Posted by Wendy Forsythe
At the recent Inman Connect conference in San Francisco there was a noticeable change in the voice of blog advocacy. In previous years technologist and vendors were on stage singing their praises to the power of blogging. This year practicing real estate professionals were on stage sharing their successes and insights into building and enhancing a real estate practice using the blogging medium.
A lively debate erupted questioning which is a better inquiry generator– a website or a blog?
I’ve been on a mission over the last two weeks to ask as many active bloggers and website owners as possible which tool generates more inquiries and business for them. Their website or their blog?I did personal surveys while at Inman, phone conversations following that and had a lively Twitter discussion. All ended with the same conclusion–blogging wins!
Why? Blogs are easier to update and therefore offer fresh content on a more regular basis (really benefical for SEO rankings). Blogs allow readers to gain more insight into the blogger and allows the blogger to demonstrate credibility and expertise on the market. Blogs are more interactive. Although the general concensus is that you can’t judge the success of a blog by the number of comments. Most people don’t comment. They make direct contact.
All this being said, blogging takes work, time and commitment. In order to reap the benefits you must be willing to invest the effort.
My favorite quote from the Inman Connect conference came from Linda Davis who during the “How Four Bloggers are Closing Sales” session said “if you have a crappy business, a blog isn’t going to help.”
Interesting blog stats from Technorati (Dave Sifry) via Technology Liberation :
- Number of blogs as of April 2008= 112 million
- Bloogers post over 1.6 million posts per day (that’s over 18 posts per second)
