Home Builders and Blogs

In a recent article posted on FloorPop: http://www.floorpop.com/Floorpop120705.html
an online marketing best practices newsletter published by Blair Kuhnen. The Harbor Hills Blog is featured in the Communicating Community Lifestyle section:

Communicating Community Lifestyle
I started this article because I ran across the Michael Rich's blog about his HarborHills community in Florida http://harborhills.blogspot.com/. Rich is General Partner Harbor Hills Development, LP. Here was a developer/builder posting every few days pictures, events, celebrations and other news from the community of Harbor Hills. Through the blog, the lifestyle of the community comes alive in a way that is hard to accomplish online.

I asked Rich why he put this blog up. "It's hard to update your website. We can get a posting up on our blog easily." Not only was it much easier, it was much quicker, "After we won an award, we had it [the notice] up in 10 minutes. Within minutes, 3 or 4 people [blog subscribers] were congratulating us." How connected is that?

Rich sees his blog being used by homeowners, clients under contract, and by prospects. He sees a number of key benefits:
It helps him keep in touch with customers in the build process,
He uses it to communicate "Club" news, and
He uses it as a sales tool for both prospects and buyers choosing options.