The video above I recorded yesterday from the open house I was holding. The comments and the blog post on AgentGenius that I mentioned can be found here.
While I was at the NAR convention at the blogger Q&A booth, the most popular question I heard from non-bloggers was, “how much business do you get from your blog?” The honest answer is, “I don’t really know.” As a direct result of the blog, I know I have had at least one listing, and one buyer contacted me through the blog. That is in almost 2 years of blogging. Some of you are looking at that and thinking, “man, what a crappy ROI.” If that is your attitude, than blogging is not for you. This is not to say that you can’t use blogging as a lead generation tool, there are certainly good ways of doing that, but as with any business tool, if you are looking for instant success, you may want to keep on looking.
I do not look at my blog merely as a lead generation tool. If it does generate leads for me, that is just wonderful. The fact of the matter is that I have derived plenty of benefit from blogging that has more to do with enhancing and strengthening my business than it does with generating business.
I know that blogging has made me a better agent. It has forced me to stay in tune with issues and find resources that I might otherwise have ignored or simply been unaware of. It has helped me form relationships with people who have deeply affected me and the way that I practice real estate. All of this has also been a benefit to my clients.
Of course I blog for me, but I blog more for YOU. I blog for you whether you are a Realtor or a consumer; a customer or a client. I want everyone to have as much access to as many valuable resources as possible, and blogging is a way for me to do that. Blogging also allows me to start and hold conversations with clients and customers. It allows me to establish rapport with them, and it allows them to get to know be a little bit before we ever work together.
The benefits of blogging is something that I have been thinking about more and more in the last few days. It is a topic that you will read and hear a lot more about as I try to explain to you something that might not be obvious, but is powerful once it is realized.
The benefits to blogging are numerous and real, even if they might be virtually impossible to quantify. That’s the funny thing about passion– it can be like that sometimes.
