To say lead generation is important to real estate professionals is tantamount to saying sunshine is important to plantlife. (No, I'm not comparing Realtors to plants! It's just an analogy.)

RIS Media has a great article that outlines six strategies you should consider deploying this year to increase or enhance your online presence with a view toward accruing more leads. Heres's the list...

1. Take advantage of the two main opportunities on search engines: search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). SEO is organic or natural search, while SEM is the paid variety, also known as pay-per-click (PPC). You gotta love all the acronyms!
2. Keep the content on your site fresh, accurate and robust.
3. Honor channel preference - By that I mean make it as easy for someone to contact you via e-mail as by telephone.
4. Utilize a contact management program.
5. Study competitor sites.
6. IMPORTANT - If you send an e-mail to your database and you do it in one bulk e-mail, make sure that you blind copy (Blind CC) all of the recipients.

I want to speak to numbers one and two specifically. I've said it before and will say it again until I'm blue in the face -- blogs are search engine magnets. In terms of SEO, they can provide immense benefit in terms of a link-building strategy and in terms of keyword-optimized content. That's like gold to Google!

Blogs are easy to update, so keeping fresh content is a no-brainer, in terms of the technology at least. In terms of coming up with content, let me suggest a few tactics:

1. Subscribe to any number of news sites via RSS and email. These include Google News, Yahoo! News, Topix, and even Digg. Using relevant keywords, anytime a story fits you'll be notified.
2. Subscribe to other blogs and blog search engines such as Technorati or Google blog search. Same thing applies here, except that, instead of news, you get opinion and editorial.
3. Subscribe to local news sites. More and more local media are RSSifying content for download. Even if that's not the case in your local market, make it a point to visit the sites routinely to scout for real estate news.
4. Join a real estate social network. There are a couple now, and more coming. Active Rain and Real Town are two of the more popular I'm aware of. If you're a member of some of the real estate marketing organizations - Star Power or Leading RE for example - take advantage of any online networking opportunities they provide.