Insight from Blogworld & New Media Expo: Real Estate Blog as Communications Channel
I attended the 2008 BlogWorld & New Media Expo over the past weekend — which was a twofer deal with RE BlogWorld, organized by the incredible team of Todd Carpenter and Jason Berman. It turned out to be an excellent adventure in many ways, including the educational.
I wanted to share a couple of insights that I picked up from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Business Blogs panel, which featured people heading up the blogging and social media efforts of companies such as Yahoo, Kodak, Facebook, and Dell. It was an interesting look into the tech-heavy companies and how they think and work, which is somewhat (well, hugely) different from how real estate companies think and work.
I believe our clients would benefit from thinking about some of these issues.
Communication, Not Marketing
I noticed that all of the panelists were talking about how they use the blog to communicate to their customers, and how it’s a major part of (or has nearly replaced) their traditional PR and communication strategies. But it was curious that none of the panelists talked at all about how these companies use their corporate blogs to do any marketing.
In fact, Tom Hoehn, the Director, Brand Communications and Convergence Media for Kodak, mentioned a couple of times that he had to take down posts that were comparing Kodak products to competitive products by name, because Kodak’s Legal department had issues with such ‘advertising’ on the blog.
So… I asked them all a question during the Q&A thinking not only of Onboard Informatics, but also of many of our clients who are smaller companies who use their blog for marketing. It’s the current rage in real estate:
Smaller companies often look to the blog as a way of marketing themselves and their products or services. Do you have any sort of a relationship with your marketing department? Do they view your blogs as a channel to get the message out about the brand or about your products and services?
The answer, with near-unanimity among the panelists, was a resounding No. In fact, Nicki Dugan, senior director of corporate communications at Yahoo!, said that she felt marketing was really more of a one-way communication from the brand/company to the consumer, while the blog/social media was a two-way conversation between the company and its customers.
I thought that was a particularly interesting insight. I’m not sure whether I actually agree with Nicki on this or not just yet, seeing as how I believe in marketing as conversations, but it’s an interesting perspective: Marketing is one-way; communication is two-way.
That perspective does, however, raise a very good point relevant to real estate.
The Trouble with Real Estate Blogs
Blogging is one of the buzzwords or buzz-concepts sweeping all of the real estate industry. Even the big guys are getting into the act. Agent blogs have been all the rage, as experts tell realtors that they need to blog or get left behind as the consumer sweeps onto the information superhighway.
Thing is, most real estate blogs are very clearly marketing blogs. Go do any random search for “real estate blog YOUR LOCATION”. I did one for New Jersey, and came up with this site. Now, as realtor blogs go, it’s pretty good. It has market information, a listing, real estate news… pretty much what you’d want to find on a realtor blog. It has the content that experts have been telling realtors to put on their blog.
One might even say it’s a very effective marketing blog.
It would, however, be a ‘bad blog’ under the Nicki Dugan analysis of blogs as a two-way communication vehicle. Most of the posts have zero comments, and there is little evidence that the realtor in charge of the blog uses it as a two-way communication with her existing clients.
And yet, to recommend real estate agents or companies to use their blogs as a client communication medium seems… suboptimal given that unlike a Kodak or Yahoo, the typical “customer” of a real estate company only does a transaction once every seven years. And almost never with the same agent or broker. What would be the point of such ‘customer communication’?
Breaking the Impasse
While I am not 100% certain how a real estate blog should best be run, it seems to me that there is a way to mix both — a necessity given the particular vagaries of our industry.
A real estate blog should be a “pre-customer communication” vehicle.
It makes little sense for a blog to be aimed only at existing customers, or past clients, unless you have the systems and the discipline to conduct CRM over a seven year period. At the same time, a strictly marketing-focused, marketing-oriented blog reads and sounds just like what it is: a giant online ad. Unless an ad is extremely funny or extremely interesting, very very few people like to read or look at one.
One possible solution then is to write the blog as if it were to your existing clients, but to treat every visitor as a “pre-customer”. Perhaps few of those “pre-customers” will become an actual customer; perhaps not. But it seems instinctively right to use a blog as a communication vehicle, no matter the audience.
The difference will come in content emphasis and voice. Every human uses a different voice when communicating and pitching. Everyone wants to be communicated to, but very few want to be pitched to.
Thought of this way, random house listings do not strike me as “conversation” or “communication”. If you were actually writing for a client who is working with you, why would you bother telling them about a new listing on the market? Unless you can surround the listing with some reason why that person should want to read about some fabulous new 3BR/2BA on the market… don’t post it.
Whenever you are sitting down to write a post, ask “Would my clients want to read this?” That question alone would eliminate a bunch of self-serving advertisements masquerading as content.
(All of this, incidentally, is excellent advice for us at OnBlog to follow as well… and we will.)
Conclusion
Blogging is a powerful tool for real estate. It’s the hottest thing right now. But many real estate blogs are done wrong, as marketing vehicles. Instead, they should be written as “client communication channels” where you happen to allow pre-clients to come in and have a conversation with you.
-rsh
Tags: BlogWorld, RE BlogWorld, real estate blogging.
on Sep 24th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I like how you point out some of the problems with real estate blogs. There are some great resources, but a lot of the blogs present many of the problems you outlined. Hopefully the quality can be improved so that blogs can become more of a viable source for information in the real estate market.
on Sep 25th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Look at it this way:
Some of the pre-client conversations in real estate, have a lot to do with marketing, as so much of what we do is market homes. To showcase a new listing does two things: Brings eyeballs to the site- without eyes, there is no conversation- and we can showcase how we market homes, which could start a conversation.
That’s not to say that everyone does that, or everyone does it well, but it can and should be done.
And then there are the bloggers who use the juice in a blog to post market reports and not much else. Over and over. There’s no conversation, but the blog is used as a googlelicious site to post information that people want to know. They don’t want a conversation with a Realtor (who can blame them) they just want information.
Most people do not comment on the blog. They will contact us offline because of what they find on the blog and then say: “You know the market” “I can trust you” “I like the way you do business”… It’s the nature of the beast- it is a two way conversation, but you are only privy to one.
Nice post, Rob.
on Sep 26th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hi Teri,
Great comments! Let me take them in order.
1. Much of what agents do is marketing.
Yes, that’s true. But if so, my opinion is that simply putting up a listing is a fairly bad way of explaining to clients what it is that you’re doing.
Seems to me it’s a fairly minor bit of effort to post the listing, then take time to explain why you’ve posted what you’ve posted. For example, you might post a listing, then point out: “Look how I’ve included 17 photos of this property. The reason is that buyers like to see pictures, so more the merrier.”
That transforms what is obviously an advert into something more of a client communication.
While I recognize the school of thought that throwing up more words on a webpage for Googlebots to crawl is a good thing to do, I just disagree with it. People aren’t stupid; they’re savvy enough to know when they just got taken in by search spam and when they’ve landed on a page with substance that’s worth reading. And no one I know whose job isn’t in advertising likes to read advertisements.
2. Market reports
This is slightly different. Market reports are exactly the kind of information that a client would want to see from his broker. It’s what I’d want to see if I listed a home with someone — give me a weekly report on what’s going on, so I can assess whether I should be happy with the situation, or call you about reducing the price, or whatever.
That there are no comments on posts like these is of no importance. To your point, sometimes people just email you or call you in response to a blog post. That’s fine, of course.
But the key there is that the agent-blogger is using the blog as a communication channel, with the client (and pre-client) as the target audience, and creating appropriate content.
Viewing your blog as a “free advertising billboard” is what, I think, devalues the blog and the agent as a whole.
-rsh