By: 
Today I received an email from Trulia announcing a number of (potentially) welcome changes to the way a member’s profile is set up:
- Include testimonials and experience
- Claim up to 20 areas of expertise
- Add a headline to your profile e.g., “The best realtor around”
- Add up to two links to help your Website SEO
I added the bold to the above, because it illustrates so clearly my biggest gripe with Trulia: The site encourages REALTORS® to be unethical. I’ll explain further, with a quote from the official Membership Marks Manual, which can be found on Realtor.org:
Never
· Never use descriptive words or phrases to modify the MARKS. This is explicitly prohibited by Article V, Section 7 of the Bylaws of the National Association. Adjectives may suggest an improper vocational meaning and also tend to distort the consistent understanding and image of these terms, thereby undermining their identifying function:
–Main Street’s most qualified REALTOR®
–Consult a professional REALTOR®
–Doe County’s leading REALTOR®
–The concerned REALTOR®
–Number one REALTOR-ASSOCIATE®
–Your local REALTOR®
As you can see, the above recommended use for the “headline to your profile”, as encouraged by Trulia, is never to be used. As a result, I have three recommendations for Trulia:
- I encourage Trulia to find a way to improve its feedback loop with REALTORS® to avoid making recommendations like this in the future. Mistakes like this tell me that there isn’t a past or present REALTOR® on staff at Trulia, or at least in the marketing department, that is overseeing the communication to the REALTOR® community.
- I encourage Trulia to send out a retraction email, immediately, noting a proper and ethical way to use the new profile headline.
- I encourage Trulia to police its own site, looking for REALTORS® that may not see the retraction, and as such have inadvertently set up an unethical Trulia Profile.
As of yet, I haven’t had time to look into the new “areas of expertise” feature, to discover how it benefits both agents and non-agents. If it addresses one of my other big gripes, namely agents working outside their area of expertise, I’ll be a huge, huge fan of the change.
10 responses so far ↓
Hi Steve!
Thanks. We appreciate your feedback.
The use of “best Realtor® around” was tongue in cheek. Sorry if it
didn’t come across that way.
We do not police the community so to speak, instead we give agents and consumers the opportunity to do so…and this has been very effective thus far.
We ran multiple agent focus groups to get feedback from Realtors® prior to launching the new profile to make it as useful and robust as possible and to give consumers the most useful information while helping agents market themselves more effectively.
We will continue to improve and enhance the profile as well as all other aspects of the site. We’re truly heading in the right direction.
Regards,
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia.com
Rudy, I understand tongue in cheek, but perhaps I’m more sensitive to this today, due to the dental appointment I had this morning.
I also know about the way that the community polices itself…as I wrote previously, I think it’s ineffective. I do understand that Trulia feels it is effective, because the system hasn’t changed, even though myself and several other agents have been vocal in our opinion to the contrary.
Hi Steve!
I hope you feel better. I know how those dental appointments can be….Hey, you’re entitled to your opinion about how our community operates. I respect that and value your participation on Voices. I will most certainly keep you in the loop as to any changes we make.
Thanks for your understanding.
Best,
Rudy
P.S. Your profile is looking good……
Rudy-
I think Trulia has the potential to and often does great things for buyers, sellers, and agents. But I also think Trulia’s system encourages agents to behave in unethical and sometimes illegal ways. My only request has been, to remove those “features” that encourage bad behavior by agents. Pete promised changes, and a couple of small steps in the right direction have definitely been taken. As you can see, I didn’t read the email today as tongue in cheek, so today stunned me as a major step in the wrong direction.
Anyway, I welcome the opportunity to provide input in the future. I’d like nothing more than for Trulia Voices to be a place where the public can consistently get expert advice, in a legal and ethical way.
PS- just a simple cleaning today was all…but it played nicely with the dialogue.
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super clear that trulia was showing some personality, being a little irreverent, and in no way meant to encourage ethical violations.
come on, steve, lighten up!
“super clear”. Apparently it wasn’t super clear, a point I’ve already stated.
I’m glad Rudy came by and clarified the company’s position, at least with me. I do wonder how many other agents read the announcement as other than “showing some personality”, but never chose to voice an opinion, and thus have will never know what Trulia’s actual intent with the message was.
Hi Steve!
Great hanging w/ you and the rest of the crew on Sunday. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to get to know each other even better in the near future.
Stay well my friend.
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia
Hey Rudy, I was disappointed that you and I didn’t get to chat last Sunday. As we were all leaving, I realized I had missed a golden opportunity. Rest assured I won’t make that mistake again. My excuse, is that my end of the table was pretty engaging.
Likewise…..my side of the table was pretty engaging as well…..
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