Recently, on another blog site I was told by a real estate agent I should “pack it up” and put my posting on vacation sincsamp6755cc77df1ea21fe real estate is slow, and come back again when things pick up.  I’d then be so busy, I wouldn’t have time to post.  Frankly that goes against everything I believe in. 

In May 2008 when things were slow then too, I got my blog on-line and focused on social media and internet advertising. Nordstrom’s retail sales are down drastically, yet Nordstrom is still sending out their catalogs and advertising.  They haven’t stopped. They aren’t waiting until their sales start improving.  I have taken their approach and only expanded my on-line presence, not eliminating it or slowing its pace, yet not being distracted from my main objective of listing and selling real estate in the metro Portland area. 

Last year another reader was also critical of my lack of presence on Twitter and Facebook and my ignorance regarding how important those sites are.  OK so now I’m part of the Twitter and Facebook family.  There was a great video recently that shows how important your on-line presence is not only if you are a Realtor®, but if you are another business owner as well.  You can see it here.  

So I’ve been busy focusing on my Internet presence:

  • Photo Blog

Recently, I started my photo blog….Lake Oswego Living.A Photo Blog and a new photo was posted Sunday.  If I had it to do all over again, I would only do a photo blog.  I didn’t happen upon this idea until recently and it is a lot more fun than posting every day on ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate.  I post a new photo every week, typically on Monday’s, devoted to Lake Oswego.

  • My blog will soon have direct access to foreclosures. 

RE/MAX International, Inc., announced a strategic partnership with RealtyTrac. Through the partnership, RE/MAX Associates will receive discounted subscription rates to RealtyTrac, the nation’s leading online foreclosure marketplace.

  • New blog features

If it’s been confusing navigating my blog lately, I have been rearranging categories/posts and have added new search categories.  In addition, I have started posting city profiles. Tigard, Lake Oswego, and West Linn are posted with West Portland to follow.  There will also be individual neighborhood snippets for those areas.  There are new links to mortgage calculators, FHA loan limits, rent vs. buy, credit reports, search investment properties, search for residential properties, videos, plus many more new links in the sidebar and some new ones to come. 

  • My blog is now on multiple blogging sites

My daily blog (this blog)appears on RealTown, Trulia, Realtor.com, Blogger, Linkedin, short tweets on Facebook and Twitter and, of course here on my main site –  WordPress.  They all contain the same information.  From the beginning, I had committed to writing daily and since May 2008, I’ve been doing  just that.  I had started one more blogging platform, but have decided to stop my participation on ActiveRain.

  • New website and blogging design

I’m upgrading my blog here at WordPress. Lots of new ideas and soon will incorporate some of them. Who said computers would make our lives easier??

  • I continue to learn

A while ago, I attended a WordPress Camp (a techie conference).   I was unable to go both days, but after one session, I was already on overload.  Yesterday I listened to RealEstate Tomato on BlogTalkRadio.  Stefan Swanepoel spoke about the new trends in social networking.  He has for the last 20 years written TREND Report tracking real estate trends and now also writes about social media trends.  I continue to learn but seem to have a million other questions.  In addition, I hope to take some photography classes soon.

All this to better assist you in buying or selling real estate.  P.S. Let me help, I’d love to be your Realtor®!

Creative Commons LicenseALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No askfirst1Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. © Copyright 2008-2009 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.  Based on a Blog at WordPress.

(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com).