Doesn’t Ardell know she has to listen to ALL of my advice!

I wanted to open up the discussion over there, but thought it was not appropriate to hijack her listing post, so I’m bringing it back here.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/443476/1132-N-77th-Street

And in our presentation yesterday, Jim had a great example… He talked about how all marketing is to get someone in the car. Once they are on a car ride with you, it is about customer service, sales, negotiation, etc… but initial car ride is really the goal of any and all of your marketing. Along those lines, phone calls are much better than emails, and emails are clearly better than comments.

However, my experience has been that comments by consumers do three things. (1) They add credibility to other consumers that you are a valuable resources. (2) They represent the easiest way for a consumer to begin the conversation that may turn into an email or a phone call (and eventually a car ride). (3) Comments provide frequently updated content on otherwise “old” posts, which is something that Google LOVES.

The post I wrote about moving to Seattle two years ago is a great example. (just noticed that today is the post’s 2nd birthday!!!).

1) It’s fair to say that consumers consider the post is very credible with a recent commenter (#491) saying “This has been the best source for a CITIZENS P.O.V. of life in Seattle.”

2) With over 500 comments and literally hundreds of them from consumers, it has proven to be a very easy way for consumers to start a real estate conversation with rain city guide contributors… most of whom would not have made contact otherwise.

3) The post does very well in Google and while I don’t know exactly (or even close to exactly) how Google’s algorithms work, I’m pretty sure that the frequent updates from commenters plays a large role in driving organic search traffic to the site.

I write this not to say that blogs without community activity are bad or wrong or somehow valuable… but to say that the benefits of engaging your consumers in a way the encourages them to contribute to your site can have HUGE benefits.

It all comes back to the question; do you want to be a professional blogger or a successful Realtor who happens to blog about real estate?

It seems to me we are blogging for contact with the consumer, we seem to agree with that. While comments on our blogs by consumers are nice, few consumers are comfortable with engaging on blogs.

When the contact comes in the form of the use of the contact link on the blog, a phone call or and email, as a Realtor selling homes, it is far more valuable.

Anyway, Ardell is hoping that I’ll expound a bit and I only wish I could have something very valuable to add… but at the end of the day, we’re seriously lacking valuable data in this discussion. However, I’ll give it a shot.

When I put on my consumer hat on and look at the sites (from people in this thread) who are blogging their listings, I’m often immediately turned off because they’ve made the blogs about “them” instead of the community they are trying to attract. I don’t think it is a surprise that the people who are claiming to have found “success” in blogging have almost no comments from any consumers on recent threads (i.e. the only comments are from industry professionals, and even those are far-and-few between).

With that said, if the people on this thread are convinced that it is bringing them more business and I wouldn’t want to stop them from their positive attitude. It reminds me of my years playing baseball where every kid has rituals that don’t do a darn thing to help performance, but I never heard a coach try to stop kids from doing the oddest of these rituals, because believing that something works is often the key ingredient to making it work. If these bloggers are convinced that their business success is because they are blogging their listings, then I say go for it… regardless if it is working or not. Confidence is one of the keys to business success, even if the cause of the confidence is misplaced.

However, I started this thread by saying that their is a real lack of data. Despite some people’s claims that their open houses get more people because of their blog posts, I have my doubts (but no data to back it up). I just don’t think that any blogger in the real estate space has figured out how to get a large enough market share of the local home buyer community to think listing a home on their blog is going to attract additional buyers who wouldn’t see the home through the MLS… and the typical listing is most likely to be irrelevant to almost EVERY buyer who reads the post. (i.e. the listing is too big, too small, too expensive, too cheap, too close to downtown, too far, too old, too new, etc.).

There’s a reason that despite thousands of listings in any given market, there are often only a handful that would actually work for a given family. Finding relevant homes for people is something agents tend to be good at… Pushing irrelevant homes on thousands of people in the hope of finding one relevant client is a sure-fire way to turn off many people to your blog.

The question of posting your own listings have come up in the blogosphere. I for one think it is a great idea. I wouldn’t post the typical drab MLS listing with its acronyms and such. This is your chance to

I think you are going to have to expound on the why.

No false advertising. No fake claims. No lies.

When people type in..oh, say Boracay blogs. They are looking for blogs, not travel deals. Blogs, Web Logs. travelogues. et…

But go ahead and google it. Much like the poster above, it is a huge mass of lies. I mean that word in every sense of hatred I can express…..lies.

Thousands of businesses advertise in the blog form…and in Boracays case, thousands more that are completely fake to pose as real blogs from individuals but are actually made by The Fil DOT and business owners.

Blogs were, at one time, a good source of online journals and personal opinions. When it came to travels blogs, it was an honest interpretation of one persons experiences. Now businesses who are ripping people off and providing crappy service have managed to steal that medium in the never ending pursuit of lying to potential customers about the services they can expect.

And once upon a time, it was simply a matter of placing the camera high in the far corner of a hotel room for the brochure pix…..