blogging?

I blog about investment properties and I find lots of customers call me thanking me for giving them real information.  Basically free advice.  Customers will read what they find helpful.  No offense, but I don't (and most customers don't) really care about your dog, the upcoming music festival, how your weekend was, or how the listing appointment went last week. 

They want to know why they should with you.  If you want to blog about your personal life, then have a seperate blog for your friends and family.

Jesse -

Great question! Some will say "Real Estate Only!"

I disagree. I happen to think one of the most powerful aspects of real estate blogging is the opportunity to display your personality, and who you are, to anyone that stops by. Real estate is a "people business". People "connect" with an agent for a variety of reasons, not just what they know about real estate.

My own blog contains many "off topic" posts, and it is through some of those posts that clients have really connected.

Sure, it should be mostly real estate. It's also critical to have a way for people to search for homes -- best if they don't have to leave the blog to do that, but at least have a link to your home search.

Start off by reading a LOT. Read a bunch of real estate blogs and get a feel with what you can do. It's OK to use ideas you sess, but don't take actual content! (That's a copyright violation).

We get almost all our business from our blog. It's a lot of work (so is any other form of prospecting/marketing), but can be very rewarding -- both personally and profesionally.

And good luck!!

Jesse, there are a lot of ways for your blog to succeed, but what I've found the most successful is to keep a consistent type of content and tone for every post.  I remember six months into my blog, I would take Fridays and post about a Silicon Valley side trip instead of my usual consumer protection articles.  I'd regularly lose 20-50 RSS subscribers after those posts.

Now that's my audience.  There are a lot of sites competing your people's attention.  Your audience will self-select based on your writing style and personality.  If you're consistent, then people like you will connect with you on your blog.