Writing a blog in the past was a simple proposition. You found something interesting and wrote your opinion of it. Real estate blogs are all over the landscape now. Some are written by vendors, Realtors, and just plain old bloggers like myself. That is a great thing.

But like anything else in life, there are risks involved. the Insurance Journal has come up with some of the biggest risks that bloggers face and I thought I would share with your some of my favorites.

• Do readers consider the blog a credible source of information and depend on it for up-to-date information (a matter of opinion that can be judged based on analytics and comments)?
• Is information in the blog accurate or is the blog rife with mistakes and misstatements?
• Have facts been checked (as required by due diligence standards) or have they simply been accepted as heard or read elsewhere without further verification?
• Have facts been attributed to the original sources?
• Are information sources reliable?
• Are rumors and gossip printed as fact?
• Are opinions labeled as such?
• Are comments in news and opinion pieces fair and based in fact or could they be considered malicious, libelous or defamatory? via Insurance Journal

The liability of blogging is something I have thought about, often! One one of my other sites that I no longer run, we would have people threatening us with lawsuits quite regularly and even had a small island country threaten us with lawsuits. (The site Scared Monkeys was instrumental in covering the disappearance of Natalee Holloway on the island of Aruba. We set new ground on citizen journalism and interaction with blogs, but that is another story for another day.)

So when I write about real estate I do one of two things:

• I write something that is very clearly my opinion, or
• I append my post with the original source.

That is why on most posts I have a paragraph of the original article. It is not for the search engine optimization benefits, it is so if the original source changes over time, I have a record and so does any litigator.

Corrections happen and I do not have the time to go back and check sources for all of the 2,500 posts I have done. If there is an error in the source and I have shown the error it allows the aggrieved party to contact me and correct the record. Simple, professional, and effective, and does a good job of CYA…

Real estate agents, continue to blog and enjoy it, but remember where the line is. You all live in a world of very tightly controlled ethics as proscribed by your local boards and the National Association of Realtors. As some one who blogs about real estate I live under a different code than a Realtor that blogs. What I can do can end up getting you in a great deal of trouble if you are not careful.

So have fun, if you are writing on something based upon someone else’s work, please give attribution. If you are writing under your own opinion, think of how the target will feel and make sure that you have created a defensible argument based upon fact, not malice.

Related posts:

1. Could Your Real Estate Blog Be In Trouble With The FTC?
2. Linking in Comments For Real Estate Agents
3. Dean Graziosi Real Estate Investment Center Review
4. The War Between Online Real Estate Information and The MLS