Comments on: Straight From The Hound’s Mouth

By: Jeff Dowler

Jeff Dowler — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 15:31:44 +0000

Great information, insightful, and much food for thought. I’m new to this blogging thing but more than anything enjoy the writing – it helps to clarify my own thinking on various topics, the learning opportunities are outstanding, and my relationships are prospering. If leads come, great! Better yet, it’s nice to have readers and their comments. Keep up the good work!
Jeff

By: Magnus

Magnus — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:30:59 +0000

Great interview with one of the best RE blogs outthere.
However, if Greg first spit on email based interviews and then find them enjoyable, maybe he uses Zillow after all…

By: Barrett Niehus

Barrett Niehus — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 06:03:30 +0000

Great interview. Between you, Greg, and Sellsius, I get the most up to date information on the industry and the various ways to help agents market themselves.
Cheers
Barrett Niehus

By: Kenneth Ruffo

Kenneth Ruffo — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:10:46 +0000

Everything is relative folks. I use blogging to write about important issues in real estate and provide a way for readers to contact me. Blogging is still in its infancy so who knows what the future will provide.
My professional opinion is that blogging allows us to communicate to our audience 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the end, blogging makes us experts in our field and isn’t that why we’re hired in the end?

By: Gena Riede

Gena Riede — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 20:02:25 +0000

Very long post from the Bloodhound…read through it and I too, believe that he is targeting a different audience and has an entirely different purpose. I enjoy reading Greg but I must agree with Dave and I second Teresa’s comment. Our blogging is geared toward the client and providing awareness for the empowerment of our future clients. We have goal and a purpose!
Jim, have trouble reading the red highlighted names…for those of us with computer eyes, is it possible to change that to a yellow highlight,instead?
Jim,Kudos for having Greg post. Of course we all know that yours is the blog to post on!!

By: Ann Cummings

Ann Cummings — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:53:17 +0000

I have found the opposite of what Greg says about blogging not bringing business leads. I am brand new to the blogging world, using my training wheels mostly on Active Rain blogs, but I’ve had several good leads come in from both of my blogs. One of them (my RealTownBlog) is geared directly to consumers, and the other (my ActiveRain blog) is a combination of both consumer-oriented posts and just-for-fun posts. But they’ve both, as new as they are, brought in some leads.

By: teresa boardman

teresa boardman — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:26:56 +0000

Now I am really bummed. I have four closed sales because of my blog and am working with 2 seller and 4 new buyer leads right now, that I have met through my blog. What am I doing wrong? The dang thing is about real estate, yawn. I am blogging for all the wrong reasons. You would not believe the email I get from readers. The hits on my web site are also up because of the blog. I don’t want to say I disagree with Greg, I just want to say that my experience has been very different than his. I encounter other agents who blog and they would agree with Greg, because they don’t get leads from their blogs either. They write about themselves, or they write about the stuff that real estate bloggers like to read, they write about other blogs and other blogers, which generates traffic but not of the type that generates leads.
I am glad that no one told me that my blog would not generate leads before I started it, because if they had I never would have started in and certainly would not spend any time on it during business hours. I would have missed out on some business that I really needed this year.

By: Jim Cronin

Jim Cronin — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 09:01:24 +0000

Dave, thanks so much for the detailed explanation of how blogging has not only improved your internet presence, but been the fuel for the lead fire. You’re not alone.
Regarding the name: Real Estate Tomato: I’ve told the story many times, but might as well tell it again. Originally I was aiming to focus this blog on the Sacramento real estate market. Sacramento has a nickname: Sack-o-tomato, because the abundance of tomato farming. I came up with Real Estate Tomato to help emphasize the local focus. However, by the time I found my voice and audience, I abandonded the whole regional approach and made the effort to reach the industry as a whole. And the rest, as they say, is history.

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 04:44:32 +0000

Jim – Norm,
Norm, “I was a little discouraged by Greg’s suggestion that a real estate blog for consumers isn’t likely to produce much in the way of business leads.”
Our Blog is Tucson Real Estate in The News. It has been up and running now for a little over two months. It is designed to be a consumer blog. It focuses on Tucson real estate in the news; we provide analysis of the monthly statistics, we anylize local real estate news and dig out for the consumer what is really being said beyond the headlines.
We post about new condo conversions, and subdivisions. We post about buying and selling real estate in Tucson to help both adjust to this market.
Yesterday was my first post that was about real estate blogging and not about real estate specifically. And it will probably be the last on that blog, I’ll start a new one.
We have seen a significant increase in our web traffic. I installed Hittail on each page of our website and blog posts. I can track what search engine was used, what search phrase was entered, and I can click on the search and see what brought them to our site. It also gives me good ideas for what topics to write about in future posts.
We are now getting more clients and leads from the blog than from the website. We are getting both buyers and sellers. We have a listing right now that came from a seller in California wanting to sell his second home here. He did a search on the current market, found a blog post on market statistics for Tucson I wrote, checked out the website and called us to list his home. He like the fact that we had a blog dedicated to Tucson Real Estate and provided answers to many of his questions. He has his own company involved in technology. I created a single listing address website for his property. He loves it and I’m sure will refer anyone he know that is looking at Tucson real estate to us.
From the Hittail data I can determine that about 80% of the initial traffic to our site is coming through the blog.
Our blog does not have a domain name. It is not a subdomain. It is simply a directory on our hosting site. I’ve found that I almost never type a domain name. I use a search engine, type in a phrase I know will bring up the website or blog and click on the results. So I didn’t worry about not having a specific domain name or subdomain for the blog.
Our daily visitors have increased by more than double since adding the blog. Our pages viewed has also increased significantly; without doing the math I would say tripled.
Yesterday we had a call from a prospect wanting to help them purchase a home here in Tucson, they live in Washington state, they found us from a blog post and then went to the website. Yesterday we received a call from a realtor in Phoenix wanting to refer a client to us, she found us on the web doing a search for tucson realtors. She went to our site and blog and said she really liked what she found and wanted us to work with her client.
Our pages indexed in google have increased by more than 100 pages since starting the blog. We have climbed significantly in search terms like tucson realtor, tucson realtors, tucson real estate, tucson homes, tucson relocation, etc. There are at least 20 or 30 keyword phrases we are on the first page of google.
Using one of the future pagerank prediction tools that RSS Pieces recommended it looks like our blog page will be PR5 for the home page on the next go round and our web site home page is between PR4 one day and PR5 another. I need to add some more content to the website as well as post to the blog.
We have never used pay per click. I redesigned our web site from the ground up starting in March of 2006, at that time we had 10 pages indexed, the site was a canned site we paid $500 for with $37.00 a month hosting.
In March I started over, using HTML and CSS styling and making sure that every page was W3C compliant. The site has come a long way in those few months.
The blog has supercharged our web site.
Increased our traffic significantly.
Brought in 3 to 1 prospect and clients over the web site alone.
Increased our organic standings in all three major search engines.
It has provided a quick way to get information to the public and have it indexed in hours instead of weeks or months when that information is on a newly created webpage vr. a blog post.
I need to close by saying all this works for our market. Tucson, isn’t Phoenix, or San Diego, or Chicago. It has a lot of people retiring here and wintering here. We have targeted relocation which is why we chose the internet for our farm and not a local neighborhood or geographic location. For the Tucson market this works, we have a lot of people moving here from all over the world. Projections are 33,000 people a year for the next 10 years many of those boomers. So we post about gated golf communities, new malls, new condo conversions, things that appeal to people wanting to move here.
This I think any realtor could do, look at your local market, find out what is unique and what people are searching for that brings them to our town, and then create pages and blog posts accordingly.
Finally as I have been recently advised, stay on target, keep your message clean and to the point. If you want to blog about real estate (Which I have found it the majority of Real Estate Blogs) Then have a blog for that and a second blog directed at consumers in your market buyers and sellers. I think you will be surprised by the results.
I read Greg’s blog everyday, I get a lot from it, but as a realtor and blogger, not as a potential buyer or seller. Greg knows the audience he is blogging for and he does a great job staying on message.
Jim, Thanks for the Tomato, I’m still puzzled by the name, I can say this, you sure bring the sauce to make my blogging experience more appetizing and appealing.

By: Norm Fisher

Norm Fisher — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 02:23:22 +0000

Suddenly the success stories are hitting me from every angle. Jim, I read all the posts on your Blogging Success Carnival. Some good stuff there. Thanks.
Thanks to you as well Carol. It’s great to hear of some first hand wins.
I’ve had good success with my website. I can count on a certain percentage of my visitors becoming clients. I’ve been at that long enough to see a fair bit of repeat business from those I originally met through the site. If nothing else, I’m sure my blog will bring me a little more traffic there which should result in business.