Posted by Sherry Chris

If you are reading this post, you have found the blog belonging to the soon to be launched Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate brand! We are feeling a little like the television show “Lost” right now, because nobody knows how to find us. There is a reason for that, and it is because we cannot launch the new BH&G brand until July of this year (that is when our licensing agreement with BH&G parent Meredith begins).

This, of course, poses a number of challenges, one being – how do you hold back a enthusiastic team of Type A Genexer’s (The BH&G team) who want the brand to be everywhere now…?? One answer, go social media!

Thanks to social networking, we are able to engage in what our lawyers refer to as “pre-launch activities” as long as we don’t show our new trademark to the general public until July. So we launched a You Tube channel , posted several staff profiles on Linked In and Facebook, and we built a password-protected microsite at www.bhgrealestate.com. Since the microsite includes elements of our new brand identity, you will have to request a username and password to see it. It’s worth the few minutes it takes.

Now we know there are many, many real estate blogs out there in the land of real estate. And we are well aware of the risks involved in launching a blog. Rather than becoming a casualty of blogging before we even launch the brand, we made the smart decision to hire blogging coaches. Our coaches want to remain anonymous for now, but their help has proven to be invaluable.

Here at BH&G we have our favorite blogs set up on iGoogle. Hopefully this blog will become one of your favorites. You will get to know some very interesting bloggers on this site, including some surprising guest bloggers, some of whom have never blogged before.

We’re looking forward to hearing everyone’s ideas, suggestions, comments and critiques. So please, join us in the conversation and let the blogging begin!