I know this goes against conventional wisdom, but have you ever considered the fact that a real estate website full of blog posts with no comments, anywhere on any of them, is a bad marketing decision?

I know the experts tell you that a blog is suppose to engage your community, allow for the extension of the conversation and create a sense of connection with your audience.

If your taking the mindset of  a very well know real estate broker/blogger/speaker you might disagree, but time tells all (see the accompanying graphic). In the beginning this person took a throw the rocks at the industry approach and it served them well. Agents from all across the country would chime in and post comments because they were taught (or sold a lie) that if they communicate on blogs and post their name and company website it would provide them with critical back links needed so their websites would rise in the rankings. What these poor agents didn’t realize is that their is a tag used in the coding on the website that said “hey search engines ‘nofollow‘ these links. The broker got what looked like lots of engagement on his website but the style and comments were mostly about how screwed up other agents and the industry is. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t seem very prudent to air your complaints and dirty laundry in public, especially about the very profession you belong to.

Think about it for a moment… you pour blood sweat and tears into writing blog posts to show what an expert you are, how in touch you are with the community and no one comments. Now put yourself in a prospects shoes. They come to your website and start reading your blog posts to get a sense of who you are and what you represent and your knowledge of the industry and your community. Then on each and every one of your blog posts you have that big fat 0 comments just sitting out their for them to see.

Face it, real estate is boring, it’s not a topic of conversation that elicits ‘community’ or a sense of connectedness with an audience. The whole premise of writing blog posts, or as I like to say writing articles about the industry that imparts your knowledge and understanding just isn’t going to illicit a lot of comments. Sure you might get some comments, but it’s going to be very specific to that individuals needs and if that individual feels that after reading your articles that they would like to pose a question to you then it will normally happen with a phone call or they will fill out a contact form and ask the question.

Think about it this way. You walk into a restaurant and there is no one in the place. All those empty seats are like blog posts with no comments. Would you have confidence that the restaurant serves good food? I realize it’s a perception question, but one you should seriously consider.

By the way, the graphic shown, 2 of those comments are from agents in the very office of the brokerage that posted the blog article, one is from a 2% commissioned competitor and the rest are spam.

The purpose of blogging or writing articles for your website is to address questions that your potential clients may be interested in. By doing this, they get a sense of who you are and what your capabilities are. From there the contacts and leads will happen.

With all that said, it does make sense and evidence is increasing that using social share signals on your website is becoming more and more a factor search engines are using to determine relevance.

Whether to use comments or have the social share buttons is a fine line for sure. It just doesn’t seem to me that real estate lends itself to too much sharing.