Zillow : What’s Your Favorite Blogging Platform? 5 Agents Share Theirs

Sharing your experience and expertise through blogging is easier than ever, but choosing a platform might be trickier. A more established platform - one whose name has more Internet cachet - might attract a bigger audience to your posts. At the same time, a platform that's easy to use might prompt you to post more consistently. You know you want to start blogging, but with so many platform choices, how do you pick the right one for you?

Here are five favorite blogging platforms from real estate agents who blog.

WordPress is a consistent "top five" blogging site and where Jon Griffith's blog calls home.

"It's easy to use and versatile," Griffith said. "I have complete control over it."

WordPress comes in two versions: WordPress.org, which you install on the server of your choice, and then update and maintain on your own, and WordPress.com, which is fully hosted.

Blogs on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org are free, easy to use - no knowledge of coding is required - and offer several options for customization.

Technically you don't own your blog, which means WordPress can suspend your blog at will - and you don't control advertising revenue. Also, there are costs for domain registration, content hosting and security. If you want to customize your blog outside of WordPress' own templates and themes, you'll pay for developer's fees as well.

As a real estate agent in Stowe and one of Vermont's biggest cheerleaders, Charlie Aronovici uses spectacular photos on his blog to help drive home the appeal of living in the area.

"I wanted header photos on every page that I could change whenever I wanted to," Aronovici said. "And that's what drove me to Squarespace."

Squarespace templates are designed for high visual impact, making it easy for a novice blogger to create a sleek, attractive site. The templates are also responsive, which means that no matter what size display followers use to view your blog - even on mobile - they will provide an optimized experience.

Squarespace makes it easy to get started and start customizing; you don't have to know any coding to build your blog. The site has also several themes and plug-ins to choose from. If you have questions, there's a one-hour turnaround on tech support emails.

Squarespace will cost you out of the gate: it has three plans that range from $8 to $24 per month.

Like many blogging platforms, Typepad is easy to use; however its reliability is what impresses John Schneider.

"You don't have to be a tech guru and it's dependable, with little or no down time," Schneider said.

Several big-name companies use Typepad for their blog, including ABC News, BBC and Amazon. There are four plans to choose from that offer increasing levels of designs, features, support and storage.

You own your own content on Typepad, so you have more control over your blog. It also offers professional-looking templates, and many design and promotion tools.

Typepad charges monthly fees ranging from $8.95 to $49.95. The site also limits your options for customization unless you choose the higher-priced plans.

Despite blogging on multiple platforms, Debbie Kirkland found herself gravitating toward Medium for its rich, visual experience.

"I prefer Medium because I like the clean look of it," Kirkland said. "They have stock photography, but you can upload your own images and I just really like having that high-resolution background; I think it's what attracts people."

Medium is ideal for people who love to write and tell a story. It also allows readers to annotate others' blog posts. Started by the Twitter founders, Medium is also growing in popularity, in part because you can use your Twitter account to blog and comment on Medium.

Medium offers a very clean, easy-to-use interface for writers with a pop-up formatting bar when entering text. Because of its Twitter connection, you can also get your content out to a potentially huge audience.

Relatively new, Medium doesn't offer as much search engine optimization (SEO) as other platforms, and it can be difficult to link to content that's located elsewhere.

For their blogs, MarkZ and Martin Archacki went a little off the beaten path with Real Estate Webmasters, noting how easy it is to use and customize their sites. For MarkZ, the platform allows him to design his blog for his followers and not for a real estate hard-sell.

"Nobody goes to your blog to find your listings," MarkZ said. "It's a place to hear the author's voice, so make it about the user."

For Archacki, a blog is for business, but also a way to make meaningful connections.

"Every real estate agent should focus on bringing traffic and interest to their website, and on connecting with clients and creating conversations," Archacki said. "We like to provide the aha! moments, where someone will say 'I didn't know that.'"

Many real estate agents choose to host a blog on their own website through a third-party platform. If you choose this path, be sure to investigate costs, ease of use, customization options and content ownership.

A blog is your chance to share your opinions and expertise and engage with followers who are looking for a like-minded real estate agent to help them find or sell their home. There are several other platforms, free and paid, that you should look into, including Blogger, Tumblr, Svbtle, Postach.io, and Weebly. Finding the right platform to support what and how you write - and whom you're writing for - will make it easier to attract followers to you.

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