Looking Out From the Garage

'tis the season for 10 Best Posts.  They are everywhere.  Here two...  Maybe I could even do a "10 Best of the 10 Bests" post...  (that might be going too far) 

I think these are my 10 Best Favorite Posts for 2009... 

From LaneBailey.com

• Think you have time to mull over that house buying decision for weeks?
• Cheap Sex and Real Estate...
• My home is worth what?
• Can a $29,000 Home be overpriced?
• Where in the World is Lilburn, GA?

And from ActiveRain/GwinnettGarageGuy.com

• The best agent to use is the one that tells me the highest price
• I turned down a listing today... because it was the right thing to do... 
• Thomas Edison, Kids' Hockey and Failure... Lesson?
• Absorption Rate?  What is this all about?
• What IS the value of an Open House?

All of these posts were from Calendar Year 2009.  For the ones on Active Rain, none of them got a feature.  Some had a couple thousand views, others only had a couple hundred.  Some of them might have been "overlooked"... others weren't. 

I liked them.  I hope you like them too.  Feel free to drop the name of the one you like the most into the comments.  And if you have a "Best of" or "Favorites" post, drop that into the comments, too.

I'm making some modifications to another one of my websites...  This is when it would be really nice to have a staff like the AR folks to design scripts to convert terms and so forth with the theme change. 

But the end product will be worth it. 

And yes, this is a tease... Here are some of the ingredients...

• I am ready to make a change on my WordPress site...
• Brad and Bobby Carroll (Dakno Marketing) have made a very good point that sites need to carry a brand identity...
• I have a LOT of content and I would like for more of it to be "caught" by site visitors...

Posterous.  WordPress.  Joomla.  RocketTheme. 

Flickr.  Twitter.  YouTube.  FaceBook.

Are you curious?  I am...

I can't help it.  Each year, as summer wanes towards fall, I get the itch to mess with my blog.  I don't know why... I just can't help it.  I like it.  I think it is pretty cool, but I just want to mix it up again. 

So, because I know that I am really bad at avoiding the compulsion, I know that I have to start looking around at WordPress themes for LaneBailey.com.  There are tons of cool themes that are free...

Of course, the other problem is that I also want to make some structural changes to GarageHomesUSA.com.  That one is Joomla. 

Why does this keep happening to me?

I guess it is the same drive that won't allow me to leave well enough alone with cars...  I have to mess with them as well.  Even when they are "done", they aren't ever really done.  They are just awaiting the next round of modifications. 

So...

Any suggestions of WordPress themes for me to look at?  I know a few places to find a couple hundred, but I am wondering if anyone has any groovy suggestions.

I like Twitter.  I communicate with some consumers as ell as some of my peers through Twitter.  As an organizer of Social Media Breakfast Atlanta (#smbatl), we use Twitter for promotion as well as to recap... and even during the event.  Heck, I have 1200+ followers and almost 2800 updates... obviously I think it is a worthwhile tool. 

But as I was reviewing my new followers, I was actually shocked by a tweet from one of them... needless to say, I did NOT choose to follow them back.  In under 140 characters she dropped the F-bomb twice... and had a couple of poop commentaries (she utilized another short word). 

Personally, I'm not offended by colorful language.  I have been known to use a little myself... especially in Atlanta traffic...  But I don't generally use it lightly and over a manicure appointment...  Ok, I don't get manicure appointments, but if I did I don't think I would cuss at the world if it got canceled because someone was sick... especially if the salon called to let me know before I showed up. 

But all of that is just unimportant detail...

The important part...

This was a person with an appropriate avatar.  They have a respectable number of followers.  They had several hundred updates.  But the first thing I saw when they followed me was a string of obscenities over nothing.  Is that how ANY of us wish to represent ourselves?  I think not...

Back when the rest of the country was playing with CB radios (we Jeep guys STILL use them), everyone knew what the squelch dial was.  The short definition is that it was a knob that lowered the sensitivity of the radio and got rid of background noise. 

I just turned the squelch dial on that one...  And I do it regularly.  On my @LaneBailey account, I am pretty open to whom I choose to follow back.  Aside from spammers, pornbots and people that just broadcast crap all of the time... I'm likely to follow back.  But with my @Lilburn account... not so much.  If you aren't in Gwinnett County, I probably won't follow you back.  I have a few people in the industry I follow... but it is consumer and geographically focused. 

Don't be afraid to use the squelch dial...

Turn down the noise.  Don't follow people that aren't worth following.  Unfollow people that aren't worth following.  And don't contribute to the noise, either...  Be follow worthy.  And to be honest... I am not always follow-worthy.  I have too many of my blog posts going to Twitter automatically.  I need to spend more time engaging.  But at least I have crossed the first step... I know there is something I need to fix. 

And that is the final idea...  Examine your presence on ALL of your networks.  Change it as needed.

If you haven't seen the new FaceBook Business Pages, here is a great sample. These are the pages I have set up for the ventures I'm involved with. These are pretty cool!

They don't take much time to set up, and Jeremy's blog about how to set them up walks us right through.  For some applications, the iFrame is the better way to go.  I haven't had any issues putting the regular box in the sidebars of my WordPress blog, but for the posts I have had to use the iFrame version.

I'm beating my head on a wall... 

Little did I know that I needed 100 fans in order to register a vanity page URL.  And I asked a few friends that are up on things... and they didn't seem to know that little tidbit either. 

So, here is the hot tip... if you don't have 100 fans, you can't register a custom URL for your Facebook page. 

And... I have two pages I would love to get registered... if you haven't already, feel free to become a fan of:

Lane Bailey

Lilburn Dwellings

Thanks...  and feel free to post yours here... maybe we can help you get the needed number of fans if you haven't already.

This is a simple question... I have asked it before and the answer has always been a resounding "because that is how we have always done it."  What am I talking about?

Why is it that MLS entries are ALL CAPS?

It doesn't make sense.  It is common knowledge that ALL CAPS is the www version of yelling.  And it isn't like this is a new thing...  Even back in the days of BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) that we had to dial into, ALL CAPS was yelling. This isn't a new etiquette. 

I have talked to agents, brokers, admin people... and none of them know why... they all type in ALL CAPS when they are putting stuff on the MLS, but they don't do it otherwise... in fact, many of them think it is rude.

So, why YELL at buyers?

Oh those many (less than 5) years ago that I got into real estate, my office support person typed in my first listing in ALL CAPS.  I asked her why.  I went back and changed it.  At my request she was quite willing to not type in ALL CAPS, but I was the oddity. 

Strangely, I had a buyer contact me BECAUSE I didn't have descriptions written in ALL CAPS.  As most of us agree, it is more difficult to read a paragraph written in ALL CAPS.  Further, it makes it quite difficult to stress some feature of the property.  Everything all blends together. 

Let's start a REVOLUTION...

We can produce the listings that stand out.  By putting the CAPS where they belong, altering the leading picture to NOT look like every other home, and writing descriptions that don't read like every other listing on the market, we will be unique.  I think that most buyers would respond to NOT being yelled at while looking for homes. 

I'd love to hear what you think, especially if you are a buyer or seller.  Does it make a difference?

Ken Cook and I have decided to launch a Social Media Breakfast series in the Atlanta area.  We are planning the first event to take place on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 in Gwinnett County.  We are still working to secure the location for the first event.  We expect to have a program that runs from around 7:00am to 9:00am, with networking opportunities covering at least the first and last half hours, with breakfast and information from 7:30 to 8:30.  Of course, it is early and things might change... we'll keep you informed. 

Currently the plan is to have events rotating to various parts of the Atlanta metro.  We are so spread out that having events in only one location would make it tough for a lot of people. 

We haven't set a date yet, but we are planning for the second meeting to take place in Cobb County.  We would like to also be able to hold future events in the South Metro area.  In order to do that, we would love to find a partner in that area to coordinate the event. 

You might know Ken as the KC half of the JCKC Twitter Tuesday program on BlogTalkRadio.  Despite the Twitter-specific name, they talk about all sorts of social media and networking, and bring in cool guests from a variety of social media spaces. 

This is NOT only open to real estate professionals.  In fact, we would VERY much like to have people from outside of the real estate industry.  We will be discussing how to effectively and responsibly utilize social media for business.  The discussions will range from basics for beginners to advanced topics and integrating social networking and social media like blogging, Twitter and FaceBook into a broader marketing strategy. 

We'd love to hear from you!

We are all doing it.  That is the purpose we share here on Active|Rain... marketing through social networking channels. 

Of course, some have taken it well beyond blogging on A|R and have included Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Trulia, Zillow, Flickr, Blip.fm... and a million other sites and communities. 

But the same question is always at the bottom of it...

just out of sight of some, and front and center for others...

WHY?

What is the purpose? 

• To 'close' sales
• To make money
• To grow our business
• To get back in touch with old friends
• To make new friends
• Lookin' for Love... 
  

These are the answers I usually hear... but they all entail one thing.  To meet people... and to build relationships.  Regardless of what else you might be trying to accomplish on the list, it comes down to meeting people, building relationships and leveraging those relationships to fulfill the goals of each and every person involved. 

Seriously, what else on that list can be accomplished without meeting people... probably face to face... and building relationships? 

I have had the great fortune to meet a lot of Active|Rain drops.  Some that are no longer active in the rain, others that are very active.  I have been able to hang out with some of the famous and the infamous.  On FaceBook I have been blessed to get re-acquainted with many of my (I thought) long-lost friends, as well as get toknow a lot of new friends. 

But there should always be a goal...

And raw numbers are not the goal...  I can't have meaningful relationships with 50,000 people.  And there are a lot of people that I really don't want or need to know... and a LOT more than really don't want or need to know me. 

Do I really want or need 53,000 followers on Twitter?  If I had 10% of that, could I actually interact with them, or would I filter out all of these "new friends" so that I could concentrate on people I knew? 

So, is that the goal?  Should we be trying to build a following of thousands of people just to broadcast messages to them, but not engage in two way conversation?  Not that there is anything wrong with that... I have a FaceBook 'Fan Page' that I started to put up even before Mike Mueller and Dustin Luther told me to... and I think it is a GREAT idea.  But there is a major difference. 

If we are friends on FaceBook or if we are mutual followers on Twitter, we expect that the conversation is two way.  If we are fans of a FaceBook 'Fan Page' we expect that to be a one way broadcast. 

Do I have all of the answers?

Heck No... I don't even have all of the questions.  I do have a questioning nature, though.  And I like to go against the grain.  And popular notions often strike me as something to question. 

And I'm one to talk...  I am following 900 people or so on Twitter.  I have over 500 'friends' on FaceBook... and I don't actually know some of them.  I have started getting more picky about who I friend or follow, and on my local Twitter account, I only follow people that are in my immediate area... but the fact remains that I am not the poster boy. 

But I am starting to put together the questions...

You might recall about a week and a half ago I wrote a post wondering if I should change the theme (in a BIG way) on my LaneBailey.com blog.  I was looking REALLY hard at the Ikarus theme to replace my Shifter theme system.  I had been running the Shifter theme system for around a year and a half, and was quite happy with the performance, but after seeing Ikarus, I really wanted to give it a try. 

Well, I did it... I made the change.

Yep.  I dived in and made the change.  I think that my estimates of the time involved were pretty close.  Of course, there is one thing I didn't do... and I am still up in the air as to the direction to take. 

I have been using 'read more' tags on my blog for a long time.  The Ikarus doesn't need them.  So, I could go back and take out the tags in old posts... but I don't think so.  Aside from it being a MASSIVE amount of work, it would be work that would have to be repeated if I changed to a theme that benefitted from 'read more' tags in the future.  I think I might continue to use the tags on the posts so that I have more floxibility in the future.

** A 'Read More' tag is a little piece of code that allows the front page to have an intro to the post displayed so that when it is clicked, it links to the whole post.**

I made the other change, too...

As I said, I think that Shifter is a GREAT theme system.  I had been wanting to play with the 'Portal' option on it for a while.  So, I chose to re-deploy that theme on another of our WordPress sites, BaileyServices.com.  I am certainly not close to finishing that site, the plan is to more fully populate it with content and play with the different options for Shifter. 

For those that remember how LaneBailey.com looked while running Shifter, you might notice that it looks complately different on BaileyServices.  That is one of the strengths of the Shifter system.  It allows a lof of options to change the look of the site without having to dive into code or re-arrange widgets and such.  Usually, themes might have slightly different orientations, and so widgets might have to be tweaked when the theme is changed. 

End notes

There is still some work to do with Ikarus.  To start with, I am working on a way to rotate the header image randomly on each load.  Also, I have a javascript conflict which prevents me from having the block with the video/tags/recent posts AND a mortgage calculator.  I need to figure out how to resolve that conflict... 

Finally, and only a little related, LaneBailey.info will be my social networking hub, maintaining links and info about all of my current social networking.  It will also eventually have all of my technology related posts in one place.  I am testing another theme on it that I think might be applicable to my property blogsites.  The best way to test it and see what it can do is to toss it out in a production environment... where it still isn't crucial, but where issues will show up.  Basically, I want to see if there are ways to re-skin it to look differently for different properties.