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Listicles, Drones, James Taylor and Rude Home Sellers
Drones are the hottest thing in aerial photography for homes in Sacramento
For some labrador-squirrel-jerk reason, I found myself distracted the other day by 9 Things James Taylor Will Never Understand, and laughing myself silly. Oh, wait, I do recall why I ended up on that website when I have so many other more important tasks at hand: real estate-related stuff to do for my clients and also to research how to become a Known Traveler (from Sacramento, you have to go to San Francisco) to avoid those long lines at U.S. Customs.
I googled the term “listicles” because I have been asked by About.com to write such a thing for a new campaign.
Turns out I’ve been writing listicles all along for years and never realized it. Listicles are helpful content that is short, sweet and easily digested, generally numbered with subheads.
For example, I could write about the top 5 things to love and hate about drones. I love drones because they definitely help to market my listings in Sacramento. I get aerial views not otherwise available unless I were flying overhead myself in a helicopter and clutching a puke bag. The photos show geography surrounding my listing, including whether the roof needs to be replaced. Obviously, I would not include drone photography if the home backed up to a school or a commercial building.
I also have this vision in my brain of the future of drones, when Amazon and Pizza Hut begin employing drones, and how they might fill the airspace over your house, buzzing about like annoying dune buggies on the beach. Bite my shiny metal ass, you’ll probably mutter as you stare up at the skies in amazement. Drones can be irritating.
It would be nice, though, if drones could carry your packages without the packaging. Because we order so much stuff online nowadays, the recycling centers have got to be bulging due to all of this excess cardboard and packaging materials. Right now we have 9 boxes sitting on the floor at our living room entrance, delivered by UPS from a pet food supplier. Trying to find time today to unpack those boxes will prove as difficult as trying to find space in our recycling can for the waste packaging.
Much as I moan, you’ve got to agree, though that a guy who writes I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song; I just can’t remember who to send it to, surely should win the prize for Top 10 Stupid Song Lyrics. Plus, if I had a drone handy, I could have it sent over to south Sacramento yesterday to verify my listing appointment with certain Sacramento home sellers. Instead, I tossed my jeans, dressed up and prepared a listing package for a seller who couldn’t even open the door wide enough, as I stood on her front steps juggling a Supra iBox, my camera equipment and her listing paperwork, to properly explain over the noise of her barking dogs why the appointment was canceled and she forgot to mention it.
I can count with 2 fingers, not the peace sign, mind you, but the poke-in-the-eyes two fingers, how many times that has ever happened in my Sacramento real estate career. Those sellers don’t realize it, but they need me more than I need them. This woman today is on her own.
Humor in Dying and the Affidavit of Death
You never know who you will touch with your words when you write online, but you can bet it will probably be a person who is alive. An agent in my office yesterday asked how I can be “everywhere online,” and he asked if I spend a lot of time in front of the computer. Not really. I write a blog every day about what I do as a Sacramento real estate agent. I’ve written other articles online that stay there and continue to be read by people day after day and year after year. Like I reminded the agent in my office yesterday, I was sitting on top of a desk talking to him. I was not at my computer.
That’s the beauty of writing online. People will read articles long after they are written. I also write a homebuying newsletter that I send out every week to my subscriber base. I can’t tell you how many people subscribe to it because it’s confidential information that About.com won’t let me divulge, but let’s just say it’s a good thing I don’t have to maintain nor update that database of subscribers.
I often highlight a new article I’ve written in my newsletter. Most of the time, I never hear anything from anybody, but the article I wrote about an Affidavit of Death generated a lot of emails (positive, thank goodness). First, I must admit that it is a humor piece. It starts out pretty serious, and then it heads into a different direction, one that I hope tickles. It might take you a little while to figure out that it is one huge parody. Real estate agents in particular find it amusing. It was a real estate agent who initially asked me about an Affidavit of Death as a marketing tool and prompted the article.
I’ve had people ask if the agent who initially wrote to me had responded to this article, and yes, she did. She changed her mind after reading it, apparently. Another agent wrote yesterday to say she received my newsletter while she was in the hospital with her husband. He died a few hours later. Right when she was sitting there reading my Affidavit of Death article! . . . and laughing. She thanked me for it. I guess humor helps. See, it’s stuff like this that makes my day.
It also reminds me that no matter how bad a situation might seem, there is generally an upside to it somewhere.
An Unusual Saturday for This Sacramento Real Estate Agent
It is not usual for me to meet with clients nor attend a listing presentation on a Saturday. I generally use this day for writing my blogs, articles and newsletters for my homebuying website at About.com. In between, I answer calls about listings, book future appointments, so it’s not like I’m totally tuned out to my Sacramento real estate obligations, but it’s mandatory that I set aside a little bit of time in schedule to write.
However, today, I have three appointments. They could not be scheduled at any other time, so I had to squeeze them into my Saturday. If I were a less organized person, this would not be possible, but I am flexible enough to be able to make last-minute changes. In fact, I seriously doubt another agent in Sacramento could survive the fast pace of my real estate business yet still maintain time to focus on each client individually like I do. Not one of my clients ever feel as though I don’t have enough time for them, because I make time for every client.
I’m meeting first with a couple who have a fourplex in downtown Sacramento, and I’ve already received preapproval on their short sale. I wanted to make sure they had no worries nor concerns when we go into the short sale. This meant juggling a few events for them so it better met their personal schedule. We have a preapproved price, so we’re basically meeting to shake hands face-to-face and sign the listing paperwork. This will go on the market on Monday.
Next, I have a seller who needs to sign a purchase contract and has no access to a fax machine nor a printer. She cannot scan documents. She could pop in to any of our 17 offices and I could email the documents to that office, but she prefers to come to my office, and that’s OK. I will bring the purchase offer with me and highlight the places where she needs to sign, just so we don’t miss any of those all-important initials.
Ending my day is a listing presentation for a seller in the Pocket. My team member Barbara Dow was out showing homes yesterday and called this seller to make an appointment to show her home. The seller said there were no showings. Apparently, the seller told her she was so mad at her agent that she had just dumped her agent. I asked Barbara to give me the phone number, and I checked MLS. Sure enough, the listing had been withdrawn. So, I called the seller and said: “Hey, I hear you’re looking for a real estate agent? Well, guess what? I am a Sacramento real estate agent! How lucky is that?”
I can always write tomorrow.
A Twist to Online Plagiarism
Seven years ago next month I started a part-time gig writing for About.com as its Home Buying & Selling Guide. Now, 7 years might not seem like a long time to some people, but say that to an 18-year-old graduating from high school, who would have been in grade school 7 years ago, and it’s a long time. It’s not long enough, though, for some people to forget when they have plagiarized.
Oh, some are bold enough to simply copy content from the web onto any other page they so feel free to choose — word for word — and they don’t realize they are plagiarizing or they simply don’t care. They often don’t care because they think nobody will do anything to them, but people do track them down. They are traceable. They have domain names and IP addresses. Everybody has a face on the Internet, if they participate. Stealing content online is a crime just the same as grabbing an old lady’s purse and running off with it. It’s maybe even more severe because it’s done on a grander scale.
There are some who think as long as they give the author credit for the work, it’s OK. But they are dead wrong. Unless the author has given permission, it is not OK. It is still theft.
Others, take words and reuse them, and they swipe thoughts and rework them, which is OK as long as it’s not identical. When it appears identical and there are direct phrases and bullet points used, a plagiarizer is treading on thin water. The correct way to use another person’s content online is to quote a few lines and then link directly to that article. That’s permissible.
I have sold some of my About.com articles. Or, maybe I should say the New York Times, which owned About.com until recently, sold them for me. Because words have a dollar value and articles are proprietary.
You can see how I might have been a bit shocked yesterday when a person out of the clear blue wrote an email accusing me of plagiarism. I was in shock because her accusations were impossible. I looked at the article she referenced, which was a piece I wrote when I started at About.com, in May of 2006. I then examined the article on her website, which she thought was plagiarized. It was very similar to my article. I could see the concern. The only problem was she or her website had stolen my content, not the other way around. She was the plagiarizer.
Sometimes, these things come down to your word against their word. Even if you are innocent, you have to prove you are innocent. I noted the copyright date at the bottom of her website, which was 2008. That was 2 years after I had written my article. I also sent her screen shot of the date the article was archived.
Now the story is she might have rewritten the content for a writer who had stolen my article. But the thing is people who swipe other people’s material and belongings are thieves. Thieves are so used to lying that they begin to believe their own lies in order to survive. As such, this plagiarizer most likely has no recollection of stealing my content. She did apologize for her brashness, so I give her that, but still. No excuse. Her stolen content was removed.
Of all the odd things that could happen, this incident really took the cake.
