Real Estate Blogging

Written by: Gary Horsman

Real Estate Blogging

What is a Real Estate Blog Anyway?

Yesterday I received a call from a real estate agent that I know. I met her at a party last week and she wanted to talk with me a bit more. Why she really called was because she had a burning question. 

“What’s a real estate blog?”

She felt so bad that she did not know and she felt comfortable with me from our conversation at the party (we had also briefly talked about blogging) that she wanted to call me to learn more.

I explained the following. In the beginning, blogs were personal journals posted on the web for everyone to read and upon which readers could comment. They started out with very limited circles of readership and a lot of personal journal type stuff with photos and links to things of mutual interest. You might have a personal journal blog and post your thoughts on books you’ve read recently or movies you’ve seen. You would be able to place links in your blog to reviews of those books and movies. This was the genesis of blogging.

Since those early days we have a long (long) way.

Blogs have become hugely popular ways to rapidly convey a wide range of information. You may learn the opinions of top influencers and get the up-to-date info on developing stories and events. There are millions of blogs covering almost any topic you can dream up. Pick a topic and there’s probably a blog for it. If it is a popular topic then there will be many blogs dedicated to it.

What we want to look into is how blogging can be beneficial to your real estate business. It can and should be one of the tools in your real estate marketing toolbox.

By creating a real estate blog about your area, happenings and commentary, you can begin to position yourself as an “expert” on the area and real estate trends there. Readers of your blog can then “subscribe”, as in a magazine subscription, and have your real estate blog comments and articles delivered to them daily in their “news reader”. We’ll talk about news readers and RSS feeds in the next section. For now, just know that you can create a blog about “Your Town or Your Area” and post articles and comments regularly that will be of interest to potential buyers of real estate in your area.

It’s a commitment, as blog content needs to be updated frequently to keep readers’ interest, repeat visits and subscriptions. You can, if you have the proper blog service and setup, have guest authors that will help you keep your blog fresh with new material. Perhaps your favorite mortgage broker would like to write some articles for your blog with links to his/her site – or a title company, or home inspector, etc. Let your competition keep plugging away at “newsletters” and email delivery. You can get a jump on the “Internet world” of publishing with a blog and have your subscribers get your posts immediately without email or action on your part.

Get started as soon as possible in positioning yourself as the expert in your town or area with a well written real estate blog.

If you want to gain some of my insights into how to market your real estate business online then I invite you to read my 2-part series on real estate marketing.