Trying to bring myself up to speed with things around real estate blogosphere I have came across across the RSSPieces announcement that Mary McNight, the founder and (now former) Chief Marketing Officer of RSSPieces “is no longer part of the day to day operations of RSS Pieces”.
During last week I have e-mailed Mary once or twice and never received a reply. Very unusual of her, since in the past Mary would respond to my e-mails rather promptly- at times within minutes.
On her Active Rain blog Mary wrote briefly that her relationship with RSSPieces went south. Evidently many of the Mary’s social medial accounts where hijacked, but she is on they way to recover them.
So will the pieces at RSSPieces stick together now that Mary is gone? From the comments on RSSPieces appears that they might already be falling apart.
I personally never was Mary’s client and our paths would not have crossed if I was not interested in Internet Marketing and Blogging. Needless to say Mary has my respect and support. Mary had build a strong and respectable profile for RSSPieces. She is well known and respected in various circles of this wonderful new media we call blogging. It is hard to know what really happened and what Mary is planing for the future. Real Estate Radio USA is interviewing Mary today, so I am looking forward to that interview.
I am certain though that Mary will have no problem to be successful no matter which direction she decides to take. RSSPieces on the other hand will have to struggle and really step up a bit, especially now that many of the clients are disappointed and confused.
photo credit: TankiJust a few days ago I have welcomed first guest blog post on Go Beyond MLS. I have been asking in private few of my colleagues bloggers to contribute to this blog at their spare time, but today I open my invitation to all my readers.
There are a few conflicting opinions about guest blogging in general. And it may not be something every one should consider. I will write about my stand on quest blogging at a later time. If you think you can benefit from a guest post on my blog please contact me through the contact form on About Page.
Every guest post on this blog will be formated in a similar way as was Wayne Harriman’s post. You are completely free to choose the subject of your post as long as it is related to real estate or real estate marketing. Ans yes, you are most welcomed to write about your listings and link to them from your guest posts.
Friend, husband and fellow REALTOR® was unexpectedly hospitalized read more
I the recent weeks I have been recipient of generosity of many people (most of them I have never met in my life). I am in particular thankful to real estate bloggers for their generous contributions to my defense fund.
I am not sure how I missed that Charles Richey has been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome but I will be heading to donate to the fund as soon as this article is finished and goes live. I hope you can do the same.
You can read more about Charles Richey Fund here. Apparently only 35% of money needed has been raised so far, and it is my strong believe we can do much better.
I would like to take this opportunity and thank the owners of MortgageCalculator.Ogr for advertising on this blog. MortgageCalculator.org offers free motrgage calculators for your website or blog and you can install the calculator in seconds by simply grabbing a piece of code and pasting it into your website’s template. On the right is an example of the mortgage calculator in action, and if you prefer you can have this calculator in a form of WordPress Plugin.
NOTE TO MORTGAGECALCULATOR.ORG CREW:I would strongly recommend changing/adjusting CSS file for your javascript widget. Apparently the “div” containing the logo image in the calculator is named “header”. Many WordPress themes as well as other websites already have CSS values named “header” this can be very frustrating to users whose websites background images are code through CSS. I have not tried your WordPress plugin, but I am guessing it may have similar problem.
The easy access to the internet and freely available publishing tools offer wonderful opportunity to just about any one to get your word out there, to establish your brand, to grow your business, to promote your charity and even find your love.
These same tools combined with anonymity can become a real nightmare. A lie aimed at destroying your reputation can quickly, some times in days, propel to the top of the search engines for your own name. It takes much longer to clean up the mess. In fact, the vicious postings on Yahoo! Answers that I was subjected to back in February are still cached by search engines even though Yahoo! Answers had deleted them long time ago. Although they no longer appear on the first page of results for my own name.
So what can you do to protect your name and your reputation. Depending on your involvement with the Internet and how much time you have, you can probably learn how to make more difficult for your enemies to carry out their some times most evil attacks on your reputation. Following are few things that I have been doing lately, that may help you as well.
Join online communities and if possible link to your profile from your websites and blogs. It might be difficult for you to do if you are not particularly involved with any online communities. But if you are a member of MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, StumbleUpon, Facebook or even if you use Twitter build up your profiles and link to your profiles from your own blogs and websites. With the time, these pages will rank well for your name making harder for faceless creeps to propel pages that can damage your reputation to the top of the search engines.
If you happened to have more than one websites or blogs consider including (if possible) your name in the “about” page. Again these will be the pages to beat should any one tries to use the internet to attack you.
Set Google Alerts for your own name. This will allow you to catch the unwanted staff early on, before it would begin to appear in top results on the search engines.
You might want to befriend a lawyer who understands the nature of the internet. Some times you will be able to remove unwanted material by writing the the websites administration. However there will be cases that your attorney’s help might be required.
Depending on your popularity or how much your enemy hates you, this can easily become almost a full time job. Unfortunately not every one has time to be engaged in the above described activities. In fact during past 6 months, I have fallen behind on many projects precisely because of reputation management activities. And let me tell you, it can be disheartening.
For the last few weeks I have been seriously contemplating to start using Reputation Defender. Below is the video from 20/20 about the case involving the death of Niki Catsouras and how the pictures of of the car crash had become a nightmare to Catsouras family. The Reputation Defender was involved in the case.
Disclosure:The above post is not a legal advise nor should it be viewed as such. The link to Reputation Defender in the last paragraph is an affiliate link, if you sign up after clicking through that link I will receive commission for referring you to Reputation Defender. If you don not want that to happened you can use the following direct (not affiliate) link www.reputationdefender.com to visit their website.
Just found the video below on Matt Cutt’s blog. He was interviewed by USA Today and offers some interesting points. One thing I found interesting that Matt points out about importance of description meta tag, but why should I spoil it for you. Enjoy!
Vlad has generously allowed me to contribute to his blog, and I thank him for the opportunity. I’ve been in a really foul mood lately, and I’m gonna tell you why. Other than Vlad’s ongoing troubles, I really get annoyed by some things I’ve encountered in my short time as a Realtor®. Some of them occur often, others not so much, but they all qualify as PITA’s. Here’s the “short list”:
I am annoyed by…
…agents who purport to be the best thing since sliced bread, but can’t be bothered to confirm my showing requests. Come on people, your client wants to sell their house, don’t they? You want to sell your client’s house don’t you? Then how’s about calling me back to confirm a damn showing before the listing expires, OK? And don’t make me drive 100 miles out of my way to pick up the damn keys. Use a frakkin lockbox or meet me at the property. It’s literally the least you can do.
...agents who can’t take a picture if their life depended on it, but slap any old pic up on the MLS and call it good. Oh my God, leave that awful picture of the basement being used as a trash dump on the flash card and take a real picture, if you don’t mind. No shirtless relatives, no pets puking on the floor, no kitchens with sinks full of unwashed dishes, no front yards full of toys, trash cans or junk cars, OK? Can you handle that? Good.
...agents who, even though their listing has been up for a month or longer, can’t be bothered to even take a picture of it, let alone a bad one. Can you take a picture? Do you even have a camera? No? Borrow one, or better yet, buy one. Get your teenage son to take the pictures if you can’t. Or ask Athol Kay to take them for you. You can’t get much better than that.
…agents who take it upon themselves to speak for their clients when you present an offer. Please, DO NOT tell me that your client will not accept my full price, cash offer. DO NOT tell me that they won’t fix an inspection issue or grant an extension. Present the offer! Ask them if they’ll fix the problem or grant an extension. DO YOUR JOB!
…agents who place ads in the paper for a listing, but the picture accompanying the ad is of the agent, not the house. What are you trying to sell, a house or you?? Get your ugly mug outta the ad and show the house, will ya? That’s what buyers want to see!
...agents who, the closer to closing you get, make themselves as hard to contact as possible. After 10 voicemails, 16 emails and a dozen notes sent by carrier pigeon, do you think you could call me to set up a walk-through?? HUH??
…agents who “buy” listings. The house has no curb appeal, it’s outdated, the seller wants to price it so far above market value that The Donald himself wouldn’t touch it. Your mouth makes promises your performance can’t keep, but you’ve baffled the seller with enough BS to fertilize the Sahara. Puh-lease. If you can’t be honest with the seller and tell him his house will never sell at that price and in that condition, at least be true to yourself and have the decency to pass. Or are you really that hard up for business?
…agents who get emotionally involved in the transaction. OMG, don’t get me started. The next time you call me and yell at me so loud the phone cracks, you call me names and tell me what a jerk you think I am because I told you the truth, you and I are gonna throw down. After I’ve had a cool, calm and collected conversation with your broker…
…agents who expect you to do all the work, theirs included. Um, you want me to what? Set up your inspection for you? Contact a lender to see if they’ll pre-approve your client? Get your client’s signature on a contract because they live closer to me?? Pay for your client’s credit check?? Let an appraiser into your listing because you’re on vacation?? Show your client my listing because you’re at your real job?? Why sure, anything else? Shine your shoes? Wash the car? I’ll do anything…just sign over that commission check to ME on closing day. (And we have done some pretty strange things, because if we didn’t the deal would have fallen apart.)
…agents who think asking my clients questions is OK. You’re asking MY clients why they’re selling? How much of a down payment they can make? Even if they’ve considered using another agent?? In FRONT of me??? Are you NUTS??
…agents who delay putting their listings in the MLS so they can try to sell it themselves first. You know who you are. You take that primo listing because you know the perfect buyer for it, so you sort of forget to enter the listing in the MLS and call them to come see it TONIGHT. No sense in letting any other agents horn in on YOUR commission, right?
…agents who use professional sounding email addresses like, realtor4U@aol.com. Like that has an air of professionalism about it. More like an air of cheapness and laziness, because you can’t be bothered to buy a $10 domain, set up a decent web site and actually use it for your email address. Even johndoe@johndoe.com would be better than your Mickey Mouse address. Sorry, Mickey.
…agents who whine about having no business instead of trying to make business. You know who you are, too. The ones who sit at the office and play Solitaire all day or chit chat with the other whiners. The ones who always watch as we put together deal after deal and then have the audacity to say, “You’re so lucky that so much business falls in your lap. I wish I was as lucky as you are.” The ones who never volunteer for floor time or open houses, have no SOI, never prospect, never do any of the things that would make business for you. No, you’d rather wait for something to “fall in your lap.” Well, good luck. In this case, it’s NOT better to be lucky than good.
…agents who send me flyers about their listings, even though they’re 1000 miles away. I swear these guys have access to the entire NAR email database and they’re not afraid to abuse it. Sorry guys, I do not have any clients chomping at the bit to buy a million dollar condo on the beach, or a 50 acre horse farm in the Rockies, or the Georgian mansion on the 18th green of the golf course. Nor am I myself interested in any of those properties. All you’re doing, as this entire post implies, is pissing me off! I unsubscribe but it does NO GOOD! What do I have to do to make you understand, I don’t want your “spamarketing”, so STOP IT!
Ok. There you have it. Are these legitimate beefs? To me, yes. Are they petty? Maybe. I could have added a few more, but I’ve already hijacked Vlad’s blog long enough. Maybe there are some that I forgot that really get under your skin. If so, drop in a comment and vent. You’ll feel much better. Oh, and before I forget, there are a few things that clients do that annoy me, too. But that’s another post…
July 18, 2008 
So will the pieces at RSSPieces stick together now that Mary is gone? From the comments on RSSPieces appears that they might already be falling apart.
Posted in Blogging, Internet Marketing, Real Estate News 
Pat & Wayne Harriman are realtors with William Raveis Real Estate in Wallingford, CT. Their web site is 
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