Why Web 1.0 is good enough for me.
In a campaign reminiscent of the great Any-Agent-Who-Doesn't-Have-A-Website-Is-Instant-History blitz of the late 1990s, today's real estate agent is bombarded with exhortations to step up to Web 2.0, also known as "tweet like you mean it".
As you no doubt knew well before I did, the term Web 2.0 refers to a shift from Web content generated by experts and marketing specialists to content generated by users. In the words of O'Reilly Media, which put the idea on the map in 2004, Web 2.0 means that "customers are building your business for you". To the media consultants and real estate coaches selling it to agents these days, Web 2.0 boils down to blogging and, lately, social networking. Which explains why the real estate community is inflicting itself on Twitter.
"This morning I took out the trash and listed a hot new property at 123 Main Street. Worship me."
While the weekly commentary on this site might seem to give it a Web 2.0 (or maybe Web 1.5) blog-esque gloss, what you're reading now is, of course, anything but interactive. I talk at you, and your only available responses are to a) listen, or b) change the channel. You're welcome to see me after class, but there's no classroom discussion.
But I like to keep up with the times, or at least trail the times by a consistent five years or so, and I certainly wouldn't mind consumers building my business for me. So let's construct an elaborate hypothetical scenario in which I overhear an agent, whom we'll call Suzy Networker, credit a recent sale to a post on her blog. Suddenly I'm motivated to check this Web 2.0 thing out.
Googling Suzy reveals her entire Web 2.0 strategy.
First, she blogs frequently, if not regularly, on her own site. By "frequently, if not regularly" I mean that Suzy blogs when the spirit moves her, as most of us would if we blogged. However, one thing that ol' dinosaur Web 1.0 (and, for that matter, the daily newspaper) taught me is that readers like regularity. Faithful Reader likes to know that if he makes the effort to go to a certain information source at a certain time, his initiative will be rewarded with new information, not the same information he got last time. Every one of my Faithful Readers—both of them—luxuriates in the certainty that my site will feature a new commentary each Saturday AM. The only uncertainty will be the quality of that commentary.
A further problem with Suzy's irregular posting schedule is that it keeps the search engines from noticing her. Since Suzy blogs to get noticed, and not just to spout off, this isn't the best use of Web 2.0.
The other thing I notice about Suzy's blog posts is the deafening silence that greets them. I go all the way back to May without finding a single response. Not only is this bad for Suzy's morale—c'mon guys, give her some validation—it's also bad for the morale of anyone following Suzy's posts, because if no one else follows Suzy, why should Faithful Reader? Not only does Suzy's site have zero traction. Now, thanks to Web 2.0, everyone knows it.
Next I move to Suzy's Facebook page, where the first thing I notice is that her favorites include:
Since Suzy makes a living selling homes, right here and now, in this area, her Facebook strategy doesn't look like much of a business builder unless she's a) trying to generate referrals she can pass on to agents in areas where she doesn't sell homes, or b) discretely telling readers where she'd like to own a second home or retire someday. But one thing the old media (and my advertising classes) taught me is, "don't make your readers guess". A mystified reader is neither a happy reader nor a repeat reader.
Next, I find Suzy active on Twitter where, bless her heart, she really does tweet like she means it. I also find—yes, this is my first time—that walking into a Twitter conversation is like walking into the middle of simultaneous conversations, one-liners and inside jokes. It's like hanging around an infinite number of office water coolers, or hearing every conversation at Pac Bell Park during a Giants game. And about as edifying.
I note that one of Suzy's followers thinks the NFL is picking on that poor Rush Limbaugh by not letting him buy into the Rams, and wonders out loud if the NFL would give Michael Moore the same run-around. (Michael Moore, that darling of the capitalist class that owns and runs the NFL.) Now, I won't make the mistake of telling you what I think of Rush Limbaugh, because that has nothing to do with real estate. However, I will tell you that the Democratic Party obviously believes that most of the country thinks Rush is a loud-mouthed yahoo, or it wouldn't have been so anxious to anoint him the GOP's new spiritual leader earlier this year after McCain muffed his chance. And if I'm someone who's Googled Suzy because I'm thinking of using her to sell my home...and I'm most of the country...
I end my Suzy Web 2.0 experience at Trulia, which credits her with twenty-two "helpful answers". Unfortunately for Suzy, she's given 156 answers, which implies that 134 were unhelpful, which is not the batting average I look for in my agent. Then again, I have to wonder how anyone who has to ask a question about real estate or anything else fairly complicated would know for sure what a "helpful answer" looked like. Because sometimes the most helpful answers turn out to be the ones we like the least.
Suzy also blogs on Trulia, and since I still haven't found a post of hers that looks like it could've led to warm feelings, let alone a sale, I look for it here. Suzy's most recent post generated zero comments. As did the post before it. (If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, is it really a post?) However, the post before that lit up the board with 75 responses. Bingo! I zoom in to scope out Suzy's money-making secret.
The post turns out to be nothing more (or less) than a low-key, workmanlike assessment that local real estate is no longer on its deathbed. Which is not only true, it's a lightening rod for the many out there in Web Land who won't be happy until every homeowner mails his or her house keys back to the bank in disgust. By daring to suggest that there might be a ray of hope, Suzy inadvertently triggers a mini-tsunami of name-calling and hair-pulling of the kind that passes for informed discussion on most real estate blogs. (I wonder why anyone was surprised by the vehemence of those health care town hall meetings. That kind of stuff's been going on for years on the Internet.)
A few quotes:
Blah, blah, blah. Another realtor shilling the market and promoting himself. How dull.
Hi everyone, here is proof that Suzy lies. Big time evidence.
Suzy, your last post is full of it, and you know it.
Here's a telling comment: We are so freaking doomed.
You come across with all the credibility of a used car salesman. People aren't fools, and perhaps if you'd stop treating them like that you'd have more listings than apparently you do have per your website.
Naturally this gets Suzy's goat, and she decides to roll in the gutter with her "admirers". Which simply provokes more catcalls. And so forth, and so on.
Folks, this is bleeding-edge marketing? This is "customers building your business for you"? I don't think so. No, this is more like a comic bombing on stage and then heckling his hecklers. No home buyers and sellers here, Suzy, no ma'am, just people who sound like 14-year-old schoolyard bullies and, for all you know, may be. No one here except people so paralyzed by a sense of impending doom, even during the best of times, that they wouldn't buy a house from you if you gift-wrapped it and left it on their front doorstep. No ma'am, no one here except a few cranks trying hard to make you look bad and not doing such a bad job of it. And you're giving them the platform.
No, all this is—aside from proof that, like the rest of us, Suzy isn't ready for her close-up—is more evidence that we live in what might be called The Age of Denial of the Expert, or Up With The Little Guy! The little guy, feeling more than a little cranky and more than a little full of himself, knowing very little about the subject at hand but armed with that great leveler, they all lie! And now, after several millennia of anonymity, finally able to tell the whole world exactly what he thinks.
We also live in an age when little guys and gals like Suzy, who really is a big-time expert at selling real estate, have access to big-time communication tools that supposedly make the marketing expert unnecessary—and manage to shoot their credibility in the foot anyway. Forget Web 2.0. I'm thinking of the flyer an agent in my office proudly showed our regional vice-president, a flyer that crawled out of some desktop publishing software so scrambled and with so many mis-matched design elements that it looked like one of those pasted-together ransom notes. And the one thing that would've given it credibility, a Coldwell Banker logo, was the one thing missing.
So be sure to look for the roll-out of my exciting new blog. And in the meantime, that's me tweeting like I mean it.