Real Estate Marketing Drips

The Top Three Tips to Become a Blog Originator and Build Your Brand Identity Online

Is blogging dead?  This is the question that seems to resurface every time a micro-blogging platform gains more visibility, new features, and higher traction.  To me it is like a comparison between a quick bite to eat and a great home cooked meal or an elegant dinner with fireside dining. 

Sometimes I need information and conversation that is quick and fast, other times I might want to opine and banter back and forth soaking up the prose along the way and digesting an idea to let it permeate my thought patterns and hopefully create something great as a result.

....Or just be satisfied with a belly full of good conversation among people I respect.

What might just be dead, though, is the regurgitation of tired topics.  As bloggers we need to create content that matters to our readers.  As business bloggers we have the tools at our disposal to see what is relevant to our readers and write about new topics and old topics with a brand new bent. 

Blogging for business is about establishing your brand, your presence, and your authority on a topic and owning it in your own unique way.

Blogging for business is one of the greatest tools available for real estate professionals to brand their business online.

Here are the Top Three Ways to Become a Blog Originator and Build Your Brand Identity Online

Create a theme focused blog

Create a theme for your blog and stick to it.  Start tracking categories on your blog so you can be mindful of the topics you are blogging about and if those topics are staying consistent with your blog's theme or if they are starting to run off track.  It's easy to meander on your blog and if you do this consistently you are shooting your brand in your foot and run the risk of losing readership and business in the process.

Need help finding a theme?  Use this blogging workbook designed to help real estate professionals decide on a focus for their real estate blogs and create a strategy for blogging and micro-blogging.

The stronger the dialog, the stronger the brand; the weaker the dialog, the weaker the brand.

~ Larry Webber

Content is big business online.  How do you create and maintain originality while still remaining a water fountain of information that your readers thirst for and pass on to their friends and family?  The answer is to develop your blogging voice.  You can do this by working on traditional writing exercises that will help tone and strengthen your blogging muscles and allow you to feel more at ease letting your personality seep through your blog prose.  Here are 36 resources to create blog content that blossoms online.

Developing your writing skills will allow your blogging voice to seep through your blog posts and up the emotional value in your real estate blog posts.

Once you have developed a readership and gained traction in the blogosphere for your niche market make sure to use and protect your blog property wisely.  There are many widgets and applications designed to make blogging easier and at the same time pull your readership to those companies internet property and away from yours.

You will also find that if you make a big impact online by working your blog with dedication there will be other professionals eager to have you open up your blog to their services and products.  Choose your affiliations wisely and keep your reader's needs in mind FIRST before you recommend other professionals products or services whether it be in a blog post or by an ad on your blog. 

Your association by link, blog prose, widget, or ad will be attached to your brand and your name for all to see.

Consider your blog as a primary Internet storefrontto showcase your products, services, and unique selling proposition BEFORE considering outside resources for your readership. 

Consider all these components of your blog as branding opportunities,

• Blog Header
• Call to Action in the Footers
• Blog Post Headlines
• Blog prose in each post
• Outbound links
• Interlinking
• Tags
• Photos
• Images
• Blog Margin/Side Bar
• Groups you join to Promote Blog Posts in a Community
• Name of Your Blog
• Blog Post Topics
• Blog Archives
• Blog Categories
• Alt Tags

Don't miss another opportunity to build your brand identity online through your blog.  Use the top three tips and become a blog originator.

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Rebecca D. Levinson is a real estate marketing consultant with 17 years of experience serving real estate industry professionals.

If you need assistance with online marketing, offline marketing, social networking, or blogging contact Rebecca D. Levinson at #262-203-5231 or email rebecca@bloggingintherain.com.

How Deep Does Your Blog Content Go?  73 Resources to Help You Write Better and Create Blog Content that Blossoms Online

I have chosen these resources to help you dig into your blog deeper and create content that will expand your current skill set.  Writers are constantly honing their skills and perfecting their efforts, digging deep into the bowels of their works and often their mind and souls in the process.  Given that blogging is a form of writing, and both writers and journalists have been exercising the skills of their trades before blogging came to be I have taken care to comprise this list mainly of writing and journalism resources that are relevant to blogging.

Here are 36 Resources to Help You Write Better and Create Blog Content that Blossoms Online

• How The Huffington Post uses real-time testing to write better headlines » Nieman Journalism- Article on A/B Testing
• Mulitvariate Testing and A/B Split Testing- who provides it?- List of service provides for A/B split testing. Yes Google is on the list.

ACCURACY

• 44 Tips to Accuracy- Excellent tips to make sure your writing is accurate.  Makes a great checklist.
• Accuracy Checklist: Detroit Free Press | Committee of Concerned Journalists- It's funny but as a blogger almost all of the eight checklists will apply to the blogger as a one (wo)man writer.
• The Journalism School- Columbia University- Event Archive- Three sessions that make sense to listen to:  HuffPo's Ken Lerer's Nothing's Off the Record, Helping Writer's Write, Beat Reporting with Sig Gissler

BLOGGING BASICS

• News University:  Journalism Training.  What Makes A Great Blog:  Principles for Success: A Poynter/NewsU Webinar Replay- Free recorded webinar on creating a great blog.
• Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers- Free online course for publishing content online.

COPYRIGHT AND CITATION

• Documenting Electronic Sources: Online Guides to Citing Electronic Sources- The OWL at Purdue-Citation and Style Guides
• U.S. Copyright office- Copyright basics.
• Copyright and Attribution- Reference list from J-Learning

FOCUS ON LOCAL

• News University.  Localism Training.  Build and Engage Local Audiences Online- Free E-Course- How to build and maintain a local online community.
• Targeting New Audiences: Finding Your Niche- Creating content for a specific audience.

HEADLINES

• Headline Writing for Google, Social Media and Profit : Condomunity.com-Gigantic bullet list blog post of headline do's, why's and how to's.Gigantic bullet list blog post of headline do's, why's and how to's.
• How to Write Headlines That Work | Copyblogger- Eight types of headlines.
• Advanced Marketing Institute- Headline Analyzer- Gives you the emotional value of your headline.  Very cool.

PROOFREADING

• Proofreading Your Writing - The OWL at Purdue- Easy to follow tips for proofreading.
• Wordiness, Wordiness, Wordiness List- Big list to help you declutter your blog posts.
• The Communications Network- Jargon Finder- A list to help you keep your blog jargon free.

TYPES OF WRITING

• Online Storytelling Forms - CyberJournalist.net - Online News Association - Tips and Tools- Article about the types of storytelling online.
• News University: Journalism Training. The Interview-Free E-Course on effective interviewing.
• News University: Journalism Training. Beyond the Inverted Pyramid: Creating Alternative Story- Free E-course on different methods of writing.
• How to Write a Comparative Analysis- Good thorough exercise to help you write posts that focus on comparing programs, tools, etc.

WRITER'S BLOCK

• Writer's Block/Writer's Anxiety-The OWL at Purdue- Overcoming Writer's Block
• Stuck in a Rut? The Top 5 Ways to Change Up the Ambiance and Get in the Mood To Blog- 5 ways to break your blogger's block

WRITING COMMUNITIES AND GROUPS

• Writing.com- Online community for writers and readers.
• Groups and Associations for Writers/Poe War- Groups and associations across the country for writers.

WRITING EXERCISES

• Writing Exercises | PoeWar-Great list of writing exercises that makes sense for bloggers to do.

WRITING TIPS

• Writer Resources.com- 10 Tips for Better Writing
• Get Me Rewrite- The Craft of Revision- Free E-Course on editing and revising content.
• The Lead Lab- Free E-Course on what to lead with in your content.
  

WRITING TOOLS

• Word Spy- Learn new words.
• News University:  Journalism Training- The Writer's Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use- Free E-Course to help sharpen and create good writing skills.
• Strunk,William,Jr.-1918.  The Elements of Style- Writer's Style Book.
• Skrbl- Online whiteboard.
• Xmind- Mindmapping.
• WriteRoom for Google Docs- Distraction Free Writing

How Deep Does your Blog Content Go?

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Rebecca D. Levinson is a real estate marketing consultant with 17 years of experience serving real estate industry professionals.

If you need assistance with online marketing, offline marketing, social networking, or blogging contact Rebecca D. Levinson at #262-203-5231 or email rebecca@bloggingintherain.com.

The Journey of Blogging

I am entering my third year of blogging professionally and have enjoyed my journey immensely.  When I started blogging I wrote to real estate consumers. After I started that I began to write to real estate professionals through my blog here on ActiveRain.

Both of my blogging efforts (B2B and B2C) required consistency, dedication, and a desire to learn what my blog readers wanted to know and how I could best provide and convey that information to them.  My progression on my professional blogging journey has provided me with many lessons from my blog readers that I have been able to develop into effective writing strategies.  I want to emphasize that this effort and these lessons did not come overnight.

The biggest lesson I learned was to listen to my blog readers.  Most of what I have learned has been as a result of listening to what my readers were looking for, what they resonated with, and what they did not.  Listening has been the greatest tool for my blogging efforts.  When I blogged to real estate consumers, using tools like analytics when comments weren't as frequent helped me to understand what real estate consumers wanted to read and know. 

Today I want to share with my blog readers the lessons I have learned in a cohesive fashion.  One of my difficulties with blogging was trying to gather all the great information I was reading and learning in one lesson book.  It always seemed to be scattered and no matter how great it was, sometimes difficult for a novice blogger to piece together.

Here is a Real Estate Blogging Tool Kit from Real Skillz for you to enjoy, use, and share

While I want my blog to be a healthy balance reflective of my personality,beliefs, and business abilities, my lack of consistent marketing posts was underscoring my skills and diminishing my business opportunities.  I am glad I was able to catch this in my analysis and turn my blogging efforts around. 

If I were given a do over, I would have spent the time to carefully consider the theme of my blog, from header, to description, sidebar to content and start off on better footing.  Instead I did this by going through a remodel halfway through my blogging efforts and the remodel has paid off.  I have increased my page views, PageRank, and readership by at least 25% and that figure increases monthly. 

I have also increased my business (my end goal) by remodeling and sticking to my blog theme.

Here's a thorough exercise to create a new blog theme or remodel your old blog's theme. 

A Roadmap Blogging Real Estate Professionals 23-Oct-2009

Gain Readership and Visibility for Your Blog

Keep your Content Consistent with your Blog's Theme

Enjoy your Real Estate Blogging Toolkit from Real Skillz

I hope you enjoy this real estate blogging toolkit.  I have tried to cover the topics I feel of importance to real estate professionals who blog and if you read through you will find instructions on theme, content creation, consistency, commenting, visibility, seo, listening, storytelling, competitive analysis, analytics, and creating an integrated marketing strategy.

If I'm missing something you expected to see, please don't keep it a secret.  I'm listening. Tell me by commenting.

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ActiveRain has a great feature called blog bookmarks where you can bookmark a post on the ActiveRain platform and return to it later to read.  Bookmarking is a wonderful tool, but unless you have something in place to help you to come back to that bookmark the chances are that post that you thought had so much useful information will sit and collect dust.

There is a solution and it's called Diigo. 

Here's how to use Diigo to Organize your ActiveRain Blog Bookmarks.

1.  Download the Diigo Toolbar

The toolbar will be installed on your Firefox Browser and give you easy one click options.

2.  Log into ActiveRain and go to your blog bookmarks page

Once you are in your blog bookmarks, right click your mouse and choose "open link in new tab". 

Now you can go to the blog post, read it, highlight it and add sticky notes/annotate the post before you save it to your Diigo account.

3. Save your notes in your Diigo account.

Once you are done annnotating the post you can save your annotations and highlights by using the one click save option in Diigo, tagging the post, and then hitting saved. Your annotated bookmark can be public for the Diigo community or you can mark your notes as private.

You will be able to create a library inside Diigo of your saved links, annotations and notes for your use and reference.  You can also invite people to view your notes or create a group inside of Diigo to share within the community itself.

If you are not ready to read the article/blog post you are on you can save it and mark it as read in your Diigo library.  You can also upload other documents on the web, like PDF's.

4.  Use the other options to help your content creation on the web

Diigo allows you to take snapshots of the pages you are bookmarking, you can twitter your annotated pages, and you can even blog articles or blog posts you have read and saved as bookmarks.

Diigo currently supports WordPress Blog, Blogger Blog, LiveJournal Blog, Typepad Blog, Movable Type Blog, Windows Live Space, Drupal Blog.

Before you reach for your blog bookmark button after you have read a post that you know you want to visit again, consider using the Diigo bookmarking tool.   This way you can highlight, annotate, save, send, share, collaborate, create reports, or even a slideshow all from one FREE simple platform that is accessible from any computer and now even from your IPhone.

I have included a video that shows the ease and power of Diigo.

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Diigo V4: Research ~ annotate, archive, organize from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

I hope that after you read this post you make it simpler on yourself and download Diigo.

UPDATE:  If you are a staunch IE user and are not into Firefox, you can download a similar tool, WebNotes.net.  The Personal version is FREE.  I use both Webnotes and Diigo and like both.

You may find Webnotes to have less of a learning curve.

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If you enjoyed this post on time saving tools then check out,

• How to Cut Your Real Estate Blogging Time In Half and Re-Purpose Your Content Three Ways with the Time Saved
• How to Re-Purpose Your Real Estate Blog's Content To Grow Your Email List in 5 Simple Steps
• Real Estate Marketing Toolkit:  Creation of the Tech Body Electric
  

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Rebecca D. Levinson is a real estate marketing consultant with 17 years of experience serving real estate industry professionals.

If you need assistance with online marketing, offline marketing, social networking, or blogging contact Rebecca D. Levinson at #262-203-5231 or email rebecca@bloggingintherain.com.

How To Cut Your Real Estate Blogging Time in Half and Re-purpose Your Content Three Ways with the Time Saved

One of the burdens challenges of being a content creator is providing consistently focused content that will be of interest to your readers.  If you are blogging 3-5 times per week or more content creation can become difficult for many real estate bloggers.  Now if you add in the creation of email marketing campaigns, strategic micro-blogging on Twitter or Posterous, newsletters, and generating additional content for your business peers this challenge can be dizzying.

This is where the value add of web 2.0 tools comes into play.

Problem:  Generating valuable content in a timely and consistent manner for multiple platforms and purposes.

Solution:  Use Gmail and WebNotes to help you collect, organize, generate, repurpos, and syndicate your content.

Here's How to Cut Your Real Estate Blogging Time In Half and Repurpose Your Content Three Ways with the Saved Time

1.  Use Gmail to Collect and Organize Your Research

Add a folder to your Gmail account labeled "Research-Blog".  Everytime you receive an email newsletter, a notification of a new blog post, or even a question that you could use from a consumer/prospect as content for your blog move a copy of that email to your "Research Blog" folder.  If you don't do this right away, at the very least, star the email so you can move it your "Research-Blog" folder later. 

If you find content outside of your email account no worries, just write a quick note by emailing yourself and include a link.  I personally do this all the time and find it to be simple, quick, and highly effective.  Mark the subject line of the email to yourself "Research-Blog" so you can move it to your labeled folder later.  In both Firefox and Internet Explorer there are options that enable you to email links and web pages to yourself.

2.  Open an Account at Webnotes and carefully sift through your "Blog-Research" folder

• Use Webnotes as your "go to" research tool.  It will allow you to highlight and add sticky notes to web pages, blog posts, and pdf's (Pdf's only if you purchase the paid version). 
• Register for an account with Webnotes.  I choose the paid version because I review several pdf's a week, and download the webnotes toolbar. 
  
• Go back into your Gmail account once you have downloaded the webnotes toolbar.
  
• Use the time you have allotted to read and research the contents of your Gmail "Research-Blog" Folder.
• Open up each webpage that you will use as a resource to create your newsletter and use the Webnotes tool to highlight and annotate the document.  You do this by clicking on highlight and sticky notes right from the Webnotes toolbar.
  

The more thorough you are with your note taking the quicker it will be to create your content.  This is where the time savings will really come into play.

3.  Generate your Content

Once you are done researching it's time to create your content.  Go back inside your Webnotes account.  You can get there by clicking "View My Webnotes" on your Webnotes Toolbar.

You will see a results page that looks similar to this,

Webnotes keeps the title and source of all of your notes including a hyperlink to the original source.  It also records your highlighted text and your sticky notes. 

Open up your blog editor and start blogging your post.  If you took copious notes the advantage is three-fold:

1. You now have a more conversational tone to write your post because you wrote the notes without hesitancy and in your own voice.  You will also be able to check spelling, grammer, style, and switch copy around to have more of an active than passive voice.
   
2. You have written most of the content that you will need for your post minus a few tweaks and copy and paste actions.
   
3. You will be able to easily cite material correctly by giving proper attribute and you will easily be able to include helpful links.

4.  Use the extra time you saved to work your SEO

• Check for use of keywords frequently and effectively.
• Tag your blog post with all appropriate keywords.
• Take advantage of additional features (If you are in the ActiveRain platform or another social network) by adding your post to groups and taking the time to add your post to the proper ActiveRain Channel- an often overlooked feature.
• Use Header tags properly.
• Scan for visibility and make sure your images are aligned, crisp, and help to paint your story as well as marked with ALT tags.
• Create a call to action on your blog posts.

5.  Re-purpose your blog content in three ways with the additional time

a.  Create an embeddable report

In webnotes you have the option of creating a report of your notes in html or pdf format.  If you use the pdf format you can upload a copy to scribd or docstoc where people can subscribe to your notes and where they can be indexed on Google.  You can also embed the report to Posterous if you have an account there or share it on your Facebook Fan Page or LinkedIn.

Summary Notes Report- Marketing to Women

b.  Send a newsletter

Announce your research to your database via email.  You may include all of the content or just a few items in a newsletter to your database.  There also might be some lefotvers-items when you researched that you did not include in your blog post- that could be perfect for content in your newsletter.

c.  Twitter with a real estate marketing purpose

In performing Step #2 if you find a resource/link that could generate a conversation and you have taken the  time to annotate and highlight thoughtfully share it with the your Twitter followers.  There is a share button in the Webnotes Toolbar. Click "Twitter" and you are good to go.

Use Gmail, Webnotes, and the method above to cut your real estate blogging time in half and re-purpose your content three ways with the Time Saved.

Subscribe to Blogging In The Rain, A Real Estate Marketing Blog

Rebecca D. Levinson is a real estate marketing consultant with 17 years of experience serving real estate industry professionals.

If you need assistance with online marketing, offline marketing, social networking, or blogging contact Rebecca D. Levinson at #262-203-5231 or email rebecca@bloggingintherain.com.

Real Skillz Halloween Treat~A Blogging Workbook for New Real Estate Bloggers

In conversations sprinkled throughout my blog and in seminars I have given to real estate offices and franchises I am aware that there are still many real estate professionals who are intimidated as to where to begin blogging.  There are many great resources to get started, but with the crush of information that exists online the amount of resources can be enough to make new real estate bloggers turn on their heels and run away from the blogosphere.

That's a shame because a content fueled marketing strategy online is a winning proposition for real estate professionals. 

• Real Estate bloggers win SERP (Search Engine Results Placement) on Google, Yahoo and Bing with content. 
• Real Estate bloggers win relationships with other professionals which often leads to referrals.
• Real Estate bloggers win new clients who get to know like and trust them by reading their  blog for advice about real estate,information on local events, and a few posts that are just about the person behind the real estate license.
  

Real Estate bloggers win business online when they are consistent, thorough, creative, transparent, sincere, and genuine.

Today I want to share two free resources with new real estate bloggers.  I thought about the lessons I have taught in real estate seminars and my own experience blogging to real estate consumers for nearly 2 years and put together this workbook and slideshow to share.

Real Skillz Halloween Treat~A Blogging Workbook for New Real Estate Bloggers.

A blogging workbook

A slideshow on blogging

• Real Estate Market Reports- You could take 3 months worth of real estate market reports and create a quarterly ezine.
• Home Maintenance and Repair- You could group by seasonal repairs/improvements or by type of repair/improvement (e.g. kitchen, living room, outdoor landscape)
• Home buyer checklists
• Home Seller checklists
• Short sales 101
• First time home buyer information
• Relocation information
• Any of your real estate blog posts that you have in a series

Once you have decided which blog posts you will use in your ezine, list the names of the blog posts on a document ( I use Google Docs) and the order in which you want them to appear in the Ezine.

2.  Create your Real Estate Ezine

Go to Zinepal.com and take 2 minutes to fill out a form and create an account.  It's free.   Once you have an account an Zinepal you will log in and start creating your ezine.  The first step is to enter the url of your blog or your blog's rss feed.  Once you have done this the zinepal.com application will pull a list of your blog posts.  You simply check the ones you want included in your ezine and zinepal.com will add them to a dashboard for you. 

Check to make sure that you have the right blog posts for your Ezine in your dashboard and click the customize and create my ezine button. 

3.  Edit your Real Estate Ezine

Once you are in the Ezine Editor it will ask you to:

• Enter your keywords and an introduction for your ezine.
• Choose your logo for the header of the ezine, font type and font size.
• Upload an image for advertising on your ezine (I'll discuss this later).
• Save your ezine as a template for future ezines.

Editing your Ezine will take you about 5-10 minutes maximum.  Once you are done you can preview your real estate ezine or hit create to publish and save your ezine.

4.  Your ROI Is Dependent On How You Market your Real Estate Ezine

You will get a PDF copy of your ezine which you can download onto your computer and save in your documents.  You will also receive a profile page on zinepal.com that will become a library for your Ezines.  You can choose to keep this ezine profile page public or private.  If you allow your profile page to be public visitors can subscribe by RSS to your ezine feed.

Here is how I recommend you market your Real Estate Ezines:

• Decide which ezines you are willing to give away without requiring Internet visitors to fill out a form and which ezines you require visitors to fill out a form before allowing them to download.
• Take your private ezines and upload them to a document storage and collaboration website and set them as private. 
• Create a simple form for Internet Visitors to fill out before they can access your private real estate ezines. 
• Embed this form on your website, email, blog, social networks and other places online where your advertise your real estate services online.  After they complete the form it will take them to the URL where your private ezine(s) are located for them to download.
• Expose your public ezines by leaving them public on your profile on a document storage and collaboration website.  This will allow visitors to download and share your ezines by email, facebook, twitter, Digg and more.  It will also allow the search engines to index your profile page thereby increasing the visibility of these public documents.
• Use the RSS feed you are given from zinepal.com and embed it on your blog or website.  Even though you may leave some of your ezines public, you can still use the RSS feed to gain subscribers and grow your email list).

5.  Take the Marketing of your Real Estate Ezine to the Next Level

The simple repurposing of content from your real estate blog into real estate ezines can provide a wealth of viral branding avenues for you to explore and create new business opportunities.  Taking the marketing of your ezine to the next level means marketing your ezine in both offline and online venues.

Here's how you can take the marketing of your real estate ezine to the next level:

Pull and push your content heavy ezine for the maximum ROI.

It's up to you to take action now that you know how to repurpose your real estate blog's content to grow your email list in 5 simple steps.

 
A Roadmap Blogging Real Estate Professionals 23-Oct-2009

Crush the box.  Somebody's gonna do it and it should be you.

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Top 7 Tips to Connect with Blog Comments

Do you want to kick your blogging up a notch?  One key to successful blogging is listening.  When you listen by reading a blog post you need to treat that time as you would if you were sitting across the table from a prospective client.

To listen you need to make a commitment to unplug from your other tasks at hand. There's a lot of hearing that gets done online, but listening is in a class all its own.  If you truly listen you set yourself up for great connections and true business opportunities.  Add commenting to your blogging goals and try these commenting tips.  

Top 7 Tips to Connect with Comments  

1.  Read the Full Post- It's common for people to skim posts online.  Try to choose blogs that you can regularly visit that are chock full of great content and interesting subjects that keep you on your toes. 

Continue Reading Top 7 Tips To Connect with Blog Comments

The Power of the Referral May Be Losing Its AV ...Will the FTC Recall Your Client Testimonials?

Background and Thoughts on New FTC Rules

This post was inspired by "Will New FTC Rules Affect Agent Testimonials on Trulia Blog", General Twitter Buzz on the FTC Guides and my own direct experience in using testimonials to sell and market real estate services and products to the real estate industry.

There has been much talk in the blogosphere as to how the FTC's new regulations has put more restrictions on bloggers, advertisers, marketers and businesses.  After reading several sources, including the FTC's announcement it is possible that the very testimonials Real Estate Brokers and Agents use to advertise their services could come under scrutiny and be in violation with the FTC's new rulings,

"...advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect."

Hmmm.....I can only imagine what the disclosures of real estate companies, real estate agents, and real estate vendors might have to say. Who can say what is average or customary? These disclosures could be the makings of very wishy-washy ineffective testimonials making the power of the referral online lose its appraised value.

Think about testimonials on websites, blog posts....what about Recommendations on Linked In?

Real Estate Vendors Live for Client Testimonials

Even more susceptible to these guidelines are the real estate vendors who use testimonials.  Joseph Ferrara cites Zillow and Trulia in his blog post, but I can say from experience that many referral companies, lead generation/management companies, website vendors, and Internet advertising companies have their sales force use testimonials almost exclusively to sell their services and products. 

I would go so far as to say this would encompass every existing and established real estate vendor selling and marketing to real estate professionals today.

If you sell a product to real estate agents or real estate companies you are 7/10 asked these questions:

• What real estate agents/brokers use your service/product near my area?
• How many real estate agents/brokers near my area use your service/product?
• What real estate agents/brokers may I talk to who use your product/service?
  

Many real estate professionals purchase products based almost exclusively on these testimonials and the inherent promises that their words promise.  FOR REAL.

I imagine these sometimes false expectations are part of what the FTC is trying to avoid, but it is hard to police human nature.  If consumers do their research and try to cure their impulse shopping habits, whether they are B2B or B2C therein lies the better and bigger picture. This makes common sense....right?

Do not disregard the new FTC guidelines because of what you assume is common sense for consumers or businesses to know.

Businesses now tell people things common sense takes for granted,

To protect us from ourselves,

If you had to add a disclosure to your testimonials what would it need to say?  How ridiculous might it look?

The revisions to the guides from the FTC also states,

"The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers."

I imagine there are many "handshake" agreements in the real estate blogosphere- agreeing to send each other business, promote readership, etc., when they can.  Will these agreements now have to be disclosed?  Just some food for thought I am throwing on the table.

Keep Informed of the FTC Guidelines

Let's keep informed so that we can remain aware, proactive and empowered bloggers.

Additional Resources on the Worldwide Web Regarding the FTC guides for Testimonial Advertisements:

From: FTC Sets Endorsement Rules for Blogs by Cecilia Kang
Source: The Washington Post, 10/6/2009.
Via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright 2009 The Washington Post

From: Web reviews must disclose payments by Associated Press
Source: The Boston Globe (Boston, MA), 10/6/2009.
Via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright 2009 The Boston Globe

Have you read the new FTC revisions to the guides regarding testimonial advertisements? What do you think?

Regardless of FTC revisions think about how Customer testimonials influence you as a consumer.  Do they make an impact on your purchasing decisions, B2B or B2C?

Please share your thoughts by commenting below.

If you enjoyed this post you'll enjoy reading,

• Stuck in A Rut? The Top 5 Ways to Change up the Ambiance and Get In the Mood to Blog
• Your blog's content is a commodity.  Treat it like one
• Creating an Effective Blog Strategy that Doesn't Leave You Numb is a Job that Real Skillz Can Handle

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