With the huge popularity of blogging, it's only reasonable to expect real estate blogs to evolve. They're growing at an extremely rapid rate, as they are an effective and inexpensive internet marketing tool for real estate agents and brokers.

Too many real estate professionals shy away from blogging because they believe the do not have the time or the ability to get the job done. It's not a problem if you learn how to do it and where to get your content ideas. Before you choose a blogging platform or software, check out these basic real estate blogging tips. You'll get off to a faster start to a highly effective and interesting real estate blog for your area.

1 What Types of Content, or Posts Will You Need and How Much Time is Required?

Real Estate Blogging and Community

Don't start a blog unless you're ready to spend the time necessary to post regularly. In most cases, several posts each week will produce the best results as regards both readers and search engines. A bare minimum should be one post per week, though.

There are so many great topics and items of interest about which you can write. It's best not to make it a blog totally about real estate. Just jotting down the questions you're asked by clients and customers is one way to get content ideas. Each answer is a blog post.

2 How Much Will It Cost to Do it Right?

The Different Viewpoints of Buyers and Sellers. (c) Photo: sxc.hu

Actually, cost is the least concern, as it's quite inexpensive. Think twice before using a free blogging platform though.

These days you can host a WordPress blogging platform on multiple vendor hosting sites for less than $60 per year.

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Mimbo Pro Theme for WordPress Real Estate Blog. binarymoon.co.uk

If you enjoy what you do, like to talk about it and want to share your knowledge with others, real estate blogging is for you! Keep a few basic concepts in mind and then just jump right in. There are ways to get help from the community also.

You really can position yourself as the local real estate expert by posting regularly about the transaction process and local market trends.

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Realty Blogging

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Networking. iStockPhoto

How many subdivisions or neighborhoods do you work in? Do many of them have associations? If they do, they have meetings, announcements and activities. Leverage this network for your blogging benefit.

I have had them thank me for helping them to get their message out while sending me original free content.

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There is a debate about the ethics of offering bonuses to real estate agents for selling certain listings. (c) Photo: sxu.hc

It's always a problem to allocate our time between clients, office and marketing functions. And then we have to figure out how to get the time to regularly and effectively communicate with our sphere of influence. If you're using email newsletters, or if you're thinking about it, here's a way to do one thing well and use it twice.