With the decimated housing market fueling the Great Recession, savvy realtors have realized they needed to “up their game” with their online marketing in order to keep food on the table for their families. Where did they turn? Why, blogging of course, among other things.

I had an opportunity recently to sit down with one such forward-thinking realtor-blogger, Jamie Miller. She’s actually a former employee of my former company Netconcepts, and she’s the agent for this beautiful property in Madison Wisconsin (yes, it’s my home). I asked her to share some pointers for realtors who want to get into blogging. Here are Jamie’s tips:

• Use your blog’s name to target geographic locations. I named my blog Madison Wisconsin Living.
• Also consider optimizing your blog around condo communities, like Miami Condo Lifestyle does, to target Google searchers. Individual posts can be condos for sale within their respective communities.
• Post all your property listings to your blog, and have a separate property listings category. This provides an excellent source of regular content for readers and the search engines.
• Don’t remove properties once they’ve sold. Simply update the listings with the word “Sold” — it’s a great way to communicate to prospective clients how many properties you’ve sold.
• Develop an authoritative voice in your local market for all things home sales. For instance, The Boston Real Estate Blog publishes local real estate news and stats.
• Leverage your blogging content into Social Media sites, such as your Facebook pages or Twitter profiles. It takes time to source and author content for blogging, this content should be shared across additional marketing channels in order to get the most bang for the buck and maintain message consistency.
• Don’t forget to also incorporate typical Real Estate Website features and functionality into your blog, such as Featured properties to highlight the agents own properties for sale, a Property Search that pulls from a MLS (multiple listing service), and informational pages on buying and selling homes. For example, My Westside LA has great posting categories that feature content targeted to buyers and sellers.
• If you’re a blogging newbie, it’s really easy to get started. Simply purchase a domain or use an existing domain you own (don’t just use a subdomain of wordpress.com or blogspot.com), purchase a hosting package (Ed. note: Bluehost is the one I use), and perform the famous “5 minute WordPress install” (actually it’s more like 5 seconds!)
• There are some great, cost-effective real estate-specific themes for WordPress you can choose from, including RealEstateThemes.com, Agent Press, and Villa Grande. Or, just Google for “wordpress real estate themes“.
• Install the following WordPress plugins: SEO Title Tag, Breadcrumb navigation, Google Analytics, and WPtouch iPhone Theme.
• Before you start writing, first outline your content plan for the blog. The plan can include things like new listings, local real estate news, tips on home selling, etc.

20 solid pieces of advice about business blogging from Microsoft’s A-List in-house blogger, Robert Scoble. Here’s a taste of the top five:

1. Tell the truth
2. Post fast on good news or bad
3. Use a human voice
4. Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards.
5. Have a thick skin

Scobleizer: Corporate Weblog Manifesto

Boston Globe technology reporter Hiawatha Bray has been maintaining a blog since June 2003.

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Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee whose role is customer "evangelist," regularly posts a dozen or two entries a day, often into the wee hours, on subjects ranging from business travel, blog culture and general tech trends, but it’s mostly all Microsoft, all the time. No question, Scoble takes to the medium like a fish to water, speaking his mind and engendering large and loyal following. A poster child for how to do business blogging right, both as a thought leader and customer servant.

One post is a useful one for all our readers, The Corporate Weblog Manifesto.

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Two new blogs from the London News Review, one on music and one on books.

Edmonton radio station’s community calendar. This is a perfect example of a business blog — many radio stations could copy this model.

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Another great example of a small organization using a weblog to keep the site dynamic and useful.

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Supporting the consulting business of Tim Slavin.

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Senator and 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry’s web site maintains a blog written by campaign staff.

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MediaMap, which services PR companies with information about trends in the media industry, recently started a blog.

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>From Hammock Publishing’s CEO Rex Hammock, whose company specializes in publishing client magazines. The blog focuses on the magazine industry, custom publishing and business communications.

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Terrific article on the trend of business blogging, with comments on blog initiatives by the likes of Microsoft, Verizon, DaimlerChrysler, American Airlines, Hartford Financial Services, IBM, Dr. Pepper and Macromedia.

The story notes that “to meet corporate demand, both UserLand and Six Apart, makers of popular blog software programs, are coming out with enterprise-level products later this year.” It also contains this great insight:

Corporate America is jumping onto the blogwagon for many of the same reasons all those journalists, brooding teenagers, and presidential campaigners are already on board. Unlike email and instant messaging, blogs let employees post comments that can be seen by many and mined for information at a later date, and internal blogs aren’t overwhelmed by spam. And unlike most corporate intranets, they’re a bottoms-up approach to communication.

Fast Company: It’s A Blog World After All

The blog is called FC Now, from trendy business magazine Fast Company, written by a buddy, Heath Row. Insights on the world of high tech businesses.

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Sporadic blog (posts seem to average once a week or so recently) from investors in August Capital.

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While not exactly a business blog, as it’s produced by the UK’s Leeds Business School, close enough.

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Web development and strategy company written by Adam Kalsey, moderator of MarketingWonk’s I-Blog email discussion list.

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B.L. Ochman

B.L. Ochman, PR consultant and moderator of MarketingWonk’s I-PR discussion list, has taken to blogging like a fish to water. A mix of PR advice, blogosphere observations, miscellaneous humorous stuff and uncontrolled liberal political rantings. (Just kidding; we love you, B.L.)

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Seth Godin’s forehead

Everyone’s favorite visionary marketing author, speaker and consultant, Seth Godin blogs, of course.

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John Porcaro

>From John Porcaro, with the big-ass title “Group Manager on Microsoft’s Home and Entertainment Division’s PR and Communications team.” A breezy combination of his thoughts on marketing and technology, as well as family and personal life. It’s not explicitly a Microsoft blog, but given his disclosure of his business title, it can’t help but to reflect on Microsoft to a degree. A nice blending of the professional and the personal.

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Not really a blog, but Rolling Stone has adopted RSS to let you subscribe to news about your favorite musicians. Cool enough to make the list.

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Of course, tons of media sites have blogs at this point, which I’m trying not to include many of on this list, as they’re not much different than a new kind of opinion column in most cases. I make an exception in linking to the Job Blog, as it’s so well focused on a business-related topic. Would be a great idea for an employment agency to duplicate (or better, to have thought of first).

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