Marin Real Estate Insider, as I mentioned in a recent post, is a top-notch residential real estate blog, loaded with important house-hunting information.

Bob Ravasio, the blog’s author, recently talked to me about his blogging experience and how it’s affecting his and wife Pat’s real estate business. A former journalist and advertising account executive, Bob has a great perspective on the creative, marketing, and sales dimensions of blogging.

WS: How long have you been blogging now?

RAVASIO: I believe it has been a little over six months.

WS: Has blogging helped your business? If so, how?

RAVASIO: Yes, it has. First, I’ve had a few people find me via the blog, and then turn into leads and potential clients. I haven’t closed any deals yet as a result of blog leads, but am getting close.

Second, we use it as a way to drive people to our Web site. That’s actually the business strategy behind it. It’s really designed to get traffic, build credibility, then drive people to our main Web site, www.onlyinmarin.com, where they will hopefully register and become future buyers and sellers.

Third, and this may be the most important, it adds enormously to credibility, especially among net-savvy consumers. Lots of older people don’t even know what a blog is. But I’ve met several potential clients, sent them an e-mail, and they see that I have a blog. Once they check it out, they’re impressed–at least the ones that call me back!

WS: How much time do you devote to your blog?

RAVASIO: Not enough. Because it has not turned into an immediate significant lead generator for me, I’ve also started some other marketing programs which cut into my time that I used to spend writing. Right now, maybe three to four hours a week.

WS: What would you do differently if you could start over?

RAVASIO: Make sure I have the strategy really nailed down. I tried originally to do some sort of hybrid between an industry and a consumer-oriented blog. It was mushy and unfocused as a result. I was trying to play the game of interacting with other bloggers on real estate, linking back to them, commenting on their blogs, etc. The problem with that is that most of those blogs are written by realtors and then read only by other realtors.

I don’t have a desire to pontificate on the state of the industry. I’m looking for business. Plus the whole read, leave-an-intelligent-comment, get a nice comment back thing is really time consuming, and my biggest issue is time management. I know it helps with search, but I just didn’t see any return from it.

I have now squarely focused on writing for consumers. It may be hurting my overall traffic–I don’t know, traffic is actually pretty steady. But I started this from the beginning thinking the only reason to do this was to generate leads for my business, and I don’t see any reason to change that now. I said I would give it a year.

WS: What single word would you use to describe the California residential real estate market?

RAVASIO: Astounding.

Thanks, Bob!