Seattle Agents Help Each Other: Say No to "Prohibit Blogging"

...We have more 'hood blogs than any other city in the United States*.

...We have more agent authored blogs than any other city**.

...We talk about blogging, Facebook and Twitter more than any other topic at local real estate events***.

BUT less than 5% of the active listings in the NWMLS allow blogging.

And I don't think this is really the agent's fault.

I think the fault lies with the design of the NWMLS listing input form which defaults to "Prohibit Blogging: Yes".

And then for the agents who do want to blog about listings they see, "Pro Blog: Yes", and get confused. Does this mean they can blog about it? Actually in this instance "Pro" is short for "Prohibit". No blogging allowed.

It is an unfortunate user experience!

Especially because I think that listing agents would want their listing to be promoted as much as possible. But by prohibiting blogging by default it means that a ton of great blogs written by agents like Seattle Condos and Lofts, Seattle Condo Review, Urban Condo Spaces, UrbanAsh, 360 Digest, etc. can't blog about your listing. Each of those blogs has hundreds to thousands of readers a day. Wouldn't you love to get your listing in front of them?

Don't worry though, Urbnlivn, Seattle Bubble and Lovely Listing can still blog about it though. But if they do, and link to your listing on Redfin, Redfin won't be able to show that fact.

I've heard agents express concern that by saying "no" to prohibit blogging, that is, allowing blogging, that it will open their listing to being trashed by other agents.

Really? Read through the most popular Seattle real estate blogs written by agents and tell me one of them would say disparaging things about your listing. And have you met any of those agents in person? I have. They're all the nicest people I've ever met.

Now if you took bad listing photos leaving "Prohibit Blogging: Yes" isn't going to stop your listing from appearing on Lovely Listing. But then again, if you're that kind of listing agent you're probably not on Active Rain.

So, Seattle agents, let's help each other out. Let's say "No" to "Prohibit Blogging" so that we can all blog, Tweet and Facebook each other's listings so they get as much exposure as possible.

* I have verified this. We have about 50 'hood blogs. I don't know of any other city that has more than a few.

** We have a lot. I don't know if we have the most. I do know we have the most condo blogs!

*** If you don't believe me go to any real estate conference.