Blogging Celebrates 10th Anniversary
I was reading Paul Chaney’s blog today, Conversational Media Marketing and he shared that blogging has actually been around for 10 years. As a tribute to blogging he shared his blogging story and encouraged others to do the same. It got me thinking and reflecting and I thought I would take a break from writing about Clearwater Beach Real Estate today and share a little about our blogging journey so far…
Blogging isn’t a Sprint it’s a Marathon
We first learned about blogging a little over a year ago when I attended an Internet Academy with Dean Jackson in Orlando Florida. It was a weekend dedicated to learning how new technology could enhance our real estate business – just one of the many opportunities Jack and take to constantly gain additional education and skills. While there I was able to meet with successful real estate agents and mortgage professionals from around United States and Canada who shared their blogging success stories. They talked about how we could provide more community and real estate information in a more client friendly way by blogging. From there we left with the inspiration to begin our own blog.
Our first try at blogging was actually a Typepad blog. It was just in it’s infancy (2–3 months old) when I received an invitation from a Brea CA Realtor to join Active Rain, a fast growing real estate social network. We did and it allowed us to learn and improve as bloggers by working with over 20,000 other real estate professionals then – now it’s over 60,000 and still growing.
Well the dirty little secret is “blogging is addicting” and before long we were hooked because it created a great way to share information about Clearwater and Clearwater beach and also start a dialogue with our readers in a safe, no pressure environment.
Ironically we learned that working in a community like Active Rain was a much smarter first step in becoming effective bloggers so we quit working on our typepad blog (only so many hours in a day) and focused all our efforts on our Active Rain blog because it was easy to use and comprehensive for both fellow REALTORS and consumers.
Like many before and after us, once we started blogging on Active Rain and Localism we were able to jump start our effectiveness and got a real blogging education from helpful bloggers like Paul Chaney, Jeff Turner, Ines Hegedus-Garcia, Kristal Kraft, Laurie Manny and too many more to name here. That’s where I learned that blogging’s not a sprint – it’s a marathon and the best blogs, like fine wines when done right get better and better with time as their content grows.
Blogging turned Us into Hermit Crabs
So while it is great being a part of a dynamic community like Active Rain we decided we were ready, like the hermit crab, to expand into a larger shell and to start our own website and blog with the things we’d learned. We move into a GoDaddy Blog Shell…while it was easy to get started with their turnkey offerings, over time we found that the things we wanted to include on our blog weren’t available through them so we experienced growing pains again and needed to trade in our shell again – we’d outgrown this one and so we went in search of a much bigger shell – something we could grow with and not have to change so quickly.
Now that we knew what we wanted we researched and sought out the best real estate blog design company . Ultimately we chose The Real Estate Tomato, recognized innovators in real estate blogging. We were sold when we shared our vision for our new website/blog and they “got it” – we were then able to work together to create this Clearwater | Clearwater Beach Real Estate Blog – the ultimate hermit crab home.
So today, a year later We’re reflecting on all we’ve learned about blogging and the only thing we know for sure is that while we love our current shell here on Sandbars To Sunsets – we will definitely continue to grow and evolve. For example, we already know more and more video will be coming and so in the future, like the hermit crab, we’ll keep expanding our shell to keep delivering the best information for you – our valued readers.
Thanks for letting me share a little about our journey this past year. How fitting that New Years is around the corner…a great time to reflect and plan for the coming year of improvements and innovations.
So, I’m curious, what’s the pending New Year got you thinking about?
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The above information and images are Copyright © 2007 Jack and Cyndee Haydon, REALTORS and your Clearwater Beach Real Estate Consultants and may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed or published. All rights reserved. Plagiarism will be detected and is punishable by law
