Real Estate Blogging... WHY? (Part 4)

Article from: http://www.stlagent.com

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By: Darin "Sid" Cameron, CRS
Thu, Jul 6th, 2006 12:42 am

Yesterday I ended with the question, why is it real estate agents have jumped on the blogging bandwagon?

My belief is that the answer is tied to the unique nature of the real estate industry.

First off, no other industry gets the product they have to sell like real estate. Can you imagine a car dealership whose inventory was setting in driveways all across town and owned by dozens of individual owners instead of on a car lot owned by the car dealership?

Second, we are an industry of “one person” companies forced to market ourselves against thousands of other one person companies. Even if an agent is with a large brokerage who is affiliated with a national franchise, they are still generally left on their own to sink or swim and have to perform their own marketing above and beyond the brokerage and franchise.

This is because agents are generally hired as I-9 contractors verse W-2 employees- so even if a broker would like to bring structure and unified marketing to his/her sales team the laws governing I-9 contracting generally don’t permit it.

As a result, agents are often responsible for setting themselves apart in the minds of the customer even from other agents in their very own office.

But more important, as an industry of individuals, we have thousands of tiny little marketing budgets. As a result, agents often have a strong need for creative (and cheap) marketing. And that is what has driven hundreds of agents into publishing low cost (if not entirely free) blogs.

Now earlier in this series I said that just because there’s a desire to blog doesn’t mean you should. Well in real estate blogging, just because there’s a need for cheap marketing doesn’t mean a free blog is your answer.

Take a look at the real estate blogs that are out there and you will see that many of them are nothing but self-serving sales pitches- “Why buy a house from me,” “How I can sell your home faster,” “I’m a top agent,” etc. These blogs really don’t say anything- and that makes them very different from the successful corporate examples I mentioned yesterday.

Yet again... I'll continue this topic tomorrow.