I am not a real estate agent; however changes in the real estate industry have caught my eye as an internet marketing consultant, especially since this CNN article came out recently on technology and real estate blogs.  Are you a real estate agent?  Well perhaps you have your own website, and lets say you offer a plethora of valuation tools, calculators, mortgage scenarios, you name it, to help your clients reach decisions, or just play around with these free tools and have fun on your site, hey I admit I do it!.  Well the question comes up, “Why would I want to start a Real Estate blog?” “I already have a web site that generates leads, shouldn’t I be spending my time following up with these leads, SELLING and not writing Blog posts? Actually, you need to be doing both, but why?

Its obvious technology is changing the real estate marketing landscape. Traditional style marketing does work, but alone won’t make it today, so you must think outside the box.

Real estate blogs have become and will be it seems, a cutting edge portal for agents to market their company, services, give frank opinions, share ideas, relocating advice and become the authority in housing in their respective cities. According to my research, some seasoned real estate bloggers have increased leads by almost double! Guess what, leads = sales!

The internet of today is becoming more of a social experience known as Web 2.0, (Think of YouTube.com, Myspace) thus a real estate blog gives you your own personal voice on the web about your local city and listings, as well as candid observations on median prices of homes, cost of living, job market, restaurants, crime, good or bad neighborhoods, all of which people want to know before they pull the trigger and buy a home. You know this is true, especially when someone is relocating to another city; in fact I am sure your past clients asked you similar questions.

Ok, so I start a real estate blog, but what makes this different than my web site? How do people find my blog? Find out in my next post to get “A Perspective”.