February :: SoundBiteBlog.com 2010 :: SoundBiteBlog.com

Welcome back to the 8th episode of our informative series,

“Developing a Social Media Strategy”

If you’ve missed out on the previous installments, here they are:

“Social Media is a Conversation, not an Advertisement!”     “The ‘WHY’ of Social Media?“

“Taking AIM”      “Social Media Sushi“      “5 Keys to Having a Killer Blog!“

“Top 10 Ways to Feed Your Blog.”      “What’s in Your Social Media Tool Belt?“

In this next part of our series, we’re going to take a bold step….

“Beyond The Blog”

At this point, we’re going to assume that you have a blog and that you’ve been diligently posting good quality content there on a regular basis. The content that you generate can be one of the most valuable and effective marketing resources that you have. Think of your blog as the publishing house where your wealth of professional knowledge, advice, and experience is skillfully formatted and attractively packaged for consumption by your intended audience.

Your Blog Content is Like Cow Manure

In order for your valued blog content to be most effective and achieve its fullest impact, it needs to be spread around. The next successive step or key in your social media strategy is selecting the best tools/methods to spread/push/distribute/syndicate links to your prized content, thereby exposing it to the largest audience possible. Fortunately, given the tremendous amount of inter-connectivity being offered across multiple platforms, we have an abundance of viable venues to choose from.

Before we identify a few of those venues, allow me to make a couple of helpful suggestions as you’re evaluating potential sites:

Push Come to Shove

Don’t push or syndicate your content to a site unless you intend on actively participating on that site. In other words, don’t just automatically post a link from your blog article to your Twitter account if you never or rarely engage in actual conversations there. As with traditional ‘Interruption-Style’ marketing/advertising, your links simply become elevator noise to be ignored.

If You Blogged in the Woods, Would Anyone Listen?

Ensure that the platforms you choose are relevant for your content subject matter as well as your intended audience. Few things can be more frustrating than spending an inordinate amount of time and energy attempting to converse with a brick wall. Do the people you’re hoping to attract through your writing frequent the targeted site regularly? Are they actually being exposed to your articles? Obviously, this is where some good analytics need to be consistently employed and evaluated. We’ll discuss that in more detail later.

Go to Where the Conversations Are

While there are the obvious choices of highly popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. there may be other smaller regional or even local platforms you can access as well. Does your local newspaper have a web presence with community bloggers? Or perhaps the Chamber of Commerce or Regional Visitors/Convention Bureau? Even hyper-local Neighborhood Blogs/networks are becoming more and more popular. You need to have an intimate knowledge of the ‘webscape’ of your specific market area and know what platforms/networks people are frequenting to connect and converse.

Stay Focused and Disciplined

When accessing social networks, it’s very easy to become sidetracked and lured away into time-consuming activities that offer very little, if any, return on your investment, i.e., Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.. Even on networks such as ActiveRain we can become overly absorbed in chasing points or engaged in heated debates over politics/religion. Develop a consistent daily time-frame and task schedule for your social media involvements. Being focused and disciplined will allow you the time necessary to accomplish all of your traditional methods of marketing.

The Usual Suspects

It’s relatively easy to identify the more popular sites currently being used for effectively expanding one’s digital footprint and engaging in meaningful connections/conversations with your Sphere and potential clients. I’m going to name a few here, and in our next installment, I’ll begin to break each of them down individually, demonstrate how they can be incorporated into your social media strategy, and used  to effectively grow your business.

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DISCLAIMER: The author of this series is not a social media guru. Any similarity to such title, character or history of any said individual is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

An avid blogger since 2005, Rich has published over 1000 articles, most related to real estate. He enjoys using the tools of social media to brag/boast about the quality of Life on the picturesque Kitsap Peninsula in scenic WA State. He is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Crabbing in the Hood, Everyday CK, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Tags: SMO, Social Media for Small Business, social media optimization, social media strategy, social networks

Let me start off by saying I am a big fan of VA financing. It’s one of the few loan products available for active-duty service members and veterans that requires little to no money up front in order to purchase a home. My first two homes were financed with VA home loans, otherwise I would have been a renter for a very long time!

It’s just that I really dislike the whole VA appraisal process. While we have many highly qualified appraisers here in Kitsap County WA, and most of them do an admirable job at determining property valuations, the whole VA appraisal process is horribly flawed.

If you follow any of my blogs, you know I’ve written on this subject many times before:

VA Appraisals and the Luck of the Draw Death of a Dream:  VA Appraisals Re-Visited

Curse of the VA Appraisal VA (Very Arbitrary) Appraisals in Kitsap County WA

Challenging VA Appraisals and Other Urban Legends

The challenge of accurately appraising a home’s current value in today’s volatile real estate market can be a difficult task to begin with. Add to that the rather nebulous and seemingly ‘subjective’ guidelines provided by the VA, and you definitely have a formula for potential frustration/stress.

With the recent sub-prime debacle, and the growing rate of short sales/foreclosures, lenders have really tightened their home loan requirements. This extremely cautious level of examination funnels down to the appraisers who are working on behalf of the Buyers and Lender to ensure that the property is worth the sales price agreed to in the purchase contract. As a result, we are beginning to experience an increasing number of appraisals that are coming in ‘under’ value, or below the mutually agreed contract sales price.

In addition to determining value, VA appraisers are also tasked with identifying any major structural defects or safety issues. Unfortunately, all too many times, the definition of what constitutes a structural defect or safety issue is somewhat vague or subjective. The VA guidelines don’t provide the appraiser with any substantive definitions as to what constitutes a safety hazard or the specific requirements that must be met in order to correct them. And to compound the problem, these items are normally called out as a ‘condition’ for funding, meaning that they must be resolved/corrected prior to closing.

I’ve endured a few transactions where so-called ‘conditions’ were imposed and they ended up killing the deal. Granted, if the roof has a big hole in it or the foundation is crumbling, such issues should be addressed and resolved prior to closing.

Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t always rule the day where VA appraisals are concerned. If a window sill has chipped paint (a purely cosmetic issue) and it’s the middle of January, wouldn’t  it make more sense to paint it later in the Spring or Summer when it isn’t raining? It doesn’t matter when it comes to VA financing. If the condition can’t be remedied before closing, the transaction won’t be funded. Period.

Decks are one of those home features that typically garners a lot of scrutiny. Is it structurally sound? Does it have adequate railings? But what if the deck is only 12 inches above ground level? Are railings necessary? The VA guidelines won’t tell you. It’s completely up to the respective appraiser and what their personal interpretation/definition of a potential safety hazard is.

As real estate professionals, we work very hard and diligently to ensure that the entire transaction goes as smoothly as possible for our clients. Unfortunately, elements like the VA appraisal are outside our ability to control. All we can do is prepare our clients for the frustrating uncertainties that may occur, and deal with them as best we can.

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Everyday CK, and Crabbing in the Hood, or you can e-mail him:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Tags: bangor subase, deal killers, naval base kitsap, va appraisals, va appraisers, va financing, va home loans, va mortgages

The following is a brief analysis of the combined single-family home and condo market within Kitsap County, Washington for February 2010, provided by Rich Jacobson of Windermere Real Estate, in Silverdale, WA (this includes data for Bainbridge Island WA)

• Properties currently active on the market:  1730
• Properties closed in the last 180 days:  1358
• Average Sales Price:  $284,294
• Average List Price:  $295,084
• Ratio of List Price to Sales Price: 97%
• Average Days on Market: 94
• Sales Pending this Week: 93

Central Kitsap WA statistics separately: (Area 150)

• Properties currently Active on the market:  144
• Properties closed in last 180 days:  160
• Average Sales Price:  $236,201
• Average List Price:  $238,972
• Ratio of List Price to Sales Price: 99%
• Average Days on Market: 80
• Sales Pending this week: 7

For additional area specific market statistics, go to www.KitsapLife.com

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE MARKET NOW?

If I could pick one word to describe the current housing market, it would be ‘uncertainty.’

Most of us would love to believe that things will pick up as we enter the Spring season. Typically, we see a notable overall improvement in both buying and selling of residential properties. But with all the unknowns and instability of our nation’s economy, it’s difficult to accurately predict the direction the market will go in the next month or two.

Short Sales and Foreclosures will obviously continue to impact the market, but to what extent, no one is  sure.

Home prices here in Kitsap County WA, continued to slide in January, adding to the nearly 9% drop we experienced in 2009 over 2008, according to data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

As a comparison, the median sales price of closed homes in January 2010, $224,000, was 4.4 percent less than in January 2008.

Regardless, there continues to be a few exceptions to the rule. There were three north-end communities – Poulsbo, Lofall and Hansville, and two communities in South Kitsap -  Retsil and Manchester – that all enjoyed positive increases in sales prices when compared with the previous month. Close proximity of these communities to ample waterfront was no doubt an influence.

Poulsbo’s median closing price in January was $364,250; Lofall’s $450,000; Hansville’s $429,900; and Retsil and Manchester were at $287,450.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEW BLOG ‘EVERYDAY CK’

‘Everyday CK’ – My New Blog on the Kitsap Sun

Just wanted to mention that I was recently afforded the opportunity of joining the team of bloggers on the Kitsap Sun website.

My blog is entitled ‘Everyday CK’ and is geared towards sharing information and encouraging conversations about the Central Kitsap area.

Please take a moment to hop over and subscribe!   ‘Everyday CK‘

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Everyday CK, and Crabbing in the Hood, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Tags: central kitsap wa real estate, kitsap county wa market report, Kitsap County WA real estate, kitsap peninsula, kitsaplife.com, Silverdale WA Real Estate

There’s been a lot of somewhat heated yet healthy discussion and debate lately regarding the upcoming local school support levies being voted upon here in Kitsap County WA by February 9th.

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An avid blogger since 2005, Rich has published over 1000 articles, most related to real estate. He enjoys using the tools of social media to brag/boast about the quality of Life on the picturesque Kitsap Peninsula in scenic WA State. He is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, ActiveRain, Crabbing in the Hood, Everyday CK, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Tags: Central Kitsap School District, chris stokke, cksd, education, funding, greg lynch, kitsap county wa schools, school support levy, silverdale wa