Wallingford Wired Has a New Home

After 8 months on Blogger, we've decided to take the plunge and move this blog to a new home over on Wordpress.org. It was a decision we agonized over for more than a few days, but in the end all the comments from other bloggers we network with convinced us that a self-hosted blog on Wordpress was the way to go. The new URL for Wallingford Wired is:

http://WallingfordWired.com

All of our posts from here have been migrated over there, and the new layout has a very clean and crisp feel to it that has us very excited about the future. We appreciate everyone who has frequented us here and invite you, and future readers who might happen upon this blog, to visit us at our new home!

Thanks again, and see you over at the new Wallingford Wired!

Warm Regards,

Pat and Wayne Harriman
The Harriman Team

UPDATE: What The Real Estate Consumer Wants From Your Blog

If you remember, I wrote a post and posed a question on BuzzDash a month ago to try to get a feeling for what the real estate consumer is looking for when they read a real estate blog. Well, the poll has expired and the results, meager though they are, are in. Keep in mind that the debate settled into roughly two camps: those for posting mainly real estate info, like listings and market updates, and those who maintain that the blog should be predominantly community information based.

From April 9th to May 9th, 36 intrepid souls cast their vote for what they want to see in a real estate blog, and it seems the proponents of real estate info have prevailed: 69%, or 25 out of 36 people, agreed that they look first and foremost for listings. Another 14% (5 people) were looking for real estate related news, while only 11% (4 people) look for community information first. Two people, perhaps frustrated Michigan or Florida primary voters looking for something to vote on that really counted, chose "Other" as the thing that drew their attention in real estate blogs. Poor Souls.

I was actually surprised by the low turnout for this hotly debated and thought-provoking question, especially since the real estate market (at least where I live) seems to be raising its rotting corpse from the dead. Maybe BuzzDash was the wrong place to ask the question, but they do get a lot of traffic to their Real Estate polls so I thought this issue might get some attention. I have placed a similar poll on PollDaddy to see if there is any interest generated there, but I'm not hopeful.

Speaking of Poll Daddy, there are a few polls there of minor interest. Some of the more popular ones are:

1. Who is the most ubiquitous real estate blogger? (Jeff Turner leading with 37% of the 38 votes cast, Jay Thompson trailing with 21%)
2. What is the most important service your real estate agent provides? (53% say "Listing my property in the MLS"), and my personal favorite submitted by the inimitable Broker Bryant,
   
3. If I wrote a book about real estate, would you...(A. Want a hard copy, B. Want an e-book, C. Have no interest, D. Be very interested, or E. Throw it in the lake. The majority would want the hard copy, a testament to BB's stature in the RE.net.)

I got a kick out of those polls, but back to my own poll. An inquiring mind wants to know...as a real estate blog reader, what kind of info do you most want to see in a blog? Listings? Community info? A balanced mix of the two, or something else all together? Be you a realtor or a potential buyer/seller, feel free to post a comment here and let us know how you feel about this issue. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make up a good excuse as to why I voted to throw BB's book in the lake...

What The Real Estate Consumer Wants From Your Blog

For some time now, there has been, let's say, a...disagreement between many prominent bloggers regarding what the typical real estate consumer wants when they come to your blog.

On the one hand, there is a faction that believes that the consummate real estate blog should be chock full of juicy morsels of information concerning...real estate. Listings, prices, mortgage rates, open houses, foreclosures, short sales, how the local market is doing, etc. Everything a person needs to know about real estate, all wrapped up nice and neat. The torchbearers of this camp, including such illustrious names as Mary McKnight, Bryant Tutas, and Laurie Manny believe that, in order to give your clients want they want, you should feed them a majority of real estate-related info, all the time. Doing this, they argue, ensures that you will place high in the search engines for your keywords, ensuring that potential clients can find you and ask for your services. And after all, isn't that what you're in business for?

The other camp, helmed by the esteemed Jim Cronin, James Kimmons and Todd Carpenter, espouses the view that you should provide your readers with as much community information as they can stand. The reason for this, they say, is to establish yourself as the community expert by writing on subjects such as community events, reviews of local businesses (such as restaurants, dry cleaners, banks, etc.), local government as it pertains to home ownership, and local history. Now, this also appears to be a worthy goal for any realtor wanting to corner their market, dontcha think? Yeah, I thought so too.

A third, but somewhat less well represented, group has taken the stand that, hey, maybe if you kinda strike an even balance between real estate and community info, I might just stick around for a while and maybe, just maybe, I'll contact you when it's time for me to buy/sell/rent/invest.
Blogger Sean Purcell had an eloquent take on this position over at BloodhoundBlog. Me being the diplomatic, middle-of-the-road kind of guy that I am, I tend to pitch my tent in this camp, or at least try to. This way, I'm hopefully giving my present and future clients equal measures of what they want and want they don't know they need.

Having said all this, I don't see a whole lot of information about someone actually asking Mr. and Mrs. Public exactly what it is they want when they read a real estate blog. So I asked.

There's a pretty engaging web site called BuzzDash where you can take little mini-opinion polls covering a multiude of subjects, including real estate. You create your own little poll and if the honchos at BuzzDash deem your question worthy of asking, they post it to their site. And being the generous guys they are, they let you post it to yours, too. Just take a look at the sidebar to the left and you'll see my personal mini-poll as it appears on BuzzDash with up-to-the-minute stats on what the people want. Cool, huh? Not very scientific, perhaps, but cool nonetheless. It's going to run for 30 days after I posted it, or until May 9th. If you'd like to keep track of the results, just come visit my blog anytime, the poll will remain up until it expires. Or, if I can get it extended, maybe forever.

Just remember, take the results with a grain of salt. The consumer doesn't really know what they want anyway.