Blogging By Ghosts? Bring The Blog Is Nothing To Fear

You run a busy real estate office. You read blogs and think they are the new wave. You would love to publish one. But you think the learning curve is too steep and you just don’t have the time to write useful content. Understandable. There is a solution.

Bring the Blog, the child of Dan Green’s brain (and what a brain it is), is the easiest way to wet your blogging feet. As the name implies, they provide the blog AND the content. Experienced bloggers (including a Blogging Goddess) will provide you a daily dose of content. Here’s what you get:

We know what you’re thinking —”What’s THAT gonna cost me?”. Fair question. Truth is, not much. In fact, $0 for the 15 Day Free Trial. Go there now and see how easy it is to post something in the demo section. Try it on for size. (I added a draft of this post there—easy)

If you likey, pay $199/year (til March 31st—then it goes to $399), and you got yourself a ghost blog.

You will see how quickly the content gets out on the net. What a thrill to see it on Google, Yahoo and MSN. You may say to yourself, “Hey, I want to try writing a post myself. Get my name in the Google lights” Go ahead. You have the option to write your own posts. Now you have the best of both worlds—a ghost writer to deliver hot & fresh daily blog content to your door and the ability to add you own genius from time to time—while you’re taking a break from turning those million dollar deals. Sweet.

Now, we can hear some purest weblogger crying blasphemy. Admittedly, it’s not original content but blog novices will see what good content looks like and they may start supplementing the blog with their own rants and raves. It’s like skydiving strapped to someone’s back. Not really skydiving but still a thrill. And we’d be the last ones to deny someone a thrill. Besides, they may decide to drop the training wheels and ride the blog bike themselves. So we give a “Sellsius Thumps Up” to Bring the Blog.

Now there is one feature we question—NO comments. We understand the comment spam problem but that could be remedied with a SpamKarma2 or Akismet type solution. The really exciting part of blogging is getting comments and responding—the dialogue is the juicy part of blogging. We would suggest Dan rethink this decision—or give clients the choice of disabling comments. Just because Seth Godin doesn’t take comments doesn’t make it a good choice. (He doesn’t have a search box on his blog either). Until then, Bring the Blog is bringing a Blogletter.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Bring the Blog, Sellsius

Dan Green

Thanks for the glowing review, fellas! I especially like the skydiving analogy. I'll be sure to footnote you when I re-use it... ;-)

We'll tackle comments eventually and think you're spot on about giving folks the ability to disable them. At this point in the product lifecycle, we thrive on user feedback like this because it helps us to shape where the product is headed.

Bring the Blog's stated goal is to be the simplest blogging solution for sales professionals. You took a test drive on our demo so you see how user-friendly the product is.

So, as soon as we can make managing comments as easy to do as to use the rest of the product, we'll enable the feature.

Thanks again for the coverage and for pointing out the March 31 date -- that's when the introductory pricing for real estate blogs ends.

sellsius°

We wish you success Dan.

Paul Chaney

Objections...

1) Regurgitated content, even from experts, is still regurgitated content. I want to hear the blog owner's voice. Blogging is just not about creating content, it's about the personality behind it.

2) If I'm reading content written by a ghost blogger, but don't have that vital piece of information at hand, I'm going to be suckered into thinking the blog owner is the writer, when all the time, it's someone else.

3) If it doesn't allow for comments, it's not a blog. Period! Blogs are about engendering and fostering conversations. Again, it's just not JUST about the content, it's about the personality writing it. Give me the opportunity to interact with them via comments and trackbacks.

In terms of marketing, blogs are great, but only because they allow conversations between blogger and read to take place. "Markets are conversations," so said the Cluetrain, and what the commenter has to say is equally as important as the blogger...and maybe moreso.

Dan Green

Hi, Paul. Thanks for the comments.

As blogging evolves, the term is bandied about and has come to mean a lot of things. There are a lot of folks who agree with you when they say that blogging, by definition, is a conversation.

I learned a long time ago that arguing about what a word means is a silly argument. Just like a product, it is what people use it for.

I imagine that your company's blogging software that you sell at http://www.bloggingsystems.com has its own market and that market is using the product in different ways than you imagined that they would.

The same goes for the book that you wrote about blogging in 2006. Your readers can interpret THAT product however they choose as well.

I see your points, though, and appreciate your viewpoint.

Users of Bring the Blog have the ability to add their own posts to their blog at any time. Some choose to, some don't. But ALL of them get the benefit of an easy-to-use blogging platform that simplifies the process.

That is our goal and our focal point for development -- keep it simple.

This is why adding comments was not part of our original release -- it was too hard to do it in a way that wouldn't intimidate the newbie bloggers. That doesn't make their blog any less of a blog, though. I think you're being a little harsh about that point.

To gauge the success of a blog, you need to understand what the goal of the blog is. And, every blog's goal is different. Establishing a back-and-forth creates community, but many bloggers just want to give their clients and trusted partners a quality source of information that never goes stale, and is branded with their name.

In the past, these folks used newsletters with template content that were expensive to print, and more expensive to mail.

Today, these people use Bring the Blog.

Your

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Sellsius real estate marketing blog

Blogging By Ghosts? Bring The Blog Is Nothing To Fear