When I first started thinking about doing a blog I really thought I knew what I wanted to do.  It took two weeks of long hours into the morning to set it up.  Little did I know I was creating a website, something I’d never done before.  There was a new language I had to learn quickly, i.e. google juice, link love, meebo, feedburners, pings, trackbacks, tags, avatars, CSS, box.net, permalinks, WYSIWYG, etc. and I bought Blogging for Dummies which became my Bible.  Although written for beginners it still was above my head at times.  Thank goodness for Kris Keener in our Tech Department of Re/Max Equity Group.  My late night and early morning emails were always answered and she kept me from pulling my hair out!  Hey Re/Max, I think she should get a raise!  She went above and beyond….without her I would not be anywhere close to where I am. 

If you’ve never blogged, let me fill you in.  You type in this little box.  It’s not like typing in Word or Publisher where you can see all your typing.  In a blog, you basically see the few lines you’re typing at the moment.  Unfortunately, I don’t know about other sites and only know wordpress.com.  My site has limited view of what you’re doing.  Once everything was set up, posting pictures was my next hurdle.  In other programs your picture goes where you want it to, not in a blog.  I’d put the picture where I wanted, went in to preview the post, and the pictures were somewhere else.  It took 2-3 days to get that figured out.   Ron Ares of repdx.com helped me with that problem. Twenty-five drafts later my media library started to get full so I decided to delete my pictures and clear up space.  After deleting them, I realized I had delted the pictures from all 25 posts and had to reload them.  What a pain that was.  Another time, I deleted a post by mistake I’d spent hours on.

Portland, Oregon has approximately 8,000 +/- Realtors®, and someone told me there are only 60 of us blogging!

The hardest part for me, however, is finding my “voice”.  Blogging is supposed to be an informal email to the world, a cross between social blogging and posting relevant real estate information.  There’s the catch…when in conversation with someone, I can see them and have no problem finding my voice.  Talking to the ENTIRE WORLD! is not that easy.  The real estate industry is all about what to say, how to say it, when to say it; and mostly, what not to say!  Therefore, I am having difficulty being candid and not “crossing the line”.  Having “foot in mouth” disease doesn’t help either. 

I’ve read the books, read other blogs, been in discussion groups, done the research and haven’t found the “me” as yet.  It is difficult to speak to people that I can’t see or know what their facial reactions are because I’m very much a visual person.  Finding my blog voice by far has been the hardest part of blogging.  My intent is to provide useful information that perhaps you are not aware of so you can make ”good” decisions about your real estate.  Many times I tell my clients that I give them information they may not want to hear but need to hear.  Good or bad, I am a “realist”.  We as Realtors® are given information that isn’t in the media and I am wanting to share some of that with you.  I’m still on my blogging journey to figure this all out.

Now, if I can only figure out how to get my stats into charts and graphs posted into my blog, setup an email subscription box, and learn how to say something in 3 words or less!  I keep hearing the chant—edit, edit, edit. I’ve been working on that too!

 (For more local and national real estate news, click on my monthly newsletter - JUNG’S JOURNAL - on my website www.bettyjung.com).