Each week during our Blogging Boot Camp we share creative blogging ideas, discuss how to implement blogging best practices and offer helpful tips to best use the WordPress blog editor with our real estate agent/broker students. The exchange is fun and the ideas that flow out of our time together are always very interesting. During our recent boot camp call (Thursday-week #7), we shared this idea we thought would benefit the “masses”. Just as a helpful reminder, when blogging, think globally but write locally.

Write for the Masses (in your area)

The best content you can write for your real estate blog is about local information, with a “slant” that is appropriate for a larger audience. Here is a good example.

The Neighborhood Optimization Plan

One of the most underused tools available to real estate bloggers is the use of a “page” (not post) on your WordPress blog. With this neighborhood optimization plan on your blog, you will create a miniature “web” of valuable content that is inter-linked and inter-related. Great for SEO and blog visitors too. Plus - you will come across as the neighborhood expert!

• Step #1 - Write a blog “page” about a specific neighborhood or subdivision in your area. Include general facts and figures. The neighborhood has 200 homesites, list the neighborhood’s amenities (include a picture), list the price range of the homes, the schools kids attend… the usual stuff.
• Step #2 - Write a “spider” post on a “topic” about that neighborhood. It could be the next HOA meeting and important items on the agenda, the golf tournament to be held at the club course, or even tips to maintain your lawn during the local drought. The ideas for this could be endless. Just be sure that you link the “post” back to the static “page” on that neighborhood.
• Step #3 - Write a “Market Recap “post” (Sold Reports, Absorption rates, DOM report, YOY sales…etc) of the neighborhood. Be sure to link back to your neighborhood static “page”
• Step #4 - Write a post about a “Featured Property”. STOP! What ever you do, don’t just slap a couple of pretty pictures on the post with the “features” of the home. Remember - I “said” “write” a post about a featured listing and talk about why this particular home in this neighborhood is the perfect example of the type of architecture home buyers would expect to find in the community.
• Step #5 - Write a post about a “Local Shopping Center” near the neighborhood. Talk about the unique shops and services that are available to the residents of the neighborhood. Don’t forget to “link” your new post back to your neighborhood page!
• Step #6 - Now write a “post” about the “Amenities” in the neighborhood and link it back the page. Talk about the great pool, playground, tennis courts, greenway/walking trails, whatever amenities are available to the homeowners. Always remember to link your post back to your static Neighborhood page.

The number of ideas for writing post on your neighborhood are limitless. You could write a “restaurant review” about an eating establishment near the neighborhood (just remember to always inject your role as a RE professional). You could write a post about a school, a local charity event you sponsored (don’t brag about your sponsorship in your post). One more thing, don’t forget to create a “category” for your Neighborhood and point all your post to that category too.

Now Take Action!

I know I just heard a collective moan from all the real estate professionals - MORE writing! Remember - the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. So get going and “just do it”!

Talk to Me!

What other neighborhood ideas have you blogged about?

Helping you blog smarter,

Bobby

Dakno Real Estate Marketing Senior Consultant

Your Crystal Coast Blogger

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Is Your Real Estate Website the Consummate Area Resource?

So here’s the scenario. Your “About the Area” page is basically a “laundry list of community links” to local websites. Hoping to make it easier for the site visitor to obtain “valuable area information” quickly, you make sure this list of “links” is accessible within “one click” from your homepage. Some agents make it even easier to access these links and place them on their homepage. And we all know “area information” for certain types of buyers is critical to their decision making process (can you say relocation?). Now with the “HELP” of these useful websites, your site visitor can access all kinds of great information about “your” neighborhoods, your community, your town/city, your county and your region all by simply LEAVING YOUR WEBSITE! Now ask yourself how in the heck that can be a good thing! Silly me - and I thought the primary reason you had a website was to be the consummate area resource for your site visitors offering valuable search tools and nuggets of area information. The main reason you spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars on this thing you call a real estate website was to hopefully have a site visitor see the “value” in your web site and its’ resources and maybe ultimately see the “value” in starting a relationship with you.

The Chamber of Commerce Would Never Think to Monetize Their Space on the Web!

If you believe that little nugget, I have some beachfront property for sale in Phoenix! Read on…. Completely satisfied, you can relax knowing you have “accomplished your mission” and “sent your traffic AWAY” from your website to that “harmless” chamber site or maybe even the local newspaper website where your potential client will “NEVER” see a “banner ad” or a “Google Adword campaign” for your competitor. Wait a second - did I just say your COMPETITOR? Sure did…. congratulations! Your website is now a “resource” for your competition.

Is It Possible Your Website is a Direct Gateway to Your Competitor’s Website?

Here is one even better! I’ve actually conducted website evaluations on agent websites where they “framed in” another chamber or newspaper website within their website. Brilliant! Now the site visitor can escape directly to a competing agent who’s banner ad is screaming for them to “CLICK HERE NOW TO SEARCH the MLS!” By the way, you might want to read the “TERMS of USE” policy of that website you are framing in. I dare say 90% of the websites agents choose to frame into their website warns them against such practice. But agents ignore this small detail all the time. (Hmm… fodder for another post!)

Real Estate Agents are Wising Up!

While I see some improvement in the real estate industry with this problem, it continues to happen quite frequently. Can you offer these types of links to sites to your consumer? Sure if you must, but if you do, do it right. Make sure the links you offer are deep within your website (at least 3 clicks from the homepage). That way you are sure your site visitor is “vested” in your site and realizes your website is the valuable real estate resource they should come back to time and again. Give them a reason to come back. By all means, write your own area information page. If you can’t write it, hire a pro, hire a journalism student, get an intern, hire a high school student. Get anybody to write it - just do it and keep your site visitors to yourself. Otherwise, keep sending your site traffic to those harmless other websites. Surely “your” site visitors will never click on those banner ads or those Google ads. Yeah right!

What’s Your Feedback?

Take a close look at your real estate website. Does your site offer your site visitors a way of escape to your competitors?

Helping you build a better real estate website,

Bobby

Dakno Real Estate Marketing Senior Consultant

Your Crystal Coast Blogger

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You Can’t Have One without the Other

I couldn’t agree more about what ARDELL was saying (not just because she chose us as the winner). Most people want to take the easy way out of Search Engine Optimization. They want the “quick fix” or the “magic bullet”. But the reality is that you have to have a solid mix of great content, authority backlinks, and a well structured Web site. Leaving out any one of these key ingredients is a formula for having your real estate website perched on page 18 of the search results.

Authority Backlinks

Let’s face it. To some degree, the web is a big popularity contest. If your real estate website is in with the “in crowd” then you have a much better chance of ranking higher in the search engines. That’s because Google and other Search Engines use links (also called backlinks) to measure the validity of a website. Each backlink counts as a vote or an endorsement (some votes count more than others). The more votes, the more authority you have and thus higher rankings in the search results. So how do you get these precious votes? Write great content!

Great Content

The old saying holds true. Content is King. After all, all the backlinks in the world do you no good if your website doesn’t live up to those glowing endorsements. Additionally, having great content on your site is the quickest way to build links and ultimately search engine placement. Let me give you an example. When Dakno first started selling Real Estate Blog sites, we quickly realized that there were little resources available online for WordPress Training. We immediately saw a need that could be fulfilled. So we purchased a few WordPress training videos and placed them on our website. Next thing we knew, we had dozens of people linking to our videos and as a result, we now sit at position #3 in Google for the keyword WordPress Training.

A Well Structured Website

The third ingredient to SEO is having a well structured website. The reality is that good HTML code matters! Your real estate website should be designed to accommodate headlines with a set hierarchy, solid title tags and easily accessible content. After all, what good is all that great content if Website visitors and search engines can’t easily find and read it!

So ARDELL, thanks for the compliment but in my book, you’re the clear winner of the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest!

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Frequently Asked Questions

I created a styled blog through ActiveRainCustomizer.com but my blog still looks the same! What am I doing wrong?
You still need to copy and paste the code from the AR Customizer website into the “Blog Description” of your ActiveRain blog. But keep in mind, you are only required to do this one time. If you want to make a change to the design of your Customized Active Rain Blog, you simply need to login to the Customizer Website and make the change. You do not have to paste the updated code into your blog. Your Active Rain blog will change automatically.

I decided to change the design of my blog. But it still shows the old header and background image.
This is probably due to your browser pulling from the cached version instead of downloading the new graphic. Try refreshing; hitting “control” + F5; or clearing your temporary internet files.

Why Is My Blog So Narrow? / Content is cut off in my blog!
With the new customized blog design, the blog now has a “fixed width.” If you include elements that are wider than the content area, about 670px in width, then it will create a horizontal scroll. If you wish to eliminate the horizontal scroll, make sure all your elements are less than 670px wide.

Will this make my site load slow?
Only if you have graphics that are large in file size. The code only adds a few lines of “style” into your blog, so it shouldn’t slow down the load time. Not nearly as much as all the widgets that some of you have in your side bar

My background image is like a checkerboard! Why?
We have set the background image to “tile”. This is so people can place repeating background images into their blog. If you want to avoid the tiling effect, simply upload a larger image. Perhaps in a later version, there will be the option of choosing more settings for the background.

The customization affects other portions of my ActiveRain blog post! Why?
This is due to a limitation in how ActiveRain coded the Web site. I have asked AR to tweak their code so I can adjust only the sidebar. They are going to do this but it will not happen until their programmer returns next week.

The Customizer broke my blog! / The Customizer broke another widget on my blog!
More than likely, it’s not the Customizer that broke your blog. It’s a conflict with something else in your ActiveRain blog. Try to find the culprit by process of elimination. Keep removing other widgets until your blog looks correct.

Will you add the option to include text in the header?
The Customizer works by dynamically overwriting specific areas of the existing Stylesheet. With this in mind, we can only edit elements that are already on the Blog. This means that we cannot add new elements such as header text, etc.

The Customizer Web site keeps logging me off. What’s going on?
We have confirmed a bug that automatically logs a visitor out of the website when you save your settings. We are working on a fix for this. Please note that your settings are still saved and you can simply log back in.

I have uploaded images, but they are not showing up in my ActiveRain blog
We have confirmed a bug in the ActiveRain Customizer site that “breaks” images if you do not select all color fields. To avoid this issue, simply make sure you select a color for all selections (background, header, menu background and menu text).

The Customizer has a bug! When will you fix it?
As of right now, the only known bugs in the Customizer are the two mentioned above. ActiveRain has recently partnered in this project. With that in mind, they will soon be taking over development. As of right now, we do not have a definitive date as to when these two bugs will be corrected.

I contacted Brad/Dakno and told them that I needed help setting up my blog. When will they help me?
We have been inundated with request to support the setup of Customized ActiveRain Blogs. Please note that this was simply a side project that we offered at no cost to ActiveRain users. With this in mind, we are extremely limited in the amount of free support that we can offer. If you are interested in Dakno assisting you with Design, Customization, etc., then please contact us. We will offer this service at our standard rate of $75/hour. If you are interested in obtaining free technical support, please see the next question.

My Question isn’t answered, where do I get Tech Support?
Since ActiveRain is such a great community of people helping others, I would suggest you contact a fellow AR member who has successfully setup their Customized Blog. If you are still having problems, please contact ActiveRain. They have agreed to offer basic support for the ActiveRain Customizer.

If you have another question/comment that you may find helpful for others, please leave a comment in this post. I will then add it to the FAQs.

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If you haven’t already signed up with ActiveRain, then read this first, then setup your own account.

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You have probably heard the buzz about the ability to totally customize your Active Rain blog. Visit my recent Active Rain post if you haven’t yet seen an example. It turns out; Active Rain gives you amazing flexibility in the look and feel of your blog. You don’t have to have to be a part of any special beta program. You can do this with any Active Rain blog.

How Does It Work?

Let’s talk about how this is done. No, there is no “hacking” or anything like that involved. You are simply modifying the CSS (a.k.a. the Style Sheet). I have actually been adding Style Sheet modifications to my post for quite a while. In fact, Jeff Turner of Real Estate Shows, grabbed my code and published it in the comment section of this post back in October of last year. That’s how this whole thing got started. In the beginning, I simply used my modified CSS to make simple changes to the look of my headlines, links, etc. But last night, it hit me. If I can make those changes via CSS, I bet I could also use CSS to make even more changes! A quick side note. I really commend ActiveRain for making this feature available! There are so many possibilities that can be done with this!

The Basics of CSS

Okay, I am getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s take a step back for a second. Most websites use CSS to control the look and feel of a Web site. By adding a new Style Sheet, you can “trump” the existing Style Sheet to create a new look. You just need to target the specific areas of the Web site that you want to modify. So how do you target these specific areas? That’s easy. Each section of the site has a unique ID. For example, the top portion of the ActiveRain website has an ID called “header” (pretty logical). Their Style Sheet sets various parameters of how that header should look. If you want to change these parameters, simply add a new Style Sheet and target the header. Because your Style Sheet comes after AR’s Style Sheet, you are able to overwrite their instructions and add your own.

Do It Yourself

I knew that this may be a little technical for some people so I decided to create a quick tutorial (below) on how you can do it.

First, Login to ActiveRain. If you don’t have an ActiveRain account, then read this first, then setup your own account.

On the left hand side, select (Post). Write your blog entry the way you would normally, just be sure you set your Visibility to “Draft.” Now save your blog entry by selecting “Post Blog Entry” at the bottom of the page. Now go back and select “edit” to edit your post.

This is where things get interesting. In order to make the Style Sheet modifications, you have to be in HTML mode. With that in mind, click the HTML tab.

You should now see your blog post in HTML view. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of your blog and add the follow piece of code.

This tells the browser that you want to make Style Sheet modifications. Now, any edits need to go inside those two tags. For example, let’s say I want to change the background color of the site from white to yellow (for the sake of everyone’s eyes, please do not actually do this!)

Your Style Sheet would look like this…

body {background-color:yellow;}

Like I said earlier, you can even target specific sections of the site. In order to find these ID names, I suggest using the FireBug plugin for Firefox. It will tell you the name of the ID as well as the current style applied to that ID.

Okay, now that I have told you how to do this, please, proceed with caution! Let’s not turn ActiveRain into another MySpace with everyone’s blog having spinning backgrounds and pink Comic Sans font!

My Code

In case you need some inspiration, here is the Style Sheet used to achieve my Active Rain blog design. Feel free to grab and modify this code. All I ask is that you link to this post so other AR members can benefit from this!

<p>body {width:950px; margin:auto; background:url(http://www.dakno.com/blogpics/arback.jpg) fixed top center; }</p> <p>#header, #footer {background-color:#99c523;} #header {background-color:#fff; padding-bottom:60px; margin-top:30px; padding-top:100px; background:#FFFFFF url(http://www.dakno.com/blogpics/daknotop.jpg) no-repeat scroll -32px 0px; border:0px; margin-top:0px; }</p> <p>.footerText {color:#ffffff; }</p> <p>td {background:#ffffff}</p> <p>#footer td {background:transparent!important;} .site_button {border:0px; background:url(http://www.dakno.com/blogpics/arbutton.gif); height:60px; width:180px; padding-top:10px;}</p> <p>#logo {position:relative; top:-10px; left:330px; width:950px;}</p> <p>#member_count {display:none;}</p> <p>.nav {padding:4px;0px!important; text-align:center!important; background:#99C523; width:930px; border:1px solid #2f4165!important; margin-left:5px; }</p> <p>h2 { color:#356D9E!important; font-family:Trebuchet MS,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:24px!important; font-size-adjust:none; font-stretch:normal; font-style:normal; font-variant:normal; font-weight:normal; letter-spacing:0pt; line-height:24px; margin:9pt 0pt 0px; padding:6px 0pt 0px; } h3 { color:#356D9E!important; font-family:Trebuchet MS,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:20px!important; font-size-adjust:none; font-stretch:normal; font-style:normal; font-variant:normal; font-weight:normal; letter-spacing:0pt; line-height:24px; margin:9pt 0pt 0px; padding:6px 0pt 0px; }</p> <p>a { color:#356D9E; text-decoration:underline; }</p> <p>p{ margin-top:2px!important;}</p> <p>a:hover { color:#ffffff; text-decoration:none; background:#356D9E; border 1px solid #DDA603 }</p>

There still may be a few bugs to work out with my style but I think it will give you the general concept.

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Dakno Marketing Helps Save the Environment!

One of the exciting new features included in this release is the integration of Google Street View. With Google Street View, your site visitors can tour your area from the comfort of their office or home saving them time and $3.50 a gallon gas. Not only are you helping your prospects discover your area from their laptop or desk top, you’re helping save the planet preventing unwanted automobile emissions! I get it… enough of the over-hyping!

How to Flip the Switch for Street View!

Just remember, you must be located in one of the select 40 metropolitan areas mapped by Google. If Google Street View is available in your area, just remember - you can enable it via Agent Backdoor by clicking on the settings icon and selecting “Yes”. To see if Google Street View is available in your area, go to the Google Maps Street View site to determine if it is available in your area and click on the Street View button. The map will then populate “cameras” designating the areas where the Street View technology is available.

Google Street View Addition

Google street view provides an interactive 3-D view of the streets in your area. You have the ability to literally drive down the streets of your area via the web. Many areas allow you to “pivot” Street View up and down. Click here to see an example of Google Street View and to see if it is available in your area.

RSS Feed of Listings

We have added an RSS feed of all of your listings to your property list pages. This enhancement will allow your site visitors to subscribe to this feed and be updated about new property information instantly as you add it to your site. That is real-time information delivery at its best!

Redesign Enhancement of the Area Info Page

We have redesigned the area-info.php page to better showcase the listing of your neighborhoods and condos. This means this page is better organized for your site visitors to eliminate page scroll and provide a more pleasing visual representation of your available neighborhoods and condos on this page.

Enhanced Condo and Neighborhood Information

We have enhanced the condo and neighborhood pages to better optimize for your title tags and meta descriptions. You now have the ability to optimize your site for the search engines. The latest enhancement will allow you to add specific key words and descriptions to your neighborhood and condo detail pages. This enhancement is sure to grab the attention of the search engines even better than ever before.

Drag and Drop Ordering Capabilities

Because we value your feedback, many of you have voiced the desire to reorder information on staff and testimonial pages. Providing you greater control of your Web site, now you can use a simple drag and drop interface to easily update the order in which your staff members and your testimonials appear on your site

.

Improved Page Load Time

We enhanced the way images uploaded to your site for your listings, condos, neighborhoods, and staff so they render on your site for improved page load time.

Distinction Between Baths and Half Baths

Now your listing information will present separated baths from half baths. Before we were adding half baths devided by 2 to the number of baths, this worked great if you had one half bath because you would show as 2.5 baths for example, but if you had 2 half baths it would show as 3 baths. Now your Dakno Web site will reflect this important information accurately!

An All New Agent Backdoor Settings Page

To allow you greater control over your Dakno Web site we have added a setting page to allow you to enable or disable Google Street View on your site. Currently this is the only option on the settings page, however as we continue to upgrade and add to Agent Backdoor. In the future, you will be given even more control of your Web site via your Agent Backdoor settings page as new enhancements are provided.

General Maintenance of Your Dakno Web Site

Here at Dakno Real Estate Marketing, we are continually performing maintenance upgrades, eliminating bugs and providing you a secure environment which in turn provides you with a better quality product. The ultimate goal is to provide your site visitors a better online experience.

Your Opportunity to Chime In!

The purpose of this post is to be another communication conduit for our clients and to also solicit your feedback. What other Agent Backdoor enhancements would you like to recommend that will maximize your Dakno provided product? We look forward to your feedback and your recommendations.

To your greater success,

Bobby

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• It’s so easy!
• The convenience factor
• Competitive cost (savings versus traditional brick & mortar retail outlets)
• Varied selection over traditional retail shops

Other Valid Reasons

Other more obscure but equally powerful motivating factors for the success of e-commerce websites was the rush of adrenalin with the adventure of shopping online and the satisfaction of completing an online purchase. e-Commerce website designers must engage site visitors with tools that give the site visitor the impression they are in total control of their buying experience and “stir” feelings that the consumer is having a brand new buying experience different from their last buying episode.

Poor Website Design = Site Visitor Distrust!

To accomplish any and all of these goals, e-commerce website design must cultivate a feeling of trust on the part of the site visitor. We have heard that site design is actually more important than given credit for especially when feelings of poor site security and unreliability are conveyed as a result of a bad design! The important element that real estate professionals can extract from this post is this…. e-commence websites:

1. Make the website feel as thought the experience is all about the consumer. A well-designed website will give the consumer the feeling that they are in full control of the process
2. Provide a strong design that will allow the site owner to remain “Anonymous”
3. Offer user-friendly navigation
4. Are coupled with detailed product information
5. Presented in a comfortable design package that makes the site visitor feel at ease are deemed highly productive e-commence portals

These sites will succeed over other sites that offer average usability coupled with so-so design presentation.

Application for Real Estate Professionals?

1. Bernice Ross stated it this way in her recent post, “In a study of 1,173 real estate website visitors, 54% said that the agent’s picture on the front page of a website interfered with their ability to find what they wanted.” In other words, make your website less about you and more about making your consumer comfortable. Of course, always comply with local MLS board rules, broker rules and clearly state who you are in the footer. Just leave off all your pictures of you and your pets… (unless you target the pet crowd)
2. Focus on delivering a website design that creates an atmosphere of trust and delivers a feeling of professionalism. This means you should focus on a website design that makes your site look different from all your competitors. The #1 problem with most real estate website designs is this…. they all look the same!
3. Insure the website is very easy to navigate and information can be accessed in 3 clicks or less.
4. If we are to learn anything from our e-commerce counterparts it’s this, real estate agent sites must deliver detailed area (product) information (county-city-neighborhood) and offer user-friendly mapping and search tools. Holding site visitors hostage to search is no longer the acceptable method to create lasting client relationships.

Your Feedback?

What have you learned about website design from your experiences as a consumer on e-commerce websites? Be the first to comment!

Helping you design better websites,

Bobby

Your Crystal Coast Blogger

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Take a look:

1. Post should be written in a relaxed fashion using the “soft sell approach”. It’s all about creating a casual environment where site visitors are “ok” with leaving a comment.
2. The blog should serve as a platform to demonstrate that you’re the “local real estate expert”.
3. In your post, use the same font styles and sizes for every post to maintain site uniformity. Hodge-podge of fonts sizes, colors and styles makes the blog look less than professional.
4. Post should be written in a format that is “scanner-friendly”. It is recommended you include bullets and numeric points along with images to compliment the post subject. Long “War & Peace” post are boring and will never be read.
5. Use smart linking strategy from your post to your website and deep link within your flagship website when possible for SEO juice.
6. Content can be hyper-local, regional or national in nature. Generally speaking, blogs are driven by hyper-local content.
7. Blog on local events, market conditions (include stats/charts), blog on local interest stories like property tax assessments or HOA disputes, home builder parades and other real estate related events.
8. When you attend a local event, take a camera or video camera to document the event and upload the content to your blog via YouTube.
9. Refrain from doing what many blog site owners do which is to use her blog site to “only” highlight their listings. Consumers typically don’t respond well to “featured listings” on a blog.
10. Refrain from using the same content on your post of your blog and on your Active Rain blog. It doesn’t help with SEO to cut & paste post from one platform to the other.
11. Never copy and paste article directly out of Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word has unseen “junk” code embedded in the application that does not “play well” with your blog editor. Simply copy and paste your post from Word to Notepad. Then copy it from Notepad to your blog. Or type directly in the WSYWYG editor of your blog platform.

What rules do you use to blog by that maybe I omitted from my list?

Helping you blog smarter,

Bobby

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Let’s start with the basics.

Blogging is frustrating, time consuming, and is basically you just giving away information – for free! So why would anyone want to become a blogger? Personally, I think it’s an easy choice. Blogging gives you a chance to show your audience that you are a trust-worthy expert who believes in open communication - in other words, a chance for you to be seen as a “trusted adviser.” But that’s not all, there are many other benefits. Personally, I think the Search Engine Optimization value alone is reason enough to start a real estate blog. But it’s also a great lead generator and a wide open opportunity, after all, the National Association of Realtors state that only 5% of Realtors are blogging.

Time Commitment of Blogging

I mentioned earlier that blogging can be time consuming. There are actually lots of ways to help offset that time commitment (we will get to that in a second) but first, let’s address the issue of the time commitment. Imagine someone called you and wanted you to keynote in front group of hundreds or even thousands of potential clients. As a real estate agent, you would probably jump at the opportunity. The time it would take to write your speech would be well worth it. In other words, with all marketing, there is a cost. But the return on investment for blogging makes it all worth it.

But I’m Not a Good Writer

Blogging isn’t necessarily about being the world’s greatest writer. Instead, it’s about being able to communicate with your audience. It’s about finding your “voice” and using your unique style to speak with your audience. And remember, you don’t have to do it all yourself. There are plenty of ideas to help offset the task of keeping your blog updated.

You Don’t Have to do it Yourself

Okay, I am sure some of the blogging “purest” are going to disagree about the whole ghost writing concept. But the reality is that having others help add content to your blog is a great solution to keeping it updated.

• Ghost Writers: Good copywriters can write to emulate your voice. They have the added benefit of being able to effectively work in the correct keyword density that help makes the Search Engines happy.
• Preferred Partners: Your preferred partners are a great resource to help add content to your blog. I am sure your mortgage vendor or local handy man would love the opportunity to contribute to your blog in exchange for free advertising.
• Business Owners, elected officials, school board members, etc. are also great resources to pull from. But make it easy on them. Provide them with a list of questions that they can easily answer. Basically conduct an email interview.

I’m ready. But Where Do I Start?

Avoid the temptation of simply going to WordPress.com or Blogger.com and creating a few blog. This provides little SEO value and can get you started in the wrong direction. Instead, find a solution that gives you total control. For example, our SwiftBlogs are affordable and are extremely scalable. In other words, your blog can grow with you. There are thousands of plug-ins that you can add to your SwiftBlog including Podcasting, multimedia and other features.

So are you cut out to be a real estate blogger? Would you like to know more about blogging and ways to go about getting a blog site set up? If so, leave a comment.

Training an army of real estate bloggers,

Brad

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