Should Real Estate Agents Blog?

A very personal choice for the average Realtor. Are you comfortable expressing yourself in writing? Blogging will be a cake walk for you. Not so keen on writing? No worries, you can still Blog! Try a video Blog, or maybe you would prefer to Podcast, which is like an Audio Blog. Regardless of the method of Blogging you choose, if done correctly, Blogging can be the largest driving factor in your real estate business.

Blogging has many by-product advantages that may not be apparent initially.

The first advantage is the obvious one, that everyone understands.

1. Readers (or viewers or listeners) are delivered the full message of what you have to say, with out being filtered by the media. No need for the middle man to interpret or slant what is being said.

Also a known benefit:

2. Viewers feel more connected to you and feel there is a relationship with you, as they read your blog posts.

Some more advantages that is not quite as obvious on first glance:

3. Replaces the need to continually pay a web professional to add up-to-date content to your website. Also, you can update in a far more timely manner than having another party add this content.

Photos, links, articles, stats etc, can all be added to your blog and can be updated daily, or weekly or as often as you like. Blogs can redefine the purpose and utility of your website, with the website providing mostly long term, slow-to-change relevant information, while your blog provides the latest up-to-the-minute information you want to share with your clients and potential clients.

4. Frequent or a least consistent Blogging keeps you fresh on the minds of potential clients.

5. Blogs can be hosted on dedicated blogging sites that are free to create and maintain

6. Agents who blog are going to appear higher in search engines searches, than those who don’t. The more times you post , the more recent the information being feed into search engines, creating higher search rankings for you, your website and your blog. Being high in search engine rankings is still vitally important in today’s business.

To increase your search engine rankings, be sure to add tag words to your blog, as well as use these same words in your blog posts.

7. Blogs allow the public to respond. The internet is no longer just a one way communication, but a conversation between parties interested in your post or topic.

8. Widgets –can provide all kinds of additional information, fun, facts etc from other sources. For example, a most basic practical widget would be a local weather forecast. You may want to include a mortgage calculator widget, or a local restaurant guide widget. Polls are great fun to add to Blogs as they engage readers as well provide either fun or useful information for you. Example of a fun Poll: What are you doing this weekend? And have 5 multiple choice answers to choose from. Then in your next blog you can post the answers or Tweet them on Twitter or your Facebook Page etc.

9. Creates excellent content for you to provide to your other social media sites. Tweet about it and add link on Twitter. Add link and comment on it on your Facebook page. If it is a video blog, your YouTube followers will automatically see it. Post a message to your contacts on Linked In when a new Post is published.

Blogging does take time and may not be right for every agent. For those who give it a try, be sure to post consistently, respond to any comments submitted and then make sure you market it to all of your data bases! Happy Blogging!

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For more information contact Jessica Stoner at jessicastoner@remax.net or visit www.irealtycanada.com