There’s a very interesting post over at Reyn Bowman’s blog about the sources of negativity about Durham. Reyn, of course, is the leader of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau and for 20 years has researched and documented the sources of negativity about the Durham community. One conclusion is that much of the word of mouth trashing of Durham comes from a very small percentage of the population in nearby communities that use that all to common tactic of building themselves up by tearing others down.
Reyn has always had to walk a line similar to what is being attempted in this blog. How do you point out the sources of negativity without calling attention to the negativity itself? Reyn and the DCVB are just like I or any Durham real estate agent in that we are trying to sell the community. Without much real effort at SEO (search engine optimization) DurhamLuxRE.com is consistently landing on the first page of results for several key search phrases. This means that buyers from all over the world and not just local sellers can easily stumble upon it.
My original purpose in launching the blog early in the Spring was to convince sellers in Durham and their listing agents to sell the community and not just houses. This is especially important with the luxury home market in Durham which has been in the doldrums for a number of years. Because of this, I’ve been shifting the emphasis to what is great about this community and added a special report on buying luxury property in Durham. But every once in a while we have to remind ourselves that there are those in nearby communities, including real estate agents, that see the good things happening in Durham as a challenge to their own sense of superiority.
There are a number of people like Reyn who have spent a good part of their professional careers not only promoting Durham but helping create the real substance of our claims to be a great place to live and work. It’s time for all agents in Durham to take advantage of it in every piece of copy they write about a listing for flyers, email campaigns to other agents and listing information that is now easily syndicated on dozens of web sites. There is much more detail on how to do that contained in the Luxury Home Report available through this link or the link in the left sidebar.
