If there is one question that stirs debate amongst real estate bloggers, it’s whether or not it is “correct” to blog about your listings.

On the surface, this may seem like a no-brainer. Your blog is a marketing platform, it’s quite likely advertising (another subject of much debate) and hopefully people are coming to it in droves – all chomping at the bit to view, and buy, your sellers’ listings.

But let’s step back and look at the big picture and take a look at the pro’s and con’s of blogging listings.

The Pro’s

Sellers want to see their listings in as many places as possible. If you have an established blog with some readership, there is no question that blogging a listing will expose it to more people. And exposure for a listing is generally a good thing.

In addition to getting good exposure for the listing, it can also provide good exposure for you. And whether you want to admit it or not, you are blogging to market not just your listings, but yourself.

The Con’s

Blog posts about listings can be boring. Take for example the typical pitch:
“This lovely 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2100 square foot home is in a wonderful neighborhood with access to all of your needs. Granite countertops in the kitchen, new carpet, fresh paint….. blah blah blah.” BORING!!

Boring in a blog is not good.

Blogging listings can come across as salesy, and salesyness (is that a word?) in a blog is not good. Everyone that reads your blog knows and understands that you sell houses for a living. Do you really need to cram it further down their throats?

Listings are dynamic. Prices change, listings expire, and listings are (hopefully) sold. Unless you are diligent in updating old posts on listings, you’re likely to have bad, outdated info on your blog. Also not a good thing.

So what is a blogger to do?

Many established bloggers have weighed in on this in the past. Dustin Luther of 4Realz.net and one of the most respected people in the real estate blogiverse is an opponent of blogging listings. Always has been from what I remember.

Dustin wrote a post on 4Realz titled, “Don’t Blog Your Listings” that elicited numerous comments. Read it and the comments for a very good discussion on this topic.

The real estate blogiverse is filled with similar posts. Here are more examples, all well worth a read:

CREN Blog: How to Blog About Your Real Estate Listings … effectively.

Dalton’s AZ Homes Blog: Blogging About My Phoenix Real Estate Listings? Absloutely!

The Real Estate Tomato: Blogging your Listings

In the Real Estate Tomato post, Jim Cronin summed up my feelings on the subject with this little nugget:

“I recommend that you either create a blog for all your listings or, you build an exclusive section on your business blog. Mixing quality content with listing details is a bad idea. It will distract and turn off your readers. Blogging is about cultivating readership to incubate long-term leads. Listings are take it or leave it content and should not be woven in among your pearls of wisdom. So, if you must keep everything on one blog, organize the listings to appear separately from the general articles.”

My personal solution is to write a post about the neighborhood the listing is in, and create a separate “blogsite” for the listing.

I link to the single-property blog in the neighborhood post. This gives me a post on the main blog that will likely appeal to a wider audience than a post on a single home, and the listing blogsite then stands on it’s own. It is easily updated when required, and I can put far more information into a single-property blog than I could ever stuff into an individual post.

Photos, maps, area info, schools, etc. all work well, making the single-property blog much more versatile than one lone post. By linking to it from the main blog, it gets “link love”, and there are now multiple pages that can get indexed in search engines—all pointing to the treasure trove of information on the listing.

It’s the best of both worlds and, in my humble opinion, the solution to the “should I blog my listings?” conundrum.