Here I sit at the Jobbing.com office building, waiting for Steven Groves to begin his “Realtor Blogging Workshop”…

Joining him will be Dave Barnhart, from Business Blogging Pros.

I happen to be sitting next to Chris Butterworth, from The Butterworth Group Blog. Chris and his team have an *excellent* blog – you must check it out. And my trip has now been worth it, as one of the things I enjoy the most is meeting fellow bloggers…

And Shailesh Ghimire, THE Arizona Mortgage Guru just walked in the door.

More when the show starts, stay tuned.

And we’re off….

There are 14 people here — apparently all from Dan Schwartz Realty… (2500+ were notified…. Hmmmmm…. doesn’t everyone want to get in on the blogging craze?)

• What do people want to learn?
  Tips, tricks and concepts
  The very basics
  How does it work, and what is it?
  Is it worth my energy to even be here?
  Why blog?

Steve’s discussing his “Agent 2.0″ model and how social media fits into real estate. I’ll link to it as soon as I can. Post about it here.

On to “social media” — tools used to share content, profiles, opinions, insights, experiences etc. It’s all about connecting to people, and them connecting to you. Tools include blgos, websites, podcasts, microblogs, communiites, wikis and vlogs.

Steve presents a pretty compelling argument for blogging and using social media in real estate.

Good question here — with the availability of data to the general public, what is the agent’s role?
Helpers, experts, negotiators, data managers
Much discussion, I feel a blog post coming on……

Steve is moving on to “What is a Blog?” and the big question for many new to real estate weblogging… why? The why’s and how’s are pretty typical (but *really* important), exposure, knowledge, demonstrating expertise.

Search engines and web presence are up now… the Long Tail, content, blah blah (not trying to minimize things here, I just can’t type fast enough….)

The “B” word — interesting comparison of what “blog” used to mean, and what it means now. Used to be: disparaged, diary, MySpace, political. Now: CEOs are doing it, respected, mainstream.

Lots of discussion on how and why blog posts typically rank well.

And the wireless connection here is beginning to flake out…

Dave Barnhart is up now. Dave is a “business blogging consultant”. He says, “Blogging isn’t what works. It’s conversation that makes it work.” I like that…

Dave’s discussing frequency of posting… if you’re trying to “climb to the top of the Google mountain” on a widely used search term, then you need to post frequently. For a long tail type term, you don’t need to post as frequently.

Lots of great discussion happening, that I’m going to jump in on. More to follow later.

Dave’s a TypePad fan. He’s discussing how to get started on TypePad. I still prefer WordPress. Dave’s though it TypePad is easier for the “less technical”. He may be right. I have no TypePad experience (other than their trackbacks seem to fail to function frequently).

Dave says, “I have been programming since Fortran was only Twotran” THAT is really bad geek humor…

Dave held a drawing for one attendee to get a free TypePad blog. Signed him up and he’s blogging right now! Follow his progress over the next few months at http://dougingersoll.typepad.com/

I have to admit, TypePad does seem quite easy to set up and get going…

UPDATE: Sorry about the abrupt ending there folks. I got to talking and, well, sometimes I can’t shut up. Steve has a post up on his blog about the event.

[tags]Steven Groves, Dave Barnhardt, Phoenix Blogging Workshop[/tags]