With no further ado, I give you Phoenix’s own, Heather Barr:

Q.  Tell us a little about yourself and your real estate career.

A. Before becoming a Realtor, I was an elementary

education teacher and a paralegal. Those two were a huge help when I made the transition to real estate in 2005. The legal

background meant I could focus on developing the prospecting and salesmanship skills

that were new to me, instead of struggling to get used to the language on the AAR forms.

Teaching 5 and 6 year olds was helpful too, because high-stakes negotiations involving

hundreds of thousands of dollars tends to bring out the immature in some people!

Q.  How did you get started into blogging and why?

A. I started blogging in the late summer of 2007 because I’d heard this was the wave of the

future. At the time I was looking for a long term plan for cultivating leads. I spent about 2

or 3 months in early 2007 checking out leading blogs, and generally figuring out how the

whole thing worked. I made a practice blog and kept at it for about 2 weeks just to make

sure I could find something to talk about every day. That was a major concern in the

beginning!

I understood right away that your blog is your public face, and your online reputation is

everything, so I didn’t want to wade right in and get it wrong somehow. I wanted to make

sure I had a handle on the etiquette of link love, blogrolls and commenting. Also, I’d

been active on the forums at TelevisionWithoutPity.com, so I had to make a mental jump

from pop-culture message boards to business-oriented serious content that would

represent me as one of many online authorities in Phoenix real estate.

I’d probably still be a voice in the wilderness if Jay Thompson hadn’t found me in my

first week out, and published a link to me in one of his posts. Jay wields a lot of power in

the blogosphere. When he says “she’s new but good” people listen!

Q.  What type of blogging platform do your prefer?

A. I use Wordpress mainly because several of the bloggers I admire were there. I signed up

with WP.com a year ago when I started out, not knowing the cool kids in the WP world

were all at WP.org. Now I understand there’s quite a kerfluffle about the benefits of .org

over .com. But I’m happy with any platform that lets me focus on my content and my

“voice” and makes the back-end tech stuff relatively simple.

Q.  If, while running a new blog, you were allowed to promote your blog using just two methods, what would those two methods be and why?

A. Commenting on others’ blogs is really important and one of my ongoing goals is to be

more consistent about doing it. The other promotion method I couldn’t do without is

emailing a monthly eNewsletter sent to my sphere of influence which basically

consolidates the best posts of the month.

Q.  Do you use any social media networking such as Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook? If so; which ones and how does it help your business?

A. The next big task on my To Do list is to utilize either Facebook or Flickr to deepen my

online relationships with clients, friends and prospects. Everyone’s so busy that getting

together in real life is challenging. But sending a quick email to say “I love the new pix

of the baby!” takes only a minute and means a lot to the recipient.

Q.  What are some of the benefits of blogging for your real estate business?

A. Surprisingly, the biggest benefit to date is that I can mine my own blog (and my broker’s

and colleagues’ blogs) to back me up when I talk about pricing and market statistics at

listing appointments. People still have a bias towards believing things they see in print.

Q.  If you could give one sentence of advice to bloggers, what would that be?

A. Blog Frequently.

Q. Do you feel that real estate blogs should be a mixture of content ie; personal — or strictly only real estate related content?

A. A blog is a way for readers to interview you from afar, so there has to be some personal

content to make readers feel comfortable with your style. Ultimately, I want readers to

come back when they need answers, statistics, data or help and then one day like my blog

style enough to call me and use me as their Realtor. But I’ll never forget that one day a

blogger re-posted one of my Day in the Life posts, and then commented to her readers

that my revelation that I’d spent some time that day making lunch and cleaning out the

cat box was too much information! There’s a fine line between having an authentic voice

and revealing too much.

Q.  Please share a link to your favorite post on your blog.

A. Picking a favorite is really hard, but I was happy with the way “Spuds and SPDS”

turned out. I  wrote it to include in my listing packet and then adapted it for use on the blog.

Interestingly, my most viewed post is my second favorite – What Ice Cream Has to Do With Selling Your

Home. It’s pulled in something like 17,000 views since I posted it in October 2007. Blog stats show that

people are finding it because they’re searching for pictures of ice cream. Who knew there were sugar dipping

hoards out there searching for an online buzz?

Obviously Heather has personality, charm and definitely talent to back her blog posts! She comes with much experience in her background and no doubt her clients love her for it! Thank you for sharing with us your blog and we encourage everyone to stop on by Heather Barr’s NorthPhoenixAgent and check her out!

Well done Heather and we here at AZREBN wish you much success and a prosperous blog and career!  Happy Blogging!