all photos they use (I guess Flickr) in the blog. That is uncommon.

The sales leads will come later.


(I do not know the folks at Silver Fern nor have I done any business with them)

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