Your Broker-Manager Hates Your Real Estate Blog
Their outlook is often unfounded.
Again, we are thrilled to announce that we have another great article by the our own real estate blogging goddess, Teresa Boardman.
Earlier this month she presented her strategy for 2007 with: Business Plan 2007: Blog For Leads.
This week she spits in the tiger’s eye:
Your Broker/Manager Hates Your Blog
By Teresa Boardman
Maybe hate is too strong of a word, but chances are if you have been spending some time on your blog you are not getting a lot of support from yours peers in the office or the important folks at your real estate company. If this is the case I have some good news for you and some bad news.
First the good news, you are on the right side of the new digital divide if you are reading this post on the Tomato. You came here because you wanted to learn or maybe take an idea you read about here one step further. You might even have a business blog, if not at least you are aware that they exist, and are reading one of the best [ahh shucks, Teresa]. There is absolutely no evidence to support the supposition that business blogs are a waste of time. The fact is that business blogs are still in their infancy and we don’t really know how far they will take us.
Now for the bad news, you will not get much if any support from your organization or your peers. You will get those comments and questions that leave you feeling unappreciated, and misunderstood: “How much time do you spend on that blog of yours?”, “It is just a blog, are you sure people read those?” “Why aren’t you using your blog to ask for business?” “During this market shift we all need to get back to and concentrate on the basics” “You don’t get business from a blog” “Shouldn’t you be writing more about yourself and your listings?” “Your blog may work for you for a time but soon everyone will be doing it and it will no longer be effective.” The last one really cracks me up because the truth is not everyone can or will write a business blog.
If you have a strong desire to be loved, appreciated or respected in your company because you have a blog, you should stop posting today and go run out and do an open house, or better yet pick up the phone and start cold calling. Chances are your peers and broker/manager will support you and may even lend you some extra open house signs. If on the other hand you have a desire to meet people, build relationships, give something unique to the world, exploit the internet as a marketing tool, try something new and different, and take a risk or two; blog on.
Nothing is certain but there is a strong possibility that my business blog is taking me in the right direction, and that the naysayer’s are so far away on the other side of that divide that they can’t see it let alone understand my motivation for writing more than 450 posts, plus a few for Jim. I have asked some people in my office what they think about Zillow, I am shocked to report that they never heard of it. What’s a Zillow anyway? The divide is growing very quickly and as the internet allows us to share ideas more easily the speed increases.
The learning curve looks much steeper to our colleagues that are watching us from far away. They encourage us to get back to the basics because that is all they know, as if they are certain that doing more of the same and working harder at it is the way to grow our businesses in a shifting market, and a new age. They give us the best advice they can based on what has been proven to be effective in the past and can not even comprehend what will work in the future, because they have missed some of the future already.
We are leaving our peers and our broker/managers behind. We can move, change, learn and innovate much faster than a huge real estate company can. The managers in those companies wait for a new direction that will come too slowly and probably too late. They watch us and we frighten them. Not everyone can do what we do so by some convoluted reasoning they have decided that we shouldn’t be doing it or that it can’t work. It is easier to believe that the old tried and true methods of running a real estate business still work as well as they did in the 80’s and 90’s, than to figure out how to compete today on the internet where the skills and tools needed are new and different.
We need to keep learning and growing and most importantly learn to ignore the voices from the other side. For support, encouragement and praise we have each other.
