Blogger Spotlight: Barry Cunningham

One of the hottest new media offerings in the real estate world is Real Estate Radio USA. It’s a radio quality production, dedicated to real estate, and syndicated over the Internet. One fascinating aspect of the show is how they’ve used it to interact with bloggers in this vertical. In fact, I’ll be a part of today’s show around 4:30 Eastern.

Barry Cunningham has taken the lead on developing their own blog offering and I wanted to get his perspective both as a relatively new blogger, and a top notch podcaster.

Hi Barry, I know you’ve been blogging for a few months now, why did you decide to adopt this medium?

Actually the blog came after we decided to do the radio show. Like most, we started researching and realized that we had a niche that was not being filled so we decided to develop a vertically integrated real estate company. What does that mean..well not to steal Howard Stern’s slogan..but we felt we could create the king of all real estate related media companies. Blogging was one of the components of that vertical integration.

One thing that sets you apart from other new bloggers is the way you’ve used your radio show as a platform to meet some of the top voices on RE.net. Tell us a bit about the power of the interview.

We realized that we were behind the pack. With all of the great real estate bloggers out there I did not want to wait around for a year until the Google gods allowed us to play outside of the dreaded sandbox. So we decided that by utilizing the blog to push the radio show and to utilizing the radio show to push the blog that we could create a synergistic approach to drive traffic and rss subscriptions. It seems to be working for us. Also, in watching late night television, we knew that because nobody else was doing it that there would be a never-ending supply of guests to bring on to talk about pertinent events in the “Business” of real estate.

What are the biggest differences so far, between communicating in audio or print?

It takes more time to research and write a compelling blog posting than it does to produce an entire radio show. Real estate bloggers can sit down and bang out something about their hyperlocal farming niche in about 20 minutes. The posts we mainly write about have to be researched and fact-checked to make sure what we write is accurate. We get blasted a lot by realtors because of what we write but if an individual takes the time to actually read the article and the supporting links and information they can actually see it may be uncomfortable but it is an issue needing discussion. So it’s definitely the amount of prep it takes to write a story that sets audio apart from print. Plus..I am a windbag which makes it easy to do the radio show.

If a blogger wants to start communicating in audio, how would you suggest they get started.

The first show we did, sounded HORRIBLE..we were nervous and did not have a plan. At first it was a “How-To” show. No one wants to hear a how to show. We quickly realized that our future was in talking about the issues knowing the business. So the start of utilizing the audio portion is to relax and the 2nd biggest part is to have fun. If you relax and have fun it comes through on the air. Don’t try to be Walter Cronkite..be yourself. People can tell the difference. To get started we made sure their were at least two of us in the studio at all times and planned the show as a conversation between friends that the listener can eavesdrop on. That’s the best way. Just have fun, talk to some friends and let others listen in. It will sound natural, you will have fun and your audience will relax and have fun with you. On the technical side, their is a small upfront investment one has to make and there are some items you just can’t go the cheap route on. Email me and I’ll give you a list of what we bought to get started. Bit of advice..there are a lot of “blog talk shows” out there that tell you that you can just call in and do your show over the phone. Just imagine if you’d like sitting in front of a McDonald’s drive thru for an hour or so. The audio presentation is vitally important to retain an audience and convert new listeners.

What are some of your favorite blogs?

I don’t have enough room…obviously the usual suspects bloodhound, 4realz, yours, rsspieces (unbelievable info), agent genius, sellsius, xbroker, transparent re, the tomato, teresa boardman’s amazing photos, phoenix real estate guy, the real estate bloggers, laurie manny’s for inspiration and of course..Seth godin’s blog…so many more..but my favorite blog besides our own is the Notre Dame football blog…sweet!

What advice do you have for prospective bloggers who are looking to start a blog?

Talk to those who are successful (i.e see above) and read everything and do what they did and it will work for you. when we wrote our very 1st post on January 2, 2008 we were so apprehensive. We could not imagine where we were headed but then I started reading and listening and following direction…great direction by all of those mentioned above and in less than 2 months we have been averaging almost 2,000 unique visitors per day, and our organic searches are not even kicking in yet as we are still in the sandbox for our prime keywords!

A parting statement.

We blog out of the sheer enjoyment and never force a post. If there is nothing there…then don’t force it. When you have something to say, say it, when you don’t ..shut up. Right now..I am going to just shut up. Ciao!!

Blogger Spotlight: Aaron Wall

If you don’t read SEO Book, you really should. It’s a read and repeat blog. Bloggers read Aaron’s post, and then repeat these concepts as their own all over the blogosphere. Why not get this advice straight from the horses mouth?

Aaron speaks largely on search engine optimization, but my favorite posts are the one where he talks about viral marketing and the new media in general. When he offered up the chance for his readers to interview him, I knew this was a perfect opportunity to bring in an outside the RE.net perspective.

Hi Aaron, thank you so much for participating. As you may know, the real estate blogging community (we call it RE.net) is by far, one of the largest, and still fastest growing small business verticals for social media. It’s a close knit group, but with differing opinions as to what makes the best real estate blog strategies. Here’s three hot topics that I’d like to get an outsider’s opinion on.

Blog Rolls- Many RE.neters maintain a blogroll on their real estate blogs. Sometimes the links are local, other times, they’re other real estate blogs from around the country. From the standpoint of SEO, how important do you think it is for real estate bloggers to maintain or avoid a blogroll?

Well when you create a blogroll if you link to it sitewide you are passing out PageRank sitewide. What I do if I use blogrolls is either just link to the blogroll from the homepage OR link to a page I call blogroll where I list blogs I read often. The nice things about making the blogroll an actual blog post are that more people will end up seeing it when they do link searches on sites like Technorati, and you are passing out less link equity while still getting all the benefits of a traditional blogroll.

You still want to link to some of your core sales pages sitewide though such that they get maximum benefit from your site’s link authority.

Listings - Unlike ad driven revenue model blogs, real estate bloggers are generally trying to generate business for their own company. A popular school of thought is to avoid “selling” on the blog. This means that writing about a new listing is frowned upon. However, other bloggers report great success in blogging about their listings. What are the pro’s and cons with regard to search engines when blogging about your own product? In addition, as a consumer how would you react to a real estate blog that wrote about it’s listings?

If you want to write a blatant advertisement but do not want your core audience to suffer through reading it, consider backdating the post a week or month.

People buy auto trader and it is nothing but ads. And few people would want to go to the million dollar homepage everyday because aesthetically it looks like crap. The key is to editorialize any sales information as well. Do you offer me tips on why I should stay in neighborhood x or the type of people who should avoid neighborhood y? Do you offer any unique ratings of areas? Have you visited the house you are pitching? Can you talk about your experience from an informing standpoint rather than using hard sales tactics? Those are the types of questions to ask. If you are teaching and informing it doesn’t feel like a sales pitch, even though Teaching Sells .

Keywords - Real estate bloggers are always striveing to own localized keyword search results. We all know it’s important to include these words in our posts, but at what point (from the perspective of SEO, or the blog’s readers) does keyword rich turn into keyword stuffing?

If you were your prospective client or prospective reader is the content you are writing something you would want to read or subscribe to? If not, then you need to fix it. Nobody is going to buy from or be impressed by poor reading content even if they do stumble upon it from a search.

Some people who keep adding keywords to try to match an arbitrary keyword density level end up stripping out important modifiers. Use a keyword tool to find modifiers that you can sprinkle in the copy… concentrate on fitting them in the page copy in a logical way more than concentrating on repeating the core keywords. Also it may make sense to use a few core keywords in your site template to help the pages be relevant for related queries.

Some Wordpress plugins allow you to make your h1 headings different than your page titles. Using these sorts of tools allows you to get added keyword diversity without making the content sound bad.

Also in many cases if your site is structured well you have sales pages ranking for the most important target queries. Make sure to link to the pages you want to rank where it makes sense.

Besides SEO Book, what resources would you recommend for small business bloggers?

Study and learn your own industry inside out. Become the person reporters call when legal changes change your field.

Read Don’t Make Me Think to learn usability. And read the Cluetrain Manifesto and The Purple Cow to get a grasp of online marketing.

Finally, do you have any parting advice for real estate or small business professionals who are interested in starting a blog?

Sooner is better than later. Get launched. No big deal if you are not perfect off the start…it takes a lot of time and effort to become a good writer. Subscribe to a lot of other blogs you find useful and learn from them while you develop your own unique style. Plus tracking your industry and seeing what ideas spread and why they spread teaches you how to create and launch similar ideas.

And this will seem a bit self promotional, but I would also read the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. It is probably the best blog marketing guide on the web…and it is available in more than a dozen languages.

Thanks Aaron, I really appreciate your perspectives here on our corner of the blogosphere.

Time for some more interviews.

I have time to do a new batch of blogger interviews. I’ll be sending out some invitations today, but some of the best interviews have come from people who volunteer themselves. If you’re a blogger in the real estate, mortgage, or title industry, that would like to share their experience and perspective, I would like to hear from you.

The interview process is very flexible. I email you a set of questions, you simply email the answers back. I do the rest. I just ask that you to get them back to me withing a couple weeks (some get it done in a matter of hours). To get a better idea of the format, refer to the long list of interviews running down the near left column.

If you’re interested, leave a comment here, or email me at todd@mariah.com.

That said, Mary McKnight is still worth listening to. Even if she is a “vendor”

I was pretty hard on Mary McKnight in my last post. That said, I still think she’s a important source for real estate bloggers to learn about improving their craft. I’ve spent almost a year collecting great articles about real estate blogging. In that list, Mary is as well represented as any other. I get annoyed by the hype, but she knows her stuff. The same can be said for Jim Cronin, Dustin Luther, Joel Burslem, and Pat Kitano.

What each of these people have in common is that they aren’t actual real estate agents or mortgage originators. They’re… vendors.

The term vendor has become somewhat of an RE.net slur lately. My friend Greg Swann uses it with increasing regularity. It’s his argument that a vendor is under-qualified to advise authentic real estate and mortgage professionals because they lack the experience of walking the walk, so to speak. I most respectfully disagree. In fact, I often think the worst advice of all comes from other professionals in our vertical.

There’s no shortage of “experts” with real estate and mortgage industry day jobs. They employed a few tactics, had some success, and decried their way as the holy grail. They’re missing the big picture. The reality is, blogging is still so uncommon in most cities that even a terrible blogger can do pretty well if they just apply themselves. The mistake many of them make is assuming that just because their advice worked for them, that it’s the best advice, or the only advice.

Vendors on the other hand, have a client base to give them the big picture. They watch their clients succeed, but they also watch them fail. They have a unique perspective as to what works, what works better and what doesn’t work at all. To ignore these voices simply makes no sense to me. Yes, they won’t always be right, but who is?

Having walked a mile in Mary McKnight’s shoes, she’s peddling hype.

In June of this year, I’ll be celebrating the twentieth anniversary of my first job in the mortgage industry. I haven’t always stuck to mortgages, but for the most part, I’m a mortgage guy. One thing I can say in all the time I spent, I never once burned a borrower, or gave them anything other than my best effort to help them. Looking around the ruins of the mortgage industry today, I can say with a great amount of pride that I’m somewhat unique in this regard.

I wish I could say the same about my short career selling web sites to the real estate and mortgage industry. I didn’t realize it at the time, but during my stint selling web sites for Myers Internet and Lion Inc, I was selling a decent product wrapped in a bunch of overblown hype. We sold good web sites with lead capture and transactional tools. But while some did quite well, for the most part what we were selling was hype.

Hype that Yahoo an Google were going magically deliver more leads than anyone would know what to do with. Hype that it was easy. Hype that we’d even show them how… for free.

Working at a company that for years owned the number one position in Google for the term “mortgage” made the hype even easier to sell. But we also cherry picked some of our existing client base to help us with the hype. On top of that, we cherry picked their successes, without mentioning all the other work the did to be a success. We sold the sizzle to a lot of people who didn’t understand how hard it would be to create the steak.

With great regularity, the peddling of hype is exactly what I see on RSS Pieces. Take today’s article for instance. I read recently that Mary considers herself the:

“Ann Coulter of the real estate blogosphere - outrageous and thick skinned”

I’m glad to hear it. It should be no problem then for me to criticize her audacity.

Fact: Ranking #1 in Google can improve your real estate leads by 600%.

Fact? I guess so long as she uses the word “can”, she’s technically correct. But the math behind her argument is absurd.

Case Study: When Laurie Manny jumped from the second position in Google to the first and second she went from 5 leads per day to 30. That is a 600% increase in real estate leads. Her traffic also took a flying leap forward from about 3500 visitors per day to upwards of 5000. So, clearly , the number one position in Google is more valuable than the number two position or any other position, for that matter.

This tortured reach assumes that Laurie is now receiving an additional 1500 unique daily visitors to her web site by searching only for the term “long beach real estate”. Further more, this would also have to mean that the 25 extra leads that Laurie is getting are coming only from those extra 1500 visitors. Are you people really buying this?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe Laurie gets plenty of traffic and leads from her blog. This is not an indictment of her. Not in the least. It’s how Mary spins numbers for effect.

My cynical eye suggests to me that this is not even an article about SEO. It’s an add to create hype for her own product. I could see it coming right from the beginning.

I don’t sell SEO and nor have I ever sold SEO services to Realtors. I do, however, help Realtors SEO their sites for FREE and have helped to pull a number of Realtor sites back from Google penalties very quickly. Why? Because SEO isn’t rocket science and enough people have their hands in a Realtor’s pocket for me to need to sell a service you could easily and more effectively do yourself.

But you do have your hand in REALTOR’s pockets Mary. You’re selling them web sites. For everyone who’s ready to rush to Mary’s defense, pause for just one second and ask yourself why you give away free information on your own blog. Mary’s not doing this as a public service. Now go back and read her post again. What’s the point of this article? In my eyes she:

Created a straw man (as if anyone worth listening to says SEO has zero relevance)

Touted the free services she offers.

Bragged about the success of one of her clients.

Mentions the success of a few more.

Recycles the same basic SEO advice she’s covered before.

Reminds you about her webinars

Then closes by suggesting you need lead generation tools.

“Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.”