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Real Estate Bloggers Join the Conversation

November 10, 2007

I just received my Barnes & Noble book order. One of my new books is called Join the Conversation by Joseph Jaffe. The cover is a great montage of face avatars, sort of like the MyBlogLog widget or even like the faces we had on Blog Tour USA. Pretty cool. As I looked closer, I recognized someone - my friend Dave Smith from the Real Estate Blog Lab. Fantastic! He’s on the cover of a new book to be seen by millions. Then I looked closer. Holy book cover Batman! I see more real estate bloggers on the cover…

Larry Cragun - Real Estate Undressed
Pat Kitano - Transparent RE
Jonathan Dalton - DaltonsAZHomes
Andrew Maury - Maury Properties
Drew Meyers - Zillow
Christine Forgione - NY Houses 4 Sale
Maureen Francis and Dmitry Koublitsky - MIOaklandCounty (Maureen is on twice)

Jim Cronin - Real Estate Tomato
Jeff Turner - Real Estate Shows
Tobie and Sadie - Sadies Take on Delaware Ohio
Deborah Burns - Rain City Guide
Norm Fisher - Saskatoon Online
Marlow Harris - 360 Digest

Did I miss anyone?

In true community spirit, Jaffe held a book cover contest on his wiki. The winning cover is based on the 2,000 blogger project. He even dedicated an entire chapter of his book to user generated content which was provided by his loyal readers. The conversation which started online, has now spread offline. Chances are, that if you find your face on the cover, you’ll be bragging to all your friends and family. Ah, the power of the conversation.

Real estate bloggers Join the Conversation

For well over the last 20 months, real estate bloggers from around the nation have been feeding the Google monster with delicious original content. We have blogged about everything from home buying and selling tips, how to advice, true stories, marketing ideas, advertising do’s and dont’s, neighborhood information, recent sales, current market conditions and even some fun posts. In return, Google has sent real estate bloggers some great free organic traffic which in many cases, has resulted in real business. Thanks big G.

Before blogs, we were handcuffed with dead static websites that were in most instances eyesores, but even worse, one way sources of information. Once in a while, buyers and sellers would stumble upon our sites. The problem from a consumer point of view was that the information was stale - not dynamic and current. What a huge turn off.

Blogging has given real estate professionals an opportunity to provide real estate buyers and sellers relevant up to the minute local information - all without the need of an expensive webmaster. More importantly, blogs enable a two way conversation. Sure, many of you already know this but for those of you who are newbies - there you have it - Join the Conversation.