div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"pA very specialnbsp;post on the Real Estate Tomato today: Teresa Boardman takes a look at what 3 years of blogging on StPaulRealEstateBlog.com has done to her and her business./p h3strong3 Years of Real Estate Blogging - The Gift That Keeps On Giving/strong/h3 pstrongBy Teresa Boardman/strong/p pimg alt="St-paul-real-estate-blog" src="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341bf76153ef010535bc4817970b-pi" align="right" vspace="2" border="0" /There are not many places where a blogger can write about blogging, except for here on the Tomato which is about blogging so once again I send my post to Jim.nbsp;/p pa title="Last year's post on 40 observations about my blogging" href="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/the_real_estate_tomato/2007/11/40-observations.html" target="_blank"A year ago I sent a list of 40 observations I had made after two years of writing a blog./abr /The observations still apply but the list is so 2007. nbsp;My neck still hurts but not as badly;nbsp;I found an exercise that helps.nbsp; The only thing that has really changed from last year is that I don't talk anymore I just blog.nbsp; I am kidding of course.br /nbsp;br /strongNow that I have hit year three I realize that my blog is the gift that keeps on giving./strongnbsp; Posts I wrote three years ago are working hard for menbsp; as readers search through Google and find them.nbsp; Some of the posts just never go out of style.br /nbsp;br /When someone sends me a question via email, I almost always have a link to my blog to send back with an answer to their question.nbsp; When I need most anything in writing, I can usually find it in my blog.nbsp; If I can't, I call it 'blog food' and write a new post.br /nbsp;br /strongI face new challenges these days./strongnbsp; When I go to write a blog post, and I already have 1300 of them, it isn't as easy to come up with new ideas.nbsp; Sometimes I write the same thing twice and don't even realize it.nbsp;nbsp;Sometimes I just recycle old posts.nbsp; Occasionally I am truly inspired and write something decent.br /nbsp;br /strongThe blog was redesigned this past year./strongnbsp; I wanted something a little fresher without changing the brand or making it look too commercial.nbsp; I learned a lot through the design process and Jim was extremely patient with me as I shared my vision.nbsp; He laughed when the design was ready and I didn't want to pull the trigger.nbsp; He told me that he expected me to resist.nbsp; He knows that my blog is my business and that it isn't easy for me to let someone else go in and change it. I am lucky to have a friend like Jim who gets it and isn't afraid to give me a kick in the . . . you know what I mean.br /nbsp;br /strongI am very happy with the new look, and my readers have responded positively./strong It looksnbsp;more professional and it handles photos better which is important as they are a huge part of what makes the blog work.nbsp; It doesn't look like anyone elsersquo;s blog which is also important to me.nbsp; Like me, it has it's own personality.br /nbsp;br /img alt="Hub-in-the-wheel" hspace="8" src="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341bf76153ef010535c2f47d970c-pi" align="right" border="1" /The blog is now the center piece of my online presence.nbsp; A couple of years ago it was my online presence.nbsp; Today it is like a hub in a wheelnbsp; of my ever expanding online business portfolio.nbsp; strongThe wheel is made up of memberships to social networks, and photographs. There are also thirty two separate pages in my blog, five photo albums, and two other blogs/strong.br /nbsp;br /It may sound like all I do is write my blog, but keep in mind this is content built one word at a time, one day at a time over a period of three years.br /nbsp;br /strongThe blog is still an experiment, and I continue to learn and grow./strongnbsp; I know my writing skills have improved as have my photography skills.nbsp; Doing something everyday is a great way to fine tune onersquo;s skills.nbsp; Writing is still my biggest challenge. . . oh and I still can't spell.br /nbsp;br /strongHas it been worth all the work?nbsp; Yes it has been./strongnbsp; The content keeps brining me buyers and sellers, and the blog still has a higher ROI than any other marketing piece.nbsp; I seriously doubt if anyone is reading post cards or newspaper ads that I published three years ago, but they are certainly still reading my blog posts.nbsp;/p pThanks Teresa!nbsp; Happy Blog Birthday./pimg src="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/the_real_estate_tomato/smile14_8.gif" /nbsp;If you enjoyed reading this article,span class="Apple-converted-space"nbsp;/spana title="Subscribe to our feed." style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(59,143,9); TEXT-DECORATION: none" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/the_real_estate_tomato/2006/06/what_is_rss_wha.html" target="_blank"why notspan class="Apple-converted-space"nbsp;/spanfont color="#ff0000"Subscribe/fontspan class="Apple-converted-space"nbsp;/spanto be notified of the next one/a? p/p p style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: left"strongRelated Must Reads:br //stronga style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(62,82,42); TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/the_real_estate_tomato/2007/11/40-observations.html"40 Observations By Teresa Boardman Regarding Her 2 Year Old Real Estate Blog/a/spanbr /a title="Jack LeVine" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(59,143,9); TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://realestatetomato.typepad.com/the_real_estate_tomato/2008/01/how-has-blogg-1.html" target="_blank"How Has Blogging Changed Your Real Estate Career?/a/p pa style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(59,143,9); TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.realestatetomato.com/agent-blog-contact?source=Teresa3Years"img title="Are You Ready?" style="BORDER-TOP-WIDTH: 0px; BORDER-LEFT-WIDTH: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM-WIDTH: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT-WIDTH: 0px" alt="Are You Ready?" src="http://www.realestatetomato.com/images/jointhevine-sm.jpg" border="0" //abr /span id="sharethis_1"a class="stbutton stico_default" title="ShareThis via email, AIM, social bookmarking and networking sites, etc." style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0px 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 22px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: url(http://w.sharethis.com/images/share-icon-16x16.png?CXNID=1000014.0NXC); PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: rgb(59,143,9); PADDING-TOP: 1px; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: no-repeat; TEXT-DECORATION: none; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial" href="#"span class="stbuttontext" style="LINE-HEIGHT: 17px"ShareThis/span/a/span/p p style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: left"Teresa Boardman is an exceptionally professional Realtor in the St. Paul, Minnesota area./p p style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: left"Her website:a style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(59,143,9); TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.tboardman.com/"www.TBoardman.com/aspan class="Apple-converted-space"nbsp;/spanbr /Her blog:span class="Apple-converted-space"nbsp;/spana style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(62,82,42); TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.stpaulrealestateblog.com/"www.StPaulRealEstateBLOG.com/abr /Voice: 651-216-4603/pdiv class="bjtags"Tags: a rel="tag" href="http://technorati.com/tag/Teresa+Boardman"Teresa+Boardman/a, a rel="tag" href="http://technorati.com/tag/Real+Estate+Blogging"Real+Estate+Blogging/a, a rel="tag" href="http://technorati.com/tag/Blogging+Advice"Blogging+Advice/a/div/div div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheRealEstateTomato?a=9zhuM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheRealEstateTomato?i=9zhuM" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRealEstateTomato/~4/433795558" height="1" width="1"/