Gloria, it does take time and while I don't know how long your website has been up an running, I will tell you that my blog on my personal website has been the most significant single item that helps real estate consumers find me and get to know me. I try to post at least 4 times per week.

I'm pretty sure Howard is referring to blogging on his own blog that's at:

http://www.charlestononlinehomes.com/blogs/howard_arnoff/default.aspx

It's very well done!

I'd agree with him too. Blogging is an *outstanding* way to bring in visitors, and probably the single best way via the Internet to allow someone to get to know you.

ActiveRain gets a lot of press, and they do get good search results. But the problem is, every time you post to your ActiveRain blog, you are adding content to ActiveRain, not to your own site. Why not blog on your blog and add content to your site?

If you utilize the blogging platform Point2 provides, then every single blog post you make in effect adds a page of content to your web site. This is a HUGE plus for search engine optimization.  

I started my blog ( http://www.PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com ) long before Point2 offered a platform. It now gets as much traffic as my main site, and ranks better in search engines for many terms than my main site. I can't move it over to P2 because it's too established. But if I was starting out, I'd be blogging away on P2s blog platform as much as I could.

JT

I'm back. Jay, thanks for the compliment, as you know, I learned a great deal from you, and thank you once again. I've looked at Active Rain and I do want to get started there, right now I'm one of those famous lurkers on their site, I'm just too busy with developing my site and blog and Reliberation to get over there to even enhance my profile and start writing on their localism site which I think has a lot of value.

As to what I do on my personal blog, I view it as an opportunity to talk about Charleston in many different ways from market conditions to happenings in the area and introduce myself to those who might be interested in the Charleston real estate market. The most important thing is adding content on a consistent basis.

Jay or Howard - Does posting the same article on two separete blog's hurt since it will be looked at as duplicate content by the search engines?

Oh Gosh...I feel really dumb and this might sound dumb...I have no idea about blogging??? Can someon enlighten me?  Do I advertise my blog or do people actually find you? I want to do a blog on my community and get people interested..any tips???Thanks Lu

Gary, good question, I personally avoid duplicate content, what I will do is link to the original content with a comment, preface or an update.

Lu, you're just where many of us now in the blogosphere were 6, 12 or in Jay's case, 24 months ago. You can catch up, good content and consistent writing is the key, get started and the search engines will find you.

"Jay or Howard - Does posting the same article on two separete blog's hurt since it will be looked at as duplicate content by the search engines?"

I wouldn't do it. There's much debate, but the general consensus is to avoid "cross posting" on blogs (posting the same content on two blogs).

Howard's method is best -- "...avoid duplicate content, what I will do is link to the original content with a comment, preface or an update."

Lu - Don't feel dumb, it's a great question -- and a hard question to answer in a comment, maybe I'll do a separate post on it. I think the best thing a new blogger can do is read other blogs. If you go to my blog at http://www.PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com and look through my blogroll (in the middle of the right hand column) you'll find some great real estate related blogs...