RealTown's RealTalk

I'm new to Blogging and looking for help.  Anyone know of software / services to add a Blog onto my own website versus sending visitors elsewhere?  I prefer to direct them to my site; www.MyDreamHome.com and keep them there. 

Thanks in advance for your suggestions :o)

You can also set up a blog for FREE at Blogger.com and FTP that blog to your site.

Another option is to use an external blog to drive consumers to your site ... there are FREE blogs here at Realtown.

AND there are 5 million unique visitors at Trulia each month ... that's a LOT of buyers and sellers ... and the blogs at Trulia are FREE and extremely easy to use.

Frances Flynn Thorsen
Community Manager
Trulia.com

Editor's Note
A critical piece to blogging is having a blog strategy and then a tactical plan to achieve your blog objectives.What are you trying to accomplish with a blog? Visibility? Increased traffic to your website? Develop a following? Lead generation, etc.Is it a hobby, a marketing tool or both?Are you going to blog about real estate, or something else of which you have a passion?How much time each day will you spend on your blog?As Fran mentioned, what about the feature sets of the blog you...are considering and the ease of use?Point2 also offers blogs for free with the Professional package which "syndicates" your listings to your blog, which has increased SEO for some.To try out a Point2 Standard website go to http://FreeWebsite.RealTown.com.Saul

The free blog given by realtown is truly outstanding and I have already entered over 230 different entries in my first year of blogging.  I'm very impressed with internet crusade's support services if you have problems with the operations of your realtown blog.  Furthermore, the spiders pick up my entries almost immediately and these entries appear under certain keywords usually somewhere on the first page of these search sites/engines.

I also have a point2 website and I now use it almost exclusively for my listings and customer/client followups.  My original website (selling-newyork.com) is hardly updated anymore since it would require continuing to pay my webmaster for changes.  With point2, I do all changes with ease and speed and thus control its content without worrying whether my webmaster is on vacation or not accessible.

If a new blogger wants great training, go to www.nobloggerleftbehind.com  --  It gave me great insight into improving my blogging expertise.

I currently have two blogs.  My realtown blog has several ways to access it.   http://GreatNortheastQueensNews.com  or http://BaysideNewsAndViews.com   or http://FinestNYRealEstate.com     You might wonder why I purchased these three domain names and then had them redirected by internet crusade to my real town blog.  When i go for a listing in neighborhoods adjacent to Bayside, Northeast Queens area of NYC, those sellers won't like a blog or website address with the rival town of Bayside.  Having a domain name that is acceptable to them when they tell their friends or family where to go to view a video of their property is a great service of internet crusade for a very minor fee.

I would also highly recommend taking the e-Pro internet professional online course.  I took this course in 2004 and it changed my real estate business tremendously.  Even in these tough economic times, I'm busy and I'm sure its because 70 to 80 percent of my current business comes directly/indirectly from the internet and my expertise via this great online internet training.

My other real estate blog is http://FinestNYRealEstate.thewrittenblog.com   --  What I like about this service is the fact that daily professionally created articles and videos are given to this clearly real estate specific blog by a fee-for-service firm and it requires no effort on my part to keep its contents fresh and insightful.  I am also permitted to cut and paste some of the best of these articles and transfer them to my other realtown blog.  If you want more information on this service, contact me offline.

John F. Maniec, LLC  licensed real estate broker  e-Pro certified trainer

serving Northeast Queens County, NYC

mailto:john@johnmaniec.com

cell: (917) 750-7842

Wordpress is a great option if you want blog software hosted on your site. The agent I was working with when I bought my house didn't have a website. I got him a wordpress blog set up very quickly http://nuvationco.com/   It takes a little computer know how so you may want to consider hiring someone to set it up.  

It takes a while for any new blog to acquire good search engine traffic so do continue using websites like RealTown, Point2, and Trulia for their search engine authority.