In my View Blog

The Funeral of the Website

"We are gathered here today to remember and say our final goodbyes to our dear friend, Mr. Website. He has had a wonderful joyous life surrounded by people that loved him dearly. So much so that they invested time, money and other precious resources in it. Ashes to ashes, Dust to Dust."

If we're not already there, the day is coming my friends. The website as we know it is dead. Gone with it will be all the complicated code work (ok, maybe not all of it) and expensive price tags. So what will take its place?

The Blog!!

Courtesy: SiliconValleyWatcher.com

I bet you didn't think it would go this far when you first started your online journal with Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad. Maybe you didn't see it coming even when you joined this outstanding community called Active Rain. But the truth of the matter is that the blogs will eventually make up 100% of the internet.

"So you mean to tell me that the internet is going to be nothing but a collection of blogs? How can that be?"

Let me clarify exactly what I mean. For quite some time, there has been a movement in the Internet "community" towards cleaner coding standards, i.e from HTML to CSS and XHTML. That means sites that are made according to the strict CSS and XHTML standards will be rewarded with higher rankings in search engines like Google and Yahoo. Guess which websites are already coded according to these standards: BLOGS! That is one of your reasons why a post from your Active Rain blog ranks so high on Google when a page in your website with the same exact information is nowhere to be found.

What's the big deal about blogs?

Blogs are search engine friendly, they are easy to subscribe to and as such bring back repeat visitors, they are easy to update and change, and they can easily be fitted with all kinds of useful widgets that make your life easier (at least some of them).

Are you suggesting that my company website will have that "blog look"?

One of the arguments that always come up when you debate people who can't stand blogs is that they tend to look funny and unprofessional and there is some merit to that statement. After all blog templates have been designed for individuals who want to keep a journal online or ramble about a specific topic.

What I have been referring to all along in this post is the blogging publishing system, or content management system. That is what will replace the website. That is the Revolution. And these systems can be coded such that they look more professional to represent that aspect of your business while still maintaining the ease of use that blogs have. Just to give you an idea CNN now uses Wordpress as their platform for many of their sections. You don't notice it because it looks just like any other CNN page, but it it Wordpress on the background doing the dirty work. Other news organizations like ABC, NBC, BBC and Sky use TypePad instead.

Basically, you install these platforms on your server and from that point on, you can easily modify your content just like you write a post on any blog you may have.

The Website is Dead, ladies and gentlemen. So pay your respects and get on the new blogging wave.

 

Google and the Rise of the Little Guy

It was around the time when Google was going public that I asked myself for the first time: What is so special about this company that makes them so successful in business? I think yesterday I found the answer!

I will grant you that Google is the number one search engine company in the world with a market share that exceeds Yahoo and Microsoft, combined. But that is not it. Google makes money from every imaginable word in the dictionary through its Adwords advertising system that was the first in its class. But that is not it either. In my view, Google's success is more dependent on who it helps succeed rather than how.

Allow me to explain in specific detail. Real estate used to be a business about relationships and I don't mean that in a good way. If you were someone starting out in real estate in the pre-internet era, you had better join a reputable franchise that had the resources to have the full page newspaper and real estate book advertisements, the intricate relocation networks and massive agent rosters for cross advertising of listings. You could go open a Joe Schmoe Real Estate company and farm your local territory to make a decent living but if you really wanted to make a big impact you had to join the good old boys with the deep pockets.

The introduction of the internet and its quick spread shook things up a bit in this industry of ours. After all, now all MLS listings were available on the internet and every agent had the same access to the same databases regardless of the name and size of the company. This leveled the playing field further but it did not complete the task since the majority of prospective clients still used conventional methods to find a real estate professional and in those conventional methods, the big firms still had the advantage.

[Enter Google]

Google has done something special that an elite few companies have achieved in the history of business: They changed the way something was done in a massive scale. Now when consumers need to look up anything from movie times to product reviews to finding a service provider they simply "google" it. Google has managed to centralize the way people all over the world look for products or services. Do you realize how revolutionary this is?

On a different note, as great as this "search centralization" can be for Google's business model, it does not guarantee their ultimate success. Granted that search centralization will certainly peek the interest of advertisers and attract their dollars. But how is this different from a free magazine that sells advertising to companies that want to appeal to its readership? In my opinion, Google's success is not based on its ability to sell a lot of advertising, per se. If you think about it, so does Yahoo, Myspace and Mapquest. What makes Google special is its contribution to the rise of the little guy.

A while back I read a book called "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson that introduced a concept that in today's business world the most successful businesses sell "less to more". And Google is the ultimate illustration of this idea. Sure, Google still strives to get massive corporations to pour their millions of dollars in monthly ads into the Google churn. But most of all, Google provided a way for companies with a monthly advertising budget of a few hundred dollars to effectively target their advertising to potential clients and customers and actually be successful at it. That is selling less to more: Small advertising from millions and millions of small businesses. In my opinion, this effect ultimately levels the playing field completely and allows creative competition between all real estate companies big and small. This allows John Doe and his 200 SF home office to compete at the same level with the big plush office franchise and have a fair chance to win. In the history of business there has never been another company that has been able to give such opportunity to the little guy. And now they are expanding this opportunity through their new Audio Ads program that gives small businesses a chance to advertise on the radio and do so professionally and affordably. I firmly believe that its contribution to the rise of the little guy is the reason (above all others) for Google's amazing success.

Erion Shehaj | Real Estate Broker and Chief Investment Adviser with Signature Real Estate. Houston Real Estate Company providing residential real estate sales, houston bank foreclosures, Houston HUD Homes and other investment properties in the Greater Houston Area.

So you want to have a super blog huh? Meet the Trackback

Do you ever wonder how some unknown kid from an unknown corner of the country all of a sudden has a super blog attracting millions of visitors and pageviews a day? I certainly have. It always puzzled me what caused the momentum gain that shot a blog or a website to immediate superstar status. Now if you're thinking that this is about popularity, you've got it all wrong. I could care less about popularity. This is about business! Being the proud owner of a super popular blog is like being the proud owner of a hot piece of real estate. Having a high visibility website can mean incredible amount of business for your company. So yes, this is about business.

Part of what instigates the confusion regarding this issue is the fact that blogs are often described as an online journal, which has a very private connotation to it. Actually, blogs are more about community than everything else and until we fully understand this concept, it is only right that we are perplexed about what makes a blog popular. So then, the question becomes: How do you build a community around your blog?

One of the answers: The trackback! If you were to visit a popular real estate blog for instance, unless you have a few books published in your name and a list of degrees miles long, they won't let you become a contributor- that is, someone who makes posts in that blog. What you can do, however, is to read a post that interests you and then comment on it. But before you stop reading this post so you can comment on a popular blog let me explain something to you first. The comment has to add value to the discussion. It cannot be something to the effect of: "Great post, John. I agree with you". This is the big leagues. You have to join the discussion and have a unique voice that is beneficial to the overall discussion. When you submit your comment, it will ask you for your name, your email and (drumroll)... the URL of your website or blog. That is a trackback. If the moderator of the post deems your comment to be worthy and adds it to the post, your comment will appear and in the end it will have the URL you provided. Now I know the temptation would be to enter the URL of your website so that you can get a backlink and I don't fault you for that. But keep in mind that the people reading these blogs are not necessarily prospective clients, but other bloggers that you should try and turn into regular readers. So I recommend that you enter the URL for your blog instead so you can build a popular blog that ranks high which then you could turn into gold for your website.

Now go out there and make some friends.

Blog like a champion | TypePad

When I first entered the blogging world of no return, Blogger was my first. It was Google-ish, easy to use, easy interface, all free. Unfortunately though, I felt like that scream in the far away forest that nobody hears. No comments  whatsoever. After all, it is hard to get the power to blog your heart out into a post and then have absolutely nothing happen.

Then I joined Active Rain - a network of active real estate professionals blogging about a multitude of topics from real estate specific topics to search engine optimization to the environment. And there the experience was completely different. People were reading my blog, they were commenting, disagreeing, complimenting, encouraging, cautioning. That my friends makes for a completely different blogging experience. In a way, you feel like you've got your own column where you can share what you feel is important for people to know or stay away from. It even changes your entire inspiration as all of a sudden you've got a multitude of topics that you WANT to talk about and give your two cents about.

I told you that story to tell you this story. Because of Active Rain, I learned about TypePad - A professional blogging interface to take your experience to that next level. Like AR, TypePad immediately notifies a slew of blog sites like Technorati and the big G itself, every time you make a post. Three days ago, I started my end all be all blog called  In my View on Typepad and slowly but surely, I am getting comments on my posts. Comments I never got on Blogger for whatever reason. 

Please understand that I am not putting down Blogger in any way! All I am saying is that when blogging, the experience that you get from INTERACTION is what makes blogging fun and effective and if you want to blog like a champion, consider TypePad in conjuction with Active Rain and you will get a readership of real estate professionals and other readers out there waiting to hear what you have to say.