The State of the Blogosphere, and How it Relates to the RE.net

September 22, 2008
By: Drew Meyers
Author's Website: http://youreachmedia.com

I was just skimming some tech news and saw the State of the Blogosphere post on TechCrunch (data via Technorati) with an interesting chart breaking down the types of bloggers maintaining blogs.

79% personal bloggers
12% corporate bloggers
46% professional bloggers

This data was based on 1,079 random bloggers, but I just got to thinking — if this same question was posed exclusively to bloggers from the RE.net, I think the result would be a bit different.

For starters, the professional bloggers category would likely encompass about 90% of RE.net bloggers since most agents write about the real estate industry, but usually not directly on behalf of their employer (their brokerage/franchise). Corporate bloggers, which would signify agents who write on a blog owned by their brokerage, would be smaller given the lack of agents currently blogging for their brokerages. The personal bloggers category, defined as a “blog about topics of personal interest not associated with your work,” is the most difficult to gauge within the RE.net. I’d argue that blogs like the West Seattle Blog are personal blogs in the fact that its authors are writing about a topic of interest outside of work. Even though the West Seattle Blog is now a full time position for its authors and, thus, doesn’t officially fit into the “personal bloggers” category, I still think the majority of local blogs are run as side projects (or agents are running them in addition to their agent blog). I can also see how someone could make the argument that many agent blogs are personal blogs because they are not directly tied to the agent’s day to day job of helping clients buy and sell homes, but I believe agent blogs are fundamental pieces of their business in many, but not all, cases. For the sake of predictions, let’s make the assumption pure local blogs are personal blogs and agent blogs are professional blogs.

Here are my predictions of the categorization of the RE.net:

90% professional bloggers
25% personal bloggers
5% corporate bloggers

What type of blogger are you? What do you think the category split is within the RE.net?

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TR @ WSB on September 22, 2008 5:53 pm

Thanks for mentioning us. Actually we don’t fit into any of these categories because we are not a “blog” … we are a professionally run (30 years of journalism) commercial neighborhood-news site — original coverage 7 days a week, occasional links out when there’s something we just can’t/didn’t get ourselves — that happens to publish in blog “format,” newest first, short bursts sometimes, long articles other times.

We evolved FROM a personal blog, and we’re kind of stuck with blog in our name because that’s become our brand and I don’t know if I’m ready for a Bon Marche/Bon Macy’s/Macy’s transition yet … but just for the record, we don’t consider ourselves a “blog” at all … we’re a news website.

Good topic!
Jim Dolanch on September 23, 2008 6:11 am

This is an interesting post, like you said above agents do have blogs for various reasons. A blog does have the potential to help future customers better relate to a real estate agent. So, I guess we would be harder to classify!
Hawaii real estate guy on September 23, 2008 11:07 am

Very interesting stats, I would of never guessed that personal blog percentage would be so high. I do agree that a lot of agent’s blogs could fall into that category.
Mark Madsen on September 23, 2008 11:29 am

It makes sense that the personal blogging category is that high, but I agree that the real estate space is definitely closer to 90% business focused.

Well, at least 90% of real estate professionals start out with business in mind. The problem with our industry is that people can easily lose their purpose and get caught up in the noise.
Serviced offices on October 9, 2008 6:35 am

Thanks for sharing such an interesting post.Part of my re-education process is to enlighten people about the different type of bloggers we have out there(blogosphere), like you said above agents/realtors do have blogs for various reasons-one key reason being to increase the popularity of their sites.A blog do have it’s benefits which also comes with a bad spill.

Would like to know were you extracted that stats from?