In our office, we recently launched a new blog website with the help of The Real Estate Tomato and Jim Cronin and staff. They are a dynamic group to work with and we have a great looking site and people already up to speed and blogging their hearts out and doing a great job at it.

The cool thing about our new website is it has an intranet so that we can all post info to each other on the backend side for "our eyes only". It's a great way for my boss to get articles and coaching tips out to the group.

He recently brought up a topic about continuing print ads or NOT! We got many diverse opinions and finally I had to comment on my belief that we still need the print ads for now.

Our seller expects it and while the nature of the print ad has changed, it still provides us an effective means to drive traffic to the internet, dedicated websites and to agent/company websites and blogs. We no longer really get leads from the print ads, however it is very advantageous to drive traffic to dedicated listing websites and our own company and personal websites.

It is also effective in driving traffic to our Opens. When you've combined that dedicated website along with the ad for the Open, the "House Hunter" is able to preview the home and then make a decision on viewing the home at the Open. I've seen my business change over the last three years from getting leads from the paper to NOT getting leads. So...I changed how I was using the print ads. I started building dedicated websites for each of my listings and advertising every Open I am holding. What I do get, however are the Opens House Buyers coming to my Opens with paper in hand.

My point to my fellow agents was that we cut out a crucial piece of the marketing infrastructure when we delete our print advertising. Just as if we decided to NOT use signs, we would be eliminating a crucial piece of our marketing and branding. So while we can argue it is not effective in getting the client to pick up the phone and call, we also have to realize that our goals have changed and that we as real estate marketing professionals should be using the print ad differently and that would be to drive traffic to web solutions.

Going forward it will be critical to all of us in the industry to blog and to bring to the consumer the most creative solutions we can concieve of to help them reach and attain their goals. The smarter the consumer is the better job we've done in helping our industry thrive.

I am Jeanean Gendron and you can reach me at 530 276-7417. I answer my phone. Visit our websites to learn about Redding and Shasta County Real Estate.