Can the real estate blogs provide consumers with useful information? This is my first year of blogging, and many non-believers told me that except for the MLS type information, people don’t search blogs for real estate information. Those who need real estate help ask for a referral from a friend, not from a blog -they said. It is hard to reconcile these thoughts with the fact that 5,000+ people are spending their time blogging on AR and other blogs. I think that at least some of them want to be found by consumers. Which group is right and which one is wrong?

“What I would do better” resolution would be natural post for the last day of the year. Every blog in the world seems to be doing it this week. For this reason I’ll skip it and instead share my recent experience from the “other” side of the blog, i.e. being a consumer searching for information.

I was planning a short skiing trip with the family and was looking for a skiing resort that was not far from Princeton NJ, had a good skiing school, and a spa or something else to do for those who were not skiing. This should have been as easy as typing in “skiing NY” into Goggle, right?  Not so. I spend a lot of time on Goggle and travel forums, found some information, but not what I was looking for. What about skiing blogs? Surely someone must be writing about this stuff? Yes, but not in a way I could find it. I even looked on Technorati and Blog Catalog, which most consumers would not know to check. No luck in the blogs either.


The final step in my search was to ask my nephew who is a skier. He gave me information about the mountains, which was very useful. As to accommodations, he was not of much help, since his preference is for motels, not spas. Is this what my non-believer group had in mind, when saying that people just ask for a referral from a friend?

You may be wandering what does the ski trip have to do with real estate?  This experience helped me see that when searching for information, whether it’s about real estate, skiing or restaurants –the same principles apply.
Carnac in her recent post rightfully warned bloggers with less then 6 moths of experience to not be giving advice on blogging. I offer the advice in this post as a consumer, who knows just a bit about blogging. If it seems very 101, it probably is, which is OK with me since it helped me sort out many questions I have as a blogger.

These are the TEN THINGS I learned about blogging, by being a consumer.

1. Understand the basic questions consumers may ask.
Write the posts that answer those questions.

2. Title your posts simply with the words someone will be using when searching. I could not find “skiing NY” if it was titled something else.

3. Don’t use the clever titles many blog experts teach you to use. Writing for a newspaper is different then writing for Goggle. Newspapers are visual and can attract your interest by simply seeing a catchy title. Blogs are invisible, unless found through the search words.

4. Make the key points visible immediately by bold font, another color or in some other way. If I did not see right away what the post was all about, I stopped reading. People are busy and will not indulge you by searching through the entire post.

5. Personal stuff was not of interest to me when I was looking for information. I did not want to read about the bloggers' vacations or children; I was just looking for answers to specific questions.

6. A little bit of the personal information would be useful, if I was looking for an expert in skiing, or blogging, or real estate and wanted to know more about their expertise. I wouldn’t be looking for very personal information, since I am not planning to be friends with them, just using their expertise.

7. Consumers are a reluctant and lurking bunch. I did not subscribe even to the blogs I found useful. Blog subscriptions are mostly for blogging friends, or blogs that are of continued interest. I bookmarked the useful posts, why did I need to subscribe? If the topic was of continued interest, for example, how to be a better blogger, I might consider subscribing.

8. It is impossible to find information within a blog without clear categories. If there are too many posts within a category, chances are I wouldn’t get to it.

9. Contact from the consumer – is possible, but under special circumstances. If I found the answers I was looking for, I would come back to this blog when I go on another ski trip. I don’t think I would contact the author if I had a question. I would just look in another place.

10. Social Networking is very different then blogging as an expert. Everything I said above does not apply. I want to know about my blogging friends and their experience. I also want to comment, subscribe and be involved and interact with them. It allows me to make new friends and could help me to refer business to those who will do a good job and who I like.

As this year comes to a close, I wish for the next year to bring answers to everyone’s questions. I hope that questions about Princeton real estate could be found in this blog.

Happy New Year to all my current and future friends!


P.S. It’s 12:01 am January 1, 2008. Anderson Cooper at the Times Square says his New Year resolution is to blog more often and to use the spell checker. Me too – these typos are just way too sneaky. And can the next version of the spell checker include the word "blog", please.