I remember less than a year ago sitting down with my fabulous broker and having a chat about Naples real estate.  I recall distinctively him telling me that the future of real estate marketing was in blogging and as he continued I sat quietly...completely skeptical.  I remember asking...really?  Why?  Who cares about what we have to say?  That sounds so stupid, how could it possibly help build business? 

Then about a week later I went to the Inman conference in San Francisco and I miraculously transformed from a non-blog-believer to a true Active Rain Juice Fan.  When I got back to town, I walked into my broker's office and admitted that I GOT IT...and then went back to my office, joined Active Rain and wrote my first miserable post.

Now although I think it's important to high five Active Rain and talk about all the business and success that I've realized in my short nine months in the Rain, I think there are already a trillion posts like that so high-five Active Rain but let's talk about what's going on now.

Many of my fellow Active Rain buddies have spent quite a bit of time talking up blogging and the successes tied to it.  There's seminars and classes etc...the chatter is really endless if you've been paying attention but here's what's most interesting to me.

Initially, just as any new marketing concept that arrives in an industry most of what we heard was..."what's that".  There's a great deal of skepticism, just like my conversation with my broker mentioned at the top of the post. 

Then the newness wore off and now I think it's safe to assume most intelligent people know what blogging is, but they still aren't doing it. I learned that fellow agents who weren't blogging weren't blogging because of a list of reasons:

• I'm too busy
• I don't know if it works
• I don't want to sound stupid
• I don't know how
• I have it on my list of things to do
• I like doing mail outs
• I prefer to work with referrals

...blah blah blah.

But now we have entered into a new blogging era...kind of a parting of the seas if you will.  It seems that some people (who don't blog) have determined that blogging is in fact stupid.  Just the other day a colleague told me that someone else thought my blogging was BS. I must say, I was a little offended at the statement but after thinking about it a little further I felt a huge sigh of relief. 

See, if everyone was blogging then well, there would be a lot more competition.  Right?  Which makes blogging a lot more effective for the fraction of people who choose to do it.

A day or so later I read an email from someone who prides themselves on being super intelligent who basically belittled blogging activity and the people who do it.  Again, cool, no big deal. 

Fortunately for me, I've seen enough success with it that I will continue to blog.  I will continue to see success from it as I also believe those two people will not.  See, it's a win-win for all of us.  We remain successful with blogging, they do not....does it get any better than that?

I'd rather write a post about something I am interested in selling than write the same information in an email to one person or my tiny sphere of influence even if it is 1.000's of people because it completely fails in comparison to say...the whole world who types in my selected key terms because they want to know more about the subject in my post.

For those of you out there who are new and are just getting your feet wet, don't let the non-blog bullies out there tell you that blogging is "BS" or that you are stupid for trying it.  Get out there and share your smarts with the world and blog about what you want to be involved in.  The results will come even if someone else doesn't believe it.  Besides, your posts are meant to attract their future clients, not them!

Best Regards,

Your Naples Smart Girl!