What do alligators eat?  And WHY, oh why would anyone who wants to embrace real estate technology care?

Turns out, you see, alligators actually eat the misinformed.  Yep, what you don’t know about the alligator, or the alligator’s teeth, or the alligator’s friends….just might get you scratched up, bloodied or even eaten.

So let’s have some fun learning about alligators, and more importantly, how to make sure you don’t look like bait to them.  Repeat after me:  “Link bait good….alligator bait bad.”

Watch this short clip from “The Beaver.”  Go ahead.  It’s only a minute long.

Technology Eats Up the Misinformed

I’ve been blogging now for many years, and prior to that I was in the computer or software industry for long enough to make me Ward Cleaver.  Enough of me, though.  I’m here today not to tout product X, or social networking Y, and not even to promote being a geek.  I am, however, here to make sure that if you’re newer to real estate technology, then you should consider yourself possible alligator bait, and take some steps to make sure you don’t get eaten alive by all the technology alligators you’re about to encounter.

 Take Your Real Estate Technology Pulse

Let’s see what your technology quotient is.  Not your geek technology quotient, but your real estate technology quotient.  Ready?

  • How much money did you make last year….directly related and measurable from technology?
  • How many of your clients told you they used you MOSTLY because of your technology savvy?
  • When you think Real Estate Technology, do you think operations…or marketing?
  • Did you ever purchase a piece of real estate technology only to ask (like the Beaver) “Is this all there is?”
  • Or harder hitting yet, did you ever buy technology only to ask yourself “Wally, have we’ve been tooken?”

If you answered that you make lots of money from your technology, have clients that rave about your technology, don’t care whether the technology is for operations or marketing, and never got bitten by a promise of some type of real estate technology guaranteed to suck chrome off a bumper…..then stop coming to this site and using up all the good air.  🙂

Because that’s why we’re here, at this site, with these readers and contributors, discussing these topics.  I want the day to start with the recognition that sometimes the alligators get us before we even get into the boat.  Here’s an example of what I mean.

My Blog Isn’t Getting Any Leads

This was a bit of a joke with me and some of my friends for a while.  A joke, that is, until I realized that the technology I had purchased, the plan I had drawn up to drive leads to me through the internet, and the extremely interesting marketing I was doing in my blogging just simply weren’t working.  These things were in fact…….food for the alligators.

First, I wasn’t making any money from my blog.  But boy was I spending money!  Upfront money for one site.  Redesign of another site.  SEO advice.  Tutoring on HTML and PHP.  And of course, the major outlay……my time.  Hours, days, weeks, and months went by with my learning more, feeling smarter, but getting nada back from my investment in time and money.

Next, my clients loved the fact that I was talking and working towards providing them with benefits that derived from my real estate technology, but none of them was FINDING me through that technology.  It was still referrals, open houses, sign calls and good old fashioned networking that were bringing in the leads.  My clients loved me mostly because they had found me….and practically none of them had found me because of my technology.

Next, I failed to differentiate between using technology to better the operational aspects of my business and using technology to market.  I’m going to write a couple of posts just on this one aspect, but for now all I ask is that you clearly know what the new technology you’ve bought is supposed to do for you.  Will it shave time off doing an offer, printing, emailing and editing?  Of will it create an overwhelming urge on the part of a person you don’t even know yet to pick up the phone, text you, or come to your office?

Finally, the alligators I’m referring to are the countless real estate technology vendors who promised X, delivered Y, and slithered back into the swamp.  In this mix were really good vendors, with really great products, looking for their next protege to climb to the top utilizing their particular product.  And then there were the predators that simply sucked time and money, taking me down slowly, doing the death roll until at last I gave up and moved onto the next new dazzling product that came my way.

 After the Intervention – A Real Estate Site that Actually Works!

I named this article about alligators because (unless you live in the South), these animals only FEEL dangerous to most of us.  As we move forward in the next couple of articles and talk about how to see the warning signs of a real estate web site that is simply an alligator waiting to devour your investments, or to recognize a web site product and approach that has drained the swamp of all the creatures that are a danger to your success, I felt it was necessary to have this mini intervention, an intervention where I speak first and say that I have failed over and over again in my quest for the best technology to use in my real estate business.

Whew!  That felt good.

In our next article I’ll go through my learning curve with specific pitfalls and hard earned resolutions to the problems many of us face as we move our real estate companies and businesses into a more technology based market.  I think you will benefit from seeing my mistakes, and then how those mistakes were resolved as I grew wiser in my approach to finding the right products and people for my business.

And in the final article in this series I’ll outline my current status, some of my visions for how our technology/business relationships can prosper, and what to demand of both yourself and the vendors you align yourself with so that you’ll be saying:  “My Blog Gets All The Leads I Want.”