20 Reasons for Real Estate BloggingAs well as a strategy for keeping in touch , real estate blogging is also a great way to keep your site fresh and worth monitoring on a regular basis. Informative blogs will have your contacts checking to see what you think about new developments and market trends. General considerations aside, there are probably as many reasons for real estate blogging as there are ways to promote your business. Here are 20 of the best reasons:
Today’s user-friendly blog software like Wordpress, Typepad and Blogger makes real estate blogging an easy to use and effective component of Internet marketing. The best way to find the most suitable blog tool for you, ask a couple of other bloggers for their recommendations. 2. Enhance Your Relationships With Clients And Contacts Anything you do to keep in touch with clients and contacts is good. Timely blog contact will reinforce the benefits of keeping in touch and enhance your existing relationships.
The information that you provide in your blog should be current and accurate. This will require some
preliminary research
on your part. This research will ensure that you remain
an expert in your market. It’s one thing to be very knowledgeable about your market. It’s something else to present yourself as knowledgeable and
attract clients
. Real estate blogging can enhance your profile as a
knowledgeable agent. 6. Share A Message; Express Your Thoughts And Feelings Your blog is more than real estate blogging. It is your personal outlet for news & views. What’s going on in your market that really like? Or are you mad as hell about something and no longer prepared to tolerate it? Use your blog to tell the world what you think and feel. 7. Make A Difference In Your Community Being part of the community is a key element of succeeding in that market. You can use your blog to address local issues and promote community causes. What better way to be apart of the community and make a difference to its residents? 8. Facilitate 'Neighborhood Networking’ An extension of referral partners, ‘neighborhood networking’ brings neighbors together for common causes. This is an excellent way to contribute to your community. 9. Open Communication Lines A blog is primarily one-way communication, from you to your readers. It does however have the potential of stimulating readers to contact you. Whether responding to blog content or asking for information, this contact represents a new or revitalized relationship that could lead to new business. 10. Obtain Instant Feedback Whether by email or blog feedback feature, blogs offer the opportunity of instant feedback on any issue at any time of day or night. Instant feedback allows you help build positive momentum or take corrective action to slow or minimize negative momentum. 11. Engage In More Conversations With More People Although they are the best form of interactions, live in-person conversations are often difficult to arrange. And because everyone is so busy, most personal interactions are severely time-limited. Blog interactions on the other hand, make it possible to communicate with more people. Messages are sent and reviewed at the convenience of individual participants. Readers of your blog make an ideal focus group for new ideas. Outline your ideas in your blog and specifically ask for feedback. You may learn how to make good ideas better. Conversely, you may decide to abandon ideas that you thought were good but your focus group didn’t. 13. Become ‘E-capable’ Like it or not, the Internet is part of today’s business world. Starting and maintaining your own blog is an easy first step in moving beyond simply surfing the Net and sending emails. And since blogs are mini-websites’ once you start blogging, your technology comfort level may rise to the point that you want a more hands-on role in maintaining your web site. 14. Communicate More Effectively Than Emailing Most email systems are equipped with SPAM filters. Email filters cannot stop blogs. 15. Position Yourself On The Leading Edge Of Communication Technology When I started working on this material about real estate blogging, I was vaguely aware of something called ‘RSS feed’. Now that I have jumped right into the topic of blogging, not only do I know what RSS feeds are, I have added the capability to my Home Page. (It’s the orange button below the navigation buttons on the left). Blogging can jump-start your entry into communication technologies. 16. Syndicate Your Blog Through RSS If you think of a blog as a newspaper, a RSS feed is the person who delivers the newspaper to you. To learn more about how to set up a RSS feed, go to the Home Page and click the help feature below the orange XML/RSS button. 17. Get To Know Yourself Regardless of topic, everything I write about helps me learn more about myself. For example in preparing this material about real estate blogging, not only did I learn about RSS, which by the way stands for Really Simple Syndication, I learned that I am not as much a technoklutz as I thought I was. You will be surprised and probably delighted by how much you learn abut yourself as you prepare your blog entries. 18. Blog From Anywhere Whenever and wherever you have Internet access you can prepare and post blog entries. 19. No Need To Plan Categories and Topics Because blog entries are date stamped, there is no need to pre-determine what categories or topics you will write about. Simply start writing. After a few months you will start to see patterns and natural groupings. At that time you can start to organize define categories and organize your entries accordingly. 20. Offer Subscription To Increase Your Network Of Contacts Invite readers to subscribe to your blog. This will result in you advising them when there is a new blog entry. With their permission, add their names to your contact network so you can keep in touch by sending them newsletters and other useful information. Words of WarningNot everyone will be interested in your blog. If however, your real estate blogging makes an impact on even a few visitors, then it's worthwhile. A new client or repeat business more than compensates for your time and effort.Continue to blog as long as it makes sense to you and/or you enjoy it. Once it no longer makes sense or you no longer enjoy it, find another way of connecting and keeping in touch. Your lack of enthusiasm will eventually discourage visitors from returning.
|
