The teams at
Active Rain and
Inman News have put together
Project Blogger--a contest pairing experienced real estate bloggers as coaches with apprentices as the newbies develop their blog and their business. It's a 14 week (!) contest culminating at the
Inman Connect conference in August. The winner gets a million bucks and Howie Mandel's tie. Or something. This week, they've graciously invited me contribute ridiculous hours to judge the contest. [
disclosure: I'm friends with many of the coaches on these teams. Some of them are business partners of Altos Research. Still others actively refer new business to our firm. And contestant Kelly Kilpatrick has signed up as a subscriber to the Altos Research services. So I'm about as independent as an East German figure skating judge with a bag of HGH. But I'll try.]
Here's my judging criteria:
- Blogging is like a big networking party, online. You have to be engaging, and ultimately, you're participating to build your business. You just don't want your conversation partner to feel like he's being sold. Nobody likes being pounced on. Bottom line: points for style here folks.
- Like networking, the more you reach out, the more you get back. I found all of the blogs I judged this week to be starved of outbound links. Blogging is about being found on the internet. Keywords matter. Links matter and you get by giving. Further, link bait matters. I awarded points for content linkability as well as readability.
- I gave a few points for technology & well executed features, deducted points for bugs.
- Finally - some points for gotta go for shear quantity. Your traffic will be directly proportional to the amount of posts. Black Kettle over here certainly understands the occasional low ebb of creativity, but this is a contest, so bring your A Game.
With that in mind, here are this week's winners for Project Blogger:
- Kevin Tomlinson with Ardell: Kevin in Miami gets credit for the single best post of the week - Don't want to close on your pre-construction condo? It's funny (can't afford your new Miami condo? Pawn your Rolex!), timely, and structured as good link-bait. People are googling this topic as we speak. Advice for Kevin: Link out to other blogs (lawyers, lenders, economists) anyone with something to say on the topic. Provides more resources for your readers and gives those bloggers reason to link back to you. Develop this into a series of 10 or more posts. Kevin got dinged a little for a bit of low volume.
- Jackie Colson Miller and Jim Cronin: Get rid of that sound track now! Any tech-y feature that locks my browser even for 5 seconds is a definite no-no. But the content show promise with the tax and international angles. I also like how you've leveraged Active Rain with half-posts that point to your main site.
- Tisza Major-Posner with Drew Meyers: Tisza scores with volume and depth. Question for Tisza:Why are you holding back? Your personality shows through on the Active Rain posts, but seems homogenized out of the posts on Route66 blog. Since your eventual customers will be coming from the latter, isn't that where you want to engage them?
- Ines Hegedus-Garcia with Paul Chaney: Good looking new design, a great domain name, excellent use of images. But there are still lots of bugs, broken links, etc. It's nice having a sexy town to blog about.
- Mary Pope-Handy with Frances Flynn Thorsen: Succinct posts keep readability high. Looks like it has a good start on becoming a neighborhood hub. Do they actually allow garage sales in Monte Sereno? Loses points for a funky structure that links across multiple sites unexpectedly.
Some thoughts for the others in the contest:
- London Whitted with Pat Kitano: Take the gloves off man! The promise I see on the commercial front is to go for the professional market, not beginner how-to text. Show me some deal structure, some financing math maybe. There's so much opacity in the commercial real estate market, shed some light.
- Kelly Kilpatrick with Joel Burslem: Kelly, you are at your best when you're ranting. Do more of that.
- Valli Wimberly with Teresa (no 'h') Boardman: We have some clients who are very successful with the impersonal, news-y style blogs. The thing they have in common: volume. Post every day and become the nexus of information for Denver. Otherwise when someone finds you, all they see is something they read in the paper a month ago.
- Julie Ferenzi with Jeff Turner: Julie your best work is socked away on the Active Rain blog. Bring it front and center. The comments about how clients found you are perfect for other potential clients to read and know it's Ok to find you too.
- Theresa Lussier with Greg Swan: Theresa, you have pleasantly structured prose, but remember you have 7 seconds to engage a visitor. Punch it up with images (see Ines above) or style.
- Madison Hildebran with Dustin Luther: Brotha, I hope you've been busy selling a beach house to Lindsay Lohan, because you haven't been blogging.
The full Project Blogger posts for the week are here.
Joel tracks the action at Inman here.
As Altos Research has been steadily growing our market coverage, we're making friends and clients in new parts of the country. Here's a quick mention for our Arizona readers to check out Phoenix Realtor Christoph Schweiger's new blog. He's jumped in to
Tracked: Jun 01, 11:46