For brokerage companies, with dedicated marketing and programming staff, leveraging a website to attract customers and sell inventory is expensive but pays off. For an individual agent, except for intermittent email campaigns, their web-based marketing looks hardly better than a photocopied bio-flyer online. Blogging can give you the competitive edge without the steep learning curve or expense associated with a standard website.

Certainly not make their own website, that’s for sure. While I’m sure there are lots of exceptions out there (seems like everyone I talk to is the exception…) the vast amount of research data shows that agent websites (like www.agentsite.com) are financial black holes. First, they suffer from the number one killer of websites: consumer apathy. NAR research continues to show (year after year) that consumers search for homes not agents when online. Second, most websites are insufferable temples to the agent’s ego. This further alienates consumers because a list of type-A personality traits usually fail to answer “what’s in it for me” for the consumer. And ironically, it isn’t even links to housing inventory that’s useful, because consumers have all the inventory they need before they find an agent’s website. Oh, and did I mention that most agent websites change less frequently than the seasons? Add in the fact that any marketing money spent on an agent website is also money spent against their company’s traffic-building efforts: Who needs competitors with agents like that?

So what’s left for the average agent who’s looking to get the average return on Internet marketing while doing (ahem) the average amount of work? In a word: Blogs. Web site logs – or blogs as they have become known – are the next big thing for agent Internet marketing, for three reasons.

First, agent blogs are usually attached to the agent’s bio page on the company website. This works incredibly well because the company drives traffic to the company site, where the consumer finds an interesting property, and then is tempted to learn more about the related agent by reading their latest blog entries. To be clear, agents should only blog as part of their company’s overall marketing effort. Creating a random blog somewhere on a larger blog portal is like shouting across the Grand Canyon. Agents simply don’t have the daily stamina to out-post the hundreds of blah-blah-bloggers who can sit in their office cubes typing rants all day long. So the only way an agent’s blog entries can have value is when the postings are positioned in the right place at the right time. And that’s attached to the inventory, which attracts consumers in the first place.

Second, blogs make it possible for an agent’s website to become a real time phenomenon. Posting an entry on a blog is like typing a short note in your word processor and having it show up on your website. The technology behind blogs – mostly typing into a box, attaching a file and pressing post – is within the grasp of almost every agent, even the dedicated technophobe. Without learning a scrap of HTML code, agents can transform their profile pages online into rapidly moving marketplaces for real estate traffic and information.

Which brings up an important etiquette note: Keep your blog professional. Real estate agents cannot afford to speak their minds in their blogs. It is not a luxury that a licensed professional has when using the Internet for interacting with consumers. All it takes is a single incendiary comment on your blog and you’re labeled madder than Dr. Frankenstein – and not even an updated airbrushed photo will save you.

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