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By now everyone knows gas prices are edging toward the $4 a gallon mark and will probably hit that magic number by the 4th of July holiday. In the meantime, Crystal Coast real estate rental agencies and hotels are feeling the effects of vacationers procrastinating. In an effort to fill hotel rooms and attract advanced rental bookings, hotels and rental agencies along the NC coast are offering some good discounts and gas/grocery cards.

Are the NC Beach Deals For Real?

In case you haven't heard, the media is telling everyone there are deals to had for beach rental property and discounted hotel rooms on the Crystal Coast. Well guess what? They got it right! I searched the Internet and found 7 websites of rental agencies and an Atlantic Beach hotel offering discounts on properties for rent all along the Southern Outer Banks

Congratulations N&O, now you've totally confused Triangle area home buyers. My question is this, does the editor have a clue what their reporters are writing about? Do they communicate with one another? My guess is this, N&O reporters live in silos like other large company employees not knowing what the left hand is doing from the right.

In Case You Missed It....

If you don't know what I'm talking about, checkout today's N&O paper. On page 1 of the Business section (D) of today's paper, N&O Reporter Dudley Price wrote a nice piece on "MORE LUXE FOR THE BUCKS." Here is where it gets really confusing. In the Real Estate section (Section G), N&O writer Denise Sherman wrote this headline in the very same paper (1-26-08); "Triangle builders see strong start to 2008." Triangle home buyers, are you totally confused about the realities of today's Triangle real estate market?

How you ask? I'll tell you how. Many agents (not all!) "force" you, the Internet consumer to divulge your name and email address before you can access property search tools and online information about buying and selling a home. They are with holding valuable information and tools that would normally help educate you to the home buying and selling process. So I have to ask you as the Internet consumer, what do you do when you arrive at one of those real estate websites that demand your contact information before you can access property search tools and area information?

Have you ever found a title for a blog intriguing and began reading the post only to find it was longer than a “War and Peace” novel, and worse yet, the text all just ran together. Captivating headlines, readability and correct use of bullets and white space are all important aspects to making a post or website artilce easy to read and attractive to your audience. In addition, blogs and website articles should be written to be attractive to search engines too! Below are some timely tips to help make your articles and blog easier to find by Google and reader friendly for your site visitors too!

Realtors are slowly embracing the use of online social communities and blogging as a strategy to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise. In today's online world, you either adopt the strategy or get left behind. There so many obvious benefits to blogging and using social networks its difficult to understand why only about 5% of all Realtors blog (according to the latest data provided by NAR).

Below is an abbreviated list of the tremendous reasons to totally embrace this medium and use social communities. I've also thrown in some blogging tips for good measure:

• Online social communities and your stand alone blog sites provide a direct connection with consumers allowing you to prove you are a SME (Subject Matter Expert). For those of you familiar with Six Sigma, this term will be quickly recognized. Blogs allow you to interact with your audience immediately building a bridge between you and the consumer. Realtors - be warned. Don't rush the Internet Empowered Consumer. For they are the ones in control in this medium, not you. Take it slow and easy proving yourself knowledgeable and providing helpful information.
• Cater to your audience. Speak to their wants, needs and fears. Forget about writing about yourself. It's just noise to the consumer!
• Tackle hot-button topics that "speak" to the issues. Be open and honest and don't try to make the consumer "drink your koolaid". Just tell it like it is.
• Be real and "speak" (write) in your own blog voice. Conversational style writing works best and is easiest to read and understand. Leave out your real estate agent speak. Terms like "CMA" and "MLS" might be confusing especially to first-time buyers and sellers.
• Tremendous SEO benefit. Blogs attract search engines like bees to honey. More on this later!
• Use all opportunities. Create profiles at the following sites. MySpace, Facebook, Eons, Active Rain, Rain City, Dakno Blog (gratuitous plug), Share.Triangle, LinkedIn, Flickr, Spoke, Technoratti, and MyBlogLog.
• Great blog domain names are abundant. Remember, if you're thinking about buying a domain and building a "stand alone" blog site, keep these domain name principals in mind. Keep the domain name short, make it memorable and keep it simple free of numeric references. Also stay with the .com extensions.

That should be enough reasons to start blogging and establish profiles on the above social networking websites. Now give me your feedback and let me know if you agree or disagree with anything I've posted.

What's in store for the future of real estate marketing technologies and what uncharted waters will it cross? I for one have some ideas of my own along some Brad Carroll came up with. So gather around the table and let's toss a few ideas out there and see what you think.

Cell Phones - The Next Wave of Technology

In countries like Japan and the Scandinavian countries, the cell phone industry is light years ahead of the US. The typical Japanese cell phone has a 5 MP camera and expanded Internet capabilities far ahead of ours. The same is true in Norway and other Scandinavian countries where everyone owns a cell phone. In these countries better features are driven by state-of-the-art networking infrastructures with greater bandwidth capabilities. The US is woefully behind the technology-curve mostly due to politics (what else!) and the lack of willingness on behalf of the cell phone industry to invest in their networks. Once we catch up with these countries, you'll see some major advancements how we will use our cell phones and what part they will play in our industry. That being said, Brad said one day in the not to distant future, property flyers posted in those silly little boxes and tubes that leak and are always empty will be replaced by a sign that says " www.123MainStreet.com/cell. Once you arrive at that property website, it will be a "scaled to cell phone sized webpage" for the property with images and an instant contact feature to book a showing. That technology is much closer than we think even with our current bandwidth limitations.