Chris Bradford is a lawyer in Austin with a passion for his city. During the day, he works at a mega law firm downtown and specializes on products-liability defense. You wouldn’t expect him to be a role model for real estate bloggers, but you would be wrong.
Bradford operates a blog called “Austin Contrarian” which claims to be about “Austin, economics, and other stuff” but as a long time reader, I can tell you that Bradford’s passion is about urban development in the city. Bradford doesn’t have any ads on his site, it’s not flashy or fancy or worried about the user interface, and it doesn’t benefit his personal brand in any way, no, he writes from a civic perspective based on his passion for Austin.
So what do real estate bloggers have to learn from Bradford? Well, Bradford is highly skilled at looking beyond the numbers output by the city government and digs deeper. He’s not worried about his social graph or personal brand and he is not out to make friends, he is focused on getting to the bottom of the matter and uncovering the truth.
Real estate bloggers are busy, well, selling real estate, so are often guilty of regurgitation of material. Headlines scream “go to the Cedar Park festival this weekend” and “stage your home for a better sale,” and fall short of serving the consumer. Imagine if real estate bloggers took the numbers output by their local board and said, “how does this apply to my niche?” or “are these numbers accurate?” or how about “do these generic numbers mean anything to my consumer?”
What real estate bloggers can learn from Bradford is how to think critically. They can learn passion and how to use that passion. Real estate bloggers can think about what their consumers are experiencing and how urban expansion or retraction has an impact on their daily lives. Real estate bloggers can learn that serving the consumer first by analyzing and debunking rather than regurgitating and worrying less about if they’re BFFs with other real estate bloggers, passion for the consumer will shine through.
We challenge you to read a few of Bradford’s articles and try to see things through this non-Realtor’s eyes as he challenges the city he lives rather than accepts everything he reads as fact.
