While at the RE Barcamp in San Francisco, I attended a presentation by the Center for Real Estate & Social Media (CREST), from the Virginia Association of REALTORS®, where Ben Martin presented findings from the group’s first annual blogging survey.
Most of the respondents were real estate agents, using the WordPress platform. Average experience blogging was about a year. The longer an agent has blogged, the more visitors they have. (Sounds a bit like farming, doesn’t it?)
Read on:
Blogging Survey Executive Summary
Virginia Association of REALTORS - CREST - Blogging Survey
Ben has a few insights to share with you, too.
Bottom line: The sooner you start blogging, the sooner you may see results. Consistency matters, but you don’t have to go overboard.
(CREST blogging survey #2 is in progress. If you complete the survey, you will receive a copy of the executive summary when complete. Deadline is 9 a.m. EST on August 8th, 2008.)
August 4, 2008 at 11:23 am |
Thanks for the link and for posting your thoughts! We have another survey in the field right now that aims to benchmark, among other things, the number of leads that REALTORS are getting from their blogs. Please take the survey! If you do, you’ll get a free copy of the summary. Here’s that link for the second survey. http://www.varbuzz.com/crest2
By the way, a more direct link to the “Ben has a few insights” link in your post is: http://varbuzz.com/three-guidelines-for-blogging-gleaned-from-the-first-center-for-real-estate-social-technologies-survey/
The link you’ve posted goes to my author archive and that entry will get pushed down the page as time goes on.
Thanks again for the link and for taking the survey!
August 5, 2008 at 6:55 am |
Ben,
Thanks for the updates and clarification! I’ve modified your insight link, too, as you suggested.
Great to meet you at Inman, and I do look forward to hearing the results of your current and future surveys.
August 9, 2008 at 6:42 am |
Phil,
Great stuff…I can personally say that I have gotten referral and repeat business because of my Blog. Just the other day a past client called me up to discuss selling his mother’s home. I asked him if he got my weekly posts and he indicated “yes” and that he thought it was really good information.
You are correct, consistency is key. Develop a few streams of thought, or sections like in the newspaper, and you will always have something to blog about. Plus, people like to know that if they want information on one of those things, they can go right to your blog.
Best regards,
Rob
August 11, 2008 at 6:16 am |
Rob,
Thanks for your comment and confirmation. Hope you had time to take the second CREST survey — your input would be very valuable.
August 11, 2008 at 11:54 am |
Rob,
Dru is the one we should all thank for posting this information. No credit comes my way for this one!
We’re glad you liked it though – we did too.
August 12, 2008 at 8:27 am |
[...] And the results were eye opening in a lot of ways - check out some of the reactions and analysis. We look forward to participation in the second survey being just as big, if not bigger than the [...]