Free is Free

Reading The Real Estate Tomato turned me to a post over at Active Rain whereby Teresa Boardman ranted about the inane behavior/posts going on at Active Rain.

She is big on a new net term called Local Blogging. This is where you as a Realtor post blogs about your market. Put another way it is using your media to focus on your demographic. This seems to be quite a revolutionary concept.

This is counter to what many realty bloggers are doing, especially on Active Rain.. Many are posting about national news and really anything other than their marketplace and its homes.

I agree. Now, maybe national news is interesting, but the fact that the Fed funds rate just jumped has got to be translated to how that affects your local prospects. Real Estate is local for goodness sake.

What is a Blog?

She says that buyers and sellers may not care about blogging. Amen!

Want to know the biggest hype of 2006? The so called Blogosphere.

Your targeted reader. The one that might buy or sell from you is a transient visitor. Your visitor has a temporary interest in what you got. After they buy or sell, chances are they can careless about your blog. And chances are very high that they may come to your blog and not know they were at a blog. To them it is called a W-e-b-s-i-t-e.

And comments. Chances are prospects will not comment. They are prospects. They are skeptical prospects that are just getting to know you. Your blog is the landscaping and front door to your business. Your email campaign and follow up is the coffee and cake at the kitchen table.

This is why I always say the ultimate goal is to capture them in some sort of offer registration or get them to call you.

Most of Teresa's rants are basically solved if people will just focus on their goal. Remembering that your are not a journalist. You are an ambassador for your business and marketplace. As she says you are not writing the next great novel.

She states that short posts are best. I agree and disagree. Its a matter of skill. If you have good compelling information, people will read it. I like to post "shorties" with a "lesson" or "commentary", every other one or two posts.

So do I disagree with anything she says? Absolutely. She says advertising your listings are a bad idea. Well, since most people come to a website thru search to see listings, I do not get that. However, you cannot argue with her results.

Comments

[Risa and David Weiss]

Can you believe people are just now figuring out what we have been saying for what? Going on 2 years now?

Too bad we're already past the typical "blogging thing" and moving further around the curve to video and other embedded multimedia experiences that are richer and more appropriate for our audiences.

And when the rest of the world catches on to that, we will have found something else to aspire to.

But that's only part of the story. The other part is how to use the forward thinking strategically (or strategerally, given that today was the SOTU speech) and in a compelling way to earn and close more business.

Don't you agree? I'm sure you do, because I know how you think.

[Coach Tim SEO]

I missed the GW speech so I am lost on what SOTU means. lol

Yah I agree. You know I do.

It just frustrates me why one would spend such energy to write about subjects that the people holding the cash could careless about.

[Coach Tim SEO]

It must have been late when I posted (yah thats the ticket).
State of the Union (SOTU) Geez

[Teresa Boardman]

This is not new. Most of the real estate bloggers started some months after I did and now they are talking about local content, like it is a big new idea. The content published in the active rain members only section is for members and not for the general public, I think you should respect that.

[Laura Kaan]

You hit the nail on the head. Most of use blogging as a tool for our business. We are able to expand our reach for potential clients, we learn, we network, and blogging helps drive traffic to our websites. Most of us don't blog just to chat. We are all too busy to just needlessly chat online, unless it has a purpose.

[Ryan Ward]

I am new to the web aspects of real estate marketing as I have only been doing it for about four months. I couldn't agree with you more that what you write about in your blog has to be local. While I surf other blogs myself as an agent, people that I will be doing business are sure to want to know about the local market first. I can't believe someone would call this a revolutionary concept!

[Red sea real estate]

Real estate bolgging is a very important way to raise the cuktural of real estate proccess

Red sea real estate
[email protected]
http://www.redsearealestatesharm.com

[sharm el sheikh real estate]

I think that local blogging will not help so much like wrld blogging

sharm el sheikh real estate
[email protected]
http://www.redsearealestatesharm.com