Disqus - Latest Comments for 4realz

Re: Are you trying to run a referral business with an acquisition website?

Dustin — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 17:31:28 -0000

You're not the only one... I've been into big companies where they have a hard time understanding where their online leads are coming from. We did a survey at one gig of "organic" inbound leads and it turned out a huge percent of them were from referrals. In other words, they were being attributed to the wonderful work of our SEO team, when in reality, those people were hearing about the company at an event, through a partner, reading about us online, etc. that had everything to do with brand engagement work (PR, events, content). Until then, we were wondering why organic leads often converted at higher levels, but it turned out it was really that "referral" traffic converted higher... No real shocker there.

The point of the article isn't that lead gen is wrong or anything like that... It's just to rethink what a homepage might look like if your goal was to convert those people who come in as referrals. Those people are generally not searching your site for homes, but to see if you're an awesome person to work with or not. How credible are you? Should they be using you or another agent? It's for those people that a homepage should appeal.

Although I'd probably recommend most agents go cold turkey and offer to "configure" the home search alerts as part of their service, if that's too much, I also describe how I've worked with companies in the past to break out their site into three different areas here: Optimize for inbound links or on-site SEO? . The core part being that a typical business site should look to serve three different purposes: 1) Homepage designed close sales from referral clients), 2) authoritative section designed to convert online leads and 3) a community section that's designed to drive inbound links. From my perspective, the home search would fit into the authoritative section of a site... and not something that should be featured when a prospect does a search on that company's brand and lands on their home page (brand searches almost always bring someone to a home page and almost by definition come from a referral source).

Re: Are you trying to run a referral business with an acquisition website?

Dustin — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 16:53:23 -0000

Hey Bryn: It's totally legit to run a business that generates inbound leads from a home search. Totally makes sense. Out of curiosity, out of your last dozen closed sales, do you have a sense of how many of them do you think came to your site based on a recommendation from someone vs starting from a cold internet search?

Re: Are you trying to run a referral business with an acquisition website?

Dustin — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 16:47:12 -0000

Hey Bryn: the application would add an element of exclusivity to your services, something that's missing in almost all real estate websites today. Think of it with a messaging like "Want to work with the best, tell us a little about yourself and let's see if we're a good fit." Granted, it's going to work best when the exclusivity is genuine (i.e. a broker that only sells $5M+ properties in The Hamptons).

Re: Geek Estate 3.0: The Facelift 1,825 Days Too Late

Dustin — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 19:02:37 -0000

It's looking great! Congrats on the launch!

I feel like the old school blogger in me still likes a sidebar for helping guide users around a bit more when they land on the site, but seeing how clean your layout is has me rethinking this logic... Hmm...

Re: Two Questions on Errol Samuelson’s Dramatic Move

Dustin — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 14:13:55 -0000

You're question about non-compete clauses is pretty easy. They aren't enforceable in California: http://boingboing.net/2008/...

This is often cited as one of the subtle, but super important, differentiations that has helped silicon valley thrive: http://www.siliconbeat.com/...

Re: The Perception Gap: what customers want and what executives think they want [infographic]

Dustin — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:46:41 -0000

Had the same reaction. Most of the stats seemed reasonable, but that one stuck out like a sore thumb.

Re: Why Google+ matters (because, Google says so).

Dustin — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:54:58 -0000

I wish this was more surprising... and agree Google is pushing the good-will they've built up over the years with the way they're pushing Google Plus.

Re: Breaking: Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog Term Sheet

Dustin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:20:40 -0000

Huge congratulations to the Instagram team! It's a great app and an even more impressive exit.

Re: A mirror image? Canadian real estate brokerage accused of ripping off Estately

Dustin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:09:10 -0000

Ouch... that is so wrong. I remember when someone put a proposal out to copy redfin's site: http://blog.redfin.com/blog... and I thought that was crazy... but to actually implement it. That seems downright dumb.

Re: Press Release: Brent Knowles Retiring from Writing and Game Design to Focus On…

Dustin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:42:05 -0000

good luck! ;)

Re: Facebook Should Stop Worrying So Much About Google Plus

Dustin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:39:21 -0000

John, I want to agree with you that copying G+ is just not a good strategy for FB... but I think this latest feature of Subscriptions is just right for some users (Someone like Robert Scoble: http://www.facebook.com/Rob... who can grow to almost 20K subscribers in days comes to mind). Personally, I had both a public page and a personal profile, and while I gained more "likers" on my page than "friends" on my personal profile, I'm finding myself much more excited about this new feature and being able to use one profile for all my updates.

Re: Listening and Being Helpful in Social Media

Dustin — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:27:20 -0000

inboxQ looks promising! installing now!

Re: Managing Social Presence

Dustin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:10:47 -0000

I also like Gist... and it might be a bit far out there, but it would be great if Hootsuite would let me filter newsfeeds, lists, searches, etc. by how I've ranked people on Gist!

Also interesting (and probably a lot easier to implement) would be if Hootsuite let me filter a stream (again, a newsfeed, mention feed, list feed, search feed, etc) by Klout score. Then for high-hit search terms (like a client who gets mentioned in twitter all the time), I could effectively weed out all the spammy accounts...

Re: Google and Real Estate

Dustin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:59:30 -0000

Always enjoy your take... Curious, if Google wanted to buy a real estate search presence that would compete internationally, who would they be looking at?

Re: 4 Reasons Why I'll Be Kicking Myself For Not Going to RE Connect NYC

Dustin — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 03:31:58 -0000

Site is looking great! :)

Re: From Los Angeles to Vegas in the @Audi A8

Dustin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:54:13 -0000

how awesome! Looks like so much fun!

Re: Why Groupon Needs $950 Million More

Dustin — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:58:07 -0000

Morgan,

Great insights and I agree with everything you say... except groupon's need to use this money to fund expansion. TechCrunch is reporting that company insiders are taking ~345M off the table with this round. This means the main players at groupon are financially set no matter what happens to the company... and they can just gamble with house money from this point forward.

Re: 21 Strategies for Generating Irresistible SEO Benefits - Dustin Luther | Insights | socalTECH.com

Dustin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:12:47 -0000

I'm with you Nick: Teresa's carved out an incredible niche and wouldn't want to be the person who tried to compete with her at her game! ;)

Re: 21 Strategies for Generating Irresistible SEO Benefits - Dustin Luther | Insights | socalTECH.com

Dustin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:39:01 -0000

Thank you much Joshua... I do find it interesting that while the tactics have improved over the years, the basic strategy of generating quality inbound links has been rock solid for years! :)

Re: BIG Announcement Time!

Dustin — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:21:47 -0000

Huge Congrats! Positive you'll rock it at Diverse!

Re: A Content Experiment

Dustin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:08:46 -0000

Fascinating test... and can't wait for the update!

Re: Hey Gmail Users – Announcing the Gist Gadget for Google Apps!

Dustin — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:03:34 -0000

This is great addition to Gist! I installed it earlier today and I'm totally enjoying it!

Re: Measuring influence on Twitter: Who “cares?”

Dustin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:22:02 -0000

A little late to the conversation here (was working all day and a bit too busy for social media fun!), but I just read through all the comments in this thread and there's some great stuff.

Of course a lot of the advice feels pretty common sense (focus on making money, don't blindly follow people because they are on a list, focus on your community, etc.), but sometimes a conversation like this can be so helpful as it gives us all a chance to reiterate the obvious!

In an amusing aside... Someone reminded me that you, Marc, were one of the original 10 real estate people I choose to feed into the algorithm. This means that you actually ended up had an outsized impact on the results of my list.

Re: Images tweeted from beautiful SoCal weddings

Dustin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:25:55 -0000

Definitely getting a kick out of these themed twitpics... fun stuff.

Re: Twitter Real Estate Search: Demand Spot

Dustin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:27:40 -0000

This looks really interesting. Great find. Also, thinking your "demandspot" link should probably go here: http://www.demandspot.com/ as oppose to the 1000watt site