So, you wanna be a real estate blogger? Dustin Luther’s seminar how the job is done

By Brian Brady, World Wide Wealth Planners

Dustin Luther’s real estate weblogging seminar was an excellent primer for the real estate professional who is contemplating weblogging as a business tool. Mary McKnight from RSS Pieces wrote that you should have already established your web log by January, 2007. However, if you’re the type that puts off the book report until the night before it was due, here are the Cliff Notes to Dustin’s Seminar.

The “4C’s” of the RE.net evolution:

  1. Change: The “techies” decided that there was inefficiency in the pricing of real estate brokerage and attempted to disintermediate; they found that more than “raw data” access was needed by the consumer.
  2. Communication: Real estate 1.0 was all about publishing, 2.0 is about communication with the consumer. RSS feeds, weblogs, and sticky websites are the solution.
  3. Community: Social networking sites and weblogs are creating communities where you, as a real estate professional, want to be known as an “expert.”
  4. Consumers: This movement is about the consumer and inviting them to a conversation online.

The way to invite the consumer to a conversation and create your online expert reputation is to:

  1. Create a weblog
  2. Post interesting content
  3. Link to other sites
  4. Leave lots of comments

He further outlined the steps to creating a weblog, the steps to writing a blog post (along with an excellent analogy to composing an e-mail message), how to comment on other’s web logs, and how to create a link.

The second half was dedicated to more advanced ideas for creating communities. It was agreed (as it was in Phoenix at the Webloggers Roundtable) that Active Rain is an excellent place to learn how to create and write a blog post. If you are in the profession, and haven’t joined, do so right now. It’s free and you can click this link to join.

Dustin also showed us how to effectively use a feed reader. He demonstrated Google Feed Reader and talked about how to track other weblogs. An idea that I had was to track phrases to capture potential clients by using demographic information about your typical customer. Some phrases I’m tracking are:

  1. Hard Money Loans
  2. Move to San Diego
  3. I want to buy a house

My idea is to go to the post and join the online conversation in a helpful way without directly soliciting. I “met” two interested parties this morning from that practice.

It wouldn’t be a Dustin Luther show without a mention of the importance of linking. Dustin’s piece, Linkation, Linkation, Linkation is the real estate webloggers bible.


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