Mary moves on from RSS Pieces
Best wishes Mary as you move on to new adventures. And 1ParkPlace just got a lot more interesting.
Tagged: RSS Pieces RSS
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Dustin
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Dustin
Love’n, just love’n, the linklove from…
…Mary! (and especially glad she didn’t share any of the stories!)
More notes from RETechSouth:
- RETech South – Widgets, Plug-Ins, and Tools
- RETech South Roundup
- Blogging for Alpharetta Real Estate Has Lighter Side
- REtechSouth: It’s a Great Time to Blog
- The Future of Real Estate and Technology is Now
- My Personal Take-Aways from the REtechSouth Conference
- RETechSouth – Conference 2.0
- REtech South in Atlanta, One Day, Endless Value
- The Dreaded SEO Recap from RETech South
- Trulia Goes Behind the Scenes at ReTechSouth
- Brad Nix and Matt Fagioli Pull it off!!!
and, how, could I forget… I had a blast hanging out with the Miami Beach backlink whore.
(Don’t be surprised if I add more links to stories about the event as I find them!)
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Kevin Tomlinson
I heard there was a fabulously devious plan to make me #1 for “Google backlink whore.”
I have no scruples, whatsoever.
Thanks, for the backlink!
Seriously, that conference was great and packed with quality information.
My room smelled like a big cigarette…..gasp.
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Jay Thompson
Methinks you linked to the wrong link-love post from Mary. Didn’t you mean: http://www.rsspieces.com/retech-south-was-a-huge-success
Wish I coulda been there!
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Kevin Tomlinson
Jay—it WAS great. I was sorta jonesin’ for a mid-year kick-in-the-a** and that is why I attended.
We all had fun.
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Daniel, The Real Estate Zebra
Methinks Jay is right.
Looks like the event was a success. I am very happy for all those involved.
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Tom
Dustin, Kevin is the Miami Beach Backlink Whore , lets be as accurate as possible.
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REBLogGirl
Gracias, Dustin. Had a great time with you all and I am actually holding your stories hostage for sale to the highest bidder.
Jay, I hope you will be at Unchained. I’ve been dying to meet you!
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Kevin Tomlinson
Tom
Are there any other backlink whores out there who will be “transparent” enough to admit it?
Laurie?
Tom? -
Dustin
Jay, Daniel, Tom… I updated both mistakes! (i.e. the link goes to the right post and I’m using the right anchor text on the link back to Kevin!).
Thanks to all!
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ARDELL
I can’t believe Kev actually has competition for “backlink whore”, and I mean that in so many different ways
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Jay Thompson
@Mary “Jay, I hope you will be at Unchained. I’ve been dying to meet you!”
I doubt if I’m welcome at Unchained. But there is always “after hours”. I’d love to meet you too! Going to Connect SF?
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southbeachcondo
Jay
Why would you think that you would not be welcomed at “UC?”
??
…sheez I wonder when the next blogwar will be?
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Giles
Ridiculous!!!
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Jay Thompson
@SouthBeachCondo – long story and probably best not to discuss details “in public”. Suffice it to say that things changed between myself and the primary UC organizer when I chose to stop contributing to Bhound blog.
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Carl Martens
Dustin…thanks for taking some time after the conference to speak with Brenda and I…it was much appreciated!
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Dustin
I really did enjoy the entire event… And, as is usual for me, the conversations in the hallways were the best part!
Dustin
Inbox: How do I connect my blog with my website?
I got an email this morning with a question I’ve received many times in different formats, so I figured it was worthy of a blog post:
Hello Dustin,
I am just reading the article in the Realtor Mag. I would like to talk with you about blogging. How do you set it up to connect to your web site? Is it easy? Are their any cost?
I broke your question into two parts.
Part 1: How do you set it up to connect to your web site?
As I see it, there are three main options:
1) Your blog is hosted on a different domain than your agent website
- Link from your blog to your website (and assuming you want to send traffic the other way), then a link from your website to your blog)
- Use a widget to grab the latest headlines from your blog and add them to your website. I don’t recommend grabbing ALL of the text from the post for duplicate content reasons, but there is nothing wrong with grabbing the headlines and/or a snippet of text
- Example: Kris Berg’s website: San Diego Sand Castles (with content widget) and blog: San Diego Home Blog
2) Your blog is hosted as a subdomain or subdirectory of your agent website
- It is a very viable (and not necessarily difficult to implement) to have your blog be part of your website and this has the benefit of concentrating the inbound link benefits that you’ll get from having your real estate site.
- Example: Brad Nix does this with Maxsell Real Estate (blog: http://maxsell.net/blog/)
3) Your blog is your agent website
- I got tired of managing a largely ineffective agent website for my wife and actually took the site down completely once we started to get so much more traction through Rain City Guide. There’s no reason you couldn’t still have all the typical features of a agent website (about me, testimonials, MLS search, etc.) on a typical agent blog.
- Example: Jay Thompson has a blog with many bells-and whistles at the Phoenix Real Estate Guy (although he does also have a separate brokerage site).
Part 2: Is it easy? Are their any cost?
Easy is very relative depending on the outcome you want to see. Setting up a blog is relatively painless (and free) on WordPress.com or Blogger. There are also real estate specific blogging solutions, some of which are free (ActiveRain, Zolve, RealTown, and REALTOR.com) and some of which cost money (Incredible Agent, Ubertor, Real Estate Tomato, RSS Pieces and Realivent). Obviously, when you’re willing to pay, there is often better integration, education and the ability to customize the blog to fit in with your online marketing plan. (Don’t have an online marketing plan? It might be time for a 4realz Education. )
I’ve had it in mind to do a bit more research on existing blog platforms specific to real estate (costs, features, etc.). I should have something ready to publish within the next few weeks.
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Missy Caulk
I want the same thing, dump my static site and just integrate on my wp.org. But when people go to search they have to click again, then it takes them to my search site.
Any way to frame it so it is right there?
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loren nason
Yes, Missy it is possible
This site is a project in progress right now
but if you want to see the framed home search go look -
Kris Berg
Howdy, Dustin! Love the new name for our site – Sand Castles? Wish I had thought of it.
I have mentally flopped on the whole idea of merging the static site and the blog for awhile now, but for now I keep coming back to the conclusion that I like the degree of separation. I cross market them, for sure, and the little widget on “San Diego Castles” has helped drive traffic to the blog (and links on the blog to the site), but for now the audiences for each are mostly different. I think it was on an Inman Group discussion that someone suggested that people expect to see a traditional web site look one way and a blog another. I agree that this is mostly true so, for now, I won’t be merging the two.
If your website is a pretty canned experience, with common content (the content you would find on any site in any town in America) and primarily a host for your IDX feature and About page, then losing the distinction probably makes a lot of sense. For me, I have created such a monster of content – stats, neighborhood info, floor plans, and such – that it would be a daunting (although not insurmountable) task to marry the two. And, at this point, it would require professional intervention. So some day, but not yet.
Note to Jay – You have implemented the one-site-does-all concept beautifully and are the exception.
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Dustin
Kris,
That’s such an odd mistake I made… For some reason, I just skipped over the “iego” part in your URL and assumed it was Sand Castles… (which seemed interestingly relevant to someone from San Diego!).
Anyway, I agree with you that there is definitely a place for both a traditional website with a separate blog. I used to argue in favor of combining them (as I did with my wife’s site!), but now that I’ve been working closer with Jim Marks, I’m starting to see the benefits of having a website (separate from a blog) that is purely geared toward lead capture and conversion. As you say, the two different options appeal to different types of people….
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Moe Navidi
I created blogs on blogger and my website is hosted with Point2Agent
How can I connect my blogs to my wesite?
Thank you
Moe
Jay Thompson 9:17 am on July 9, 2008 Permalink |
Mary is the kind of person that will be successful at *anything* she does.
Looks like the RSSPieces post you linked to has been pulled…
Dustin 1:54 pm on July 9, 2008 Permalink |
Wow! That’s pretty rough that they actually pulled her goodbye article down. My guess is that a lot of people joined RSS Pieces because of Mary and the RSS Pieces team is probably getting more than a few panic calls from clients today!
REBlogGirl 4:12 pm on July 9, 2008 Permalink |
Thanks for the support. I have no ill-will towards them – I am still a partner. I’ve just moved on to the next chapter.
John McKnight 5:06 am on July 10, 2008 Permalink |
Mary’s response to the post being pulled is certainly a lot nicer than the one I was about to write – you can take that however you want. I am behind her 100%.
Tom Balletta 9:26 am on July 17, 2008 Permalink |
It is true that Mary McKnight is no longer employed at RSS Pieces. It should also be known that Mary is still a share holder of RSS Pieces. And a considerable one at that.
I find it wholly inappropriate to air the internal issues of our company on an open forum such as this. That being said I would like everyone who is interested to know the following.
Everything is fine at RSS Pieces. We are fully operational and will continue to provide our leading edge products and services for a long time to come. In fact, we are very excited about the future and our new product roll outs.
Mary’s claims of wrong doing that her company perpetrated upon her are unequivocally untrue. And quite frankly I don’t understand the claims.
If anyone would like further explanation fell free to contact me personally at the company and I will be happy to have a private conversation about the events of recent weeks.
For those who continue to support RSS Pieces we thank you and look forward to many years of prosperous relations.