Miamism Blog – Thanks Roy Llera
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers, loyal followers and even those competitors that have an eye on us!! 😉 We thought it would be appropriate to re-publish this article with the story about how we started to blog. Blogging has become a crucial part of our business and the time and effort we dedicate is a direct reflection of our business practice. The truth is that I can’t even imagine where we would be without our blog.
I want to share an amazing article by Joshua Brown, “The Reformed Broker”, from Backstage Wallstreet, entitled “How Do You Have So Much Time to Blog” … if you blog, this will make you smile. If you don’t, you will begin to understand. (Thanks @tcar for sharing it).
And lastly, thanks to Realtor.com for their recognition today, Realtors We Are Thankful For And What They Are Thankful For | REALTOR.com® Blog.
How we got into blogging
Lately, I have been asked how I got into blogging and I thought this was an answer that deserved a post.
It was Roy Llera, our family photographer that first mentioned blogging to me in April of 2006. Roy has been doing our family portraits for years and also does our business shots. He is local, he is good and it doesn’t hurt that he’s a great guy.
We had done some family shots at the beach and Roy suggested doing some photographs of “Rick & Ines” just in case we decided to use them, heck we were there already, might as well. When I got the proofs I thought they looked a bit too romantic and not professional enough and asked Roy to do studio pictures as well. Roy rolled his eyes and made the appointment.
When picking up those stiff studio pix Roy asked (probably not in these exact words but bear with me)
“In your marketing, don’t you want to portray yourselves in those pictures? Don’t you want people to know what you are about? Why would it bother you if the picture portrayed you as being happy and in love?”
That was like a big rock had dropped on our heads from above.
Then he asked if we had heard of “blogging” – I said “WHAT??….how do you spell it?”
He explained briefly that blogging was like a daily journal where we could write about our daily business and our involvement in the community, show pictures of Rick coaching little league, The local Heidi Hewes Chapter events, a family moving into their new Miami Shores home. Where we could be down to earth and show our real human side to our customers.
That’s all it took folks.  I went home and started doing some research…..started putting thoughts on paper, I mean blog…..and less than a year later MIAMISM.com was born.
I am so grateful to Roy Llera for the idea and for giving me that push to change our marketing and our boring static website. So go check out Roy Llera’s website and blog, they are fantastic and he is THE BOMB!
Roy Llera’s studio is located at 11510 NE 2nd Avenue in Miami and his telephone number is (305) 759-2600
**original article published on July 25th, 2007**
Mrs. Miamism:
1) Why didn’t u include the date u started clogging in yr recent blog entry?
2) what kind of filter do u use 2 get that effect that makes the pic look like a pastel or oil painting?
I finally figured out why I enjoy reading your (blog) posts so much.
U always immediately show the reader(s) how much u love living in sofla w all yr excitement n enthusiasm. Your writing VOICE is totally engaging , regardless whether u r writing abt sofla, real estate, or heaven forbid, architecture!!
Keith,
Thanks for the questions – I added the date to the post. Roy mentioned blogging to me in April of 2006 and I started blogging right away. I think it was a BLOGGER blog and didn’t know what I was doing…then I started with Active Rain in August of the same year. But Miamism was born a year later in 2007 right before the Summer.
Thanks for recognizing the VOICE by the way…I work hard at making my writing tone conversational and not at all formal.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!