Generate Awareness with Your Real Estate Blog

Noise. That's a lot of what is out there as content in the "blogosphere." We are all inundated with information, and you feel lost in the ocean. Home buyers want to sort through all that noise. They want the real estate sites and blogs that are going to provide quality information—the ones that are going to make a real difference in their decision to purchase or sell a home.

As an agent or broker, how can you meet their needs? In general, there are some guidelines that you can follow to provide a meaningful blog experience.

Mighty Fine, High Quality Content

As a first rule of thumb, make sure above all else that you provide quality content. No fluff. No forced keywords. Home buyers want advice, specifically to know what actions to take in a given situation. Give specific instructions and lead them through the "how to" process step-by-step." Examples are how to calculate your mortgage or how to estimate your property taxes. Be sure to offer any free tools or other resources that can help in the process. More is not necessarily better; a single great quality piece of content is better than five blogs of pure noise!

Write from your heart, and write about those things you think are most important, like local market trends or key tips about making the real estate transaction process go smoothly. If you write genuinely, your readers will definitely see that you enjoy your job and that you want to share your knowledge.

Perhaps you have writer's block. No worries. What questions do you get most from clients? Keep a list of those questions, and voila—there's your blog plan. Expand upon the question, answer it, and before you know it, you've completed your blog post.

And of course, it goes without saying that you need to include high quality images or even video.

Have the Right Focus

Potential clients want a blog to be reader-focused—not agent or brokerage-focused. Clients are buying or selling or renting or leasing, so center your blog around those actions. Don't inundate readers with ad nauseum product promotions or popups that promote services. Be tactful when it comes to "plugs." If you mention a product or service, it needs to have legitimacy and be central to the blog topic at hand. You'll turn off your readers if they think your blog is all about you making money rather than helping them buy or sell a home.

The Power of Networking

It's not always up to you to provide blog content. Think about complementary service providers, make connections and see if you can make a plug for their content and/or offering. Think about services like mortgage brokers or lenders, moving and storage companies, home insurance and warranty brokers, general contractors, etc. If you are able to build a network of trusted partners, you will be able to provide that much more value to your readers and potential clients.

What's Your Niche?

Whatever your real estate niche might be, stick to it. If you specialize in serving young families, your readers won't necessarily want to read about the multi-million dollar homes on the market. Now this doesn't mean you can't throw in some variety, but make sure you are generating the right type of awareness.

Your niche might be real estate investing. If so, stick to topics like do's and don'ts for flipping houses, information for landlords, investing tools, and the like. Let's say your blog is more data driven and focused on the economy, so provide just that—local economic data, how living by certain businesses or schools can increase or decrease value, and similar topics.

Design and Maintenance

You can have the best, high quality content in the world, but if you've given absolutely no thought to the design of your blog, it's a wasted effort. The reader has to find what they're looking for. The greatest internet bloggers put just as much thought into their design as they put into their content generation. You need to do the same, but this is surprisingly one of the most neglected items by all bloggers. Adding simple features like search capability and ability to sort by date or topic can do wonders. Don't forget to categorize your posts and archive old ones so people can go back to them for reference material. Your blog must be easy to use.

You also have to maintain it. Think of it as an expensive car. You wouldn't buy this car and then not maintain it, would you? You've probably already invested significant time in your blog already, so be sure to publish new content fairly regularly, at least every other week. If you're not ready to invest the time to update your posts regularly, don't even start a blog.

Now that you have these tips, get cracking!

To view the original article, visit the WolfNet blog.