Ever since I started my own blog, I feel like a virgin. It’s like I’m blogging for the first time. I feel so shiny and new. Although, there’s one thing I haven’t quite figured out. Perhaps the multi-bloggers out there can chime in. You see, I’m not quite sure where my blog begins and Rain City Guide ends. Right now, I try to keep the geekier stuff on my blog and the more general interest stuff here. Of course since Rain City Guide has such a large audience, there’s always the temptation to post everything here (even if it doesn’t belong here).
For example, I’m getting ready to start work on the next version of Zearch (codenamed: NIMITZ). I’m thinking about putting my design ideas & implementation notes on my blog. Does it belong there? Well, I think I’ll cross-post things that pass the floor wax and a desert topping test. If it’s geeky and real estate-y or blog-y (BTW – are those real words? It’s so much easier to add a -y than spell out real estate related or blog related) I probably should post on both, but keep the meat on my blog (kinda like what I did with my blogging with Word 2007 post).
I’m sure many folks who participate on ActiveRain face similar dilemmas. The Queen of RE blogging has given me her advice, but I figured more advice is better than less advice. Besides, I don’t have as much dirty laundry to air as she does. I guess I’ll just do what Madonna would’ve done. I’ll just get into a groove and post where it feels so good inside. Ooh baby… Yeah!
While people think we speak to “industry insiders” here in RCG, Active Rain is where most if not ALL comments will come from other agents. So if agents are your target market, Active Rain is a good place to be.
A lot of RCG readers are techie types, so your contributions here are valued whether or not real estate connected.
I’d like to see more of your thoughts regarding living where you do, from a consumer perspective. Also what type of goodies you look for in housing from a techie guy perspective. I was looking at a big banner on new condos down near Belltown yesterday that said “T1 Ready”. Your thoughts?
Even though I have a real estate broker’s license, I still consider myself an outsider as I am not currently active selling real estate but rather other stuff (including baseball and teaching) but anyways, most of real estate bloggers do not even blog about true real estate these days.
What true real estate is being blogged about is more or less about the industry in general. But that is the nature of real estate. Each state has different laws and if you try to stay local or statewide, you will not get very many hits – plain and simple.
Due to the many differences in laws, etc. Real estate blogging overs very little to the consumer in my opinion but form a blogging point of view, it helps as if you compare the states to those agents who blog and those who do not, well we get the most traffic to our sites.
With half of the so called real estate bloggers (myself included) I wouldn’t exactly say they are REAL ESTATE bloggers.
Some examples
The tomato – about blogging
RSS Pieces – about blogging
Ardell – some of everything
Greg Swann – blogs about whatever he can that might stir the pot up
Sellsius – blogs about whatever they can find a good picture of! I am starting to think these guys love to party and drink a lot too!
But if you ask most people they would say they blog about real estate.
I read all that back when. Just wondering if now that you are there, you would choose using the same criteria. Has it proved to be all that you dreamed it would be.
Ardell,
Ironically, you should read Quicker Than A Ray Of Light. 😉
Burress,
What an insightful comment and I think you are correct. I know I don’t really think of myself as a Real Estate blogger. I’m a software engineer who in his spare time writes MLS/IDX software for fun and profit, that got sucked into this whole real estate blogging thing because Dustin asked me to and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I think what makes those so called real estate bloggers so compelling is because a lot of their content is written by outsiders or at least see the industry from the outside in (instead of from the inside out). Every once in a while I post something that touches a nerve with the insiders (like Digital Listing Land, Death by a thousand paper cuts, Battle of the MLS, etc) and I suspect that’s why my voice in the real estate blogging community is listened to. All real estate may be local, but the technology opportunities and challenges it faces are not.
But yeah, building a popular blog that just has local content is more difficult to do because by definition, only the locals would be interested. I mean, I don’t really care what the cactus heads in Arizona do about Zillow, because I don’t live in that state. 😉
Ardell,
My wife wishes our new house had fewer minor bugs (and it is pretty sad that our doorbell doesn’t work on 2 year old house). The flat eco-friendly paint and water based finish on the hard wood floors can’t stand the wear and tear of toddlers and cats, so I wish the builders used less eco-friendly and more durable stuff than they used.
I miss the 3 car garage of our Carnation house, because we always somehow manage to convert one spot in the garage into junk storage and I miss the drive way (since you always had a place to park when your garage had crap in it). The Carnation house felt bigger, even though it’s smaller than the Issaquah house (the Issaquah house has fewer rooms, but they are larger).
The only complaint about the neighborhood I have is that the basic utilities (gas, electric, water) are more expensive in Issaquah than they were in Carnation (in Carnation we had Tanner Electric and Ames Lake Water which are cooperatives). I’m loving the location and loving the fact it’s wired. On the whole, I’m happy with it.
Hi Robbie,
Since I jumped back into the real estate blogging world, I’m having the same dilemma. Not only do I have my site & AR, but then there’s also Localism as well.
Trying to figure out what goes where has been something that I’ve been working on for the past week. Right now if it’s for RE Agents, it goes on AR; for potential clients & friends, my site. In the meantime I’ve been uploading photos to Localism and plan to start posting market reports there as well.
One thing that I do like is the participation level over at ActiveRain and the conversations that ensue.
BTW, you’ve got one more subscriber;)
WOW. What a BLog.
I’m i the SF-Bay Area housing Market. How can we link up? Im sure some of my sphere would like to view this.
Brian… Links are the ultimate way to link up on the blogosphere! 🙂