Cultural blogging
Posted by Pat Kitano at 11/23/2007 1:24 PM 
Categories: Lead Generation, San Francisco Bay Area, Blogging
Categories: Lead Generation, San Francisco Bay Area, Blogging
Real estate agents whose native language is Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean (and others) have the opportunity to engage their own native communities in California and other metropolitan areas with high density of new immigrants.
One good strategy for foreign born RE agents is to create hyperlocal blogs in their native language that document the activities of their native communities - social events, celebrations, new restaurants and shops, film/video reviews, places to go - and supplement the blog with commentary on local real estate. The mission is cultural service and positioning oneself as a hub for that community. It's a soft sell that real estate agents aren't used to practicing - instead of blaring that you are a real estate agent looking for leads, show the reader that you're trusted as a community leader. The readers understand who you are and your profession, and may appreciate the fact that you're not hard sell. This facilitates natural networking and eventual contact.
We can still count US-based bilingual real estate blogs on one hand. As evidence, google "Chinese real estate blog" and note that almost all the citations point to mainland China real estate and not to any Realtors serving a Chinese consumer market in the US. Now go to Google Japan at www.google.co.jp (your PC may show random characters if Japanese/Asian fonts aren't loaded) and type in uber-keyword "real estate". Transparent Real Estate shows up in the 12th position by virtue of the small amount of Japanese language I have on Transparent's home page (it's been ranked as high as the 4th position earlier this year).
Immigrants, particularly Asians, use the internet extensively to get news in their own language (anecdote: my English fluent wife spends most of her time on Japanese sites). If they indeed also use their native language Google to research local real estate, developing a native language real estate blog would seem to be a no-brainer for gaining quick recognition.
In order to bring Transparent up to the first page on the Google Japan search for the keyword "real estate", I'll need to update with another Japanese language article.
Pat. Thanks for the fabulous idea. We here in Vancouver are blessed with an incredible multi-cultural community.
I have taken your ethnic-hyperlocal concept and passed it on to my fellow REALTORS as a Christmas gift. It will be fun to watch it grow.
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You can now be known as Transparent International Real Estate Pat!
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Hey Pat - I've written a couple of posts in Spanish on my own blog and feel that some English speaking customers may get offended. I have absolutely no intentions of creating a separate Spanish Blog (although it has crossed my mind).
What do you think of having just a category that reads "articles in Spanish"?
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Miami? Articles in Spanish? Como no? Writing in Spanish is a service and separating the articles into their own section is a good solution so English speaking readers don't have to manually skip them.
If they don't like it in Florida, move to California Ines baby! You'd be a star...
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You are DA MAN! thanks for the push....first Lani....now the final "empujon"!
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Pat
Here in Miami if I spoke French, Italian, or Russian, I would be blogging exclusively in THAT language. Those are the countries with GREAT EXCHANGE RATES.
There is so much opportunity here (cultural blogging)---it could almost be too easy!
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With the whole connected through the internet, even things like blogs have become an important tool. Even for a real estate agent it is a must. So in this regard, a native language based blog would only mean an increased customer traffic for a real estate agent. You see through a blog you not only get to present ideas and opinions. It also is a great resource of learning, besides being a place to list your properties. Being an agent listed with resortscape.com ( http://www.resortscape.com/default.aspx?ct=r&q=&utm_medium=linktous&utm_source=PT ) and so I even get many foreigners looking for properties in my area. I am even planning on coming up with articles in Spanish and Chinese. Hope my English speaking clients don't feel offended.
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Hi Pat, great post! This is something that is bound to happen more in the future. The reality is that in the United States people speak so many different languages. My wife is from South America and she prefers to research in Spanish most of the time. The great lack of content available online is a wide open opportunity. Next week we are going to launch a hyper local real estate blog in Spanish for Los Angeles. I will keep you posted. Thanks for the great post!
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