I spent a good portion of today pondering Jeff Brown’s post on hyper-local farming. (I know, I know; my ex-wife used to wonder how I was going to pay the bills too.) In a post over on BloodhoundBlog, Jeff celebrates the vindication of his earlier thesis on hyper-local blogging – or in Jeff’s case farming – by none other than Seth Godin. I have come to the conclusion, and you can read the post and his links for yourself here, that Jeff is recommending a cat blog.
Well… maybe not a cat blog in the common sense of the term. But look at what he is saying:
“Imagine, if you will, a blog site having more info on your neighborhood than you ever thought existed. I don’t mean boring real estate stuff, as any yahoo can generate that boring crap. I’m talking about reading about your son Steve’s game winning, last inning double in yesterday’s Little League game — complete with pictures. Yep, each neighborhood blog would be a de facto newspaper, with all the work that goes with it.”
This is not a blog about your real estate business and it surely is not a blog about all of your skills as an agent. Giving people that information is like delivering the newspaper to their door and just about as dead. People no longer want their news edited and parsed for them. They would much rather go online and research their own areas of topical interest. In the same way, few clients these days are going to be impressed with the number of closings you had last year or the number of letters after your name. What they are interested in (what they have always been interested in) is how these things affect THEM.
People hold a very strong interest in themselves. That is our nature and I am as guilty of it as you are. The main message of being a 2.0 agent is realizing that your client wants it to be about them and not you. I know many agents realized that a long time ago, but the power to market this change in the zeitgeist has been lacking. Until now. The reason people post pictures of their cat is because they like their cat. You are rarely going to earn business by posting a picture of your little ball of furry fun, but you will definitely garner the interest of your prospects by posting a picture of theirs.
A true, hyper-local farming blog is really a cat blog for everyone in your community. There are pictures of their little league stars and stories on the school art program their children entered (along with a picture or two that they forgot to take). There is information on their neighborhood, their street and yes even their house. Greg Swann elaborated on this in relation to Zillow and Zestifarming:
Not just to Zillow; to clients too. Push is a tough way to create interest, pull is a snap. If you succeeded in the ultimate (albeit unattainable) goal of creating a cat blog for each and every person in your farm, what do you think their interest would be? The pull interest? Do you think you would achieve top of mind status? If you demonstrated your level of expertise (of direct, personal expertise) by giving your clients what they crave most: themselves, how many would look to you when it was time to buy or sell their home? How close to that lofty goal does one have to get in order to own that farm? Lots of work – yes. But imagine that level of farm ownership. Hyper-local farming: one big cat blog. 
Filed under: LIFE THAT POPs, MARKETING, REALTORS , blogging, cat blogs, hyper-local, Success
[...] Want Hyper-Local Blogging? Think Cat Blog, by Sean Purcell. [...]
Everyone says it better than I do.
You and Greg nail this stuff. Greg was, for the record, talking about hyper-local months before I every put a finger on my keyboard on the subject.
Love the Cat Blog analogy.
If I could clone myself I’d put up 3-5 hyper-locals in La Mesa. The first one to do that intelligently will be earning two commas in a year.
And THAT is what I call $EO.
Jeff,
I am so far behind you I am coming back around. Don’t know if La Mesa needs 3-5, but 1-2 would sure get things going. Two talking heads can find four times the stringers.
Any interest…
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Jeff & Sean,
I have a fledgling hyper-local blog in Virginia…that was started after I read Jeff’s article on the subject last year. I have been asking people in the area what they’d like to read in that kind of blog, and I hear mostly that they’d like to hear about real estate from me.
Their thinking seems to be, if I want to buy something, I’ll go to Craigslist, if I want Little League stuff I’ll go to the Little League Website. But where do I go if I want Neighborhood Profiles, recent sales, and info on issues affecting the value of my home? They have told me that’s the kind on info they would look to me for. And by the way, providing that info is about a full time job.
So I see what you are saying about covering local events and little league teams (I’m a coach, theres 20-30 teams a kid in that neighborhood could be on) and the school art program, but it all seems a bit much, and it seems to be out of my area of expertise.
My real estate information on the blog tends to focus on what someone moving to the community would want to know. I have included community pictures, and allowed others in the community to add their own pictures. This blog is only a couple months old, and hasn’t received a lot of attention at this point. The community I’m targeting has 22,000 people in 8500 homes so is a little larger than just a neighborhood, but sees itself as a community, which is rare in our area. I’d love your advice on making this a great blog for this community and my business.
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