Every Friday morning I come to work and it’s become what I call my ‘entering the twilight zone’. I collect blog posts all week from the major real estate blog sites, real estate news sites that like to talk about all the new techie stuff and try to decipher what’s happened for the week. Occasionally there is some real journalism with actionable information that you may have missed that’s important, but it’s not often.
I read with all the excitement of a new father expecting at any time, only to find out the doctor misdiagnosed the delivery date… by a lot.
Then I ask myself is this really valuable?
Do you really need to be on a half a dozen or more social networks?
Do you really need to have this new widget added to your website?
Do you really want to know how the new “canonical’ tag works for search engine duplication issues?
Do you really think that agent that has 50,000 followers is doing 100 homes a year based on his twitter presence? Or even 20?
Do you really think that agent that has an Internet marketing class that is listed as one of the top 250 teams in the US doing all that much business? I may be spammed for this one, but if the team is 30 people large and their combined sales is 250 transactions, then that is the industry average of about 8 homes a year. There is nothing special going on there. Why isn’t he/she teaching a class on team building you ask? That’s where his real value is.
Do you really want to promote that app for anyone to download to their smartphone when you’ll never get a single lead from it?
Do you really need to read another industry blog post telling you about the newest free piece of software out there with no discussion on how it could possibly fit in your business?
Do you really need to be spending a few hundred dollars every month to be on those national portals where your competing with other agents to get a lead from your own listings? And to boot, putting up their widget to drive traffic away from your site back to them, so they can ask you for more money?
Do you really want to compete with companies that aren’t licensed agents that you so freely hand over your coveted listings to?
Most agents and brokers I talk to really just want a website to generate leads.
I wonder as a technology company that caters to real estate agents if I can even get my real value proposition (virtual assistance support for all your web needs) across to you without spouting off all the reasons you should buy my new fancy widget.