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Realtors are slowly embracing the use of online social communities and blogging as a strategy to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise. In today's online world, you either adopt the strategy or get left behind. There so many obvious benefits to blogging and using social networks its difficult to understand why only about 5% of all Realtors blog (according to the latest data provided by NAR).

Below is an abbreviated list of the tremendous reasons to totally embrace this medium and use social communities. I've also thrown in some blogging tips for good measure:

• Online social communities and your stand alone blog sites provide a direct connection with consumers allowing you to prove you are a SME (Subject Matter Expert). For those of you familiar with Six Sigma, this term will be quickly recognized. Blogs allow you to interact with your audience immediately building a bridge between you and the consumer. Realtors - be warned. Don't rush the Internet Empowered Consumer. For they are the ones in control in this medium, not you. Take it slow and easy proving yourself knowledgeable and providing helpful information.
• Cater to your audience. Speak to their wants, needs and fears. Forget about writing about yourself. It's just noise to the consumer!
• Tackle hot-button topics that "speak" to the issues. Be open and honest and don't try to make the consumer "drink your koolaid". Just tell it like it is.
• Be real and "speak" (write) in your own blog voice. Conversational style writing works best and is easiest to read and understand. Leave out your real estate agent speak. Terms like "CMA" and "MLS" might be confusing especially to first-time buyers and sellers.
• Tremendous SEO benefit. Blogs attract search engines like bees to honey. More on this later!
• Use all opportunities. Create profiles at the following sites. MySpace, Facebook, Eons, Active Rain, Rain City, Dakno Blog (gratuitous plug), Share.Triangle, LinkedIn, Flickr, Spoke, Technoratti, and MyBlogLog.
• Great blog domain names are abundant. Remember, if you're thinking about buying a domain and building a "stand alone" blog site, keep these domain name principals in mind. Keep the domain name short, make it memorable and keep it simple free of numeric references. Also stay with the .com extensions.

That should be enough reasons to start blogging and establish profiles on the above social networking websites. Now give me your feedback and let me know if you agree or disagree with anything I've posted.

To Your Success!

Bobby

P.S. For more thoughts on this topics, take a look at this post.