Blogger Spotlight: Rob Hahn
It hardly seems fair that many of us have toiled for years to build great real estate industry blogs, only to have Rob Hahn come along and pretty much shame us all in a matter of months. If you’re a real estate professional who does not read Notorious R.O.B. yet, then you’re missing out. He understands marketing in our vertical like very few others. Forget Seth Godin, you need to be reading Rob Hahn.
Hi Rob, what made you decide to start a blog?
I’ve wanted to do a blog for quite some time, when I started in the real estate industry, first at Kinesis Marketing working with Coldwell Banker, and then at Realogy overseeing interactive marketing at Coldwell Banker Commercial. As a real-estate industry outsider (well, I guess I’m more and more an insider more time I spend in this industry) I find it absolutely fascinating. It’s an incredibly important segment of the economy, but there’s just so much to talk about and discuss as it comes to marketing, technology, the Web, and business practices. While I was at Realogy, blogging was more or less strictly forbidden by the legal department, so while I had my own personal blog on politics, I couldn’t really write or talk about the things in real estate, marketing and technology. Now that I’m at OnBoard, I can do just that. Within reason, of course. J
One reason why I wanted to interview you was your unique position in RE.net. You have a personal blog, while serving as Vice President of Marketing at OnBoard LLC. How do you balance your personal opinions with your responsibilities as a public face for this company?
I’m sort of making it up as I go. J It’s actually a difficult balancing act, because I have responsibilities to OnBoard that ultimately supersede my own personal preference for blogging. I balance it by asking myself, “Does what I wrote hurt OnBoard in any way? Does it hut our client in any way?” Because of OnBoard’s position in the marketplace as the premier provider of data and geography solutions to some of the top companies and brands, it’s impossible to comment on the real estate industry without in some way commenting on one or more of our clients. Even if such comments were to be critical, I try very hard not to have them be hurtful. Not all criticism is not malicious, and I do strongly believe that criticism from friends who want the best for you is one of the greatest gifts in a relationship.
My colleagues and I have actually discussed this in some depth after one of my posts was seen as possibly crossing that line. I think what works is to be as frank, honest, and authentic as possible on my blog – and if I see a conflict, I’ll simply state that conflict, and refuse to write about it.
Then in my day job, I simply focus on telling the OnBoard story, following the principles I am preaching on the blog as much as possible. I think OnBoard is the best data company in the industry; therefore, it is no bullshit to say so. I really believe that we have the best data, the best technology, and the best customer service – it’s actually a joy to market that which I believe to be true. So it’s a wonderful opportunity.
Have you ever felt that you needed to withhold an opinion because of your job?
Of course – that’s part of the balancing act. But it happens only very, very rarely. I’m not a shill for our clients in my personal blog, nor am I a shill for OnBoard. I will refrain from commenting if I think it would actively hurt either OnBoard or a client without cause, without reason, and without benefit. In other words, criticism has to be constructive – point the way towards an improvement of the situation. Simply flaming someone, or some company, serves no purpose.
How has the OnBoard brass reacted to your blog?
Well, I’m part of the brass, so… J No, seriously, they’ve been great. Marc, our CEO, is anxious for the day when we relaunch our official blog. So am I, frankly. I’m hoping to get the rest of the brass into more blogging. We have certain views here on business, on real estate, on data, and on technology that result from having had the privilege to work with all kinds of companies in the industry, from brokers to web portals to media companies. I think some of what we know is of enormous value to others in the industry, and I’m eager to start the sharing. But first, I have to redesign and relaunch the website, with the blog – which is one project I’m working on now.
What is OnBoard anyway?
Why, my good man, OnBoard is the best data and geography company in the real estate industry. We serve some of the largest brands, some of the most innovative companies, and help them create more compelling websites by leveraging data. I don’t know that I could do better than to just quote from our website’s About Us:
Three former executives of MonsterDaata regrouped after 9/11 in a tiny basement office in New York City’s East Village. Their dream was to create a new company focused on outstanding B2B solutions derived from local neighborhood information that would increase their clients’ ability to meet the needs of today’s consumer. OnBoard LLC is the fulfillment of that dream. The office pulses with creativity, intensity and a sense of community. From teams of solution specialists helping shape a client’s vision and the product team working with clients to optimize our solutions, to the occasional Guitar Hero duel between the CEO and the new Product Manager, OnBoard is really just a special group of people, each with a little bit of that basement vision.
OnBoard LLC provides innovative web tools, web services and comprehensive data that give your website the distinctive edge needed to compete in today’s market. Our client engagements begin with providing content and continue through delivery of strategic planning and integration expertise to support our clients’ business processes. We are experts in data aggregation, standardization, distribution and integration, allowing us to deliver critical decision support and content solutions for your website, back office, marketing and planning needs.
Do check us out at www.onboardllc.com. There, that’s my pitch of the day.
What are some of your favorite blogs?
Oh man… I read a LOT of blogs… There are some great blogs and bloggers in the RE.net. I can just list a few of those in my RSS reader right now:
- Center for REALTOR® Technology
- Future of Real Estate Marketing
- Sellsius
- Outside of real estate, I regularly read
- The Die Line (package design blog)
- And I read center-right political blogs:
- Redstate
- Of course, for fun, you can’t beat Stuff White People Like, Cracked, and Iowahawk.
What advice do you have for prospective bloggers who are sitting on the fence.
I think the number one thing is to do it for your own pleasure, or don’t do it at all. Blogging for business, as a lead generation tool, is still somewhat unproven. If you can blog and see it as at least partly entertainment, then go for it. Even if you get nothing out of your blog, you’ll have had fun.
Having said that, if you want to blog for commercial reasons, understand exactly what you’re getting into and what you want to get out of it. I’m advocating blogging for business at OnBoard, knowing exactly what that requires, but also knowing what I want to get out of it. Educating the real estate industry about data, technology, geography, and how people can use these things to empower their businesses is ultimately good for OnBoard’s business. I think of it as participating in the markets-as-conversation in a positive, expertise-driven way. That only serves to enlarge the market for us. If we can do that, then I’d be satisfied even if we got not a single lead off the blog.
Blogger Spotlight: Geno Petro
It will never earn him a dime, but Geno is one of my favorite real estate bloggers. I’m a huge fan of funny, but with Geno, it goes farther than that. He’s a great story teller.
Hi Gino, what made you decide to start a blog?
A couple years back our office, a boutique north side Chicago brokerage with less than 20 agents, changed names from Pinto Realty Group to Chicago Home Estates. These key real estate words, Chicago, Home, Estates, were chosen primarily for SEO (Google spidering) purposes as the new direction of our company shifted to almost 100% internet; no newspaper advertising, no direct mail, no flyers, balloons, etc. Our web guys suggested we agents start blogs for linkage and ‘organic’ purposes to augment the various pay per click campaigns that the main site had initiated. I chose my blog’s name, Chicago’s Home Weblog for recognition/association purposes to our main site. A few years later, I think I’m the only agent still posting on a regular basis.
I first started following you on Bloodhound Blog. I liked reading you stuff because, frankly, it was funny. This might sound weird, but… are you funny on purpose? Steve Martin is known to be a fairly serious person that works at being funny. Other people can’t help it. When you sit down to write a blog post, are you trying to be humorous, or does it just happen?
Greg Swann and Teri Lussier found me back in October ‘07 and I joined Bloodhound then. I usually get an idea, sometimes it’s a very small idea, then start writing when I have a few extra moments throughout my day. It usually takes me 3 or 4 sittings to complete a single post over a period of a couple days. When I sit down and begin writing it just all comes out. When I sit down again to contiune, sometimes the voice is a little different and the piece takes off in another direction. The same with all subsequent sittings. I generally do a final rewrite to eliminate the clunkiness, tie everything together anecdotally then push the Publish button. As far as being funny; after I delete all the sad parts, the overly dramatic parts, the hyperbole and profanity…sometimes humor is all that remains. I like to leave the ’semi-serious stuff’ between the lines (and beneath the tongue in my cheek) and the ‘real serious stuff’ for my fellow real estate bloggers across the REnet. Yeah, the funny stuff just happens, I guess. Satire perhaps?
Has you humor ever backfired on you in a blog post?
Every so often I get a comment reprimanding me but no one has ever threatened bodily harm or legal action. One time Dan Green e-mailed me at midnight to let me know I wrote something inappropriate. I concurred, yanked the post, rewrote it and posted it a few weeks later on another blog. I spend most of my time trying to sell my listings and appease my buyers, not writing politically correct content that a million (possibly more) other bloggers can do much better than me. I make it a point to do at least one complete rewrite before publishing to CMAss.
With so much of your personality on display, I can only assume that many of the clients who find you through your blog already feel they “know” you. Have you ever had an unnerving experience where a client relationship was too close for comfort because of your blog?
Nothing ‘unnerving,’ per se. Not surprisingly, most of my clients come through the ChicagoHomeEstates.com website and not my Chicago’s Home Weblog. Most have no idea who I am or that I even write about real estate at all. It’s probably a 30-1 ratio in favor of the latter. Most people who become my clients initially Googled ‘Chicago real estate’ and found themselves on our website to look at properties. They then register to use our MLS search engine and the verified registrants get distributed randomly to us by the managing broker. Most of my readers, I think, are actually other REnet bloggers. I think Greg Swann refers to it as an ‘echo chamber’ and none of them have ever bought anything from me to date. I do probably connect with a client from my blog every month or so but no one yet has gotten too close for comfort although one crazy woman did email me off and on for months telling me how she was in the market for a 7 million condo at Trump’s new project. I Googled her quite unusual name and hometown and discovered she was on a couple Medicaid chat room forums complaining how her and her children were in dire need of public aid and the her bi-polar meds had been cut off. I couldn’t help but spend the commission dollars in my head, though.
Geno From Chicago is an idea worth mimicking for any blogger who spreads their content around the Internet. Please share with us the motivation behind this project.
Geno From Chicago is just a landing page for a collection of my most well received postings on Bloodhound Blog, Chicago’s Home Weblog, Active Rain, and the occasional guest spot on other sites. I use this trimmed down platform mostly as a hyperlink in my query letters to publishers. I usually disable the comment section and do a minor rewrite unlinking all the ‘unliterary’ extraneous sales stuff. This way they can read a variety of my content without getting sidetracked by all the sidebar linkage, widgets and SEO stuff. So far, not much has shaken from it although AARP The Magazine has taken a few looks, or so they’ve told me in an auto-reply.
What are some of your favorite blogs?
I always liked Bloodhound and Sellsius (ironic, isn’t it?) as well as Pat Kitano’s TransparaentRE and Hanan Levin’s Grow-a-Brain. They all ’sent the elevator back down’ as it were, when I was starting out and shared samples of my writing with their much larger respective readership bases, as well as took the time to comment favorably. I also check out the ‘bubble blogs’ for the same reason as I listen to NPR and occasionally Christian radio; to find out what the other half is saying about issues that may affect my destiny and to foresee how I might end up if I ever decide to; make a living trashing realtors, become more liberal, or get religion…and jump ship.
What advice do you have for prospective bloggers who are sitting on the fence.
Stay seated unless you’ve found your own voice. I find myself on such a fence most days with nothing to say and nothing to say it with.
A final note.
In ending I’d like to share with you my response to something Jay Thompson wrote in one of my comment sections a few years back. He wondered if I sold real estate as well as I wrote–to which I replied: “I closed 30 deals last year for over 16 million in volume but didn’t make a nickel from anything I wrote.” Glad (sad?) to report that while the sales numbers are around half that amount for this most recent fiscal year, the writing revenue has held steady at 0. Now I ask you, is that or is that not… funny?
Peace
Blogging on the Tomato tonight.
Here’s my advice on writing your real estate blog primarily to Google is a squandered opportunity.
Blogger Spotlight: Missy Caulk
Whenever I do a set of theses interviews I always ask for bloggers to step forward if they would like to participate. This time around, Missy Caulk, of Ann Arbor Real Estate Talk was actually nominated by another blogger. That should give you an idea of the impression Missy sets among her piers.
Hi Missy, why did you adopt blogging as a marketing medium?
It was only when I started blogging on Activerain that I began to get business from blogging. Both from other agents as referrals and from local people finding my posts. Now it is the 2nd most important venue I use for generating business.
You’re an active member of Active Rain. Which came first for you, Active rain, or your own personal blog?
I actually set up a blog on blogger, long before I had run into Active Rain in December 2006, but really didn’t “get it” until I started using Active Rain consistently. My personal blog Ann Arbor Real Estate Talk was just launched in November. When the whole issue of Move buying Active Rain hit the press, I knew I wanted something that was truly my own, just in case…..
What made you decide to contribute in both places? (AR and your own blog)
I rarely duplicate content, occasionally. Honestly, I’m still trying to get ranked in search engines on my own blog. I sold a house to a Google employee back in August. He was in charge of Google in Poland and he told me Google didn’t penalize for duplicate content and I believe him. My Ann Arbor Real Estate Talk Blog I am trying to have just strictly focused on Ann Arbor and Saline, market, real estate, events, human interests. Active Rain is a great place to learn and the relationships are phenomenal so it is probably more social to me now. It is a great platform to bounce real estate issues off other people and pick up new techniques.
I noticed that you occasionally include your listings on your blog. There’s a lot of debate about if this is a good idea. Have you ever received any negative response for doing so?
No, not at all. I am a Realtor, I sell houses, and blogging helps get great backlinks for my sellers on their homes.
I know you’re also a Flickr user. Would you share with us a little about how you use Flickr to promote your blog/business?
Todd, I am just getting my feet wet on flickr. As soon as it gets warm and we have green grass, I am going to do sets of things around Ann Arbor, like art fairs, music events, shopping, schools, University of MI and group them all together in sets. Then I plan on when I get leads send out the set to people relocating to Ann Arbor in my email responses. But, I really want green grass, flowers and full foliage. Ann Arbor is a beautiful city, they call it Tree Town.
What are some of your favorite blogs?
Well currently I subscribe to 153 in RSS. I learn from many of them. I love Sellisus and 4Realz.net, Agent Genius, 1000 Watt, Pro-blogger, Transparent Real Estate, Word Press SEO and Blog Marketing, Blog Fiesta, Common Craft, Real Estate Zebra. Gee, I can’t name them all, but I am really enjoying Twitter too, it has introduced me through links people publish to lots of good blogs.
What advice do you have for prospective bloggers who are looking to start a blog.
Join Active Rain, learn, read, comment and jump in. You will grow and it is a good place to find out if blogging is something you love and want to be a part of your marketing plan.
A parting shot.
I think we are still at the beginning stages of blogging, as far as many agents and Brokers that don’t understand or “get it”. I’m very thankful that I found it early. My world has been enhanced and enlarged.
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!!
