Ackkkk…before you burn me at the stake - hear me out. This is a continuation of my thoughts inspired by the Clareity Summit.
I think within the first 10 minutes, Gregg said those exact words ‘Blogging is over-rated’ — so if you are still looking for someone to go after once you finish reading this, it was Gregg!! Although I think it was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, he just called it out.
I can’t agree more. There I said it. It’s not that blogging doesn’t have a place, or when used correctly, won’t yield great results — its just that blogging isn’t for everyone, and used incorrectly is just a waste of the author’s time and could prove detrimental to any search engine placement you were trying to achieve.
Let’s whittle it down to where ‘blogging’ came from, ‘web’ + ‘logging’, or in other words an online journal. So blogging is journaling in the public view. Journaling in its raw form has had several studies showing that it can have medical, emotional, inspirational, academic, stress reducing, etc benefits. Yet not everyone does it.
But wait, with so many positive reasons, why doesn’t everyone do it? Simply, because it is not for everyone and when used incorrectly could amplify negative issues. Bingo - lightbulb - viola!! The same goes for blogging.
So how do I determine if blogging is for me and that I can create a valuable resource?
Step One - WHY
First, determine why you are blogging? If you are blogging for search engine placement, or simply to say you blog, you might want to reconsider blogging. Blogging takes a lot of time, patience, and imagination (a couple things I lack). Blogging also takes a desire to inform others of a viewpoint (something which CRT has a lot of and is also one of our primary mandates). People want information, if you are providing them with genuine information that they find of value, you will create a destination. If you write for the search engine (e.g. stuff lots of keys words in and make it almost human unreadable), you are probably not going to accomplish your goal. Think of it this way - MS Office has been correcting my grammar since 1995, do you think the search engines aren’t smart enough to figure out purposefully placed key words tailored to trick them?
Ok - so you have decided that blogging is a YARRS (Yet Another REALTOR Related Service) that you will provide to your clients. You have come to grips that it is challenging, will take time, and ultimately is for the benefit of the reader - nothing more (e.g. search engine nonsense) and nothing less.
Step Two - WHO & WHAT
Types of Real Estate Blogs
Next you need to define your audience. There are industry-centric blogs (i.e. inman or bloodhoundblog) and then there a consumer oriented blogs (The Luby Group or The Mortgage Reports). Who do you want to talk to other REALTORS or past, present and future clients?
I still say consumer oriented blogs are the real untapped medium here. Many of the REALTOR blogs that have come to my attention and end up in my feed reader are blogs talking to other REALTORs - maybe not the best use of everyone’s time if it is the consumer you are looking to attract. Blogs that demonstrate your knowledge of the market as it relates to the consumer, or can convey the same voice and opinions that you do when taking each and every client out to a showing, those are the winners! Those are the blogs that will create these relationships without ever meeting the person. Those are what I am talking about!
At the end of the day, if you aren’t writing something that you would even find of use, then chances are you have fallen into the blogging trap that claims it the magic bullet, or that you need to do it to stay in the game. Blogging should be an extension of you , your thoughts, and opinions on the internet geared as a information service to your audience.
Blogging in this context is not over-rated. Blogging for the sake of blogging or for better search engine optimization, I can safely say is over-rated.
Blog Away
Fabulous post Chris! I get questions from agents all the time about what it takes to make a blog “successful”. That’s a hard question to answer as a lot of it depends on ones definition of “success”.
But it does take time. And effort. It is clearly not for everyone (as witnessed in part by the number of abandoned blogs out there).
I do think blogging is one of the best ways to display your personality on the internet. Given that this is very much a people-oriented business, that can be a good thing — assuming you have a personality
It never ceases to amaze me how often will get a new client that already knows a great deal about who we are, and how we think. All because of the blog. But the work that goes into making that happen is not insignificant.
Jay - great point about the abandoned blogs. Turn those suckers off!!!! Especially if you still have an internet presence. No need to make a potential clients first impression that you may be in a coma somewhere in mid-america!!!
Next time you get that question - just point them to CRT!
Chris,
I’d just like to put context around the Clareity comment you were responding to - specifically that “blogs are over-hyped”. The contents of the slide were as follows:
Some people:
* have something to say,
* are good writers,
* benefit from the interactivity of blogs, and
* are good at marketing those blogs
Most do/are not.
Will Joe Agent be left behind and be unable to compete in the industry if he doesn’t have a blog? NO WAY!
thanks Matt
I do both — talking to realtors and a business blog. The business blog is informational, the realtor blog is because I love to write and I like making connections around the country — you never know how those connections will be beneficial — not just referrals, but plain old knowledge sharing.
I agree that blogging for placement, or blogging just to have a blog is futile. The thing about placement is that even if you draw traffic to your blog and it’s subpar or hardly ever used — what’s the point?
My blog is and always has been targeted at educating consumers. Some days it would be more fun to write for my peers (i.e. vent) but that will have to be a different blog!
And, yes, I think you need to have a love of writing and reading (you can’t write what you don’t know!) I also think you need some passion, or in your words, opinions.
I agree that blogging is not for everyone, takes considerable time, and has made me a better REALTOR®. I have an audience of real and imagined, past and future clients that I write for and to. The challenge, as others have indicated, is continuing on a regular basis, providing some consistency of content.
For me, blogging is not the magic bullet, but yet another way to connect with today’s increasingly sophisticated real estate consumer.
The word “blogging” needs to find a quick death and permanent burial. This fad word drives me nuts as it is a word that represents the evolution of publishing as we know it. The problem we have is that people who aren’t writers are caught spending time doing the last task they should be spending their time doing.
If everyone who writes about anything on the internet was an expert at the art of writing, then perhaps they would have started a newspaper prior to the advent of simple content publishing systems that we have irresponsibly called “blogs.”
Why didn’t they start a newspaper? Because that’s not what they’re good at. So why then would someone who isn’t designed to write and publish even think about starting a publication…on their own, that is.
Farm it out.