Blogging for Business

I attended the VPTC “‘Casting for Customers” luncheon on Thursday and was quite impressed (as I fully expected to be) with the quality of the discussion. Cvillepodcast has the podcast and there is a brief blogging “primer” on Michael Prichard’s site.

Coincidentally, I came across this site (archived: 2006) yesterday, which led me to this blog discussing how and whether companies should integrate blogging into their corporate marketing plans. His arguments are against corporate blogs, per se.

Conversely, the success of blogs comes from the concept that people respond best to quiet speaking that informs audiences and triusts (sic)them to make wise decisions. They help brands in ways you cannot imagine by letting people see real, fallible humans doing real jobs. They build trust.

My advice: don’t try to integrate your blogs.  Trust your employees to talk and they will most likely behave in trustworthy ways.  Trust your target audiences to be intelligent and they will become your champions and that is a powerful way to build your brands.
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Blogs are an example of from one-to-many communications. They fail when they push.

Trust. Besides the various forms of technology and even more importantly, my time and expertise, all I have to offer is my name and reputation. My business blog is a way for my clients and potential clients to “meet” me, to learn about me. When choosing a Realtor, there absolutely has to be trust and chemistry, just like any relationship. The foundation for any relationship, whether business or personal, is trust. The blog is an ongoing form of accountability, vehicle for creative thinking and information distribution.

Blogs also create transparency. I am who I am and I expect that comes through in my writing. My blog serves as an introduction, hopefully a source and ultimately one of the sources for local real estate information. This is truly a labor of love; as with anything worthwhile, it is a lot of work.

As importantly, the blog has opened up new avenues of advertising for me and for my clients. The Podcast for this property (archived: 2023) is a first step. More will come for these two (archived: 2022) new listings (archived: 2021).