You don’t mix wine with emotions — Hemingway
You don’t mix meat with milk — God
You don’t mix alcohol and tats — Ashlee Simpson
You don’t mix Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 — Me
Your site is either 1.0 or 2.0. In my mind, the twain should never meet. You can’t graft a few Web 2.0 branches onto your old school trunk and expect results.
I’ve spoken at a bunch of events over the past few months. I’m seeing real enthusiasm for new ways of treating customers and marketing property. I get a lot of email and LinkedIn invites after these events. People are eager to connect, to share. But they also reveal some common mistakes. It is from these well-intentioned communications that I offer the following:
- Don’t join LinkedIn, invite people to connect, and then send them sales spam.
- Don’t join Facebook and become discouraged when it doesn’t bring you new business immediately.
- Don’t create a mashup and place lead generation forms behind every click.
- Don’t make a video of yourself sitting behind a desk selling yourself.
- Don’t design a new splash page to sit in front of your Advanced Access Website.
- Don’t put a live chat plugin on your site that says you’re available when you’re not.
- Don’t incorporate lead generation into live chat. (see image above)
- Don’t create a blog if you’re only going to post once a month.
- Don’t create a blog if all you write about is your personal life.
- Don’t launch a blog and not allow readers to leave comments.
- Don’t use your standard "Realtor photo" when creating your social network account. Lose the trademark stuff (blue hat, phone to ear, meet my dog).
- Don’t build a Web 2.0 Broker website and make "Find an agent" the first link in the nav bar.
- Don’t build a Web 2.0 site with links that point to pages "under construction". Take a moment and explain what’s coming and when.
If you’re going to embrace Web 2.0 in real estate, don’t dangle your toes in it. Jump in. Halfway doesn’t work here; old and new don’t mix.
- Davison
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I am with you Marc. But sometimes the mixing is inevitable as companies go from one business model to the next.
A gradual change could also work and may be preferable.
Like learning to drink vodka straight by mixing it first with orange juice.
Sure a mix is possible under the right circumstances. Vodka and OJ is a good mix. Vodka and half and half, not so great.
Mixing 2.0 with a traditional 1.0 will, like mixing Vodka and Half and Half, arguably not achieve the desired buzz.
The subject will be turned off by both.
The best advice for a slow moving, careful process is to implement seek exert advice, proceed slowly and use very good vodka.
Marc, I think you've touched upon a really important topic. And you're 100% right when you say Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 don't mix.
One of the real difficulties that I see real estate companies wrestling with is that a traditional company could get away with a Web 1.0 presence. But a traditional company can't have a Web 2.0 presence. When they try, you end up with Mr. Coldwell and Mr. Banker and their blogs and facebook pages.
Your list of web 2.0 Don'ts is spot-on…but if a real estate company doesn't commit to BEING a Web 2.0 company, then they will read that list as some sort of web site development checklist and then wonder why they still fall short.
The underlying question seems to be which of the companies that make up our industry are ready to empower their clients as equals when it comes to having access to information and whether we are ready to greet them with the high level of transparency and genuine authenticity that they have come to expect and demand in every area of their lives? If we are, then Web 2.0 is a natural next step. If not, then we're still going to be launching our template-driven web sites while our agents serenade themselves by practicing their canned scripts in the background.
Though I realise this is off topic (and an older entry) I found this whilst trying to find a list of things that don't mix.
"You don't mix meat with milk"
That one made me smile because one of the best ways to prepare ground beef for going into an acidic environment (i.e. tomato sauce) is to actually cook it in milk.
That being said I really liked this entry – Web 1.0 and 2.0 should not mix and your pet peeves are my pet peeves on this subject.