It does surprise me that there are no blogs

[loftninja]

as of yet. I've been blogging real estate for about 8 months, but its hard to find others (in real estate-especially in NY) that care to express the level of transparency that a blog offers the public. check out:URBANFOTO (http://urbanfoto.blogspot.com) and LOFTBLOG (http://loftblog.blogspot.com)

I'd love to know what you think. As a real estate agent, I tend to be a little more artistic than most, so as to "buffer the bullshit" that most agents in NY dish. I study urban anthropology (more specifically, gentrification) and currently i plan to aquire a phd--essentially, I create my own subject matter. If this is interesting to you, write me and we can discuss. I look forward to checking out all of your blogs....best regards, justin

[Phoenix Realtor]

I'm not too surprised there aren't more real estate blogs. As a matter of fact, I'm quite pleased that the market isn't saturated with real estate blogs. It makes it easier for those of use who have one to gain positions in the SERP's!

My real estate news blog is Arizona Real Estate News, http://www.ArizonaRealEstateNews.com and it is gaining momentum! I emailed over 1100 past, current and potential clients about it a few weeks ago and the response has been great (especially the added traffic I get now)!

[HHI Golf Guy]

Asking an agent to post a paragraph or two once a week amounts to overloading them with work ;)

Seriously, I see on overwhelming majority of agents either trying to hit a home run (one multi-million dollar sale) or sitting around waiting for someone to call or drop by their office.

We ask our agents to give us 1/2 hour each month. A few easy blog posts and 2 or 3 paragraphs for a newsletter for us to format and distribute. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth.

Then we have some super agents in our market. One of them is consistently among the top 2-3 Realtors in the nation each year for overall sales. Not only does he work his tail off, but he sells everthing from $200k homes (that's the low end price in our market) to $15m homes. Base hit or home run, he takes them all.

Blogs and newsletters are high tech relationship building and sales tools. I'm truly surprised that more agents do not put an effort into this aspect of their business.

[Real Estate Forum]

If you guys want you can PM Martin here for Free Real Estate Blogs (http://www.blogparty.net/blogparty/showthread.php?t=143). Here is an example for Coronado Real Estate (http://california.realestateforum.com/coronado/)

[frobn]

If you guys want you can PM Martin here for Free Real Estate Blogs (http://www.blogparty.net/blogparty/showthread.php?t=143). Here is an example for Coronado Real Estate (http://california.realestateforum.com/coronado/)

Is there an advantage to having a blog with realestateforum url as opposed to having a blog from your own site?

[Phoenix Realtor]

The main advantage I can see is when you give a link to your site(s). It has more weight from RealEstateForum.com when going to your site than from your own site to your own site.

Does that make sense?

[HomeSurfer]

Truthfully, I've never visited a blog I liked. I'm not purposely being anti-blog -- I just don't "get" why blogs are popular (at least to readers).

Forums I get because they are interactive. Short headers where you can read the post and provide feedback. It is interactive.

Blogs just sit there. A bunch of stuff on a page. If you remember, that's what web sites used to be like in the olden days. One long page of stuff.

Then, we learned people would rather click than scroll. Short pages developed with internal navigation. To me, it seems like blogs are going backwards, not forwards.

How many people actually READ any blogs? I don't. Do you?

[gemini]

How many people actually READ any blogs? I don't. Do you?

shucks! I just wrote a whole bunch and lost everything...

well, I'll make it simple - Yes, I read blogs and a lot of them.
Try the following:
http://www.seroundtable.com - Search Engine Marketing related blog by Barry Schwartz (aka http://www.rustybrick.com ). Covers the most important SEM related topics from a lot of related forums, SE conferences and news. Very professional and informative.
http://battellemedia.com/ - another very informative search engine blog.

There are whole bunch of blogs by professionals, Yahoo and Google employees which proved very interesting informations and very often their own comparison, suggestions and experiments.

If you have RSS/XML headlines reader like Siege for FireFox or MyYahoo I would suggest to conntect to a few blogs and just watch their headlines for a few day - those that don't say anything useful will get deleted and the most interesting ones will stay.

BTW RSS/XML feeds are very useful not only for blogs, but for forums and your site too Terry - if you write your articles on regular bases RSS feed would let people know about the new material immediately and would drive direct traffic. Plus RSS feeds help index new articles faster (at least from my experience).

I understand your thoughts about blogs, but looks like you haven't found ones that you would like. I'm not big fan of private blogs where people write what they ate this morning and how sucked friday evening because there wesn't anything good on TV. But there are planty of professional and very interesting written blogs that are pretty competitive with news web sites.

[marcinsarasota]

I recently started 2 blogs:

Sarasota Real Estate News (http://www.thesarasotamls.com/sarasota-real-estate-news/)

This one ranks #5 and #6 in Google for "Sarasota Real Estate News"

My other blog is:

Bradenton Real Estate News (http://www.realestate-bradenton.com/bradenton-real-estate-news/)

This site is brand new so it won't be found yet (except MSN). Don't ask me if I am doing this blog correctly. :rolleyes:

[frobn]

I recently started 2 blogs:

Sarasota Real Estate News (http://www.thesarasotamls.com/sarasota-real-estate-news/)

This one ranks #5 and #6 in Google for "Sarasota Real Estate News"

My other blog is:

Bradenton Real Estate News (http://www.realestate-bradenton.com/bradenton-real-estate-news/)

This site is brand new so it won't be found yet (except MSN). Don't ask me if I am doing this blog correctly. :rolleyes:

Are you looking for others to post on your blogs? Posting on each others' blogs can be a fun way to exchange links.

[Real Estate Forum]

The main advantage I can see is when you give a link to your site(s). It has more weight from RealEstateForum.com when going to your site than from your own site to your own site.

Does that make sense?
That's our plan behind it. You guys can PM Martin (http://www.realestateforum.com/member.php?u=1) if you want one set up :)

[gemini]

As far as linking goes, yes, getting links from other blogs and sites is much better in all ways than from your own ones. As for posting comments on each other blogs, thus exchanging links (or with the only purpose of links) is not very smart. If your blog is more like a news type blog, than its a great marketing opportunity - keep it interesting to your visitor because this is whom you're creating it for, but if you're posting bored articles and don't have people there - than your links won't worth a penny. It's a huge difference having daily commemnts from your clients, visitors and friends than from fellow rewebmasters. Recently I saw a thread in DP - someone proposed 10cents per post to write in their forums and sure there are people that go for it. What a tasteless technique.

[frobn]

As far as linking goes, yes, getting links from other blogs and sites is much better in all ways than from your own ones. As for posting comments on each other blogs, thus exchanging links (or with the only purpose of links) is not very smart. If your blog is more like a news type blog, than its a great marketing opportunity - keep it interesting to your visitor because this is whom you're creating it for, but if you're posting bored articles and don't have people there - than your links won't worth a penny. It's a huge difference having daily commemnts from your clients, visitors and friends than from fellow rewebmasters. Recently I saw a thread in DP - someone proposed 10cents per post to write in their forums and sure there are people that go for it. What a tasteless technique.

Excellent point. When I stated that it is a "fun" way to exchange links my thought was not for the link to be primary but for realtors to contribute content to each other and by so doing benefit from a link to their site. For example, a brief article about Golf in Plam Springs would be of interest to most anyone interested in Golf. Or perhaps Scuba diving in Key Largo would be of interest to scuba divers in California. Why limit the focus to only real estate in your own area? My thought is that by broadening the focus with interesting stories and comments you will broaden your audiance. Yes, I know not everyone will interested in Golf or Scuba.

[gemini]

Why limit the focus to only real estate in your own area? My thought is that by broadening the focus with interesting stories and comments you will broaden your audiance.
This is good. You can have different sections in your blog (if such configuration possible) and have different things blogged about, but in big picture its still will be somewhat related. Good way to attract people and potential customers.

Yes, I know not everyone will interested in Golf or Scuba.
No, but a lot of people will and acticles can be about the area too. Why not to blog about what you like in your area and what people can do in spare time - will be really nice for those that relocating to the area and are not familiar with it. Share your experiences with local businesses, stores, attractions everything related to the area... may be som events etc. Of cource it would be much better to have it separately from real estate new, but still in the same blog.

[marcinsarasota]

I never thought about it but I would welcome any other posts on my blog.

[Real Estate Forum]

Maybe we can start a sticky "Blog posts welcome" thread for those who would like that. I know many who don't like posts on their blogs from others. I do think that blog comments help the blog owner as long as the comments are at least a few sentences and don't contain a bunch of OBLs.

[sarahk]

Blogs just sit there. A bunch of stuff on a page. If you remember, that's what web sites used to be like in the olden days. One long page of stuff.Thats a fair opinion but here's why I blog (and it's not realestate)

quick way of getting small bits of information online
quick way of driving traffic and IBLs to sites I appreciate. A good example here is my wowexe.exe (http://sarahk.pcpropertymanager.com/blog/wowexeexe/6/) post which refers onto a very helpful article. I get alot of search engine clicks for this. I'm not paying for bandwidth so I'm not fussed if they don't stick around.
if someone has annoyed me then it ensures that others will know too. A prime example is my NBO (http://sarahk.pcpropertymanager.com/blog/nbo-national-business-online/24/) post warning people of active pro forma scammers (http://sarahk.pcpropertymanager.com/blog/nbo-national-business-online/24/). They've already been convicted but they continue to operate. The authorities have been made aware.

The core of my site doesn't use a CMS so the blog gives me a subset of that functionality which makes posting quicker and easier.

[sarahk]

I've added a few of the blogs from this thread into my online aggregator/directory thingy under real estate (http://www.rainchx.com/mambo/component/option,com_newsfeeds/catid,82/Itemid,118/). It might give you some inbound links and it helps me keep track of you all.

Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

[Phoenix Realtor]

Hey SarahK,

Thank you for the page you made for me, I noticed some typo's you might want to check out.

Real Estate
Arizona Real Estate News
This Blog is to keep my current, past and potential clients apprised of the real estate market conditions and news in Central Arizona, U.S.A. Though we will feature news from the entire state of Arizona... Special emphasis will be placed on the city's we specialize in selling homes in: Carefree, Cave Creek, Phoenix's Central Corridor, North Phoenix, Paradise Valley, Pinnacle Peak, Rio Verde Foothills and Scottsdale Arizona. Enjoy! AZ real estate news.

Not sure how those got pulled in automatically.

Just FYI... thanks again! :D

[sarahk]

Thank you for the page you made for me, I noticed some typo's you might want to check out.I need to check the code. The ' is in your xml feed (as they should be) but I'm not handling them properly.

Sarah