Back in November, Lore Magazine published the list of what it determined was the top 50 Agents and Teams by Volume and Transactions for 2005.  I'm sure there is a reason for taking 11 months to compile the data (perhaps they don't use computers), but that is for another post.  The question that came to my mind was how prevelant was blogging in the marketing plans of the top performers.  I took some time yesterday to run through the list of the top teams by volume and do a little investigating.

I first looked for the websites of each of the teams.  I used Google to try and find the main website for each team.  In my search I found that the level of internet presence of these top teams varied from extremely flashy and sophisticated to overwhelmingly cheesy, and from childish to non-existent.  I also found that the search engine optimization for a lot of these websites left an awful lot to be desired.  In fact, some of the main websites of these top brokers didn't appear when doing a search for the team name or the team's namesake. 

After tracking down the websites, I search each team's site for any mention of a blog.  The results were remarkable.  Only one team made any mention of a blog whatsoever.  That team was Sherry Wilson's from my neck of the woods here in Northern Virginia.  She has a link to her AOL blog on the front page of her static website.  Unfortunately, she has made only 9 posts since March 2006 and hasn't had an entry since September 10th.  But hey, at least she had a blog.

So after finding only one mention of a blog on the main websites I used google's blogsearch to see if maybe they had blogs separate from the main site such as here on AR.  I couldn't find one single top performer with a blog.  Now I didn't do a comprehensive search using all the major search engines but if search by my name turns up my blogs, I would think someone's blog would turn up.

This leads me to two conclusions.  First, blogs are a very personal and individual undertaking.  They are also not a part time job.  As any successbul blogger knows, it takes a lot of time to research, read, comment on and write blogs.  Most rainmakers have gained success by mastering the traditional marketing of real estate.  It has obviously worked for them.  But will it continue to work as well in the future? 

That thought leads me to my second conclusion.  As the profile of the home buyer changes and the baby boomers move off to pasture, the top performers of today will not be the top performers of tomorrow.  And those that embrace Real Estate 2.0 have a good chance of supplanting them on top of any Top 50 list.