Whilst there are major competitors in each field in the business portal industry we are all aware of the big three, Domain, Seek and REA. There are some smaller guys that are well worth mentioning and these days out rank and deliver better quality response to you as a business owner or business broker. The majors strongly rely on traffic derived from other verticals within their business, for example roughly 30 % of the real business traffic is direct from their realestate.com site.

The large traffic volume which the bigger guys rely on is just that, volume. Not necessarily quality targeted traffic that the small sites are delivering. I’ve never seen any of the majors optimize keywords that drive organic traffic to their site that was based on quality content, articles or blog posts from relevant sources. This is what leads me to my next point that’s bound to shake things up a little.

It may be too much work and not enough in return for one major portal in particular. Is Realbusinesses.com.au for sale? A little bird told me that another major is looking to take ownership so that REA can focus on their core business, whilst this will eliminate one competitor it will supercharge another. I’m not at liberty to make the comment on who the purchaser may be, though take your pick there are only two to choose from.

Another one to keep an eye on is the AIBB who has also just launched their platform for business brokers, word on the street is that they are aiming to become a major player in the online business for sale field within the next 12 months, they will however only offer their services to business brokers.

The business for sale market may not hold a big enough piece of the pie for the big wigs, which helps the likes of some of the industry specific sites like Listabusiness, business2sell & business-trader who focus heavily on quality traffic rather than volume, and seem to be giving these others a bit of a hard time.

Lets see what the next 12 months holds in store, i know I’ve got some work cut out for myself its going to be an interesting year in the business for sale niche/world.

Here is what Jonathan has to say about this week’s launch of Property Observer “I have been writing about property for more than 25 years, and I’ve learnt that getting passionate about property is easy. Getting it right is trickier. I intend for Property Observer to be property central, providing the essential news and analysis on the ins and outs of property. We will cover the capital cities, up and down the coast, and inland to the regional towns and the bush.

We will offer plenty of authoritative coverage about the homes we live in and the investments that top up our incomes.

Property Observer will showcase the best houses and apartments and all the big-name buyers and sellers. We will also keep a watchful eye on new developments, and the plush over-55 developments that seek out the growing band of empty nesters.

Property Observer will capture the changing seasons – we will write about snow homes, vineyards, fishing lodges, marinas and even the occasional beach bathing box. We aim to be of interest to the owner-occupier and the investor, given that population and investment funds are more fluid than ever.

I intend for commercial investment property to be a key component, especially the opportunities on high street – retail neighbourhood shops, small strata offices, pubs and industrial strata. All are suitable for the self-managed super fund investor.

The website will offer wisdom on winning ways with property commentary from key economic and industry practitioners. We won’t overlook the property fundamentals, conveyancing clues, legal rulings and tax advice.

We want input from readers on market prices in their local patches, facilitating shared knowledge through dialogue, so let us know about your stories, insights and properties.”

It’s not just about bricks and mortar, as Property Observer will personalise property with interviews of the movers and shakers.

We want our readers to get wisdom, not clichés. And that way we’ll all be the wealthier.”

The content is excellent and a great assistance for real estate agents writing blogs as it is full of relevant data, analysis and commentaries.

You can also follow Property Observer on Twitter – @Propertyobs Make sure you subscribe to the email alerts too.

A broad range of real estate industry professionals attended the event including executives from The Professionals, Ray White, Laing & Simmons, RP Data, Fairfax, RE Uncut, real estate portals, software companies, mortgage brokers, real estate trainers and agents from across Australia and New Zealand. To help launch the event Jeff Turner a very popular real estate and social media presenters in the US and a seasoned American RE BarCamp contributor attended the event.

The day started with the attendees getting together and deciding what would be the topics for the morning’s 8 breakout groups. Moderators were then decided and 4 groups ran for 1 hour followed by the next 4 topics for another hour. After lunch the afternoon group topics were set, moderators allocated and the groups ran again for 1 hour each.

Some popular real estate topics included:

• CRM Systems
• Mobile phone technology
• WordPress
• Real estate portals
• Sold data sharing
• Social Media
• Lead Generation
• SEO
• Online marketing

I discussed the event with numerous attendees and the feedback was amazing, most commenting the event was relaxed, informative and they couldn’t wait for the next BarCamp. At this stage the organises are thinking (but are open to any suggestions) it will be a bi-annual event and are hoping to expand it to other Australian cities later in the year. Special thanks is needed to those who put the event together and include:

• Peter Brewer
• Lara Scott
• Tatiana Mijalica
• Peter Fletcher
• Ben Stockdale
• Greg Vincent

What’s important about these BarCamps is that they’re not for profit and community run, meaning anyone is welcome to be involved and help with planing and running BarCamps. If you’d like to help with the next Sydney event or bring RE BarCamp to your city then feel free to contact any of the guys and get involved.

Well done to all and I look forward to the next RE BarCamp!

OzHomevalue is a Realestate.com.au owned website for property vendors providing them with sales data information in relation to the suburb where the vendor’s property is located. From their homepage:

OzHomeValue provides a comprehensive property report to help find the value of your home. Try our easy to use, obligation free system and receive your FREE property report.

Well, it is not entirely obligation free given after a vendor fills in the form and receives a free property report, their contact details are then sold to local agents who contact the vendor regarding a appraisal.

But what’s more interesting about OzHomevalue is the sold data provided in the free property report. These property reports showcase recently sold properties and a Price Range for each property in the suburb where the vendor’s property is located. It’s this Price Range which is provided for sold properties which raises the question as to whether a property vendor’s privacy is being breached. Given most vendors explicitly request their agents do not publish sold prices, why then do all of these prices appear?

Given Ozhomevalue is owned by Realestate.com.au then a reasonable assumption is that REA are providing Ozhomesvalue with this sold data. As the sold dates of the properties in the report are between April 4 and April 12, 2011 than this sold data has not been sourced from the Valuers Generals office (because settlement has not occurred). Therefore more likley than not, this sold data is what has been reported on Realestate.com.au by agents once a property has sold. What’s interesting is, if you look at the sold properties on Realestate.com.au which are listed in the Ozhomevalue property report, you will see the price (for most properties) is not displayed on Realestate.com.au but is displayed on Ozhomevalue.com.au.

A perfect example of this is if you click on the sample property report on the Ozhomevalue.com.au website (after this post was published they updated their report to change the results but you can see a ozhomevalue_sample_report.)

You will see there are 12 recently sold properties in the report. Now if you search the sold properties on Realestate.com.au you will see that 11 out of the 12 properties do not have the sold price displayed. Below are the 12 properties in the report. Although the report outlines the property prices I have substituted the price with $X  to maintain the vendor’s privacy.

1. 197-199 Castlereagh Street SYDNEY – $X (REA No Price)*
2. 612/2 York Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
3. 3701/129 Harrington Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
4. 324/298 – 300 Sussex Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)
5. 1307/98 Gloucester Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)
6. 1809/183 Kent Street, SYDNEY – $525,000 (REA Price $525,000)
7. 303/420 Pitt Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)
8. 2007/98 Gloucester Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)*
9. 2007/98 Gloucester Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
10. 1409/168 Kent Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA No Price)*
11. 129 Harrington Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
12. 129 Harrington Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)*

*I decided to cross reference the 12 properties against the Australian Property Monitors database and the properties marked with * appeared in APM. All of these properties have the price withheld in APM.

Ozhomevalue refer to this price as a Price Range but make no reference to what this Price Range figure means. If it is the sold price of the property, then vendors (along with agents) would be outraged and should have every right to demand the sold price removed immediately.

After further examination it appears that Homeguru.com.au another Realestate.com.au owned company is displaying exactly the same sold property data as what Ozhomevalue does in a similar Sales Reports. However, instead of displaying the price as ‘Price Range’ Homeguru.com.au simply has it displayed as Price.

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For new subscribers to Business2 – here are the previous stages.

Diagnosing your online position (warts and all) – Stage One

Constructing your perfect online real estate media platform – Stage Two

Without a doubt from my experiences real estate agents have little to no – understanding about what exactly defines an online business. Today, they remain a tangled online entity boasting a website with very little traffic and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – the lights are on and nobody is home. Direct online communications are next to non – existent simply because they are reliant on consumers finding them, as against actually delivering then driving online customer communications. Easy to fix so long as you are prepared to lock – up this online market.

Not only are you providing purchasers the best online service – more importantly offering vendors a stand-out real estate media platform. One that you created and paid for (I say this because real estate agents struggle using their own monies to invest in technology) hopefully your online platform model of choice will now  exceed your competitors too! Stop following the market – time to lead it.

Allow me to elaborate on that –  have you read – “Digital Marketing – Strategies for Online Success”? A great and easy read by Godfrey Parkin – a must for your online library (it’s now in mine).

“There is little point in building a website or fine – tuning your e -marketing tactics unless your strategy is right in the first place. To build a competitive strategy to capture the loyalty of your online consumers requires re – thinking your vision for your business from the ground up. It also requires an intimate understanding of what this online environment is all about, from the perspective of your business, from your competitors’ point of view, and particularly in the eyes of your target customers as individuals. Without those insights, you cannot begin to put together a digital strategy that has any hope of succeeding.”

So let’s best sum up where your real estate agency presently sits.

“The answer is that most businesses have an increasingly fuzzy vision of what their future should be, so their tendency is to clutch tightly to the past. As the world around them changes faster and faster, the future becomes even more blurred and uncertain. Without a bright light to head toward, they feel safer not to move away from their fundamentals and put their efforts into shoring up their defences. Those companies that do stumble forward usually head in the direction that they have always followed, tactically groping their way through fog, turning to dodge obstacles and grasping at opportunities reactively as they fly by. Without a vision, they have no idea where they are headed. Without a vision, they cannot put together an effective strategy.” Sound familiar?

“So why, are the brilliant examples of how it should be done so few and far between?” I’m not suggesting that our online strategy is such an example – rather this is what we do – with success.

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We have five non – negotiable online services that we adhere to on a daily basis. It is imperative that your online platform must strive to deliver so that you can claim this all very important point of difference over your competitors.

1. The largest online database within your demographic area – be proud that your online media platform connects to more buyers and vendors. Our proof is that we display on our homepage our subscriber sales to our online business which presently sits at $952,234,220.

2. Without using Google AdWords – use intelligent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods where your agency appears at number one position organically on all Google keyword searches within your demographic areas.

3. Write a weekly e – newsletter, send out daily email alerts, provide weekly data on the sales that have been recorded within your demographic area. Each week send out your upcoming open for inspection lists. Provide subscribers the ability to choose exactly which online communication they want to receive. Keep branding your business online.

4. Get a blog going – move with the times. Each comment adds another page to your website as well as on Google which drives your SEO. TAG keywords that appear within your e – newsletter as we try to add at least – 100 new pages to our website on a weekly basis. When you sell or lease a property keep the link live as the more live links on a website the greater SEO. We are over 3,000 pages and rapidly chasing down 4,000 pages.

5. Be relevant – not irrelevant. Use technologies don’t refuse it. Religiously translate your enquiries and open for inspection lists to connect to your online model. There will come a time (and it is happening now) where vendors and purchasers are restricting online communications from agents – where research has identified no more than five (three is the average) and that includes property portals.

When a successful online agency advises a vendor let’s launch an online campaign with a two week marketing strategy before having to commit to a much more expensive print campaign – guess who will win every time?

As Godfrey Parkin said“there’s a very simple, powerful, burning light that all of us need to keep in focus: properly used, the internet frees customers and marketers from the constraints of time and space, which in turn unleashes personal communication and experience – sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Our online communications are very up close and personal – how are yours? When you start digging at your online foundations make sure you use a developer that really knows what they are doing they are few and far between.

Yesterday Premier Keneally quietly introduced a new property tax, being referred to as a land transfer charge. The front page Sydney Morning Herald article today estimates it will “boost the state government coffers by an estimated $90mil annually.”

The new land transfer charge is a buyer’s tax and will be charged on the sale of residential and commercial property worth more than $500,000. Charged at a rate of 0.2% of a sale between $500,000 and $1mil, over $1mil the charge rises to 0.25% for the portion over $1mil. Therefore on $600,000 which is currently the Sydney median house price, the charge is $200, on $1mil, the charge is $1000.

Back in September 2008 I wrote a blog about the NSW state government and how their stamp duty real estate cash cow was drying up due to the Global Financial Crisis and lack of property sales. At that time the state government reliance on stamp duty revenue as a percentage of total tax revenue was a whopping 20%. The government was crying poor in September 2008 because due to poor economic conditions, less people were buying and selling, the state government was behind in stamp duty revenue by $180mil for the months of July, 2008 and August 2008 alone!

As the housing market starts to recover Premier Kenneally has decided to milk the cow again with another slug at the property market. As if we aren’t contributing enough as it is.

Premier Keneally apparently defended the tax by saying 70% of property transactions would not be affected, hello???! The median house price in Sydney is $600,000. In an article on www.smh.com.au today, the Real Estate Institute of NSW provided these statistics – “Of the 50 local government areas in Sydney, 34 have average house prices in excess of 500,000”.

Even more ridiculous is the Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly, explaining the new tax as part of a strategy to prevent property fraud? Do they think we are that stupid? Like that is a good enough excuse to waste another $90mil of our money?

Let’s just say what this is really about, the NSW state government is bankrupt, desperate and we may as well compare ourselves to the Greek economy because if they are desperate enough to “quietly” under the cover of the federal budget announcements introduce a new property tax things must be really, really, Greek economy style bad!

Apparently there are 35 fraudulent property transactions currently being investigated and what $90mil is needed for that?

Keneally, I thought you were doing ok till now, I mean the state was a mess when you took over but you have lost me completely with this one.

Just a quick note to realestate.com.au’s marketing “gurus” if you build up something so much, and you know it isn’t that good, be prepared for a little ridicule and for your marketing to fall very flat. After all, revolutions are usually powered by the masses, not the few!

That is not to say the new website is good, or an improvement – it is, it just isn’t that special and it really hasn’t done any I have not seen done on other sites.

So now that the launch has now settled down in terms of sensationalism, frustration and despair, I think it is time to have a look at what is the bigger play here for Realestate.com.au and to a lesser extent domain.com.au

Both portals realise that the years of increasing basic monthly fees to agents at a good pace is slowly coming to an end, so they are now looking at new ways to get squeeze your marketing budgets (possibly only at their newspaper divisions expense) .

They also know you guys and gals are infatuated with your immediate competition and will look to leverage millions of dollars a year more from this very fact. Real estate agents needs to wise up or you will find most of your marketing being spent on campaigns that do little to benefit your brand or your vendors.

Historically speaking

When I started this blog in 2002, I did it after listening to an executive of a certain real estate portal expound a whole bunch of $#%#%@ on an eager audience at a real estate institute endorsed gathering.

Basically the whole speech was about spending even more of your money on rubbish like banner ads to bring you untold riches. Over the following years these events were held all over the country and real estate institutes were sponsored by the companies giving these speeches.

I was so annoyed at this that my initial speech (which I changed at the last minute) was all about why you shouldn’t do most things the previous speaker was endorsing and to push more of your money into your own future – your website. Suffice to say I was never welcome back again.

Why you need portals

You need the likes of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, at the basic level they are great value for money, they are popular across the country and they do provide you with a valued service.

Why you don’t need premium, platinum, super platinum and super duper platinum listings

Sure, if the client is paying go for it, but think about this, there is no statistical evidence that these listings sell quicker or for more, nada, none, zero!

Marketers will tell you that premium listings get more visitors and therefore your brand gets more recognition, however don’t you make money when you sell the darn thing, not when anyone clicks on it? So do the math, think about where else you could spend that branding money more effectively.

Why you must be on Google Real Estate

Google real estate will be a slow burn, they will build their systems and you will find more and more people using this service each month, it will almost certainly always be free* and will soon be integrated into Android Mobile Phones.

Supporting this website with your listings will also push visitors back to your current site and also make this offering stronger. The stronger Google is, the less likely you will see large increases in fees in the future from the major portals, in fact at current rates I think within 5 years basic fees on these portals will definitely come down, mainly from pressure from Google and other similar free services.

* Google has built the trust of developers worldwide because they are open, developers in return have made Google what they are today, it would be the beginning of the end for Google to change the game. Incidentally they also make about 8 billion year from this philosophy.

Start your own Groups

I want you to start your own groups on MeetUp, get all of your immediate competitors to meet once per month for lunch at a different location. Maybe invite someone to speak at these events, but generally just open discussion on as many subjects as you please, maybe you can form a local buying group.

Yes, you need to compete and yes their will be a little espionage, but I guarantee it will be of benefit to you in the long run. You never know, it could be great fun as well.

I woke up to the news this morning that Pauline Hanson will not sell her house to a Muslim or an Asian who lives overseas. I really don’t want to give her any more publicity and I do not want to get into a political debate on this, her views to me are so archaic. What I do want to point out is that we now live in such a small world because of globalisation and the Internet, and with Australia being such a multi-cultural society if you want to be successful at selling real estate in suburban Sydney today, you need to know about all these cultures that co-exist. It is the changing face of the buyer profile, it is the internet and social media, it’s a multi cultural, dynamic society that we meet when we sell real estate.

I have just got back from a holiday in Japan, I used to live there and I speak the language. When dealing with Japanese clients I know what to do and what not to. I have spent a month in China but I don’t know the culture as well and I definitely don’t speak the language.

Lately though I have had the opportunity of meeting several clients from mainland China. China is about to take over Japan as the world’s 2nd largest economy. (Pauline you have no idea what you are missing out on!)

Generally speaking, my knowledge of Chinese culture consists of Feng Shui, No. 8 is a lucky number and No. 4 represents death, so forget selling a house with No. 4 to a Chinese client (same in Japan and maybe all Asian countries)? I know that according to the principles of Feng Shui that it’s not good if you can see from the front of the house through to the back door etc. Really I don’t know much and I would like to know more.

So last week I had the opportunity to show a few properties to clients from China. Now I am not sure what Pauline Hanson’s agent would be able to do in this case as the client lives in China, does business in Australia and is an Australian citizen. His family (wife and children) live in China, his mother lives in Sydney but realistically he lives in China. He wants to buy a luxury home for his mother. We meet, I have several houses that fit the criteria. He is young and successful and speaks English, “should be easy” I think.

Well it is not easy and doing business is completely different. When showing the property the clients speak between themselves in Chinese so I am clueless, and the conversation I have with them is based on whether the house is good value or not. I had the chance to show a 2nd property to the same clients and an Australian friend joined them and he enlightened me on a few things. Firstly, whether they like the property or not is not important, it is whether the property represents good value. While a lot of clients I deal with inspect a property and say “I love the open plan feel, the CaesarStone kitchen etc”, you will apparently not hear that from a Chinese client.

The emotional impact that we seek from clients, (the basis of a good auction) is not so important to a Chinese client. When my vendor asked how the inspection went and if they liked the property, I had to say “Apparently that is not relevant”. I have a lot to learn and am respectfully curious and definitely up for the challenge!

Real estate agents deal with people of all walks of life and from all cultures. I feel sorry for Pauline Hanson’s agent, how is he going to filter these people? When he receives a call on her property is he going to ask if they are Muslim or not before he shows the property or ask to see their citizenship if they sound Asian? Anyone want to throw some money in for her airfare to the UK?

Stage Two – (for those who missed Stage One)

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A common theme within the real estate industry is when an agent speaks with a vendor who just completed a new home where they always say “we would do many things different with our next home” – the same too applies with agent websites.

Agents struggle to upgrade their own websites yet they boast the latest mobile phone technologies. Telephones are not the solution for generating market activity enquiries. Unless your online media platform is switched on and intelligently activated those telephone enquiries will diminish. In this new century agents/agencies are judged on what their respective online platform delivers where more importantly this involves the businesses driving the communication not vice versa. How many names, telephone numbers, email addresses do you presently have in “your” electronic database?

“You can run – but you can’t hide.” Don’t hide rather start seeking, delivering and then exceeding your online expectations. Move your business to the future given online technologies with aligned marketing strategies are moving at such a frenetic pace that even the most savvy of online real estate businesses are struggling to keep – up. The savvy real estate businesses are the first point of contact for new listings to prospective purchasers which are delivered via an email alert – your personal viewing invitation. Invite the call and invoke – The Law of Reciprocity.

We launched our online media platform back on September 15, 2000. Call it what you want just that at the end of the day we were actually chasing something that was yet to be recognised nor properly discovered for that matter. Five years later, Google entered the online world and the rest is history where today, it’s all about climbing that Google search engine optimisation (SEO) ladder. For all your individual demographic markets one has to explore so that you can then fast track your online SEO position. Just like market positions which are all about growing (not declining) so in which direction is your online strategy headed – better still, do you actually have one?

In life, we are all consumers where not a single day goes by that we don’t buy product(s). When you are buying something you are drawn to product presentation. Change hats – as a real estate agent ask yourself how you are presenting and communicating your properties on your real estate media platform. Are you tracking your online traffic on a daily and weekly basis – your property website as compared to the paid portals? Don’t rely on external forces rather concentrate on your internal deliveries to consumers. When you get the mix right your website must be the (primary) source and the property portals (back – up) secondary for your online communications. Drive your business not others that you invest with. Your online message to consumers has to be your number one priority.
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Online guarantees a market – print suggests a circulation market. Just because you buy a newspaper does not suggest that you want to buy a property – the smartest online real estate agencies work from within not without. I take Unique Browsers (UB’s) well over circulation figures any day – given that UB’s are consumer activated who specifically go to your website in search of information. When consumers are not chasing your website then something is alarmingly amiss?

With Stage 2 – I want to focus on the four key ingredients that I believe assure you of the perfect building process for your online media platform. Much like building a home these four points are what I consider the “bricks and mortar”. You need to build on your foundations first.

• 1. Technology
• 2. Database
• 3. Communication
• 4. Future

All four are actually intertwined although the key processes are the identification, application and integration is to ensure that you are applying best practice for your real estate media platform. When the right technology is applied you can effectively contact your database and communicate your business activity online to your key demographic markets.

TECHNOLOGY

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One word keeps resonating – WordPress which launched to the public on November 2005 a state – of – the – art publishing platform that is free. When I look at the leading websites globally they are all using WordPress. We have been running WordPress for just over twelve months now – and I am one of their greatest fans – the perfect online publisher. WordPress also, provides a fantastic database function that administers our daily database email alerts and also, the flight centre for our subscriber weekly newsletter.

In conjunction with WordPress we run Agentpoint which manages our website individual property presentations for all our listings (the back-end). The dashboard (control centre) required absolutely no training for our staff – a vital ingredient for business owners that struggle to understand online. The transition period to a smart online business must apply the Kiss Theory: Keep it Simple Stupid. If you understand it – you use it. If you don’t understand it you don’t use it!

DATABASE

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The Achilles heel for most real estate businesses – agents own vendors not buyers. If a business is running multiple databases it is terminally ill, where in all probability no one is singing from the one hymn book. Your business is simply a one agency platform that is collectively united or a divorced communication process. United we stand – divided your business will fall. The leading real estate online businesses are running the one (and only) database platform.

COMMUNICATION

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Remember the Telstra advertisement “Why didn’t you call?” Verbal communication is important – email alerts supersede memory loss provided you are managing your database correctly. Database entry = communication. For the cost of a postage stamp (not including an envelope) you can send out thousands of email alerts. Calibrate your business so that you can communicate with your online subscribers. Activate don’t detonate your online communication platform.

FUTURE

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When was the last time you used the White Pages (print edition) to look up a telephone number? Consumers use search engines for over ninety per cent (and growing daily) of their respective enquiries. We still use print with online where the global financial crisis offered an amazing Litmus Test – that being significant declines in vendor paid advertising (VPA). As a consequence we moved our business to online – (refer points 1, 2 and 3) and outperformed all of our competitors ($63,000,000 – June 2009 month sales.)

Which takes me to point 4 – you can’t expect to remain relevant unless you embrace, adapt and activate your real estate media platform.

Online is a magnificent tool – just you have to work on it. We all know what happens when the tools (of trade) go down – your competitors build something bigger and better. Otherwise known (as work in progress) where online today, is very progressive, aggressive and obsessive. Just look at what Google did to Microsoft (whom had many years start on them).

Sit back – take three breathes, and design your perfect online strategy for 2010 and beyond.

All I ask is that where is your online business today – not tomorrow? Today, it happens and tomorrow it follows. (Hmm, I should claim that quote.)

The word Blog is short for the word “web log”.  Blogs first started in the late 1990′s but really became popular around the year 2000 and today there are hundreds of millions of blogs around the world. You are even  reading a blog right now.

Social Networking followed blogs by about 5 years and started gaining momentum soon after the millennium. Websites like Facebook and Twitter have gained hugely in popularity and proactive agents have been early adopters of social networking.

The problem with social networking from a marketing perspective is that their instantaneous nature means that they are very much like throwing handfulls of snow in a snowball fight and hoping some of them hit home. Stop throwing and you will stop hitting people. This means that to get great results you have to be constantly posting which can be very time consuming for many agents.

Tweets on Twitter have a lifespan measured in minutes and will normally be most effective within 10 to 15 minutes of posting. Facebook posts are a little longer lasting but their effectiveness is still measured in days. Blogs posts on the other hand keeps on giving days, weeks, months and even years later.

At Nerang First National we have had our blog going for a little over a year now and during that time we have posted up 57 articles which equates to around 1 article per week. Posts that I made in the first month are still being read and attracting visitors over a year later.

In the context of our snowball fight think of blog posts like rolling your snowballs down the hill at the opposition. You write an article just once and every day it’s readership is just getting bigger and bigger with no further work from yourself.

To illustrate  this here is the statistics for two o four posts.

Funny Real Estate Photos was posted in July 2009 and has been one of our more popular articles.

Every month the readership of our blog increases and in the past year we have had close to 10,000 views on the website. If the month on month growth continues we should see well over double that traffic over the next 12 months. But blog readership is not all about web visitors as articles can be read a few other ways including an RSS reader like Google Reader, and through email subscription. Unfortunately tracking those views is far more difficult.

In addition to our own readership we have also been lucky enough for about 7 or 8 of our blog articles to be picked up and republished in the Gold Coast Bulletins Lifestyle Guide with full credit back to our agency. We also use many of the blog articles on our facebook page and in our email and printed newsletters.

I talk with other agents all the time who want a start a blog but are often put off because they believe that it costs a lot or is beyond their technical skills to setup. So to show people just how easy it is I decided to take setup a blog another First National member and use screen capture software to capture the process and offer it up as a video tutorial.

The Blog I set up was for Bushby First National in Tasmania.

I asked them to provide me with just three things

1. Create an account on WordPress.com. I could have done this as part of the process but this way they get to select their username, password and email that they want.
2. A header image  to suit the theme I was going to use which was 770 pixels x 140 pixels
3. Copy of a first article with matching pictures.

Using just those resources I was able to setup a blog on WordPress.com and post the first article in around 25 minutes and it was all absolutely free. I took a couple of calls in between so you may see the video jump around where I stopped and started a few times.

Now what you will not see is an amazing professional Propvid style special effects, professional voice overs or mind blowing editing. What you (hopefully) will see is a quick and easy way to get your first blog up and running today. So be kind with my video skills… even you Brett!!

WordPress.com is not the only free blogging service around but it is the one I recommend. The services uses the WordPress blogging platform albeit a very locked down version to provide a free blogging service.

WordPress is the underlying blogging platform that runs the Business2 blog and in a followup article I will cover options of how to upgrade your blog. This will cover domain mapping and even upgrading to a self hosted wordpress solution just like Business2 or my personal blog at glennbatten.com. A self hosted version of WordPress allows you to install your own plugins and themes and provides greater functionality but you need to crawl before you walk and so a WordPress.com blog is the perfect start that provides you with access to a powerful upgrade path for the future.

Anyway on with the show. The whole tutorial covers three separate videos thanks to Youtubes 10 minute limitation.

You will notice that the address of the blog in the video is bushbyfn.wordpress.com. Since creating the site Bushby First National has since purchased their own domain bushbyblog.com.au and used the Domain mapping upgrade on WordPress.com (about $US10 per year) to map this new domain to their wordpress blog.

If you follow the tutorial and use it to setup your own blog please share it’s address with everyone in the comments section. Also, if  you are a real estate agent and already operate a blog for your agency then please share its address and your experiences to date so those considering setting up a blog can be inspired and learn from your experiences.

I would highly recommend any agency who wants to interact with their community, increase their brand profile and leverage more visitors to their main website consider starting up a blog. You don’t have  to go into as much detail in your articles as I have  on some of them.  Keeping it topical, opinionated and up to date is far more important.

Anybody who has been reading my articles on this site will notice the occasional cross over articles on our blog where I have written on the same subject but just from different angles. The article titled “Google Real Estate and Nerang, Highland Park, Carrara and Worongary” is the perfect example. Just write whatever comes into your head that you want to share. At first it may seem a bit foreign but you will soon be knocking out articles with ease.