Mike Andrew’s Real Estate Tips & Technology

I spent Thursday and Friday last week chatting to some real estate agents in Sydney about blogging, and on a number of occasions they mentioned to me the potential for readers to leave nasty messages or disparaging comments on their blogs, and this was the reason why some of them did not want to start blogging.

Well lets clear up the confusion on this, a blog is not a forum. Forums are where people are encouraged to leave comments on a business or service, and we know that in most cases these comments can be negative. I’ve even been driven to add my comments to these sites on occasions. As an example, I’ve been searching tripadvisor.com, planning my holiday, and because of user comments on service or standards of hotels, I’ve changed my choice of hotel. Blogging is not a forum, blogs allow you to publish information on any issue you feel relevant or to add advice about real estate etc, it is your personal communication tool. Your readers can add comments on your posts and request information on any issue that they feel is relevant to their area, their life or business. If you get comments from readers, which you should encourage, these are captured in the backend system of your blogging program and you get to vet or moderate these comments first, so no comment hits your blog without you approving it. If you don’t like the comment delete it, simple!!!   

Set up your blog as a tool to communicate with prospective buyers or vendors and make sure you provide good quality information on your blog. The other roadblocks put forward are, “I don’t have time” or ”I don’t have time to commit to this, I’m already very busy”. Well one word of advice, ”MAKE THE TIME”. You commit as much or as little time to blogging as your schedule allows, but remember, blogging will allow you to publish information that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, by your clients or readers. Publish your blog address on all your listings on realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, promote it on your own web site and emails and publish on all printed material that leaves your office.

That means you will have as part of your on line strategy a digital communication tool, that allows you to instantly update your clients or prospects with information that might just lead to you being the chosen professional against your competition, now wouldn’t that be nice.

I’ll cover in the next post, On Line Reputation Management, this will cover how you protect yourself from unwanted or negative comments from consumers, this is a slient business killer, and you need to know how to protect yourself and your business.