Do Real Estate Blogs Really Build Business

Do Real Estate Blogs Really Build Business?
Is a blog today's must-have in the real estate business? Some proponents say yes.

St. Paul, Minn., practitioner Teresa Boardman says she has closed six transactions since May for clients who found her through her blog, www.StPaulRealEstateBlog.com, and she's currently working with six more prospects. One of them lives in France.

She suspects that some practitioners don't have success with the Internet because their Web sites are too mundane. To grab prospects' attention, your Web site or blog must be interesting and provide useful information, she says, not just generic buying or selling tips that prospects can find anywhere. In her blog, she writes about architecture, local developments, predatory lending, and more.

Another practitioner who considers her blog an important sales tool is Fran Bailey, an associate with Baird & Warner in Arlington Heights, outside of Chicago. She blogs daily at www.ChicagoMetroAreaRealEstate.com, keeping her observations to a few succinct paragraphs, usually about little things that come up during her real estate workday.

Recent posts have included a discussion of a client's potential commute time between the West Loop in downtown Chicago and suburban Downers Grove. Then there was the "how not to stage your house" photo of a sink full of dirty dishes and a case of empty beer bottles that greeted would-be buyers at another property.

Others practitioners find an audience by tackling topics that could potentially trouble buyers. For instance, Dan Green has been blogging about tough financing issues on The Mortgage Reports for the last two years.

If you blog and don't see results, Chicago's North Side Coldwell Banker associate Jeff Kerr advises patience: "You have to be blogging consistently for six months to a year, with good content, not just boilerplate, to generate transactions," he says.