The Real Estate Blog: Blogging for Success
Blogging isn't just for geeks anymore. Realtors across the county are using blogs to position themselves as experts on their local real estate market, establish their reputation as knowledgeable and approachable, and make connections with prospective real estate buyers and sellers, as well as with other Realtors.
As a Realtor, you should give serious thought to starting a blog of your own. But before you go racing off to start blogging, there are factors to consider and plans to make. A blog, or web log, requires time and attention. You absolutely must post blog entries on a regular and frequent basis. If prospective clients visit your blog and see that your last post was 7 months earlier, they might well conclude that you're not still active in the real estate profession. Or, at the very least, they'll probably think that you aren't serious about your work and don't follow up on your commitments.
Ideally, you should post a new entry to your blog several times a week. If you can only post once a week, make sure you that you meet that once-a-week commitment. And if you can only post once a month, you're probably not ready to start a blog.
What Will You Blog About?
You can only write so many blog posts about the current real estate market in your town. So what do you write about week in and weeek out? There's an endless list of possibilities, and keep in mind that not all of your posts must be specifically related to real estate.
Remember that your readers — yes, you'll have some, after a while — are hungry for information about the area. That's why they're reading your blog, after all. And many of those readers are not even currently living in your community, so almost anything you write will be news to them. Just about everything that happens in your life, just about everywhere you go, there will be an opportunity for a blog post. After you've been blogging for a while, you'll learn to recognize a blog opportunity just about everywhere.
Did you try out that new little Italian restaurant that opened up on the corner? Chances are, even your readers who live in town would be interested in how the food and service were. Did you take a drive through the new subdivision that's under development? You can bet your readers will be interested in that. Did you visit the new library or school that just opened? Yep, you guessed it — that's a blog opportunity. Do your clients ask you questions about the area, about the neighborhood, about local recreational activites? Those are all possibilities for blog posts.
Travel the Blogosphere
Be sure to go visit and read other blogs, particularly those by other real estate agents. You'll no doubt get some ideas for topics and issues to discuss in your own blog, and you can also post comments on the other blogs, including your own blog's address in your signature, of course — participating in the blogosphere is one of the ways to develop a readership of your own and to help establish your own expertise in your market. Not to mention all the contacts you can develop with Realtors in other cities and states.
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