I’m really glad that Tim O’Keefe agreed to the interview because he represents a different type of real estate blogger. He uses his Real Estate Marketing Blog to highlight the marketing services he provides to real estate agents. I really like that I can turn to his blog for interesting and opinionated posts on how to better market real estate blogs. Like all the real estate bloggers that I’ve interviewed, a lot can be learned from both his style and his content.

What inspired you to start blogging?

As a Search Engine Optimizing Company, I was blogging long before launching The Spider Juice Technologies Corporate blog-http://houseblogger.typepad.com. I tested, wondering if it was given any special priority by search engines. Contrary to what many believe, I found that they are not treated with any more special priority than a typical website.

However, the real difference was that blogs are not static like a typical website. They are usually focused. In fact, the more focused the better as far as positions go. I knew that search engines love content. The more content you offer the more chances that keyword phrases (intentional or otherwise) will get picked up and positioned. That was the hook. Easy publishing, because a blog is just a real simple and easy to operate Content Management System.

I found that that a blog still needs to adhere to the principles of the Search Engine Marketing Triangle. That is at the top of the Triangle, a page needs to have “on-page content” optimized. Most blog software does an OK job of “out of the box”, on-page optimization.

The bottom two angles are about Link Equity or inbound links. Because of RSS and Pinging, blogs can find natural and automatic links that are necessary for a web page to position highly. These links tend to offer much more natural structures into the blog page. I found the system to be beautiful as an additional tool for my clients. So about a year and half ago, I began to test on client sites, as well as launching my own blog .

Are there any special topics or issues that you enjoy covering?

I believe it essential to have an opinion on how to do a business. Otherwise, why hire you or me? The blog allows us to speak directly to our audience. It best be something useful and unique. In the beginning. I did what I find most newbie bloggers do. That is parrot back already over reported information about real estate. BOHHRING!

It became quickly apparent that if this thing was going to be worth anything to my business, that it had to be extremely useful for the reader. So my blog will rant and editorialize various topics to do with SEO, Pay per Click, lead generation/follow-up and anything about online marketing. I rarely will offer anything without giving an opinion. I do that because the blog is my chance to offer my personality on my business.

The typical searcher scans through webpages, looking for something useful. How do they know if it is important? You have to tell them either directly or indirectly. That engages your reader and gets them into you. Guess what? At that point there is a good chance that you just rose above all the other agents out there, and you have etched out a bit of their brain to remember you. Because, your opinion matters to them! This is what gets subscriptions, RSS reads, and of course more traffic.

Authors of articles, or books and publications are given a psychological Authority over their market. There isn’t a whole lot of money in writing books. But write a book and you will be given instant implied expertise. That psychology works with any kind of writing, including blogs.

Another way to say this is that I look at blogging as a way to position ourselves as thought leaders.

What have you done to personalize your blog?

When you have an opinion it is all about personalization. I don’t think personalization is accomplished by taking a picture of me with my family and my cats. It is offering an opinion that hopefully is valuable enough, and persuaded in a way such that the marketplace says we are viable.

I will weave stories from my personal life in order to make a point. I think I have mentioned my wife, kids and even the Youth Football team that I Coach. I don’t believe that I have brought my cats into a post though. LOL

Do you have any favorite posts?

The Bubble and MLS posts are definitely soap box issues for me. I also, have written about various market segments that I think are wide open for growth.

What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

Let me go down my RSS Reader- Albion and see- http://michelfortin.com, http://BoldApproach.com, http://sethgodin.typepad.com, http://seobook.com, anything political, and so on. I love reading intelligent and even conflicting opinions.

What tools/websites do you find most helpful in putting together your blog?

Typepad is simple. WordPress and Drupal, rock as far as functionality. I like them for different reasons/features.

How does blogging fit into the overall marketing of your business?

To read me is to know me. My work hopefully pre-frames my readers into knowing that we are experts. There are no surprises. The hardest thing in the world for a business to do is differentiate itself from the other “noise” in the industry. The blog allows you and me to make our expertise a foregone conclusion. Thus, we are able to shorten the sales process and get down to the nitty gritty of doing business quicker.

What plans do you have to improve your blog over this next year?

I will be adding Audio, Video and my blog will be an entry way into upcoming books, and Membership site for the do it your selfer agent.

What is the one tool or feature that you wish your site had?

none.

What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now?

More integrated into traditional website models.

(Read more interviews with some of real estate’s top bloggers under the Real Estate Q&A category)

I’d be hard pressed to name someone covering real estate issues who has mastered the art of blogging better than David Smith of The Affordable Housing Institute. His posts are always 100% original, highly entertaining, filled with informative facts, and full of interesting opinions. I simply love that he takes on complex issues, adds a bunch of tangentially relevant graphics and treats his readers like they’re worthy of some intellectual stretching. Regardless of what day you choose to read his blog (he has a new post every day!), and regardless of what issues he’s covering (it might be the French Riots, Rebuilding New Orleans or Terrell Owens), you’ll be sure to be reading a post from someone who has spent years thinking about real estate and housing issues.

What inspired you to start blogging?

Even before blogs emerged as a technology, I’d done blog-like things: written numerous articles, spoken at seminars, established a personal Web site, written movie reviews that I sent to people who expressed interest. All these were blogs-before-blogs. But the blog’s ease and immediacy of posting, plus the unique ability to link to source material, made it an ideal forum for me.

Plus, several people who knew me urged me to. Nothing like peer pressure.

Are there any special topics or issues that you enjoy blogging?

Our business is complex, and I like reducing or dissolving barriers to entry of understanding. I also like illuminating political maneuvering, especially when newspapers are missing the real point.

“Look, I’ll ‘splain.” “Okay, ‘splain.”

What have you done to personalize your blog?

People such as you have told me my style’s unusual. I title the posts because each is a small essay. I pepper in allusions, movie quotes, funny pictures and snarky captions. My text is Edgar Bergen, my visuals are Charlie McCarthy.

“Oh, I’m supposed to believe the dummy writes your captions? “

Do you have any favorite posts?

I tag Essential Posts, and Primer Posts. I have a whole series of Sherlock Holmes on housing finance. Beyond that I have particular fondness for Eminent domain: the wrong fight, Slums are economically rational, Reselling Mystico Towers, Prescribing New New Orleans, L’horloge Orange (which got me linked by Instapundit), Tearing down the French high-rises, and GSEs: fierce competition. Fierce. These feel to me genuine advances in knowledge, besides being fun to read.

What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

Boston Sports Media is a work of genius that renders sports pages obsolete. Paul Phillips on poker does a great job expressing who he is. The Volokhs have perfected the group blog. Belmont Club adds real value by interpreting news. Pepys Diary is perhaps the apotheosis of hypertext value-added — not only the diary, one post a day, but also a panoply of user-generated wiki-type comments. Phil Gyford deserves a MacArthur.

What tools/ web sites do you find most helpful in putting together your blog?

I read the news on-line — mainly New York Times, Washington Post — and grab articles that are seeds for blog posts. Knowledgeplex is useful too.

How does blogging fit into the overall marketing of your business?

Demonstrates guru insights and reminds people I’m a guru.

What plans do you have to improve your blog over this next year?

I’d love to have more blogger-writers on the AHI site. Beyond me, we have two, whose pace has fallen off recently.

What is the one tool or feature that you wish your site had?

A time-compression algorithm so I could write more ☺.

What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now?

As a business, classical real estate brokerage is facing the kind of big-bang price drop that confronted stock brokers when Charles Schwab and others introduced first discount and then on-line brokerage. In real terms, fees are likely to drop, and the service is going to reinvent itself from seller representation to buyer advocacy. This is consistent with other internet-driven reversals, where high bandwidth means narrowcasting specialist content providers like blogs, and the scarce commodity is not the content to display but the eyeball to see it. Blogging is a means of building personal brand and hence distinguishing yourselves from the common broker.

In other words, you folks should keep getting with it!

“Got that, chief?”

(Read more interviews with some of real estate’s top bloggers under the Real Estate Q&A category)

I’ve really enjoyed following Merv Forney of the Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide and I was glad to see that he responded to my request for an interview because I happen to think he’s figured out some of the key ingredients to building up a great real estate blog. He provides regular market updates with charts and graphs, he writes with a personality, he throws in a fun posts to liven things up, and he’s constantly improving the layout and content of his site. All things considered, I think he has one of the best agent/broker blogs and agents looking to get into the blogging would be well served following his model.

Merv is affiliated with RE/MAX Renaissance of Leesburg, Virginia and the Managing Director of the Choice3 Realty Group. In addition to actively serving clients, he is responsible for all aspects of the business including planning, operations, technology, marketing and general management.

What inspired you to start blogging?

When contemplating this new career, I knew Pam and I needed to be different. This is a “me too” business to the extreme. As a result of much market study, I concluded that everything about us needed to look and feel new, unique and personal. Every templated (or not) agent website looks the same, feels, the same and, in my mind, not very professional. Everyone has exactly the same canned content. I also concluded that the consumer wanted something different. We had a custom website built (www.choice3realty.com) on a content management system (CMS) that happened to be MovableType (my designers choice for a CMS). Part of my spec was to be able to add or change content easily. I had no idea what MovableType was. A month after going live (2/1/2005) with my website, I attended a breakfast seminar hosted by a Chamber of Commerce associate focused on using technology for the benefit of your clients. His management coach that co-hosted this talked about BLOGGING and its power to reach out and gain an audience. Drum roll……OH! MovableType! I had blogging tools I didn’t even know about. On March 25, 2005 my Blog was published and I posted my first article. Inspiration? I don’t know. Wanting tools to be different? You bet. Once exposed to the capability I knew it was something we needed to do. Am I glad we did! I didn’t know where we were going with our blog. It just naturally evolved. Blogs take on the personality of its owners.

(PS: I have the best designer in the world: Donald Peterson at http://www.newark1.com/blog.htm, http://www.newark1.com/ and http://abqstyle.com/index.htm. Donald started blogging AFTER I did. How interesting.)

Are there any special topics or issues that you enjoy covering?

There are many things I enjoy writing about. If you look at what I do most, it is market commentary based on research and data. People want real information. They want it form a real person, not some big organization pumping up there own agenda. We have no agenda and I think it makes us different. The next thing I enjoy doing is exposing the incompetent behavior of those that shouldn’t be in our business. Not by name but by experience. Our profession gets a bad rap from a few very bad or marginal agents. Finally, I really enjoy sharing my strange sense of humor. You can find a little of it in our archives.

Well, maybe not finally. I’m a technologist at heart. I love discovering new things and trying to figure out how to use it for the benefit of our clients. I write a little about it but mostly experiment with it. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy what you do…keeping abreast of a changing landscape. (no suck up intended, just fact).

What have you done to personalize your blog?

I think most everything about our blog is personal, from the collage of pictures (I took them, well…most of them), to our writing style, what we cover and the way we approach our business. I write what I feel and what I believe. Also, I really like exposing (hmmm… featuring is a better choice of words) our clients on the web. I have a thumbnail slide show of our happy clients on our archive pages. They really get a kick out of it.

Do you have any favorite posts?

Personally, I love my posts in the Signs and Entertainment categories. They are just plain fun. Lets me expose a little more of my zany side. This can be a very dry business and we need to break out once in awhile. I like using pictures to make a statement. See Blog Spamming under Blogging.

What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

You know it’s hard to just point out 1 or 2. There are many good ones. Rain City is one. Jim Duncan’s in Central Virginia is another. I think the blog that gets my best design vote would be Fraser’s Toronto at Home! Great content too.

What tools/websites do you find most helpful in putting together your blog?

I use MovableType. It might be overkill but a non techie can use it or a technical person can really exploit its capability.

I do my own content programming so I am always searching for free tools and scripts. There are an abundance all over the web. I also watch what you do and say and shamelessly try to copy it if I think it will work for me.

How does blogging fit into the overall marketing of your business?

Even though we promote our clients and their properties, our blog personalizes us, sets us apart from the crowd, our humanness comes through. Potential clients get to know us through what we present and write about without ever meeting us. My last three listing appointments were because of our blog. I (“We”, sorry Pam) went prepared with data, told them what we would do for them and exactly what it would cost. Our blog actually drives more traffic to our main website. I am astonished that we got such a high Google ranking in such a short period of time.

What plans do you have to improve your blog over this next year?

What I really want to do is to provide more interactive tools. There is an abundance of market data available in our MLS data base. It’s just to hard to get it out. I want to let prospects and clients put in their own criteria and get table, charts and graphs that fit their properties demographics. I don’t see anyone data mining the MLS extensively. The data I prepare, like our Market Snapshots I dig out manually.

What is the one tool or feature that you wish your site had?

I like the way map searches are evolving. I’ll keep watching and when they mature I’ll jump in. I’ve experimented a little but not impressed yet. Our MLS needs to make more data available to agents that have the ability to use it creatively.

What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now?

Geeeeeez. That’s almost like asking what will my house be worth 6 months from now. I have know earthly idea. What I do know is that it’s beginning to catch on. The most forward thinking, creative people have discovered its power.

Here’s one last thought. This is a “me too” business. When others discover that some of us are using it to create business success, everyone will want to do it. There will be companies marketing real estate blogging templates just like real estate websites. The difference is: blogging is hard work, time consuming and needs to come from the heart. Most agents will not have the stamina for it and revert to what is easy. I would love to teach blogging (and have been asked to do so) but right now, we see it as a strategic advantage in our market. Anyone seriously interested in starting a blog can call me and I will tell them everything I know and help however I can. It’s actually very easy to get started and can be FREE! But, I will warn them that it takes a significant commitment for it to be effective in their business. I found several real estate blogs that got started with a few posts and then went dormant…maybe it proves my point.

(Read more interviews with some of real estate’s top bloggers under the Real Estate Q&A category)