What You Always Wanted to Know From the Zebra, But Never Thought to Ask

February 27, 2008 |

No sooner had I been alerted to the fact that I was mentioned in the REALTOR Magazine feature article, “Welcome to Real Estate 2.0,” than I received an email from an agent who had seen the article.

The email came from John Duncan, a Keller Williams agent in Houston, TX (Clear Lake, to be specific). Having since spoken with John on the phone, he seems like a very competent, conscientious agent. He is the type of agent I love to have the opportunity to meet. John said the following in his email:

Good job,

Not the same old boring crap, put out by so many REALTORS who don’t get the idea of leading with a giving hand, being helpful first and being transparent enough to let the consumer know that jeez, you ARE a real person.

My hat is off to you. You seem like a fine young man. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a referral to pass up that way one day.

Your stuff is an encouragement to an old time REALTOR who is trying to break into the social marketing/ blogging bit.

I called John and told him that I very much appreciated his email, and that if he ever had any questions for me, just let me know.

John did just that.

In fact, his questions were so good that I told John I would answer them in this post so that, hopefully, others who might have been wondering about the same questions, but just never asked, could learn right along with us.

So here are the questions John asked me, along with my answers. My hope is that not only will John benefit from the answers, but you will, too:

What blog service do you use? And why?

I use Wordpress. Specifically, I use the hosted version of Wordpress and I host it with ANhosting. I love Wordpress. First of all, Wordpress is totally free. You just have to pay for hosting. If you want, you can make it TOTALLY free by hosting your blog with Wordpress.com. Of course, if you do that, you should still go out and buy a unique domain name and point it to your Wordpress.com blog. But really, what does that cost, $10/year, if THAT much. You can’t find more bang for your buck than Wordpress. To me, it is the gold-standard of blogging platforms.

When I first started blogging, I used Typepad, but I didn’t like the fact that it isn’t as flexible as Wordpress (it was also more expensive). Since Wordpress is open-source, and there are a ton of developers out there working on it, the sky is pretty much the limit with what can be done with Wordpress. On the other hand, Wordpress does require a bit more effort from the user (especially the hosted version). If you are going to host your own Wordpress blog, you are going to want to learn a little bit about things like ftp and at least learn how to find, copy, and paste basic html and php code. It isn’t terribly difficult, but there is a learning curve, so be aware. If you just plug some tutorial searches into Google, you can find plenty of good web resources for coding help for just about anything you want to do. YOU CAN DO IT!

I noticed your email is spelled out and not a link. I’m guessing that’s to keep spammers at bay?

Bingo. At least, it is an attempt to thwart potential email scrapers from spamming me to death. It might be a feeble attempt, but something is better than nothing, right? As far as spamming the blog and the comments, I moderate all of the first-time commenters, and I use the Askimet plug-in to filter the spam. It has worked well for me thus far.

If you had to start over, what is the one big thing you would have done differently?

This question is a real doosie. I had to think hard about this one. The one thing that I wish I had done differently was more intensive research before I began blogging. Pretty much from the beginning, I have been sort of “learning as I go.” I don’t mind that, since it is my nature, but I wish I had done a little more research before I launched my blog. Had I done that, I probably would have gone straight to Wordpress, rather than messing with Typepad. I also would have not written so many crappy posts in the beginning that were merely regurgitating articles and stats and stuff I had found. I would have had a better plan for what I wanted to write and discuss and how to approach it all.

In some respects, however, I am very glad that I just jumped into the deep and started swimming. It was frustrating and difficult and annoying at times, but it was all worth it. If you don’t make mistakes, then you can’t make anything.

Lastly, what are some blogs or materials you follow up on to learn about blogging? For example, someone turned me on to Seth Godin’s blog.

This one would be easier if I weren’t going through my RSS Blackout right now, since I have tons of good feeds in the reader. So I am going to have to give you a few examples from memory. I’m leaving off the RE.net blogs, since you can go to the blogroll in the sidebar to find good examples of those. In this list, I’m only talking about blogging and business-related sites.

1) John already mentioned Seth Godin’s blog.

2) CopyBlogger is a great resource for writing effective copy. Good not only for blogging, but business in general.

3) Problogger is a resource for people who are interested in being paid for blogging (Pro Bloggers). This might not necessarily apply to you, but the strategies and techniques discussed are not any less helpful because of that.

4) The blog at SEOBook.com is a great resource if you want to learn more about SEO. People who talk about SEO often get way too technical for most people. SEOBook is written in terms that just about anyone can understand, and the advice and resources are all top-notch. The debate still rages about how important SEO should be when you are blogging, but no matter how you feel, you should at least have a basic understanding of some of the strategies.

5) Chris Brogan is an incredible source of inspiration and information about using social media in business. In some ways, I think that his site is even better than Seth Godin’s. A lot of people wish that Seth Godin would share more concrete techniques to practice. Chris does that.

So there you have it, John asked me 4 very thoughtful questions, and I tried to answer them as best I could. I hope that John finds the answers helpful. I hope that you do, too.

And remember ANY time you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask. You can always send me an email, or just leave a comment.

Posted by Daniel Rothamel | Filed Under Blog, Blogging, General Info, Social Media 

Comments

6 Responses to “What You Always Wanted to Know From the Zebra, But Never Thought to Ask”

  1. Chris Brogan... on February 27th, 2008 6:34 am

    Wow! Thanks for the very kind compliment. I liked getting to learn more about you, too. Thanks for that. I liked the part about what you’d do differently. But remember, we ALL did that in the beginning. Maybe not on shiny new blogs that happened overnight, but on our FIRST blogs? Sure!

    [Reply]

  2. Daniel Rothamel on February 27th, 2008 7:19 am

    Chris,

    Thanks very much for the comment, and for visiting. Truth be told, I owe much of my social media exposure and experience to you. Your interview with Guy Kawasaki was the only reason I started using Twitter, which I now find indispensable. Your “Social Media 100″ has provided me with endless inspiration and thought-provoking nudges.

    Thanks again for stopping by, and I hope that this post will help other Realtors benefit from your insight, just as I have.

    [Reply]

  3. John Duncan on February 27th, 2008 7:28 am

    Hey Daniel,

    While I appreciate your answer about having done some more research before you starting your blog, I think you did the right thing by just starting it and learing as you went. As you go I should say. You’re still learning right?

    I used to be one of those people that had to have everything “just right” before I could do anything. I’d overthink everything. Consequently, I rarely ever got around to actually doing it.

    Some know it as the paralysis of analysis. It is deadly.

    I like what a military friend of mine said about his boss. His boss would say, “Lou, I just want the 95% solution.” What he was saying was you can get the other 5% but it will take you longer than it did to reach the 95%. Let’s get the 95% solution, and ROLL.

    John

    [Reply]

  4. What You Always Wanted to Know From the Zebra, But Never Thought to Ask | The Long List of Odysseus Medal Nominees | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments on February 27th, 2008 7:29 am

    [...] What You Always Wanted to Know From the Zebra, But Never Thought to Ask, by Daniel Rothamel. [...]

  5. Ginger Wilcox on February 27th, 2008 7:57 pm

    I haven’t read Chris Brogran’s blog before, I will do so now! I have all the others ones in my feed reader.
    If I had to start over, I would have skipped wordpress.com and gone straight for .org. Of course, that is a scary thought for a lot of people who aren’t technically savvy or technically adventurous! Excellent suggestions for a new blogger and very nice of you to take the time to take his call.

    [Reply]

  6. agentgenius.com- national real estate opinion column » Blog Archive » Getting Myself Organized (with a little help from Chris Brogan) on March 25th, 2008 6:03 am

    [...] with him is why I started using Twitter, he actually USES twitter, he seems conscientious, he left a comment on my blog), but one of the things I really like about him is that he is willing to talk about his own [...]

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