Blogs are powerful real estate marketing tools. Not only do blogs position brokerages as experts in their communities and their agents as trusted advisors in home buying decision making, but blogs give brokerages unprecedented long-tail Google saturation. This Hitwise report discusses the value of focusing on the longtail and this article discusses why real estate blogs play so well in the longtail.

Following this theme, this article in the New York Times profiles a successful blogger in the Catskills area and states:

"That real-estate agents have an online presence is nothing new. (According to a 2007 study from the National Association of Realtors, 84 percent of home buyers use the Internet in their search.) What's changing, however, is the growing importance that blogs play in the real-estate world in general...For brokers, blogs are, of course, a handy marketing tool: they're economical, practical and easy to update. But for prospective buyers, a sophisticated blog — one with more than an agent's plea, “check out my new listing” — can help potential buyers forge a connection to [communities], learn the landscape of an area and, ultimately, make informed purchasing decisions."
Similarly, this Universal McCann study shows that blogs have as much reach and influence and relevance to consumers as mainstream media outlets. Indeed, these types of reports and studies over the last couple of years have amped up the call for brokerages to adopt and promote blogs to their agents. But there's been key barriers to wide-spread adoption: brand centricity and consistency concerns, editorial policies and oversight, and ease of agent participation.

When it comes to blogs, brokerages, for good reasons, are concerned with ensuring their brand image is properly positioned and displayed on a blog as well as protected in terms of content. Similarly, agents need to have an easy way to blog that minimizes the time and effort they spend managing technology while maximizing the time they spend positioning themselves in the best possible light to their clients and potential clients. Propopoly® solves these issues.

Propopoly® is a broker-managed, broker-branded blogging platform that allows your agents to participate in Web 2.0 marketing without having to manage the technical aspects related to such. If your agents can send an email, send a text message, or leave a voicemail they can blog.

"Propopoly® has opened a whole new door to my staff, my agents and me. I always knew creating a “digital footprint” was integral to real estate in a web 2.0 world. With Propopoly's help I now “own” my name on Google.com and my agents are quickly becoming known as Chicago experts. Thanks to LeadingRE for creating this turn-key program!"

- John D'Ambrogio, Sr. VP/Director of Operations and Relocation Services, Rubloff, Inc.
Check out all the blogs we've recently launched. For each of these Propopoly® blogs we implement a 21-point SEO strategy, coach participating agents on blogging best practices and content strategies, host training webinars, provide weekly feedback on keyword strategy and Google Analytics reporting, and review each agent post and public comment before posting anything live to a blog (this assures brokerages that their brand--and their agents--operate within a layer of editorial security when it comes to blogging).
 
Another core strength of Propopoly® is that we promote team blogging. We will not launch a blog unless a minimum of five agents commit. There are good reasons for this. First, for high search engine placement, search engines like Google require daily updates with new posts. For single agent bloggers, unless they're motivated and with lots of time on their hands, this can be a chore. A Propopoly® team blog format, however, is beneficial because when an agent is not blogging, their team is. This means they can take a break, take a vacation, or whatever, but still get all the benefits as if they're blogging every day.

For more information about pricing and the process of launching a Propopoly® blog, email us at propopoly@leadingre.com.



Posted By: Eric Bryn