Luxury Real Estate

By Robert Lockard

I hope this doesn’t sound too prideful, but I really like what I write. And I do a lot of writing as the Public Relations & Media Specialist for LuxuryRealEstate.com.

While my blogs on ActiveRain and the LuxuryRealEstate.com Blog are sometimes quickly written and they don’t have the benefit of as much outside editing as I usually receive for my other work, I think they give you a taste of my writing skill and style.

My mind is constantly working before, during and after the writing process. I think about what is interesting about the story I am currently writing about. I ponder why my target readers would bother to read what I’ve written. I try to decide which points are most important and how best to convey them. I only have a limited amount of time to create my news releases, newsletters, magazine articles and other works, so I need to make quick decisions.

For the Week in Review newsletter I create each week, I receive a lot of news releases from members of the LuxuryRealEstate.com network. I am very grateful for that fact because it helps me keep our newsletters filled with great material. Many of the stories I receive are really interesting while others are about new employees, anniversaries and other topics that don’t seem too interesting at first. However, once I go through a news story, I can usually find something remarkable in it and I usually rewrite the headline so it’s much more eye-catching.

With these thoughts in mind, I’d like to talk about my recent experience writing a news release on a seemingly average topic: a Ewing & Clark, Inc. broker celebrating her 20^th anniversary. I don’t mean that the broker, Jane Powers, is average; I’m just saying that I’ve read many stories similar to hers. As I approached this story I tried to remember that this is an important moment for her, and she has many great stories to tell after 20 successful years in the Seattle luxury market.

So I sat down to write about her story. Many times when I write I have a sudden inspiration that I know did not come from me. This time was no different. I suddenly had a thought that I should look up remarkable events that occurred in July 1988, when Powers started with her company. As it turned out, I discovered that a little movie called “Die Hard” debuted in theaters the same day that Powers began working at Ewing & Clark.

I was ecstatic by the creative opportunities opened up by this coincidence.

I am a big movie buff and I couldn’t pass up this chance to add some really unique flavor to Powers’ story. So that’s exactly what I did. You can see the final product here. I wrote the first and second-to-last paragraphs first and then worked on the rest of it. I had a blast writing this story.

I got butterflies of nervous excitement when I showed it to Powers herself for approval. Luckily, she liked my take on her story and I got to distribute it through my usual PR sources.

I believe any story can be interesting to read. I could have written Powers’ news release in a really boring, run-of-the-mill way, but I found that little something special that turned it into a great story. I hope that you can find the greatness in your stories and, as long as you’re a LuxuryRealEstate.com member, I’d love to post them in the Week in Review!


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more. By the way, John Brian Losh is the Chairman/CEO of Ewing & Clark, which is a member of the Luxury Real Estate Board of Regents. The copy of the “Die Hard” movie poster is from www.flickr.com/photos/nickslidepics/442646618 and it is the copyright of Nick Slide.

By Jean-Yves Piton

I recently came across some remarkable facts about blogging. Did you know that, as of 2008, 70 million weblogs exist, about 120,000 new blogs are started each day or 1.4 new blogs are created every second, according to a report by David Sifry, founder and CEO of technorati.

Impressive, isn’t it? And blogging keeps on growing universally!

As a business professional, do yourself a favor: embrace this change rapidly.

Thanks to a recent analysis of the online behaviors of over 2 million worldwide candidates performed by comScore, Six Apart and Gawker Media, we discovered that bloggers are “significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections. Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many Web pages as the Internet average, and they are more likely to shop online.”

Clearly, this fact alone should help you appreciate the importance of reaching out to this ever-growing target audience in order to grow your business.

Equally important, do not underestimate the power of this innovative tool as part of your online marketing strategy worldwide. Search-engine marketing is predominantly gaining ground vis-à-vis other forms of online marketing. As you blog, your blog entries will consistently appear in search engines like Google and Yahoo, resulting in higher search-engine rankings to be seen by virtually anyone around the world.

Needless to say, blogging is much cheaper than owning and maintaining a complete website, and represents the most inexpensive method to date to advertise your company's brand name and products on the Internet.


Editor’s Note:
Jean-Yves Piton is the Global Services Membership Manager for LuxuryRealEstate.com. He assists Bente Madtsen, the Director of Global Services, in expanding the LuxuryRealEstate.com brand into even more countries around the world. Blogs are amazing tools for gaining traffic, and their usefulness is probably just going to grow as bloggers refine their craft. Be mindful of some possible legal issues involved in blogging, but other than that, happy blogging! The photo of the blog apartment building is from www.flickr.com/photos/poagao/96805244 and it is the copyright of Poagao.