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.

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

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.

Jay,

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

All the best,

Audrey

That was clever Patrick!!

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.