Some would say that low barriers to entry encourage people to enter the real estate business who can't or won't learn the basics and legal things necessary to properly represent clients. Well, there's a judge in Philadelphia who is in our business, so legalities shouldn't be a problem, or...

The only problem is that this judge has been running his real estate business out of his legal chambers for years, using his legal secretary to collect rents, handle correspondence, and represent him in landlord-tenant court. I wonder how many times the court thing has been necessary?

I've written before about the "noise" on Twitter. I don't follow that many people on any one of my accounts, simply because I actually only want to follow people whose material I want to read. Following hundreds would kill any ability to actually pay attention to what they're saying. And, even if someone has content I like, if they tweet 20 or more times every day, I'll usually unfollow, as it dilutes my ability to keep up.

With the advent of lists on Twitter, there has been a lot of fanfare. However, I follow no lists, as they just aggregate someone else's noise into one follow in many cases. I just checked my account at http://twitter.com/jimkimmons, and looked at the 11 lists on which I've been placed.

Ten of the lists averaged only 11 followers each, with two having none. The largest follower list of that ten had 39 people following the list. Kudos to Pat Kitano, as his list stood far apart from that group, with more than 100 followers. But, that list follows almost 500 people. I just couldn't bring myself to follow that many people's tweets. It's just too much noise. As with Twitter itself, and other relatively new social networks, we'll be seeing changes and developments for a while. I just don't think I've seen a value in lists when I can create searches to bring out the "content" I want, no matter who tweeted it. I do, of course, follow Pat though.

Citigroup has announced that the lender will suspend foreclosure evictions and foreclosure notices for thirty days during the holidays. Between December 18 and January 17, approximately 4000 Citigroup customers in mortgage trouble will be left alone.

Actually, it's a nice thing to do. But, the new year will get off to a back-to-normal start for these 4000 families come mid-January. I would appreciate the postponement of action for the season if I were one of the group, but I'm not sure how much more "merry" it would make the holiday. Citigroup says that their Homeowner Assistance Program has helped 715,000 to avoid foreclosure since 2007.

I believe "content is king" for ultimate SEO power, but content isn't just text anymore. With Google and other search engines indexing the content of images and video now, your site should have some of all of it. But, forgetting search engines for now, it's all about providing the type of content today's web searchers and real estate buyers and sellers want. They want photos and video of an area, especially if they're moving there from somewhere else. They want to orient themselves, so mapping your images is a plus and makes your site more valuable to them.

I just spent a couple of weeks trying out a number of different software and online solutions for sharing photos, geotagging them, and mapping photo locations for embedding on websites. Take advantage of that research with my list of resources for geotagging photos and mapping on the Web. It fits into my plan of providing today's solutions that are free or cost very little, yet bring results to your marketing efforts.

Two news releases came through my reader today. They were both on the MSNBC site, but it's hard to know what's going on with new home construction when the two articles are opposite in tone.

• Homebuilder outlook dips despite tax credit.
• Construction of new homes rebounds in Nov.

Oh well, half empty or half full.

I had to write this post as soon as I got home from the mailbox (rural here), and after a bit of research. I had a letter and window decal from Google Maps in the mail, and I was totally lost as to what it was all about. As it turns out, the listing I have on Google's Local Business Center was getting noticed.

It seems that Google Maps did some data collection between July 1 and September 30, 2009. Based on the number of times a site was found on a map search, and the number of times more info was requested (directions or click on business's site), Google sent out these letters and window stickers to around 100,000 businesses in around 5000 towns and cities, giving them the name "Favorite Places."

To be eligible, the business had to be listed in the Local Business Center, as mine was, with up-to-date information about location, services/products, and hours of operation. I had done all of that long ago, hoping to get a little exposure as a listed business in local search business results. Well, I guess it worked better than I thought. My tiny real estate brokerage was one of those 100,000, and the only one in my area that I know of to be listed.

Google even sent me a window decal with a custom QR code that allows someone to take a cell phone picture and be taken to my website. Content, lots of video, and hundreds of images all on my blog-based website is what I attribute it to, as my brokerage is one of the smallest in the area.

Here's more from Google and others on this program:

• Google explanation and video.
• Google's FAQ about Favorite Places.
• CNET Article on Favorite Places.

If you're not listed at the Google Local Business site, get it done. And, if you are, check to see if your information is accurate and up-to-date.

Time Magazine announced today that Ben Bernanke is the selection for 2009's Person of the Year. It's not a celebrity thing, but a selection of an individual who has been very influential in the past year.

As far as celebrity goes, his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, was the "popular" star of Federal monetary policy and Wall Street. Bernanke, lower key and analytical, hasn't been that popular with the public of late, with only 21% in a recent survey showing support for his re-nomination. This can only help in that regard.

Congratulations to Mr. Bernanke as Time's "Person of the Year."

I stumbled across a blog post from earlier this month on Remarkablogger, Real Estate Blogs: Move Beyond Listings, or You're Dead. It's like I found one of my own articles from this site. Actually, several of them. It's all there, community blogging, using the help of others, not pushing listings, a tie-in to travel, and more.

The future of real estate blogging is far from set, but I think that every point made in the post is valid, and I'm practicing many of them on my personal real estate site. Here are some highlights of Michael Martine's post:

• "So... what if your site didn't look much like a "real estate blog" at all? What if it was a lifestyle destination that just happened to have listings, too? What if the site was valuable to people in the community who weren't even in the market to buy or sell property?" More on community blogging here.
• "You're already fielding questions, so turn them into blog posts." More on post ideas from questions.
• "You're already attending community events, so record them on video and write up a quick paragraph or two." More on video for real estate.
• "If your blog becomes a community destination, then the community itself can help you create and maintain content on the blog. You don't have to create all the content-the community can help." More on getting help with posts.

Read the post, as there's a lot more. Thanks, Michael, for helping real estate professionals to see how their blog can become a major source of business in the future.

I've just completed a new step-by-step tutorial, Using Picasa to Geotag Photos and Create Website Maps.  It's hard to beat Google when it comes to great tools that cost little or nothing.  This is no exception.  Using their free Picasa photo management software, and combining it with geotagging and Google Earth, we have the ability to create some great photo maps, with small thumbnail images on the map to show where we took them.

It's easy, free, and you'll be able to add photos to your maps quickly in the future.  Take a look, as I've tested a dozen or more mapping solutions and haven't found one that creates a map this visually appealing and without a lot of work and time.

I just received a SPAM email, at least that's where I sent it, about a wonderful service that, for a cost under $100, would submit my link to "thousands" of real estate websites. The gist of the email and the site it sent me to was that links into your site were valuable, and that this service would provide you with a large number of them at a low cost.

Well, incoming links are good, IF they're from quality sites, and better if they're in textual links that have relevance. This site promised positioning of your backlink on "link pages," long something that Google de-values or blacklists altogether. And, their premier sites, which they say they own, were where your link back would be placed. There were 14 major sites, and I visited each, wanting to get the Google PageRank. It was ZERO (0) for all 14, though some of them had been around for two to four years. As it's also believed by many in SEO that backlinks from PR 6 sites are more valuable than those from PR4 sites, and so on, I think these PageRank numbers accurately describe the value of this service.

Since incoming links are supposed to be one of the most important contributing factors to PageRank, it seems that you can give your money to this site for doing something they haven't been able to accomplish for their own site network. The quote attributed to P.T. Barnum said that there is a "sucker born every minute," but it doesn't have to be you. Content, lots of quality content, and content valued by your site visitors will ultimately bring you the SEO you desire.