An ex Gold Coast real estate agent and current property developer, Rod Lambert has been broadcasting an interesting email to agents throughout the country today. If you have not got it in your inbox yet, chances are it will arrive soon.

I have a real problem with what Rod has done but first read the email yourself :-

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Dear agents, the website hereunder will become one of the greatest listing devices you have ever come across against Ray White.

I am a property developer who was defrauded by Michael Kollosche of Ray White Broadbeach and have complained bitterly to Ray White and provided evidence that he conspired with a three time convicted fraudster and criminal to force us into buying a property that was artificially inflated by $2.74 Million dollars.

I now intend to expose this mercenary company for their ruthless and underhanded tactics which Brian White supports and advocates.

As we all know, we have heard the numerous complaints over the years about Ray White agents and their unscrupulous and underhanded conduct, particularly at auctions.

 The Chairman Brian White does nothing to stop it.

 The case in point is that of the Ray White superstar Michael Kollosche from Ray White Broadbeach who is under major investigation by the OFT and the QPS after multiple complaints were made about his conduct in relation to artificial price hiking on the Gold Coast’s Mermaid Beach beachfront.

There have been complaints including allegations of fraud and misleading and deceptive conduct by several parties.

Ray White still employ him, and  Brian White backs him.

Kollosche was recently named and shamed in the Queensland Parliament by the Member for Rockhampton, The Honorable Robert Schwarten MP.

 He has admitted to The Australian Newspaper of knowing about fraud on the Mermaid beachfront yet Brian White does not make him go to the Police. Why?

The truth is White thinks he is above the law and this web site that has been designed in the public interest and will shed light onto what this company is really about and what some of them get up to.

Have a look in the Austlii search section in the site and type in Ray White and see how much litigation Ray White is involved in.

It is frightening…..your sellers, buyers  and landlords should be made aware of it!

Please get this web site out to as many people around Australia as you can.

Be sure the CEO’s of major Agency groups see this site.

One thing is for sure, if you are up against Ray White for a listing in the future, be sure the seller views this site, once they do the listing will be yours!

www.donttrustraywhite.com

Regards,
Rodwell Lambert

Property Developer

Mobile 0408 780 065
Email rlambert@onthenet.com.au
PO Box 350, Nobby Beach Q 4218

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My problem with Rod’s actions is about how he is attacking the whole Ray White membership with what some individuals have alledgedly done.   I know if  a salesperson in a First National office on the other side of the country  wronged a client I would be disgusted but equally so I would also be disgusted and out for blood if  local agents tried to use it against me in a listing presentation here on the Gold Coast.

You have to give  credit to Rod for one thing, he is standing openly by his claims and not hiding behind anonymous websites.  I have no knowledge if Rod’s claims are true but if they are I hope that the Queensland Police and OFT bring the hammer down.

The issues themselves that are raised on the website have already been featured heavily in the public domain in newspapers and even on Today Tonight.

I think Rod’s choice to concentrate on the whole Ray White network in the domain name itself and by asking agents to show sellers the site is a bad one and will effect on good people throughout the network that have done nothing to him. In my opinion he should have kept the fight to just the Broadbeach office.

Obviously Rod has had problems with Brian White as well which is why he might be justifying the attack on the whole network.  I would like to hope that Brian is waiting until the QPS and OFT investigations are finalised before doing anything drastic but again it does not matter,  the rest of the network are not at fault.  If they individuals are found guilty they will and they should be punished to the full extent of the law.

I believe that agents should refrain from using the site to attack their local Ray White real estate offices. Besides the legal implications of doing so I just dont think its right or fair.

There are many advantages of belonging to a real estate group but one of the disadvantages is in times like these when actions of other members reflects badly and unfairly on you.  If this is used like Rod is asking Brian White and the whole Ray White group are going to find themselves  in need of a fantastic Reputation Management consultant.

Is it fair to attack the whole team if one of the players has done the wrong thing?

What do you think??   Is Rod right or wrong on this one?

*********UPDATE*********

This response from Brian White was received in the comments section of the article :

A comment from Brian White, Chairman, Ray White Group:

You may have received an email pertaining to a commercial dispute between a former practising real estate agent and developer and one of our agents on the Gold Coast.

This dispute has been particularly painful for me and my family. Our business has been in operation for 110 years. It has been built on the hard work and strong ethics of so many people for so long.

When complaints are made we, as trustees of the Group, investigate them diligently. Where there is proper evidence of wrongdoing we do take immediate action. We do however stand by the presumption of innocence and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we support our people wherever possible.

This particular issue is complex and has been running for a number of years without any clear findings from any of the external authorities to date. During this time we have also investigated this matter extensively with the full support of the Ray White parties involved. We have also cooperated fully with the Office of Fair Trading in it’s independent investigation.

The Office of Fair Trading has indicated it cannot provide a time frame for its decision. However they understand the urgency of the matter. We hope it will be concluded soon and, of course, we will comply fully with any findings the Department makes.

In the meantime, we appreciate the overwhelming support from members of our network as well as those industry professionals who operate externally from our Group.

Ever since the age of the cassette tape the media industries across the globe have been “lobbying” and “contributing” to our politics in a way many of us do not even understand. We pretty much live in a world now where where just about all levels of government are enabled not by the people, but by corporations and PIPA and SOPA are just another two examples of how industries will stop at nothing to have control over what we can consume, when we can consume it and in what manner it is consumed!

Citizen politics these days are divided by extremes, almost entirely divided by motives and ideologies and not by critical self thinking of the the real issues that we face. One of the main drivers for my thinking on politics is to do this, I do not listen to politicians for advice or positions, nor do I listen solely to so called experts. I actually do a little thinking for myself, I completely distrust my motives for automatically taking one side, which is so easy to do. Things that matter to me, I research on my own.

We are lucky in this case that we have people that do this for us, a couple of bills that were just rejected by Congress in the US, will be back again very soon, for 20 years the media industries have been trying to these jam bills through levels of governments that will have a global effect and they will try again next year. I have attached a video from a TED talk on this issue, watch it and learn a little about it’s history and the effect these types of laws can have on our everyday life.

One of the more pathetic things about politics these days (believe me, there is a list) are bills that are introduced with brand names that have no recognition to the poisoned pills that are contained within. One such set is trying to get through Congress in the USA is SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act). On the surface with these brand names seem to be doing the right thing, but anyone who has read such bills (I actually took the time to read the presented version) know that these are poisonous to our online culture.

So who is behind this act? Well again, it’s the usual suspects, the same industry groups that wanted to place a levy every blank CD and DVD in the past decade, the same groups that wanted to make all copying of cassette tapes illegal in the 80′s and 90′s and the same ones that wanted to place limits on photo copying machines in the 70′s. By their reasoning everyone should pay for the acts of the few, citizens should be guilty until proven they are innocent.

As demonstrated in the past week, when people actually pirate and distribute copyright materials we already have laws that deal with these things and eventually many do get caught. There is a process of law that takes place for doing something illegal, that is evidence is gathered, charges are laid and then a trial takes place. This bill wants to reverse this process!

If you look at the Internet today, citizens across the globe are the ones that actually create the content. Large media companies account for far less than 1% of actual content on the Internet, it is we who create the majority of content, we mix the content, we share the content and in some cases media companies want this content we create. Media companies are shrinking by content produced, they employ less reporters, they employ more marketing and sales executives and they all encourage us to send them the ‘their’ news. The Arab Spring wasn’t brought to the globes attention by media companies, it was primarily produced and shared by citizens and the media companies lapped this content up and reproduced it as their own.

Fortunately we had some big guns in our corner, but for the most part only because they had a dog in the fight. Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and other online tech giants all made a big play to stop the bill, mainly because it will require them to pass on personal information to these private companies without recourse and will also require them to add DNS filtering to every user at a significant cost to them.

These media groups should have to go through the same law enforcement challenges citizens face when our home is burgled and our belongings stolen, they should not have laws passed that give them the gavel. My suggestion for them is to shut the hell up and accept it is a part of life and work out ways to profit from this! Of couse they will not do this, they will just massage the current bill, until they can get one that passes, and hopefully we will be ready to reject the next version as we were for this!

As a follow up to Dave Platters excellent, well articulated post on why anyone “is dreaming” that they can beat real estate.com.au, it made me revisit an idea I had a few years back. I think for the most part Dave is correct, however there is something that needs to be done about property content origination.

To me it has always been about control, if you go back to the early days on business2.com.au I wrote passionately about how agents will pay a price for putting all of their eggs in one basket and relying on one company for their web, marketing and portal needs, and it has pretty much played out in that manner. REA are top dog in many regions of Australia and can rightfully state their number one position. Agencies online property marketing budgets today are pretty much controlled by realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, annual fee increases continue at a clip and the limitations of each agents plans are pretty silly to say the least!

Realestate.com.au is all powerful because they have the listings and consumers will of course go to where the listings are. Consumers also know how to play with realestate.com.au and for the most part it is their favourite tool for browsing for real estate, domain certainly have the numbers on mobile devices but the browser is still king and this will not change in the short to mid term.

REA can pretty much do what they like with pricing, they are the market leader in an industry that is one of the most popular search pastimes in Australia, if you are an agent and you do not list on REA you will pretty much lose listings to other agents that are and REA had a brilliant strategy for agents early on, almost blackmailing agents into going for bigger packages. I lay much of the blame for this with real estate institutes who accepted ‘donations’ from REA in the early days to endorse their portal and put them in front of an eager audience – you!

The REA XML has also become somewhat of a de-facto standard for listings and pretty much all portals accept an REA XML feed to list with them.

If agents and competing portals want to to take that control away and place it back to agents they must do all of these things listed below pretty much in their entirety. Will they do this? Almost definitely not, but it is worth revisiting.

Open Source Listings System

Domain.com.au and all other portals, franchise groups, private agencies and private listing portals (yes they MUST be included) should band together and finance an open source system for managing property data. This must be fully inclusive, and that means REA can also use this system.

It must be built on open source infrastructure, be W3C compliant and define every single element useful to todays real estate agent. The system must have no stakeholders and be open to anyone. The system must be simple to sign up, simple to use and built on an open framework that can have multiple contributors. This would be controlled by a board of developers that have a wall of separation between them and any interested parties.

Agency
Agencies simply register with the system and are given a few tabs to work with (My Agency, My Portals, My Developers, My Apps). They manage all of their staff and can import their current listings into the system and the system takes care of the rest. They select what portals they want to be involved with, can give access to their web developers and can login and manage this information from their desktop, tablet or phone device.

Portals
Portals simply join the system and offer their portals with their standard terms and conditions clearly set out in the system. This will allow any agency to simply check a tick box to allow their data to be shared by that portal. If the portal is free then it simply starts the data transfer and updates instantaneously once changes are made to the data. If it is paid for then a simple code would need to be added to the system.

Developers
Web Developers are given tools to develop websites using this data and be given everything needed to do this effectively, including plugins, sample codes. Agencies can assign web developers to manage their web development by simply ticking a box next to that developer and that developer will have interface access to all they need to develop websites and applications for that agency.

Apps
Any product or service can offer their applications to agencies, be it, mobile phone apps, tablet apps, CRM software services etc. These apps can be free, paid or subscription based. Think of it like the Apple App store.

Cost + Revenue

Yes, to build this and maintain this service would be expensive, but nowhere near what agencies currently pay for the same services. The Real Open Source Community (ROSC) would be funded by annual verification. Initially it would need to be funded by portals and franchise groups with no strings attached (tall order) for two years from launch, but once launched each agency, portal, web developer, app would be encouraged to become verified, this verification would be a community trust system.

The annual report and all expenditure would be open and annual verification fees determined by the previous years revenues. This would ensure that the system was always in the black. The system would also have a constitution drawn up that can only be amended if 75% of all verified users voted up for that amendment – in other words each verified member has an equal vote.

ROSC Constitution

Part of the constitution would be that the data is owned by the listing agent and the text, photos, videos etc would be the copyright of the original author. Any breaches to this constitution would have impacts for any of the members. The terms and conditions that each portal, web developer and app developer disclose would be standardized, so agencies know the pricing, annual increases, sold data information etc from the beginning and as it is standardized there is nowhere to hide little clauses

Private Listing Portals

These would be treated just like anyone else. Yes, I hear you say this is a bad thing, complete nonsense! Over the next decade more and more people will list privately, it will take decades for this to become a powerful movement, and by this time agencies would have adapted their business models to suit It is important because they are an important part of the potential market for all agencies.

Original Sin

The reason for this system would not be too knock off any of the leaders, it would simply be to open the originator of the content and give control back to the agency, the people who create the content. REA and Domain would have access to the system just like anyone else and it is highly likely they would still be the dominant players in the market for the foreseeable future.

So, do you think that portals would get involved, do you think franchise groups would get behind this, even though not one of them will own one snippet of the system?

Domain.com.au’s recent blog entry highlighted a trend amongst an industry and governments that have run out of ideas on how to make housing more affordable. REIA thinking goes that allowing first home buyers to dip into their super savings to purchase their first home will allow them to purchase their first home and relive some stress.

This does nothing to address affordability, all it does is allow people to purchase a home, which I suppose is REIA major reason for existence, more homes sold equals more happy agents, which is fair enough.

In my opinion the problem is much deeper than this and for every good reason the REIA can put up with this scheme, there are an equal amount of reasons why this doesn’t work or is detrimental to housing affordability. My advice to REIA is to just be honest and say we want more young people owning homes and we know it will may make homes cheaper.

There are many reasons why homes are unaffordable to the majority of young middle Australia, supply & demand, urban drift and personal debts are just a number of many.

The biggest issue to me is personal debt and as I have said in the past, an over-priced property market (sighs ensue) that does nothing to help agents. The higher the prices, the less buyers, mainly because of holding debts amongst the young and wages which have a long way to go to compete with these price rises.

So why the debt? Well today it is easy to get into debt, buy this car on credit, but this TV on credit, get an awesome mobile phone for 99 cents (on a plan) and the biggest one of all, education debt.

Since 1989 the Hawke-Keating Government introduced HECS and since then public education costs have sky-rocketed, but it is all ok, you can pay this back later. This scheme was met with student protests across Australia and the idea that the government could not afford public education anymore and the fact that both sides of government supported the idea made this an easy passage through parliament.

But think about this, what we now do is educate our kids early on that some debt is a good thing, these young adults then enter a workforce where renumeration have not even closely kept pace with inflation and property prices over the same period. The effect of this is threefold, fresh workforce members have little to no liquid income, have high debt and monthly costs and therefore cannot save nearly enough to afford a deposit on a home that 30 years ago got you a whole house and educational costs (because you pay it back later) just keep rising well above inflation.

Over the past decade I have seen every single dumb idea pass through the lips of many so called experts but literally no-one looks at the real problems, everything is a stop gap measure. “We need more land”, “we need more incentives”, “we need more high rise development”, “we need less taxes”, etc. Every one of these measures have made little to no real difference to the problems we face and unless we can finally have some guts and take a little medicine, nothing will change and it will only get worse for real estate agents. Institues have got to be honest instead of continuing to roll out the same old cliches and begin discussion with industry groups and governments to make real changes – some that will need some intestinal fortitude and will fly against conventional wisdom.

At some stage governments are also going to need to make big changes and negative gearing is just one issue amongst many that needs to be discussed openly and without scare tactics, free university education for your first degree must also come back onto the agenda and a massive investment in self sustainable kit homes that are pre-approved for addition to land in suburban outskirt areas and some investment in high speed rail also needs to be discussed, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.

Personally, we will continue to just get the same old short term fixes, industry groups self promoting measures that will only aid in the short term and banks that will soon offer inter generational loans.

We deserve better, here endeth the rant!

If I can impart a little wisdom nugget on us all in 2012 it would be to live a little, we now live in a world where we are overloaded with information, be it political, ideological or otherwise and sometimes we get so wrapped up in the luminously mundane we lose sight of the fact we are only here for a short time – so let’s all live a little!

Have a lived life instead of a career, put yourself in the safe keeping of good taste, lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses, if you don’t like the style of others – cultivate your own, get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self publisher even in conversation and then the joy of working can fill your days, may it be so with you and may you keep your powder dry for the battles ahead and know when and how to recognize them. György Konrád

Merry Christmas

Some Inspiration for Living

Property Ad Guru has also “gone on Hiatus” recently as well, and we we only have to guess that this has also been closed permanently as not many companies go on ‘hiatus’ if things are going well.

At the launch Simon Baker the CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, said:

Social Media is an important marketing tool for Australian real estate agents and all agents should have a strong presence on the main sites – Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. We launched SOBOX to help Australian agents get the most from social media and to reduce their reliance on traditional and other online media when marketing themselves and their listings.

It seems SOBOX found the going a little tough and we received reports detailing how only a few agents had actually signed up for the service over the past 18 months. These customers have apparently since been notified of the closure and have received all of their data to export into a new service.

One of the problems with SOBOX is that agents could actually get most of the same or similar offerings for free or for a nominal monthly fee with little effort, which highlights another problem facing new companies feeding to social media websites. Most providers today actually do the same services as a part of their overall web design service as nearly all new real estate sites also have a blog and social media integrated.

Classified Ad Ventures Pty Ltd has seen a number of projects close over the past 12 months with many of the previous offerings no longer available or merged into a more streamlined service and it seems the company is now focussing on providing a smaller core suite of products to real estate agents, including search, web services, content delivery and also web development.

Another of their offerings List Globally (which I think is a great idea) may also be struggling to get the numbers needed – primarily because I think it is too expensive, I still cannot get my head around their pricing. For such a great idea, I would have thought if List Globally was a completely automated service they could drop the price dramatically and get the volume they needs to have the success it warrants.

No one doubts the talent and reach of the team and particularly Simon Baker, he has proven in the past he has the experience and connections to make things happen, however for every success in online technology we each experience a number of failures along the way and having success in one area doesn’t always guarantee success in another.

Property Portal Watch seems to be still growing strong with regular updates which I follow closely. It is a good website to follow if you are interested in all the happenings of real estate portals worldwide. They seem to have expended this service into directories as well.

Todays economic climate is not easy on new web service companies and hiring the right talent often is the biggest ongoing expense, you add servers, maintenance and traditional business costs you can find yourself needing revenues almost immediately.

Apple CEO - Steve Jobs

Today, Steve Jobs has announced he is leaving Apple after probably the most successful stint as CEO in recent corporate history.

He has overseen the iPod, iPhone, iMac and iPad and many other products that have revolutionized the computer, mobile and entertainment industries. You might ask what has this got to do with real estate? Not a lot on the surface, but if you look at the simple mantra around his products we can all learn something.

• Looks: Everything released is of the utmost quality, both in store, package and product design. Many Real Estate Agents websites look like they were built in the late 1990′s. Quality interfaces leave a lasting impression.
• Usability: iPod, iPhone, iMac and iPad are all just brilliantly easy to use right out of the box. The chief designer Jonathan Ivy does not care about what anyone wants but the user, he leaves the scaling back to the corporates and business people at Apple. We all could learn lessons here, particularly agents when designing their web and mobile sites, if you want something on your home page, think first about whether your customers want the same thing – honestly.

Below is the Official Press Release

PRESS RELEASE: Letter from Steve Jobs

August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Over the past year or so we have seen the rise of Real Estate Agents using Facebook to promote their business or personal profile. The best of you continually add informative and fun content to your page and have seen a steady rise in fans. But there is a disturbing trend to this and this shows complete mis-understanding of how to market yourself online.

If you are a real estate agent who has a page on Facebook and you are reading this, I am going to give you some advice, and some of this will hurt a little, but here goes.

Preaching to the converted

Let us say you have a fan page on Facebook and you update this page daily, you deserve a pat on the back and get one social strategy point, however if you have a website and do not do the same, you lose that point, why? Because you are preaching to the converted on Facebook, they are already a fan. Your first strategy should always be on your own website, this is where the whole world is waiting to connect with you and my guess is that your advice is not the most amazing real estate advice on the planet, where all of your fans spread your word and get other people to join (this is the holy grail of social marketing). The only true way to build your Facebook page is through your own business or personal websites blog and then to select appropriate articles to post onto your Facebook page.

Rachelle Hirt Real Estate Agent Miami Beach Florida

We recently built a site for a local agent in Miami, Florida. Her name is Rachelle Hirt and she wanted a site to market celebrity style homes in and around the Miami area. She has only just started, but she has the right strategy and will learn quickly from any mistakes she makes, but off the bat, she has the right strategy.

Her Facebook Page is here (you must be logged into Facebook) and I advise to follow her, just to see what she does and the content she publishes on both her website and Facebook Page.

Her site is fun and bright and she posts regularly and doesn’t push everything to her Facebook page, she selectively chooses what to post and push.

Note: The website cost just over $1,500 including theme, setup and design elements. Talk to your web developer about doing the same.

Different strokes for different sites

Another thing you must understand is content, if the only thing you post are ‘amazing new homes’, ‘get in quick’ and feel good market news, then you lose another point. The one true reason people will choose you to sell their home, is that they see you understand the local market, you understand technology, they trust you and most of all they like you.

Understanding the local market
Post local sales information and try to break it down as best as possible by property type, bedrooms etc. The more it relates to people the more they will trust that you understand the local market, Talk about property types that are selling well and ones that are not, give people advice on how to get their homes ready for a sale, smart renovation techniques that buyers are looking for. You understanding the local market gets your foot in the door.

One thing to avoid is ideology posts or comments, unless your market is mainly conservative or progressive, do not risk it. Stay away from horoscopes, and religion too. In most cases these only impress the minority, and just alienate the rest.

Understanding Technology
If you think it is cute to tell your potential vendors that you are a technophobe, then get with the program, you are and will be left behind. You dont need to know quantum physics to understand how a browsers works or how to resize an image, there is a world of information online that can help you to better understand the business you are in and the technology that you use. Spend some time online learning how to get the most out of your web browser, mobile phone, tablet device and computer. Understanding and possibly helping vendors out will impress them in more ways than you think. This is your business now, get it!

Trusting you
Start being honest on your website and Facebook page, display content that helps and hinders you, good or bad, thin or flush, this content makes a trust difference between you and your competitors.

You as a consumer would know that good advice is brutally honest advice. If you believe it when the salesperson tells you every dress you try on you look fabulous in or that Donald Duck tie you wear to work makes you look windswept and interesting then you are naive and in the case of the donald duck tie – an idiot

But tell me, how many vendors are easy these days? Very few! In most cases vendors are well armed with a good dose of information and an equal distribution of mis-information. You need to be honest and tell them what will work for them and what will not. You need to also post information on your website and Facebook profile that works against you selling more homes and always make a corresponding comment with bad news.

This comment should not be that you always disagree and why (you must always give a valid reason to disagree), but should be informative and sometimes brutally bad for your own motives.

Liking you
You are awesome right? You mum and dad thinks the world of you, you can do no wrong, in fact you dream of receiving the greatest person of the year award each year. Here is one lesson you must learn when publishing to any website or social media platform. People love self deprecating humor, it gives you a human side to your electronic life. For me, luckily it comes naturally. There are two types of self deprecating humor, the first is first person and this is where you let people know your stuff ups and remind them of this on occasions in the future.

Some of the readers may remember when I got ‘done’ big time years ago by a member on this site on April Fools Day. My default position was to try to repair the embarrassment, but I learned a long time ago (2001 to be precise) – this only makes things worse, so I embraced the fact that I got caught out and just went with it. The lesson from this is always to distrust your own motives and just let the world know that sometimes you stuff up.

The second variety of self deprecating humor and a great example of this type of person is Sam Newman. Yes, there are people that dislike him (most of whom rarely watch or engage with him), but overwhelmingly he is liked.

Sam Newman says some of the most ridiculous offensive things and should be “banged to right” on occasions, but one thing he does magnificently, is when someone makes fun of him and his positions, he laughs, he doesn’t fight back, he doesn’t get angry or show negative emotions, he laughs at himself!

So when people make a comment on your website or social profile (that is not overly abusive) display it publicly, laugh it off, or at least explain why you do not agree. If you are one of these people that blocks or deletes negative comments then you are already a failure and need to get over yourself or your business.

Finally, enjoy your social profile, don’t treat it too seriously, make sure you mix the informative with the fun.

Different Content – Different mediums

Your final strategy should be to not always post information to both mediums (blog and social) keep the mix a little different, otherwise why would they follow you on both your website and social platform? Keep the social posts a little more fun with articles from across the spectrum, if you do post funny stuff, make sure it will appeal and not offend (you can save the offensive for direct messages on Twitter – Anthony Wiener tells me it is very hard to get caught out with this strategy).

So post regularly and make 100% sure your website blog is the king when it comes to your marketing strategy! Make sure your title of your post is informative and describes exactly what the article is about, this is important for subscribers as they scan for articles that interest them.

Titles are everything

Given that we use technology differently today than we did even a year ago, speaks volumes in how we must communicate effectively. Today we are overloaded with so much information, that we care more about the time it takes to scan and read, be it your Facebook News Feed or your blog Feed, titles are everything and if you use Facebook, you should already know this. I cannot emphasize how important titles are. Here is good and poor example.

Poor: Property prices continue to rise. Comment:For who, for what? This is not personal or direct at all.
Good: Mosman, Neutral Bay Sydney see steady rise in apartment sales. Comment:This is going to appeal to homeowners or potential buyers in this area. It mentions location and property type.

How to get the ideas and motivation for writing articles

I use Google Reader (help here) to subscribe to hundreds of different websites. I create folders for these subscriptions. Here are some examples of these folders. Apps, Client, Company, Design, Style, Real Estate News, Technology, WordPress, Social, Travel.

Everyday hundreds of new articles from all of the sites I subscribe to come into my reader. I do not need to waste time jumping to each article. I scan them for ones that interest me and this is usually in the title. Sometimes I write an article about this news, sometimes it inspires me to write something else. The great thing about Google Reader is that it saves me so much time and if you organise it well, it can also save you money (daily deals etc).

If you havent got Google Reader (or similar) then you are missing out on a great little program.

Footnote: One thing that always amuses me is friends on Facebook who ‘accidentally’ click on what is obviously adult spam on Facebook. These are little posts on your news feed with images that have titles that are of the erotic nature, that one of your friends ‘accidentally’ clicked on.

What is more amazing, is that they do not know how to delete this immediately and leave it for me to ponder why this married man (or woman) of three is doing looking at this stuff anyway. Human nature is a wonderful thing isn’t it

Spokesman for AAMI Reuben Aitchison told ABC news that it is not worth keeping the branches open because such a small number of people use them.

“There’s been significant growth in the internet channel,” he is quoted as saying. “The amount of business and transactions that is now going through our branches has dwindled to the point that it now represents less than 2 per cent of our revenue.”

Reading between the lines just on this above quote – it is clear that most people do not go to AAMI branches to join the company – however this does not tell us the full story, how many people go into the branches for customer service? Far more than 2% I would guess.

This could be a fatal mistake from AAMI and its parent company Suncorp. I would hazard to guess that retirees are the bain of their existence and suck up most of their customer service time in branches across the country. Young people however, historically are immune to customer service and expect to be treated this way.

Customer Service

Customer Service is now seen by many large companies as a pain in the derriere. Ever tried contacting Google, Yahoo or the Microsoft web services team? The truth is customer service is a thing of the past. Most web companies today cannot afford to service clients who want direct conversations and you will find that as years go by – those wanting to talk to a customer service representative will pay a premium.

Google as an example have always handled enquiries online and you would be hard pressed to speak to a customer service representative unless of course you spend a great deal of money on Google Adwords. The success of Google comes from their software being relatively easy to use and backed up by community support and pretty extraordinary online resources.

If you ever contact Google with an enquiry it will simply redirect you to a help file and in many cases will not even respond directly to an inquiry. It is up to you to learn or be left behind.

These companies also affect small web development firms such as ourselves as we have found a large spike in phone enquiries on how to use 3rd party software like Google’s web services.

Annoying trends

Realestate.com.au has always annoyed me because they charge clients a fee to feed from companies like Agentpoint, HubOnline (now owned by REA), Portplus and other feed providers – when we basically take over their customer service and save them time and money. You can only do this when you are a monopoly or a duopoly. Competition not only breeds better quality software but also great customer service!

Recently, we as a small company have found that less than 5% of our customers take up to 90% of our customer contact resources with many enquiries are relating to services and software we do not own and should not have to support. We like others will no doubt in the future separate our customer service to web, email and make these users pay a premium over others.

Another annoying trend which has come into existence is having to purchase warranties for the so called quality products we buy. In the past companies backed up their products with great warranties trying to prove to you that they are better than their competitors because of the quality of those products. You only need to go to the likes of Harvey Norman to see this play out. I always make it a point to let the service representative know that this is not the way to do business, although I think Harvey Norman and the like make a killing on these ‘value’ added fees. About the only industry that now still thumps their chest about multi year warranties are car companies and this is because competition is fierce and customer expectations through past experiences are high.

In short we are all to blame because we collectively have created monsters that are shareholder graded only on revenues and profits and rarely customer service. This again is why I (and you should too) will always support quality real estate portals that compete with the likes of REA and Domain.

Currently our company (and most others like Portplus) support our customers by feeding to a multitude of portals – even though each one costs us time and money to continue to support.

What you can do?

In short, nothing much, more and more companies will direct you to online support and help and you will need to learn how to use software or services from these companies yourself. You will find that most web companies are already web based only with support and you will need to learn the software you use.

Learn or Pay your Front Office

I have made it very clear in the past that your front office person is probably one of your most important team members and you should start to pay them accordingly. These are the people that are on the frontline, more often than not these are the people that update your website and real estate systems. The turnover of front office staff is often high and you can only look at your company to blame for this. Get someone great and add these sites (most should be relevant) to your manual for front office personal – even better still take some time to learn what these services do and how they can improve your company going forward.

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Web Services
• Bing Web Services
• Google Analytics
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Feedburner
• WordPress

Over the past decade we have grown exponentially and we can safely assume the number one position in technology blogs for real estate agents in Australia.

Over this time I personally and I am sure other contributors have learned some valuable lessons in relation to blogging.

Distrust your own motives

The first thing I think of when writing a post is to distrust my own motives. I actually now carry this mantra through life. No one wants to know how great I think I am or my company is, nobody cares about how many sales we make or how much much better we think we are than our competition. Always when writing for your blog think about who your audience is and what they want to hear – not your intended payback.

My audience and target is real estate agents, I also do business with a number of real estate portals and sometimes I think for a second about being a little bit more measured – but only for a second, you see that was my motive kicking in – certainly avery selfish and human trait. My job is not to serve their needs, in fact, my job is to call them out when I think it is warranted.

So, when writing an article, or even in real life conversations, always distrust your own motives and try to understand alternative viewpoints.

Comments

For every single comment, good or bad, publish it! In nearly a decade on this site we have blocked only 2 comments and both would have landed me in court for defamation. One of them was written about a contributor here on Busienss2.com.au that made so many outrageous claims that it could have ruined the reputation of someone immediately.

But think of this, over 9000 comments have been published and two refused – there have been some measured nastiness, some are personal and some have attacked and even ridiculed me. But I publish all comments, why you may ask?

Dissenters are your best weapons for popularity, people who do not agree with you or others, call out your motives, make fun of your lack of understanding on a subject, call you a hypocrite and yes, even make a fool of you. These are the people that get conversations going, they engage others and in the meantime make your site more popular – so thank them!

Responding to comments

Never abuse your audience, always engage in a way that shows respect, you may have lost them forever as a customer but you can at least hold your head high in your dealings with them. If you do not agree with them tell them and always explain why in a measured disciplined manner.

Write local

The world is filled with articles about iPads and National Sales Results or Trends, talk to your audience about what matters to them, local sales data, local politics, local business – keep it local and relevant to your audience and you will reap the rewards long term. Robert Simeon, always published local sales and auction results, even from competitors – he is obviously a conservative, but so is his the majority of his audience and at the end of the day (pun intended Robert) he is one of the most popular real estate bloggers in Australia – so love him or loathe him, his position and views have created an audience his competitors can only dream of.

Build your contributors

The wonderful thing about WordPress and other blog platforms is that you can allow others access to write articles, we currently have around 20 contributors with a core group of 4 or 5 that regularly contribute, yes some are a little slack.

I set some ground rules and one is that no-one is allowed to blatantly plug their own products or services, overall all I do is a little line editing for some of the contributors. Seasoned pros like Glenn Batten, Greg Vincent, Ryan O’Grady need no editing, however some need a little help. You can assign varying permissions such as Editors, Authors or Contributors and each of these have different permissions (some can publish directly and some going into a pending state.

You can now even as a Guest publish on our site by clicking here

As a real estate agent, I would engage local businessmen, councillors, legal experts etc on your site, they wil benefit and so will you by the added content and engagement from more people on your website, in short – do it!

Start Today

If you havent started your own blog – you can get something up in a few hours for free over here at WordPress.com, once you have some decent content, you can aso talk to your developer about getting a hosted WordPress website under your own domain.

Good luck!