Blogging begins to penetrate Realtors' consciousness
Posted by Pat Kitano at 12/14/2006 10:46 PM 
Categories: San Francisco Bay Area, Events and Premieres, Blogging
Categories: San Francisco Bay Area, Events and Premieres, Blogging
Even in the tech-crazed Bay Area, Realtors still don't know much about business blogging for marketing their business. I know this because I make presentations about the power of blogging to Realtors at broker meetings (email me if you're interested in this) and I ask how many agents read blogs... more than half raise their hands. I then ask them to name a real estate blog... and no one can. If agents don't know about real estate blogs, how can one expect their client to know about them? But they will soon... it just needs to reach a tipping point.
On the two top ten 2006 real estate trends lists I've read - RISMedia and Inman News - both include the emergence of Real Estate Blogs. Well, I finally met my first known blogger in San Ramon, a bucolic suburb in the East Bay... John Harper of the Harper Team. He's doing his part to raise the profile of the Realtor's next generation marketing platform by chronicling the Realtor's "old world" (but effective) marketing platform - the Realtor marketing meeting - on his San Ramon blog. I enjoy the photos because I know a lot of people there, it's like my Realtors Facebook ...
I comment on John's Active Rain site - - - we both share common friends from the blogosphere, we've been attending (occasionally) the same marketing meeting... so finally meeting face-to-face today is akin to virtual-meeting-reality... (ok, I'm sure all us bloggers have had that experience... and I'm looking forward to our virtual-to-reality meet up at RE Connect NYC next month...)
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate blogs, real estate marketing, realtor marketing meetings,
Pat:
Here in Taos, NM, I still have real estate agents and brokers ask me "What's a blog?" I've been very happy with that fact, since my little real estate blog is bringing me business and they're out at a meeting somewhere networking. Of course they're pretty social and I'm a recluse with a keyboard.
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Jim, I'm just like you... instead of spending two hours trying to do networking weekly on a realtor marketing meeting, I could spend it on a blog post that will eventually network to many more people... and that blog post will become a part of an ouevre of work that will represent me for a long time. That said, I do get out a lot (but I write in the evenings)...
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Pat - Keep up the good work. I think we are already at the tipping point. The real estate blogosphere cells are dividing and we are seeing the birth of a new form of marketing. This is one phenomenon that can move very quickly - especially among tech savvy Realtors. I think you are riding the wave. Enjoy the surf before it becomes ho hum.
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Pat, I teach a class for realtor's on blogging. I start every session by asking who has a web site, most do, most don't get business from it. I then ask if they read blogs, have a blog or no what a blog is. The answer is no for most in the room. Then I try to get a feel for their knowledge of what is going on in our industry. I ask about the local market, most know their stuff. Then I take out my marker and write the word Zillow on the white board. In most cases no one in the room has heard of Zillow, I'll bet some of their clients have. When they leave my class they are sent a special electronic handout and encouraged to read blogs and industry related web sites. If I follow up with them, which I do, two weeks later most have not read any industry related news. What I see and read on the internet is one thing, reality is something different. I live in two worlds, neither world knows that the other exists. How can we expect people to understand the benefits of blogs if they have no idea what a blog is and if they themselves don't read?
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Can't wait to be able to meet all you guys face to face at Inman! Looks liek it will be a blogger convention in the big apple.
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The funny thing is that political blogs were the first blogs around and they all focused on Washington, DC yet, most agents and consumers in the Washington, DC area have no clue about what a blog is.
More irony...how come when I just ran spell check on my post, "blog", "blogs" and "blogger" came up as "word not in dicitonary"?
Diane...you mentioned that we are near the tipping point. There is a lot of recent press on blogging (Time is an example), which is great. Though I think that when "blog" is part of the spell check is when the true tipping point has arrived.
And I agree with Pat...posting a blog is equivalent to, if not better than going to a meeting to network or get business.
I am by no means an expert blogger and just got started about 6 weeks ago, but I see the light. Blogs will become an integral part of real estate and daily life in general.
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