Developing Your Brand

I recently observed on my tdnyc.wordpress.com that the sum total profit from the big online listing sites is a negative number.  That is right, Move.com (including realtor.com), Trulia, Zillow, Homegain, homes.com, Realtytrac; add it all up and they spend more in expense than they take in in reve...

Dan McCarthy writes a blog about the real estate market and has dug up research showing how brands that market through tough times reap huge rewards when the cycle turns.  Dan summarizes his findings, "The conclusion: advertising isn't a variable cost.  It's the investment that allows you to prov...

In an earlier post I said that your customers own your brand.  We put that to the test when we created product pages for Home by Design and Your Homes and Lifestyles magazines on Facebook.  In just 2 days we got about 300 fans and unsolicited postive feedback that is exactly what we want our bran...

In a recent post I asked about segmenting by social relationship.  It seems that this theme is getting a lot of attention.  For example, check-out the Spectrum of Online Friendship that Mike Arauz has assembled - very cool concept for social marketing.  Mike argues that the spectrum of relationsh...

I bumped into a post by Mario Sundar, the Community Evangalist and Cheif Blogger at LinkedIn, describing some rules for efficient social networking.  His post is a good guide for how to make sure you keep a high ROE (return on effort) rate for all of this facebooking, blogging, twittering and lin...

I am curies to hear from the AR community what eNewsletter programs are working. Just to structure the conversation, let me ask a couple of questions: What program are you using? How much do you spend on eNewsletters a month? What type of content does the newsletter cover (local economics, living...

I really want to understand how real estate agents are thinking about social networking sites and brand building.  How do you think about your interactions on the tool and what do you think are your lead generation and brand building goals?  What tools do you use within these sites to achieve you...

Treat your personal brand like Coca Cola - with global consistency.  Coke is one of the best recognized brands in the world and for a good reason.  The brand is consistent everywhere.  The bottle is universally recognizable.  When you open a bottle (glass or plastic, 12oz or 2 liter) anywhere you...

Your customers own your personal brand!   I am in the first couple of chapters of Jeff Jarvis's book What Would Google Do http://www.buzzmachine.com/what-would-google-do/.  In his chapter New Publicness he proposes that "your customers are your ad agency."  This is what having a personal brand is...

What does an agent posses that is unique and lets them stand out from the crowd?  Since every agent can compete for every listing and every sale with the same access to tools an services, the only thing that can truly differentiate one agent from another is their personal brand.  I keep an eye pe...