Marketing

Just my random thought of the day.  There are ways to build demand without creating suckers. Only focusing on maximizing profits from your customers can’t be sustained. Once a critical mass has been reached, you will have a growth rate the approaches zero rapidly

Go forth and do great things.

Real Estate

As I’m looking over a statistical analysis of the active properties in Snohomish County, there are a few details that I find interesting.

  1. 5+ bedroom homes are selling quite fast (averaging 83 days on market)
  2. They’re selling faster than 3 bedroom homes (89 days)
  3. In third place are 4 bedroom homes at 94 days
    1. I would’ve expected them to sell faster than 5+…
  4. 2 bedrooms are the slowest sellers at 134 days on market
  5. Condos are selling faster than houses
    1. 2 bedroom condos are averaging 55 days
    2. 3 bedrooms are going in 58 days

It’s good to see condos taking off. I would expect the lack of inventory has been driving that. With all the details, though, involved in closing a condo, I’m surprised they’re closing faster.

Go figure!

 

LinkedIn

I assume all of you readers are using LinkedIn. Do you have any strategy? At this point, my main focus has simply been to connect to >1 person / week, which I’ve had no problem accomplishing. However, I’m confident that there’s much more I could be doing. I’d love to hear what success you have, ideas, etc.

More Ballen Seminar Thoughts

Just over a week a ago, I attended at social media workshop hosted by Lori Ballen. Covered a great deal of content that I deeply care about, thus there’s tons to write about. There’s one piece that really struck me, though. Her ability to connect.

One thing that happens regularly for her: people who she’s never met treating her like she’s their best friend. These are people who have only connected with her via social media. For all the criticism about social media destroying society, clearly these tools still enables us to bond.

Utilized well, people can connect solidly to brands, ideas, individuals. This gives communicators powerful ways to affect our audience. And elicit cynicism. If we’re not careful, these tools will end up viewed simply as deceptive marketing tools, building a false sense of connection and, thus, exploitive.

We need to be vigilant, ensuring we strive for genuine connection. Respectful, solution driven, thoughtful, and focused on our customer more than on driving cash-flow. Once your audience becomes jaded, rebuilding that trust is painfully slow and, perhaps, impossible.

Organizing

One thing that often happens with me: odd hour wakefulness focused on organizing. Not out of any sense of anxiety, mind you. Rather, my brain comes alive with ideas. I find it amusing.

My current focus when it comes to personal organizing: realistic daily loads. I’ve been using what I’ll call a “day dump”. I throw most of my outstanding workload into “today”, then shift the un-done into tomorrow. That’s quite frustrating. It makes it look like little gets done. And organizing starts to take much longer, especially as time oases. Plus, when you scroll thru a huge task list, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

I’m trying my best to build my task list into something that has a real chance of getting accomplished. Helps keep my main foci on page one, and not scroll around looking for sheet I should do next.