Hello,
I'm new to this forum, so if this has been discussed repeatedly please excuse me.

What are the advantages of a blog over a forum. I know what the difference are, but am interested in a good/bad compairison.

Thanks

Hi there,
Well I guess you could look at it from the perspective of your audience. A Blog is more like a one way avenue for you to post information to your userbase. It would be information that you as the blogger would find interesting/important to your userbase. On the other hand a forum, such as the one we are currently in, would allow your userbase to post info/questions etc. Keep in mind that you have direct control over the content on a blog, versus a forum which you would have to monitor on a constant basis.


So you have to really ask yourself the question do you want audience participation, or an information venue for your audience?

TripleDiamonds,
Thanks for the reply. I sort of want to do both. I would like to provide some content but I also wish to have the users ask questions. I leaning towards a forum at this point.

Neal M,
I would tend to lean that way as well, unless you build a page that a user can post a question to you on. Then you can pick through the questions and any that you feel teh general audience on your site would be interested in, you could post the question with the answer on your blog. That way you would not have the administration overhead of always watching the forums for content that is not suitable.

A real estate forum. I use forums (other purposes ie sports forums) all the time but this is the first time I've thought about applying it to real estate.

As anyone tried this or do you know of any example of realtors doing this?

I know no one in my market place does it or even knows what one is so I'm thinking if it worked it could be a could lead generator.

Perhaps a non-branded forum for people to use? If you generated enough leads to your website or blog this may work.

I suppose the software has start up costs but after that its free lead generation. (anyone know the costs?) Any ideas out there?

I'd pick a forum over a blog... in fact I really did. Click on my sig and that's the great new real estate forum that i've started. Check it out!

What are the costs to start it up? Is the version you are using downloadable for free? Is the start up and installation easy to do?

I started a forum over a year and half ago on my real estate website, www.lasvegasrealestateforum.com and I don't get many leads from it, in fact I don't think I have gotten any. I get hammered daily with spam (mostly pornography). I noticed that because my market is only geared towards Las Vegas, it's hard to get discussions going. It is my opinion that National Real Estate Forums will always do much better than local real estate Forums. I recently launched my National Real Estate Forum, www.WannaNetworkForum.com and its gets more discussions and posts then my local forum.

If you want to add a forum to your site, I would recommend Vbulletin, they have the best forum software in the industry and it costs around $400.

If you decided to go with your own forum, good luck to you!!!

Make sure you also review phpBB.com It's one of the leading forum software and it's absolutely free. But just briefly looking at vBulletin it seems like phpBB provides a very similar functionality. I've been running that software for several web sites and it's great.

My understanding is that vBulletin is $160 (Owned License) or $85 (Leased License).

look at my forum on my signature. I made it in a matter of a couple hours. Absolutely free, it comes with my hosting. So easy to install and free, why not use it. It's the best!

If you're trying to decide whether to use forums or blogs to get leads and draw up business, you're better off going with a blog. Forums are great for discussion, as are blogs, but blogs have several advantages (RSS) that help draw traffic. In addition, it takes a ton more work getting a forum going, and maintaining one.

Our real estate investing forums , are an example of forums running phpBB software. It is a free software, and I have been very happy with it!

I opted for a BLOG, because it's easier for my site visitors to read in my opinion, and it allows them to comment on a specific topic instead of allowing them to create new topics that I have to moderate.

The key element to either is keyword density, so that the search engines can recognize what your site is about. If you look at my blog entries, you'll see the words "Bennington" "VT" "real" and "estate" weaved throughout the text. If you're looking for it, it might seem like overkill, but if you read it without knowing what I'm doing, it seems natural.

Each time I use one of those words it reinforces the message to the search engine about what my site is really about, and ranks me higher on those keywords (which research has shown are the keywords that are most frequently used in my market area).

I think that a BLOG or a forum are an excellent idea, whichever you choose, it will help project your image as an expert, and allow you to have a two-way conversation with your site visitors.

I am currently working on a Forum myself.
I like the fact that visitors will be able to create new topics, ask questions, & reply.

I will try to keep it organized into topics (selling, buying, community, recently sold, etc...)

I will encourage visitors to ask questions regarding real estate. Hopefully this will build trust between my visitors and myself. Then hopefully others see the vlue in it (such as I did with this website), and they will ask questions and return to view answers and new postes, etc...I will also post reports, news, different stuff going on around here, post recently sold often.

I do think a blog may be a good idea, but for now I will do the forum, and make adjustments/additions as I see fit.

I am also using the phpBB forum software which is free. pretty cool stuff.

A blog allows you to showcase yourself on the web and provide tips and pointers to people wanting advice on how to buy a home. It also allows you to create a central web presence that can be found in search engines like Google and Yahoo! a lot easier. After creating a blog, you can link to it from forums and increase your traffic to your site and your search engine rankings.

I've been working on a blog system that makes it easy to create and maintain a blog on the web. Its called ListPipe. The advanced package also gives you automated blog postings every week that are relevant to Real Estate, customized for you and optimized for search engines.

Click here to check it out and sign up