No Realtors were harmed in the making of this movie
http://www.mydeo.com/videorequest.asp?XID=3129&CID=171516

Audrey -

Search engines tend to give authority to large sites, so concentrating your posting on one blog lends itself better that way (as opposed to spreading them across multiple sites).

Here is my issue with Active Rain. You are adding your content to the ActiveRain domain, not to Audrey Hoffman's domain. When visitors find your AR blog, they are also one click away from wandering off to 50,000 other real estate professionals "blogs".

Why not put all that content you provide AR into YOUR domain, and make it work for YOU?

You could set up a blog on a subdomain of SimplyStage.com (ie: simplystage.com/blog) or even get a unique domain for your blog (ie: SimplyStageBlog.com)

Doing this adds content to your own domain, and greatly increases the SEO of your own site (as opposed to ARs site). If you had a blog on a subdomain of SimplyStage, then with every post you made to the blog, you'd be in effect adding a page to SimplyStage.com -- increasing it's authority and increasing search terms people could use to find YOU, not you and 50,000 other people...

Just something to consider.

Who let Rudy in here? ;)

Audry - Nothing wrong with naivety. When it comes to everything SEO, we're ALL learning!

Hi Chris and Maria!

Cool! We have our first video reply on Trulia Voices. Well done Patrick.

Currently, I blog on our Trulia Blog - http://www.truliablog.com/ - and Active Rain - http://activerain.com/blogs/rudy- but follow conversations and add comments in many places. I think it's important to have your main blog on your own domain for brand building purposes. If you have the time, content and stamina to contribute to other blogs, group blogs or social networks then go for it. The more conversations you can contribute to the better.

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

Jay,

Great tips, thank you; I'm pretty new to SEO so excuse my naivety!

All the best,

Audrey

That was clever Patrick!!

I only have one blog, http://www.PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com, but I contribute at other industry group blogs like http://www.GeekEstateBlog.com and http://blog.homegain.com (and one more major industry group blog -- soon.

I think too many people spread themselves too thin by trying to to too much to too many blogs. One blog, done right, can be a very valuable tool.

IMHO, it is far more valuable to add content to your own blog and brand as opposed to a community platform like Active Rain.

Chris and Maria,

I only have one blog. I participate in Active Rain occasionally and then here on Trulia. I know other agents that have several blogs and I have decided they must have someone writing for them because I can't imagine how they keep them up and work real estate full time. : )

CJ

I blog on Trulia and ActiveRain. It really helps with the Google juice. ActiveRain had about 200,000 members and it is a great blog forum.

I always find it fascinating that questions that were posted almost three years ago just seem to randomly pop again. I guess the internet really does never forget....

Because they do not have that many businees? I do not know.

Ron (&others)-
Regarding cost of setting up a Wordpress website/blog - I actually just wrote an article on that subject you may find valuable (linked below). Cost various from $0 for Wordpress.com to $20,000 or more for a full custom with everything. Most people will end up in the $1,000 - $2,500 range I would guess.

Chris,
Hi, I have seen you on active rain I believe and I used to live in Yreka and friends of the Theobald family in Redding.
The reason they do it is to create their own link juice (link sharing/blogrolling) for SEO purposes etc.
You are wasting your time on active rain for SEO purposes and finding clients, it is mostly good for agent to agent. Facebook and twitter are a generally a waste of time for SEO as well.
If you get your own blog set up, post on yours first and then active rain so you don't get penalized for duplicate content. That is why google penalizes that dog active rain because it is awash in duplicate content/copyright violations.
Wordpress blogs/websites are generally the best and can be a little effort to set up unless you are down with a little amount of HTML-web design experience. Most web or social media people can do one under a $1,000. these days.
I get over 500 hits a day/90% of business on my blogs just by doing around one a week and spending less than 15 minutes on them. If you go to my site and click you tube, I have a playlist set up there of how I blog as a Realtor. I would be happy to assist you as I also consult Realtor's on this stuff as well as Facebook websites that can search MLS from.

I don't think there's one right answer... I do think you need to consider your audience and your time (maybe not in that order)... also consider where you're blogging and do you have control of the content or can it belong to someone else. I have several blogs (my own) but I could easily have one that is work related (mortgage for me) during Mon-Fri and then do my other "fun" non-work stuff on weekends...making this clear to my readers that this is what I'm doing.

I have found Facebook to be a great place to stay connected with clients... and if I can offer this advice, it's not how many friends you have, it's WHO they are. Todd Carpenter w/NAR recently wrote an excellent post about this (within the last month)... I highly recommend you seek it out.. (if I could find it right now, I would link you to it...sorry!)

You want more than one media voice. Clearly think out the audience you are after and more waterfront properties on one, a farm rural land feel on another broadens your market share. It is not just one anything now a days. More selection, more media to feed it. Real video is huge in embeds, links on your stand alone blogs, social media, additional websites.

Thanks for the many incredible answers! You're each on top of your game. We're getting results from our blogging efforts but we're being careful not to stretch ourselves so much that we loose focus (Iike anything else). We picked up another client over the weekend as a result of one of our Blogs. We are keeping it to three Blogs for now. Plus we're trying to get more involved with Yahoo! Answers (similar to Trulia Voices) and City-data which has resulted in two clients so far.

Keep it up fellow realtors, our efforts do pay off!
Your Redding CA friends,
Chris & Maria Jeantet

I have my own blog on active rain, point2 website and blogger. I am kind of new to blogging but it definitely raises your internet presence.

I have my main blog, participate at Rain City Guide, a neighborhood blog and an (inactive) Active Rain. Blogging has been amazing for my business. The best part is attracting clients you enjoy working with. I have a Facebook too...but I'm spending more time on my Twitter. RE professionals have to be mindful of how much time we spend blogging...I'm probably about 1-2 hours per day between posting, commenting and reading other blogs.

Hi Chris & Maria!

I'm an advocate of Active Rain. I know a lot of Rainers have separate blogs on their personal sites which runs separately. I just set up a link on my website which directs users to my blog. I do a lot of commenting on other blogs, so I agree with what has already been said: how do you have the time to run multiple blogs (with your own content)?

Maybe devoting your efforts into one quality blog and then finding good grass root marketing strategies is the way to go---at least I hope so! Or, for SEO purposes, multiple could be better.

Best of luck!

Audrey
SimplyStage of Baltimore

Hi Chris, the trick is to have different names leading to the same site. I have about 11 names, within them, can be a microsite that they click on that was their intention. They will see what they came for when they get to the blog.

I do have individual blogs that link to each other which gets extra points. They tend to be area, subdivision, recreation, statistics, listings etc. An easy way is to set them up per zip code and pull off of existing statistics, demographics etc. I find zip codes are easy to get stats on.

We are experimenting with a listings only blog where we blog of all of our listings and keyword optimize them and put them o U-Tube, Flicker, Photobucket, My Space, Facebook etc. I have actually found some of my listings show up on Google, it is exciting sometimes.

I have a great source for a professional looking blog. He is less than 500 dollars and does SEO on it, it looks like a website. Feel free to check it out at http://www.renohomestalk.com keep in mind we are still working on it. It is about 1/3 complete.

Feel free to e mail me at http://www.ronbellrealtor.com if you need a professional one like mine. He can do them for other Realtors as well.

Ron Bell
Reno Homes Realtor

I think doing one blog well is more valuable than spreading yourself over too many. I am the Portland Real Estate Blog at http://www.PortlandRealEstateBlog.com. Writing one post a day and then commenting is about all the time that I can dedicate to the effort and it is a lot of time at that. The blog cross-posts to Facebook with no effort (through typepad). I read other blogs when time permits and comment when time permits but my blog comes first.