Citi’s So Nice I Bought It Twice (a Tin Foil Hat production)

Alright, let’s see if I got this straight:

• Less than 4 weeks ago Citi was purchasing Wachovia in a deal brokered by the FDIC.
• Less than 3 weeks ago the Fed injected $25 billion into Citi
• Less than 1 week ago Citi’s shares tumbled
• Yesterday the Fed injected ANOTHER $20 billion into Citi

Am I forgetting anything?  Oh yeah:

• Based on share price, Citi is now worth $20 billion… which means we (the taxpayers) have bought her twice!

When Citi was buying Wachovia waaaaaaay back in October, it was apparently strong enough to handle the $42 billion in losses it agreed to take on in exchange for the Fed covering the other $270 billion that Wachovia was going to generate in bad loans.  But now we discover that they actually needed us to purchase them… TWICE, and we’re still unsure if they’ll survive.

(For a clearer picture of which lenders had these bad loans and would fail, read The Mortgage Dance from July of 2008 and click on the “accounting debacle” link which was originally delivered in a speech in August of 2007!  Or you can read about Countrywide beginning its fall back in May of 2007.  My point is that much of this seems obvious now and was actually visible on the horizon quite a while ago.  But the Fed keeps up its Animal House impression, telling us to “remain calm… all is well.”  The possibility of a conspiracy grows so large that now i don’t even leave the house without my Tin Foil Hat.)

I have to wonder if there was more going on in that initial Wachovia deal.  Was Citi getting a cash infusion of some type?  One of the influential directors at Citi is Robert Rubin – the former secretary of the Treasury.  I’m not sure I understand how he didn’t see that Citi was only three weeks away from failing.  Although I can certainly understand how he might have an inside ear at the Treasury.  Was the Wachovia deal a way to support Citi without making a public scene?  That would explain the ensuing public scene (the technical term in economics is hissy-fit) that Citi AND the Fed threw when Wells Fargo came along and said they would buy Wachovia without any help from the government.  The Chairman of the FDIC would have none of it.  She said they still backed the Citi plan!!  Citi itself stomped its feet to the tune of a $60 billion lawsuit.  Sixty billion dollars?  Is that what they were looking for all along?  How in the world did the FDIC stand there with a straight face and say they still backed Citi when Wells was offering 7 times as much with no taxpayer risk?  How in the world did Citi plan to show that losing Wachovia to Wells Fargo cost them $60 billion?  Maybe they all believed what they were saying… Maybe they all forgot their Wheaties that week… Or maybe there was more going on than we were lead to believe.

I’m not sayin’… I’m just sayin’…

Filed under: "TIN FOIL HAT" Productions

Social Media Marketing and Real Estate

Earlier this month I spoke at the Social Media Marketing National Conference in Orlando.  The conference itself was over twelve hours of real estate marketing ideas you can implement right now.  Each speaker was a recognized expert in their field and I left with my head spinning.  This post is part of a series in which I will share what I learned.

By now most of us have heard the term Social Media Marketing.  It is variously described as the future of prospecting, a revolutionary version of networking for a 2.0 world, the miracle of permission based marketing and – if I remember correctly – a cure for the common cold.  Do you ever feel as if there is some tremendous movement sweeping through the industry and no one has stopped to explain it?  You hear all the sizzle but what’s needed is for someone to actually throw a big, juicy steak on your plate.  Well I hope you’re hungry because Brian Brady worked the grill for hours at the Unchained Conference in Orlando and he did not disappoint.  Not only did he serve up the meat of the matter, he cut it into bite size pieces and made it easy to digest.

His very first statement set the tone for the rest of his presentation, but regular readers of mine will not be surprised by it: “Marketing is an Obsession.”  I couldn’t agree more, although I might add more: “Marketing is More Than an Obsession… It’s a Passion.”  He goes on to lay out the basis for marketing in a nutshell:

• New customers are the life-blood of a practice
• Farming new customers produces new customers
• The Internet allows us to automate our Unique Selling Proposition

Think about the power in that last point.  Automating your USP and reaching an exponentially larger audience with no extra effort or cost is a magical formula.

The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing (with my notes)

1. DECLARATION OF IDENTITY – Here I am and I am and here’s what I do.  Don’t hide your light under a bushel.  There is no point to marketing if people don’t know how they can use you or why.
2. IDENTITY BY ASSOCIATION – You are judged by the company you keep.  This is true in all aspects of life but can be utilized advantageously on-line.  Make purposeful decisions about what groups you join and who you associate with; the perception of who you are can be greatly enhanced.
3. CONSUMER GENERATED CONVERSATION – By declaring your identity in well chosen places, you open yourself to contact by consumers.  Either directly, through forums or in question & answer format, the consumer will talk to you if you are listening.
4. PROVIDER GENERATED CONVERSATION – This is what you push out; the answer to the question, the story that relates a benefit, the information that is useful.  This is your opportunity to really shine.
5. OFF-LINE CONVERSATION – The secret!  This is the step missed by so many.  The first four pillars will enable you to acquire prospects, but this game is a contact sport.  The whole point of marketing is to cause the consumer to take action.  This reminds me of a little retail wisdom I heard from Home Depot’s founders.  They said “we didn’t spend all that money paying for advertising and buying products just to have the consumer walk away because the check-out line was too long.”  When someone walks up to your register with money in their hand… engage them!

Setting Traps on the Internet

You want to be where your potential clients can find you and engage you.  The easiest way to find that place is by asking previous clients where they go on the internet.  Once you know, show up and build a profile.  Your profile is pure marketing, by which I mean a golden opportunity to share your USP and not a place to hammer consumers with sales gimmicks.  Keep track of your profiles, revisit them from time to time and make sure they are all up to date and expressive.  Connect with everyone you know.  Be an active member of the community (both online and off).  Another idea Brian shared is to update your status bar on Facebook.  (What’s that?  You’re not on Facebook yet?  Your clients are…)  Also comment on other people’s status bar updates.  Again, be an active part of the community.

Goals

So what are the goals of social media marketing?  Brian points out the primary goal is get people to your landing page, your blog or website.  This is your office… your home.  Once there they can get to know you and transform from a cold call to a warm lead.  You would like them to subscribe to your Provider Generated Conversations.

• RSS feed is OK
• email subscription is better
• e-zine subscription is way-better

If you are doing it right and providing useful information to people you’ll get what’s called a full data dump.  In other words, the consumer will share all of their relevant information with you.  This allows you to start moving them into your community and practicing Mayoral Marketing.  Just don’t forget to continuously feed the community with good ideas.

The Ubiquitous Road

Ubiquitous yü-ˈbi-kwə-təs – from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: existing or being everywhere at the same time : constantly encountered .  Here are a number of the best places to practice your social media marketing according to Brian:

• LinkedIn – go to the “answer questions” section and get involved
• Meetup – whatever your interest, it’s out there
• Facebook – average age is now over 35 years old
• Zillow – another opportunity to answer questions for potential clients
• My Space – younger and hipper than Facebook – source of the next generation of buyers
• YouTube – real estate’s use of video will be widespread in the coming years

In the end, Social Media Marketing is all about being in front of your prospects, consumers, clients and community on a regular basis.  It is the process of creating your own community of raving fans by being where they are, making sure they know who you are and giving them answers and information they can use.  Consumers have the power in the real estate business relationship.  They can choose to learn about you (or not learn about you) as they see fit.  They reject most forms of “push” marketing (cold calls, email spam, flyers on the door step, etc.) and are out there – in the various mediums just mentioned.  Imagine a potential client stumbling across your front doorstep… make sure your porchlight is on and your door is open.  Maybe even offer them a steak.

Filed under: REALTORS, SELLERS, WORLD OF 2.0 , Social Media Marketing

Real Estate Marketing is Greek to Me

Earlier this month I spoke at the Social Media Marketing National Conference in Orlando.  The conference itself was over twelve hours of real estate marketing ideas you can implement right now.  Each speaker was a recognized expert in their field and I left with my head spinning.  This post is part of a series in which I will share what I learned.

Greg Swann is famous, if not infamous, throughout the RE.net world.  To give you an idea of his reach: the term RE.net was coined by him.  He is the creator of the BloodhoundBlog, a nationwide industry blog with a host of expert contributors posting multiple articles each day.  Their are tens of thousands of people reading the blog at any one time and the comments are at least as informative as the posts.  Greg’s philosophy is one of absolute free market activity and it is based on the watershed leap in humanity handed down to us by the Greeks.  Greg’s philosophy boils down to one, concise statement of freedom… which, much like dessert, you cannot have until you have finished reading this post.

Greg pointed out that most civilizations will do just what is needed to survive and no more.  When faced with a new problem they will do just enough to overcome it but again, no more.  The Greeks were the first culture to come along and reach for more than just surviving; to become, as Greg wrote: ”a doer for the sake of having done, a thinker for the sake of having thought, a poet for poetry’s own sake.”  We, each and every one of us, has that opportunity.  We are free to succeed and we are free to fail.  We are free to control our business and we are free to believe others control it.  But we are not free from making the choice.  Either you choose to recognize and more importantly acknowledge that you alone are responsible for your thoughts, actions and results or by definition you cede control of them to someone else.  The only true wealth in the world, Greg shared, is intellectual capital.

Here then, are ten things Greg suggested you do – all of them FREE - to increase your intellectual capital immediately (with my notes in italics):

• Start your own weblog.
  • does not have to be perfect
  • does have to be updated frequently
  • does have to be on topic
• Comments are fine if you just do not want to blog. (called comment marketing)
• Blog all of your listings.
• Don’t spin your wheels in the RE.net echo chambers. (other agents are not your audience)
• Good at weblogging?  Build a blogging network.
  • PTA
  • Local handymen
  • any group of interest to you
• Use LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
• Start a ding-dang Ning group (don’t know what it is? Google baby…)
• Leave your scent trail all over Zillow and Trulia’s trees.
  • post pictures of homes in your farm on Zillow
  • answer questions in the forums
  • make sure all of the above links back to you (linkation, linkation, linkation)
• Post a profile and make it great (marketing opportunity)
  • say what you would say if in person
  • use pictures
  • make it a part of your scent on Zillow, Trulia, etc.
• Don’t sabotage your business plan with internet irresponsibility
  • remember there is no privacy – it does not exist
  • your clients are out there – don’t write it if you wouldn’t want them reading it

Now for dessert.  If you accept ownership of your own production and embrace the exploding information age, you will learn it is not the Geek who inherits the world – it is the Greek who will inherit the world.  Or, as Greg serves it up in his one, concise statement of freedom: “You will never have to take crap from morons again.”

Filed under: REALTORS, SELLERS, WORLD OF 2.0

Unchained Internet Marketing Notes – Overview

Random Thoughts
A day and a half since I left Unchained Orlando, but my head is still spinning.  Maybe it was Orlando – the home of Disneyworld – that added to the surreal nature of the experience.  If you haven’t been there, Orlando is beautiful in a Disney kind of way: everything is clean and bright and just a little plasticized.  Maybe the buildings all use the same 7/8 scale that Disney uses, or maybe Unchained was just oversized… hard to say.

Over the next few days I am going to share a few of the gold nuggets I panned from the rapid flood of information that was one long, intense, ecstatic day at Unchained.  But not today.  Today I am still sifting and understanding.  Today I have only themes and simple data – points of interest that do not connect into a greater whole.  For new information to infiltrate and impact our daily activities it must be processed and that is where I find myself: clarifying the headers, organizing the outline and slowly expanding the void with pages and pages of ideas handed to me while I was there.  Bloodhound Unchained in 36 hours.  A blur of activity, a multitude of speakers – each sharing freely and every last one of them speaking much too quickly for my longhand chicken scratch – and laughing.  Laughing so much at times my sides hurt.

Dark Theme Emerges
The one theme I find over and over again is most assuredly not on Greg or Brian’s agenda, but the results speak for themselves.  Allow me a few words on most of the speakers and tell me if you see a thematic element:

• we opened with Greg Swann discussing the Greeks and the disciplined violence that was the Spartans
• you had Brian Brady sharing the dark secrets of being a Ninja in social media marketing
• Teri Lussier warned of a fatal addiction to the Tweet drug
• there was Kelley Koehler exhibiting the cool, detached efficiency of a hit man targeting Google
• Mitch Ribak covered 100mph marketing and proved that speed does kill the competition
• we were exposed to John Rowles’ killer app
• and finally, Eric Blackwell explained how to make the organically grown poison known as SEO

Is it just me, or was there a message here?  A call to arms, so to speak, that our competition did not (or could not) heed.

An Outsider’s View
These notes and those to follow are “an outsider’s view from inside the pound.”  Why?  Because I have a lot more in common with most of you reading this than I do with the speakers with whom I shared a stage.  Take a look at the people who spoke at this event: SEO experts, SMM inventers, Tech giants and Real Estate innovators.  This is the deep end of the RE.net pool and I try to stay out of it.  My area of specialty (such as it is) might be called the Passion of Marketing.  In that regard I try to be a very big fish in a relatively small pond.  I am what you might call a disciple of the Dan Kennedy school: take everything they will give, devour it, digest it, apply it and use it… boots on the ground and skins on the wall and all that.  I share all this so you know where I am coming from when I tell you to invest in yourself, invest in your business and invest in the next Unchained event.   The fee is ridiculously low.  (If I were running Unchained the cost would be higher by a factor of 8.)  Since I am not running it I will gladly pay what they ask.  But if you go, remember this secret:

Get Inside the Pound
Here you go, the secret to Unchained: find a way to spend time with the people behind this thing.  Go to lunch with them.  Offer to buy them dinner.  Stalk them in the hallways!  I had the great privilege of bunking with Greg Swann, Brian Brady, Eric Blackwell and Teri & Jaime Lussier.  It was like TWO Unchained events at the same time and gun to my head (there’s that violent imagery again) I couldn’t tell you which gave me more information.  If you have the opportunity to attend the next Unchained and they offer “Breakfast With (fill in your favorite speaker)”… take it!  Pay for it!  Just bring your pad and your appetite and I guarantee you will double your return.

Filed under: MARKETING, REALTORS, WORLD OF 2.0 , Social Media Marketing, Unchained

Tin Foil Hats Optional

In an earlier post I laid out how my distrust of conspiracy theories is being severely challenged by our government and what appears to be a naked power grab. I am loath to continue in this vein for fear of being labeled the nut job who writes about Area 51 and Men in Black. But my tin foil hat fits well and the strange shenanigans continue unabated at the government level.

WASHINGTON – The former chief risk officer at investment bank Bear Stearns Cos., which nearly collapsed in March, is now a senior official of the Federal Reserve division that supervises U.S. banks.

Michael Alix, who worked at Bear Stearns for 12 years and was its senior risk manager since 2006, was named a senior vice president in the bank supervision group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Fed announced. (emphasis mine)

Read full story here.

So, just to make sure I am getting this straight: the senior man in charge of assessing risk for a company that… failed miserably in its risk assessments (costing billions) will now “help oversee the financial safety and soundness of banks.”

What?

We (the taxpayers) pledged $29 billion to backstop the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan and the government hires the individual originally tasked with preventing such meltdowns and puts him in charge of evaluating bank risks?

Each time I find myself with tin foil hat in hand, I think it only prudent to end the post the same way I did that first one: I am no longer confused… I am scared. Are you? Are you paying attention?

(This post was first published here.)

Filed under: "TIN FOIL HAT" Productions