Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Agents blog for success

When you think of blogging, you think of an online journal - people writing about vacations, posting family photos, politicians getting in trouble for inappropriate comments... But now blogs are starting to earn a purpose for business, and the real estate industry has jumped on board. Companies and individual agents are starting blogs left right and centre, something you should consider or risk missing the boat.

An article I read in the National Post recently reported that 70,000 new blogs are started everyday. The two blogs that our humble little company produce deliver enough traffic to our website to bring as many leads as our paid search campaign brought in. In fact, we put our paid search placements on hold over Christmas, hoping to cool the site down so we could take a break from the leads, but our Edmonton Real Estate blog more than picked up the pace and we spent much of our time of dealing with leads.

The real estate industry has embraced blogging. It is easy to do, requires very little technical skill (if you can send an e-mail you can start a blog), and it gives us professionals a place to demonstrate how much we really do know about selling real estate. If you're sitting there thinking, I barely know what a blog is, and I don't know any agents who've started one, this girl is crazy....think again. I just did a quick search on Google's blogsearch and found 2.5 million blog entries to do with real estate. (Oh, and in case you haven't read any of my previous articles, search engines LOVE blogs....)

A recent article from RISMEDIA talks about a company in the states that started a blog in late October (just after yours truly). Their blog is a place where they write about the houses they are selling, their city's quality of life, give advice on how to obtain a home loan and list the area's accolades, such as its ranking as a top place to retire. They got the idea for the blog after reading an article about real estate blogging in the Wall Street Journal. They once thought blogs were a fad until they discovered Really Simple Syndication, a program that feeds Web sites that consumers choose to them every day.

Their blog hasn't yet resulted directly in the sale of a home, but the agents believe the new tool is getting the word out about their company and them. "Anytime we can get our name out is a good thing." Some weeks there are daily entries while other weeks, submissions might pop up several times. The agents blog as much and as often as they want. Of the office's 70 agents, about 30 are blogging. Visit the Long & Foster Daleville office's blog at roanokerealestate.blogspot.com.

Real estate blogs alone don't necessarily drive buyers to purchase a certain house. They often are the first step to connect a person to a real estate company's Web site where they might find other home listings and information. Most firms link to their own home pages from their blog sites.

2 Comments:

At 11:30 AM, Blogger Sara said...

Hi Heather,
Yes, you are blogging! You can start your own blog for free at www.blogger.com, and/or post comments on other people's blogs. When you do post comments, don't forget to include your website address :)
Sara.

 
At 3:53 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I started blogging last January after reading "Blog" by Hugh Hewitt. www.TwinCitiesRealEstateBlog.com isn't setting any records with hit counters yet, but we get a steady stream of traffic daily.

After starting to play adult hockey last year as well, we started www.TwinCitiesAdultHockeyBlog.com as a "one-stop-shop" of information on classes, clinics, etc. for the adult hockey player here in town.

Now...we have to figure out a way to target the adult hockey community as a real estate business opportunity.

Just found your blog and it's great. Nice work!

Jane

 

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