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Starting a Real Estate Blog
by Brandon Cornett
A blog is a content-management tool that allows you to quickly and easily publish content to the web, usually in reverse-chronological fashion. Were you expecting a more complex definition? Sorry. In technical terms, that's exactly what a blog is.
Blogs began as online journals kept by individual authors. Web diaries, if you will. While much of that individuality has been retained, blogs have evolved to fill many roles. Today there are business blogs, personal blogs, educational blogs, religious blogs, and yes ... real estate blogs.
What's a Real Estate Blog?
In this context, a real estate blog is just what it sounds like — a blog published by a real estate agent, or a group of agents. A real estate blog is a great way to expand and enhance your website with fresh content. In fact, if you're a real estate agent, I can't imagine a reason not to start a real estate blog.
First, let's dispel a blog myth. With regards to search engine visibility, a real estate blog is not magical. It will not leap onto the first page of Google in a month, they way some people seem to think they will. But blogs are extremely easy to publish — and that's the search engine advantage they have over regular websites.
By default, most blogging programs (such as WordPress and Blogger) create clean, well-coded web pages. And they do it literally at the click of a button. Just type your blog post, click the "Publish" button, and you've got a new web page. No web coding experience is necessary.
Now repeat that three times a week for a year, and you've got more than 150 pages of quality web content. That's the search engine benefit of real estate blogs -- they make it easy to publish new content on a regular basis. This keeps people and search engines coming back to your site on a more regular basis. These are good things!
Benefits of a Real Estate Blog
- An easy way to grow your website / web presence
- A great way to "feed" search engines with relevant content
- Helps you position yourself as an authority
- Helps you provide valuable content to readers / potential clients
- Improves your search engine ranking and visibility over time
- Demonstrates that you're web savvy and "with the times"
Blog Content Considerations
A real estate blog is only as good as the person who publishes it. There are a lot of great real estate blogs on the Internet. There are also plenty of duds. Launching a blog is the easy part. It's the constant addition of useful, interesting content that sets the good blogs apart from the duds.
Think about it from a reader's perspective. Step out of your real estate shoes for a moment, and imagine you're not a real estate agent. Let's say you are selling a home in San Diego, California and preparing to move to Austin, Texas. So you scour the Internet in search of information on the Austin real estate market.
Now for the sake of simplicity, let's say you find three websites that seem to offer the information you need. They all have information about relocating to Austin, info about the real estate market there, etc.
But one of these websites is primarily a real estate blog, with new information added several times a week. The other two websites are fairly static, looking like they haven't been updated in a while.
Which real estate website would you bookmark and revisit — the static websites, or the real estate blog with market updates and other information posted daily? You would obviously want to keep tabs on that blog!
And if you do keep tabs on that blog, there's a strong chance you'll wind up contacting the agent who owns that blog after you reach Austin (or perhaps before leaving San Diego). Why? Because by following the agent's blog, you have, in a sense, gotten to know the agent. They are less of a stranger. You have read their information, found it very helpful, and come to trust what they have to say.
How to Use a Real Estate Blog
So what do you publish onto your real estate blog? Well, this question is only limited by your imagination. How about property listings, current interest rates, or special events ... or all three? Why not build your blog around a certain theme, such as "Around Town," with plenty of information on local happenings (and how they apply to real estate, home values, etc.).
As you can see, the possibilities for your real estate blog are virtually endless.
Better yet, if you want to write about multiple topics, you can label each blog post to assign it to a category (like news, property, miscellaneous, etc.). This makes it easier for readers to find information on your blog.
How Blogs Work
Popular blog programs include Blogger (owned by Google), WordPress and TypePad. Which blog program you use is not nearly as important as how you use your blog. Different blog programs have different features, but they all do the same thing. They convert your text into an HTML web page (known as a blog post) at the click of a button.
You simply type your blog post, add links or images as desired, and click a "Publish" button. The blog application will then publish your post onto the web, making it a part of your blog. Most blogs are published in reverse-chronological format, with the most recent post at the top of the first page.
The best way to understand blogs is to see some of them for yourself. Here are a few to start with:
My own blog on real estate marketing:
http://www.armingyourfarming.com/realestatemarketing/
The "Bloodhound Blog" (a popular real estate blog with multiple authors)
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/
Seth's Blog (a very popular business and marketing blog)
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
Why Should I Start a Blog?
The overall premise of this guide is to grow your Web presence by combining multiple web-publishing channels, and the blog fits in perfectly with this concept. So that's obviously one of the reasons to blog — it helps people find you online.
But that's just one of many reasons for starting a real estate blog. Here's a more complete list of reasons why real estate professionals should blog, starting with the one we already know.
1. Search Engine Visibility - By default, blogs do many things well that can help them earn search engine ranking. In many cases, blogs can achieve solid ranking faster than regular websites. A blog is easier to publish than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often. Search engines like websites with frequently updated content.
2. Easy Online Publishing - If you can create and send an email, you can post content to a blog. It's a simple matter of entering your content and clicking "Publish." This simplicity makes you more inclined to publish content regularly, which keeps people and search engines coming back more often.
3. Positioning Power - More so than a regular website, blogs tend to be closely associated with an individual author. So if you make your blog an extension of yourself, it becomes a readable manifestation of your knowledge, personality and professional talents. In this way, you can use your blog to position yourself as a "thought leader" in your market area.
4. Potential for Dialogue - Blogs are part of the social web, often referred to as Web 2.0. Web publishing of yesterday was mostly a one-way affair in which the publisher spoke to the reader. Web publishing today is more of a dialogue, where publishers and readers speak to each other. With their reader comment capabilities, blogs support this notion of an online dialogue.
5. Blogs Foster Trust - When you publish a blog in your own true voice, you encourage people to trust you. This is especially true when people read your blog over time — when they become "fans" of your blog. You become less of a stranger and more of a trusted resource, which is a huge plus for real estate agents.
6. Potential for Leads - You stand to gain a lot from the interaction and trust mentioned above. When you interact with your blog readers in a positive way, you have a much greater chance of turning them into clients.
7. Fill in the Blank - This is just my own list of reasons why real estate agents should blog. After a month or so of blogging, you'll be able to add to this list with reasons of your own. With their versatility, blogs mean different things to different people. What value will you build into your blog? There are no limits.
I hope you've enjoyed this guide to starting a real estate blog and I wish you well in your blogging endeavors.
About the author - Brandon Cornett is an Internet marketing veteran and the creator of several resource websites for real estate agents, including AdviceForAgents.com, ArmingYourFarming.com, and TopTenAgent.com. Visit the author's website at www.AdviceForAgents.com.