5 Key Reasons Real Estate Agents Should Blog
October 11, 2007 by David Cowgill
Blogging is rapidly developing into a tool whose purpose is to establish an online presence, improve visibility, build a sense of community, maintain an open dialogue for clients and prospects, and offer valuable information — all of which is accomplished in an unfiltered direct way.
Just by those reasons alone, blogging has a huge potential for real estate agents. What strikes me odd is the fact that most real estate agents or real estate websites I’ve visited don’t have a blog and are losing out on such a powerful median. A blog should definitely be added to their real estate marketing mix.
This void offers a unique business opportunity for someone or a company to help develop and maximize a real estate agents ability to essentially generate more leads and close more business. Being an entrepreneur, I’ve actually thought about doing this myself since I’m very experienced in blogging, internet marketing, and real estate but I just don’t have the time with all the other projects I am working on.
So let’s get down to the 5 key reasons real estate agents should have a blog.
- Direct Communications - Most real estate websites seem to contain static content which is usually more about the business and properties on the MLS the real estate agent is looking to sell. The beautiful thing about a blog is that they provide a way for realtors to speak directly and honestly with potential customers and prospects in an open way. Visitors to your blog can actually comment and reply to your posts which only adds value and creates a community-type environment. Here’s a great example of Luba, a real estate agent in San Francisco who started her own blog.
- Positioning Yourself As The Expert - Blogs give you a way to express your viewpoints, demonstrate your knowledge, and provide your expertise on issues and topics pertaining to your industry or community. If you’re the only real estate agent in your city or coverage area that actually blogs, prospects and potential customers that find your website are going to view you as the expert in that area.
- Lead Generation - You will find that having a blog is a low cost method of highly visible real estate marketing. It will provide you a consistent flow of leads at almost no cost. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo highly favor blog content in their search results so once you start publishing content you will be surprised to see the amount of traffic increasing to your website. You just have to make sure to capture these leads once they visit your site.
- Competitive Differentiation - How is your business difference from the dozens of other real estate agents in your area? How can you make a prospective customer understand that you have something better to offer or that you have the expertise and experience to make the home buying and selling process easier and to their financial benefit? Having a blog gives your readers insight to who you are and what your business is all about.
- Relationship Marketing - The beautiful thing about a blog is that it allows you to build personal relationships with your readers and customers that eventually creates trust. All real estate agents are familiar with the importance of “farming” as a way of generating activity. Blogs allow you to create a tight niche of potential customers who you can deliver messages to on a daily basis.
These 5 key reasons alone should be enough justification for you as a real estate agent to start a blog tomorrow. Now your next question is probably going to be, “How do I start a blog?” and “How much will it cost?”. The good news is most blogging software is free and depending on your skill set and depth of features, I would recommend wordpress.com, typepad.com, or blogger.com. All are great platforms and each has their positives and negatives.
For me, I use wordpress.com for all my blogs and would never use anything else. Wordpress.com is by far the best if you’re looking for something extremely flexible and you have some technical knowledge and experience with the internet. There is a learning curve and all blogs require some time to configure and setup, but that’s where someone with technical and business experience comes in.
I do (on occasion) provide consulting services if you’re interested in setting up an integrated blog for your real estate business please contact me directly. In most cases, I can have you up and blogging within a week.
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Very informative
Thanks
Totally agree….Let me add a sixth reason…to improve search engine positioning for their websites!
Thanks for the mention in the post!
For those of you thinking about a little search engine optimization, this guy is your man. Just from his free advice, my rankings in the search engines jumped drastically. Now I’m just hoping he doesn’t share his free advice with anyone else!
At least not in my niche market! 
Thanks again!
Thanks Luba. Well, your blog is the “model” blog that realtors should look at. It’s got great, fresh information and I’m sure helps you close more business!
Very true. Your website will benefit from a blog especially in search engines. Blogs out of the box are designed to be search engine magnets!
Blogs are a great search engine optimization tool and a good way to learn from others at the same time. Also, they are a great way for experienced professionals to put their ideas and experiences out there for others to use as a resource.
Blogs with comments enabled (like this one) are the most effective. They get people talking and that discussion is eventually indexed in search engines.
I agree with everyone else. Commenting on real estate blogs such as this one is very helpful for your website.
Great advice for realtors, nice work! There’s another great article by Matt Ferrarra at Tips, Tools and Tricks of the Trade TipsToolsAndTricks.com. Blogging really will help you make your mark online. It is an amazing tool for realtors.
thanks David,
I appreciate your insight. In my market, Edmonton Canada, there are very few bloggers out and about. I think it will help me to get ahead of the back by taking some of the advice on here. Keep it coming!
Hi
Great post why realtors should blog.
I’m building a “wordpress real estate plugin”, which will allow realtors to “bring in” the search, search results, listingview (of MLS properties) and so on directly into wordpress(with daily updates from the MLS). That will be done easily just by from the wordpress admin, you won’t need any programming knowledge. I just want to underline that it’s not a wordpress theme, it’s a plugin which actually brings the real estate listings into wordpress, giving him a lot of content. Combined with how quick wordpress ranks, that should bring the site good rankings
http://www.wprealestatelistings.com/realestate/wordpress
I’d like your comments, suggestions
Thanks
Mike
Not bad… Not bad.