Mark A. McLaughlin Starts New Endeavor Worth Watching
If you are part of the brokerage community, you have probably met or know about Mark A. McLaughlin. He has grown a few companies and had some very successful exits, including Pacific Union to Compass, one of the largest real estate brokerage sales in history. Even if you do not know Mark, he is worth listening to and watching. This week, he launched his new website where he posts insightful observations about the industry. The cornerstone of Mark is that he is a huge fan of the industry and does not believe that a '#', '@', or '.com' is going to disintermediate our business. In the first post on his new blog, he talks about the $9 billion in new prop-tech investments of 2021, recognizing that that influx of capital is going to "move the needle" and our industry needs to have the courage to invest wisely. In real estate, there is a battle being waged between agents on the street and technology in the cloud. Will the industry go to the cloud, or will the cloud connect to the street? Well, the cloud is here but the agents on the street are winning as much today as they ever have. "Our clients have voted with their checkbooks [commissions] that they value a real estate professional's advice over a discount," says McLaughlin. Take a moment to visit mclaughlin-ventures.com where you can subscribe to Mark's writings. You will be glad you did. Below you will find the first blog post on McLaughlin's newly launched site. October 1, 2021 What is your vision for 2026? How will you plan and execute? I am a friend and huge fan of our industry. I have said many times— as long as our real estate professionals have the trust of their clients, I do not see a #, @ or .com disintermediating our business. But things are changing at an ever-increasing rate. Nine billion dollars of new prop-tech investments in '21 YTD will 100% "move the needle." One thousand software engineers at Compass will "move the needle." Stepping away from fifteen years of experience focused on strategic growth of brokerage operations, including nearly a dozen acquisitions, joint ventures, technology investments and a one-of-a-kind China Concierge program, I challenge you to think like Gretsky used to skate. Push boundaries and be willing to embrace the hard and execute on the expensive— others may not. To quote Roger Staubach, "There are no traffic jams on the extra mile." Don't model your future based on your bordering competitors as that compromises innovation and greatness. Model your business and your team around the consumer– our real estate professionals' clients! Gather your leadership team and ask everyone to bring a good idea to a strategic planning meeting (one or two days). Challenge your team to make a few of the good ideas into great ideas. Then agree to execute the great ideas to a standard of excellence. A former executive at SoFi expressed her approach to consumer finance, "If Chase does it this way, we need to innovate and do it better." Love this! Don't accept the current state. Don't benchmark against the company across the street. Innovate! In 2017, I started pushing a vision that the race was on "To Connect the Cloud to the Street." "The cloud" being the "disruptors," and "the street" being the legacy company. Would the street rise to the cloud or would the cloud collapse to the street? Well, the disruptors are here– the street did not exactly rise! In 2019, Chris Gough, Managing Director, GCA illustrated our industry in nine verticals. Each one of these companies is chasing your clients. The chase is on! Everyone is chasing your client and your real estate professional. How do you envision 2026? We have not seen disintermediation— but the pie might be shrinking. We have new players in our business— iBuyers, mortgage banks like Rocket Mortgage & Loan Depot, conventional banks, institutional investors and countless start-ups offering consumers technology and discounts. We will sell 6.5 million homes in the U.S. this year— setting records, but what's "eating" at your business? Have you thought about "Who is Chasing Whom?" Our clients have voted with their checkbooks (commissions) that they value a real estate professional's advice over a discount. Your teams' knowledge and advice are core to real estate in America. Your real estate professionals may not know what they need or want until you deliver "it," but they will know you haven't delivered when they get the recruiting call from those who do have "it." My friend, Brian Solis, and I recently collaborated to address one hundred top team leaders in the U.S. His message was to "Thrive in 2026" your business will need to embrace automation of the mundane and routine and integrate AI for decision support. This thesis was confirmed via a CNBC report on September 17, 2021. Push your technology vendors to be ahead of your expectations. Envision and strive to 2026. Invest in and protect your assets – people! Remember that our clients are far more demanding of instant gratification than your real estate professionals. In the end the clients get whatever they want because an entrepreneur will give it to them. I have always said, "Get the people right or nothing else really matters." Your people want your everyday presence and your Vision for 2026. This is Where We Are Now. Thanks!Mark A. McLaughlin To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.

Real Estate Marketing 2020: Special Dates and Themes
2020 is coming, which means it's time to start planning your marketing strategies now. Because there's so much content out there, today's consumers--and future homebuyers--expect a little something extra to inspire and inform them. No matter whether you're focusing on email, social media, or even a real estate blog, here's a list of special and themed days you can use to inspire and inform with your content!

Real Estate Blogging for Market Domination
What's new about real estate blogging? Well, real estate blogging isn't new anymore, so why bother with yet another article or post about why it is valuable? Let's just start out agreeing about why blogging is a valuable asset to a real estate professionals' online marketing presence with quick bullet points:

Natural Language Processing for Real Estate
Natural Language Processing (NLP), as a subcategory of artificial intelligence, has continued to grow in its practice by the real estate industry. This growth is evident as seen by the proliferation of chatbots on real estate websites and new innovative products like Homebot, which won the 2018 Realogy FWD Innovation Award. Let's dip into Natural Language Processing and how to use it for SEO in real estate blog articles.

Real Estate News Curation for Your Website
Which two different audiences have a common interest that can make real estate news very important for your website? Your prospects and Google is the answer, and here's why. Google can index your website, and every now and then their bots will drop by to see if there's anything new. If Google begins to see regular new content, their bots will increase the frequency of their visits and you'll pick up some SEO clout. As for your prospective buyers and sellers, a great many of them will appreciate one place to get relevant real estate news, especially when it's localized as well as national. Active buyers, sellers, and investors want to know what's happening that can influence their next sale, purchase, or investment. The good news is that there is an easy and free way to have fresh content news delivered to your website regularly.

Evergreen Content for Websites, Breaking Content for Blogs
How can you generate more leads from your real estate website? One thing goes without saying: without great real estate website content, your lead generation strategies will not be successful. It's a fact, so instead of fighting it, just fix it with valuable evergreen content. What is evergreen content? As with trees, it's content that's green (relevant) year-round forever. It's not content that is specific to a date or dated event unless it's in a form that discusses a regularly scheduled event. Even then, the content should stick to what's relevant every time the event happens. Think about the value of internet content over time. You write an article, let's say about title insurance, and someone reads it years later. If it's still valid and informative, it's going to be just as valuable to your site and lead generation at that time. Your blog is where you can create more time-sensitive content, such as announcements of zoning changes, special events, etc.

5 Foolproof Content Ideas for Real Estate
The new year is approaching fast and so is your chance for a blog reboot! If your goal is to put out more content in 2018, there's no better time to step back and reframe your blog ideas and posting goals. Before you get started, think about what makes you likely to come back to a website. People tend to revisit sites that offer value — and we don't just mean monetary value. As a real estate professional, you have a wealth of knowledge about topics that most buyers and sellers will have to research before they get started on a transaction. Put this knowledge to use to gain blog fans who come back for more. Below are five foolproof content ideas that you can deploy as you make a 2018 blog plan.

Real Estate Blog Do's and Don'ts
Writing a blog that people will want to read takes more than just typing up a few paragraphs and posting them online. As a real estate professional, you want to pull in an audience and make them see you as a valuable resource. Your blog is an important component of your online marketing, so you want to make sure it is high quality. Remember – no one creates a great blog overnight. It will take some trial and error. But the following information can help you understand what you should be doing with your blog, and what you shouldn't be doing.

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

So You’ve Got a Broker Website--Now What?!
Your website is up and running, you're displaying properties, now what?! Write something! A steady stream of unique content is a valuable asset on your journey to top search engine placement. The websites with the best rankings feature unique, relevant, content-rich articles that keep visitors enthralled. There are two primary ways to publish your unique content – pages and posts. Pages are static. You can create a page and link to it in your menu, and that page will always be the same (unless you change it, of course!). You might create an "About Me" page, or a "Seller's Checklist" page. Posts are your news or blog articles. You can create a menu link to your blog, and visitors will always see your newest posts when they visit that link. You might use posts to publish market news or community events. What kind of content should I add? This is a common question! We see a lot of great content ideas out there, and the best advice I can offer is to write what you know!

How Long Should a Real Estate Blog Post Be?
Or what's the shortest post I can publish and still see good results? The following is an argument for short real estate blog posts—even though I know that longer posts will perform better. The 300 Word Myth? The idea that a post needs to be at least 300 words in order to be seen as long enough for Google is one that I see and hear frequently. The idea is that is falls under what Google calls "Thin Content." But the idea of Thin Content is content that doesn't satisfactorily provide value to your website visitor. If your blog article is one that doesn't require more than a couple of sentences to make a point, or answer a question, then how can it be seen as lacking value? I think that to best understand what Google means with their goal of stamping out Thin Content is to look at the spirit of the rule. If your website is a consistent violator of publishing content that is copied from elsewhere, or syndicated from another account, or causes your audience to bounce (as opposed to stay and read), then I would say that you are violating the spirit of the rule, and you deserve what Google penalizes you with. But if your content is unique, frequent, and engaging (people actually read it, share it, and/or subscribe to it) then the length of the post it takes to make that happen is irrelevant. My take: If you get blogging, then counting your words is a distraction you shouldn't be bothered with.

Blogging for Dollars: Cha-Ching! (7/20)
Wednesday, Juy 20, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT Join us for Power Hour this week featuring rock star agent Debbie Reynolds and learn how she turns her blogging efforts into hot leads. Choosing the right content can bring your website to the top of search engines results pages which in turn generates free website traffic. We'll show you exactly how to get started, make a schedule, and get your blog posts to generate leads—cha ching! How often to post for maximum dollars What to include in your posts to help convert leads Writing tips to yield the biggest return Register now!

Timely Blog Posts Yield Great Traffic
When you correctly anticipate what your target audience is going to be searching for in Google, you reap huge traffic dividends. Each landmark holiday provides you with the opportunity to drive a huge amount of targeted web traffic to your real estate website. Your broad target market is residents and future residents of your community. During a holiday, the community tends to act in a similar manner. A timely blog post that covers these acts will bring you web traffic. The summer holiday of the 4th of July is fast approaching. What do we all do on the 4th of July? We watch the firework display put on by the town. What's the best way to enjoy the display? Location Location Location.

Blogging BootCamp: Keywords and What to Blog About (5/19)
Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT In our third bootcamp class, we will discuss keywords and what to blog about. It's important, if you are going to take the time to create content for your blog (or website) that you know what kind of things to focus on. In this class, Bob will share how to best go about deciding what to write about in your blog. We'll cover: What is the long tail and how do you target it What are the 5 best types of blogs you can produce If you only have limited time to devote to blogging, what gets the best return Register now!

5 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block
Has your blogging buzz died? Your creative flame dimmed to a flicker? Writer's block is the foe of professional writers and novices alike. But your real estate blog requires consistent content to be effective. For your blog to reap the most benefits, attract the most leads and showcase you as the expert you truly are, you've got to work through the rut. We have five tips to inspire your creativity. Change Locations Your office might not be the ideal location for inspiration when you're blogging about your community. Draw inspiration from your surroundings by changing your surroundings! Grab your tablet or laptop and head to your favorite location in the neighborhood. You can draft your article in a word processor and then cut and paste it into the blog. This way, you aren't reliant on locations with wi-fi. Truly find a place where you will be inspired! Explore Industry Sites Find industry-relevant topics on the real estate blogs of technology companies, brokers, associations, and more. You may also want to check out community events calendars, interior design blogs, lifehack and DIY blogs. Just be sure to give credit where it is due.

The 10 Most Socially Shared Real Estate Blog Posts from Across the Web
Social media has become an indispensable tool for modern real estate professionals. It can connect you to potential homebuyers, alert you to new opportunities, and keep you plugged in to the developments in the industry. So what is the industry talking about today? What is generating the most buzz? We've used a special tool to gather some information and find the 10 articles and blog posts that have been shared the most across a variety of social networks. We ranked them by their total overall shares, which includes Facebook shares, Facebook likes, comments, Tweets, LinkedIn shares, Google +1s, and Pinterest pins. Some articles, obviously, do better than others on specific platforms, but rather than delve into that aspect, we are going to keep to the total numbers. Check some of these out to get a feel for what is currently being shared the most. 1. Buying a Home: The Real Deal on Repairing Your Credit A credit score can have a huge impact on the home buying process. This article takes a look at how high a credit score needs to be, how credit is about more than just a high number, and how one might go about fixing a poor credit score. 2. What Mortgage Lenders Look for When You Apply for a LoanGetting into a dream home may require jumping through a few hoops with a lender. They look for some very specific things before providing the necessary financing, so it's best to have a good idea what they're looking for.

Content is King, Queen and the Joker in the Deck
You can find the "content is king" quote all over the Web in articles about SEO simply because it's true. As Google and the other engines have evolved, they have become much more effective in gleaning the meaning of page content, how it relates to the overall site subject matter, and how visitors perceive its value. How does Google know what visitors think about your content? If you're using Google Analytics, which is a great way for you to know what your visitors are doing on your site, Google definitely knows how long they stay on a page and where they go from there. If they stay on a page a while, then the assumption is that content of value is there and visitors are reading it. If they take links from that page to other pages on your site, the assumption is that you're helping the visitor learn more about what they came there to see. Even if you're not using Analytics, you can bet that Google knows what they're doing anyway after they arrive from a Google search. Google's algorithms are highly secret and very complex, but we do know that Google is learning a lot about individual user preferences and Web activities and applying that knowledge to large groups of users based on common destinations and surfing activities. The more complex the algorithms and analytics measurements, the more detailed the profile of your site and content. It's no longer about packing keywords into a page over and over again. In fact, you'll get penalized very quickly for "keyword stuffing" these days. Google has made giant leaps in understanding what constitutes valuable content for the site visitor. One of the newer and very powerful content analysis tools used by Google is LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing.

Why Hire Blog Writers For Real Estate Topics?
Blogs are like a dime a dozen: Everyone from grandma to your daughter in grade school may have a blog. So why hire someone to write when you can just do it? Many professionals wonder that every day. But take a look around the internet at the millions upon millions of websites and blogs that are created, and ask yourself one simple question: How am I going to stand out among these other sites? And that's exactly why hiring a professional writer for your blog makes sense. Knowledge Having a blog is a lot more than expressing your thoughts these days, it's about creating a virtual community and attracting the critical eyes of Google. A professional writer understands the intricacies behind Google rankings and the incredible importance of organic search engine optimization. The purpose of having a blog is to attract readers to your writing to serve as an authoritative voice in the real estate industry. While you may have extensive knowledge of the industry, communities in which you serve and rules and regulations to follow, you may not be able to portray those thoughts as fluidly as a professional writer. Don't worry, you shouldn't be expected to.

5 Tips for Making Butt Kicking Blog Content
If you search for blogging tips online, chances are you'll find a website telling you that you need to create killer content in order to drive and maintain traffic to your site. Truth be told, it's easier said than done. Not only does your content have to be to be interesting but it also must be contextual. So with all the time constraints that come with working in real estate, how do you produce quality content on a regular basis? Below, we've put together five tips for making butt kicking blog content. 1. Create Pillar Content Pillar content, as first described by blogger Yaro Starak, is content that is (i) timeless, (ii) has search engines in mind and (iii) is well written. The easiest pillar content to write is a list-type of post. They're inherently easier to write and easier to read. Readers are able to quickly see the headings and dive into whichever point intrigues them (hopefully every point!). Write a list about something your potential customers will find interesting. An easy topic to get you started would be, The Top 5 Things to do in [Insert Your Target Market]. This type of post will incorporate your expertise in the area and target your potential customers directly. Pillar content also tends to get many more backlinks and traffic from search engines. This means, as the piece ages it actually increases in productivity. Here's an example of a blog post I produced in 2012 and the stats since: As you can see, the post got 18,581 visits in 2012. As the piece aged, it received increased traffic from search engines. In the first two months of 2014, the piece received 18,703 visits – more than all of 2012. Put effort into making pillar content and reap the awards, even years after the piece has been written and marketed.

3 Strategies You Can Use to Generate More Blog Traffic in 2015
Having a blog is a great way for real estate businesses to dominate local search inquiries. But there is a catch. It takes work. This doesn't mean posting something new every day. It means taking the time to be strategic, thinking about what your local real estate market will be searching for and creating your content around that. It means adopting the old the adage of working smarter, not harder. Here are three strategies you can use to generate more blog traffic in 2015: Research Your Audience Take the time to do a little investigative work. What are your friends and followers sharing? Are there any popular local events that you can create content around? Are there any attractions in your area that make it unique? What things make your city a great place to live? Write about these things. Not only will it help your local SEO, it will be relevant to those in your market who are already connected to you. Have a Guest Author Do you know someone who is well connected locally? Ask them to write some articles for your blog. There's no harm in asking. If they say no, at least you had an opportunity to reconnect with them. If they say yes, you've now extended your reach into their social circles. It's a win/win situation.

The Blogging Guide For Real Estate
You've heard it a hundred times at real estate conferences and in media reports: Start a blog. But it's actually great advice, and it's not so hard to do. Set it up in Wordpress, Blogger or another free program, add your credentials and start writing. But what do you write about? How often do you post? How do you get traffic to the blog, and where do you promote it? Basically, how do you turn the time, money and effort into something that stimulates your real estate business? Why blogs? In a nutshell, a blog is a cheap and easy way to update your site regularly with new keyword-based content. This activity pushes your site higher in search engine rankings, increases your authority online and brings new traffic from keyword searches. Not all Realtors are blogging, but the ones who do are reaping the rewards. Now that that's clear, what do you put on your blog? Unique Content While your main web site has your photo, contact info, listings and so on, your blog is a place for fresh updates and for interacting with your customers. What will bring them back to your blog week after week? Unique content. It can't just be any content, and it shouldn't be recycled. Your blog must provide a heartbeat for your web site, allowing you a place to reveal the real person behind the curtain. If you don't have time to do this every week, consider hiring a content feed or a freelance writer, but it's also good for the business owner to write as well.

Get Local With Your Real Estate Content
What do we write about, when we write about real estate? When offering advice on their craft, most writers, authors and journalists will say, "Write what you know." This same advice can be applied to your real estate content strategy. A Realtor's next question might be, "Well, what do I know?" The answer is, a lot. Begin with your skills, reputation and experience. Clients appreciate your knowledge of the process, dedication to customer service, attention to detail and so on. Why not take a moment in the middle of your busy day to reflect on how you do what you do? It's a great way to launch your content strategy in terms of what you're posting on your blog and social media sites. Next you'll want to emphasize your local focus. This is the part of your social networking and real estate agent marketing that can showcase what really makes you a standout real estate agent in your area, namely your knowledge of your area. This is a good time to ask yourself a few questions like: What does your area have to offer to young people, families and retirees? How close if your area to cultural centers and outdoorsy activities like hiking, biking, swimming and so on? What is the business community like in your area, and who are the top employers? Who are the interesting community leaders and tradespeople in your location?

Utilizing the Power of Photography in Blog Posts
As the popular saying goes: "A picture is worth a thousand words." Doubly, adding a picture to a story with a thousand words comes with its own unique set of advantages. Below are some useful tips on how to best utilize photos in your blog while also further attracting readership to the site. We live in a visual age where the phrase "print is dead" has been thrown around with some degree of accuracy. Attention spans are shorter and online viewers are less inclined to read blocks and blocks of text without any visual aid. It's also worth noting that using the right photo can further entice visitors to your blog to click on and read posts relevant to them. For example, someone perusing recent posts might miss the fact that an article is geared toward them based solely off the title, but the appropriate image could catch their eye and lead to them digging deeper and reading the post. As hinted at above, relevance and appropriateness are key when it comes to implementing photos in your blog posts. For example, if you write a geo-specific story on Southern California and use an image that features snow-covered trees, it could take the reader out of the story as it is obvious the stock image has nothing to do with SoCal. Another example: say you write a story about the condo market in your area but the image you use clearly features a single-family house. Anyone who knows the difference between a home and a condo (which is everyone) will immediately be turned off by the post and you as the author will lose credibility for not only the post, but the entire blog.

Your Content and the Doctrine of Fair Use
Fresh, interesting and visitor-valued content is a challenge for every real estate professional in building out their web presence. Not only do we try to create our own totally original content, but we can also provide value to our site visitors by citing other articles around the Internet with real estate related content. The question is whether, and how much, content of others we can quote or copy into our posts or articles. The "Doctrine of Fair Use" gives us specific guidelines, and this article is taking information directly from the Copyright.gov website, the legal authority on the subject. First, a blanket statement: You cannot copy whole articles or blog posts legally, and simply giving the author credit or a link doesn't make it legal. This is a misconception shared by many website owners out there. Every word you or anyone else creates as your original work is protected by copyright, and you don't need to file any documents to make that happen. If you write and publish it, the content is protected. Section 107 of the copyright law brings together numerous court decisions over the years to create the doctrine of fair use. Section 107 gives us four factors to consider in determining whether or not our use of someone's content is "fair use." The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes. The nature of the copyrighted work. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

Why Blogs Boom In the Winter
The real estate market doesn't necessarily slow down during the winter months, but blogging definitely heats up. Even though social media is still a relatively new medium, statistics make it pretty obvious that online activity increases during the winter due to people spending more time indoors. Online shopping, video streaming and gaming sites of course witness a boost in traffic, and so does blogging. Citizen journalists, real journalists and other experts have more time at the computer to craft their messages, and readers have more time to read them. Between December and March, Realtors® still have work to do, but they too have more indoor hours to devote to promoting their businesses online. We've talked about how to transform your real estate business with a blog before in this space, but now we'd like to point out that reading other blogs is almost as important. The best way to generate content for your blog is to write about what you know: your area. Prospects looking to move into or out of your area will find your blog via their keyword searches about your area, and they'll return to your blog to read what you have to say about the market, schools, jobs, events and other important community-oriented tidbits. This way you become an authority on your subject matter (key for any blogger) and you'll be competing directly with other real estate pros in your field.

13 Sources of Free and Low-Cost Images for Your Blog Posts
This post comes to us from the RealEstatePointe blog: We create a lot of content for our client's websites--community pages, buyer and seller resources, pages all about the company, etc. We also blog and post to social media accounts for several of our clients. So, it is an important part of our business to be able to find good images to use royalty-free for a small cost, and even for free. If you're blogging, remember that "a picture's worth 1,000 words" and use images in your blog posts. One image is good for short posts. For longer posts, you should break up the text with additional images. Very important: you are responsible for the lawful use of any images you find online. Be certain that you are not violating the specific copyright laws associated with an image. Creative Commons Image Databases The Creative Commons Copyright License allows images to be reused. The image is still owned by the creator, but may be freely reused without the creator's permission. In most cases a simple attribution (photo by artist name and a link to their website or to the page where the image resides) is all that is required for lawful use. I can't stress enough that you should read the terms of use and be sure to follow instructions for the lawful use of each image. Here are the Creative Commons image databases that we use the most: Wikimedia Commons (we use Wikipedia for community research and find the photos here as our #1 source of area-specific images) Flickr Creative Commons Wylio

The Importance of Educating Your Readers on the Latest Housing Market Trends
This post comes to us from BrokerageU: As a real estate professional, you pride yourself in not only knowing the community you serve from the inside out, but also the homes for sale you have listed in the area. In addition, you might also have a passing interest in keeping up with the overall health of the U.S. economy and national housing market trends, but it's equally important that you provide your current and potential clients with trustworthy and accurate access to this information. While maintaining your blog, it's obviously important to highlight every day tips that home owners and prospective home buyers can utilize to make the housing market work for them, no matter what shape it happens to be in. But it's also wise to sprinkle in some housing data and analysis from trusted, reputable sources to give your readers an inside look at the inner workings of the national housing market, and hopefully lead them to take away some positives that could help them in their search to buy or sell a home. A few of these trusted, reputable sources that report on national and regional housing market trends and data, include: The National Association of REALTORS® - Billed as "The Voice for Real Estate," NAR releases monthly data that breaks down home sales on not just a national level, but on a regional level, as well.

Use Picture Paste to Supercharge WordPress
This post comes to us from the Diverse Solutions blog: Picture Paste to the Rescue! If you're using WordPress and trying to do frequent and informative posts to build SEO and provide content for your site visitors, you're probably doing a lot of image insertion as well. It's a fact that images enhance the visitor experience, so photos or screen shots always make a post a little more interesting. However, with WordPress, you have to upload the image and go through those image properties boxes, and it takes a bit of time. What if you could simply copy an image or take a screen shot from the Web and paste it right into a WordPress post? No, it's not a new WordPress feature, but it is a small software application for Windows that makes it possible. This image was copied from the PicturePaste.com website and just pasted into this post. There was no upload necessary, though it is now in the Media Library in WordPress in case I want to use it again.

First-Time Home Buyers are Declining: Reasons for the Trend and Tips on How to Reverse It
This post comes to us from the Delta Media Group blog: The first-time home buyer market is shrinking this year, taking a percentage of buyers that normally make up as much as 40% of home purchases. The Wall Street Journal first reported the trend last week, noting that first-time home buyers accounted for only 29% of purchases of existing homes in June, compared with 32% in June 2012. A number of reasons come into play, including rising interest rates, a more competitive market, and a higher rate of unemployment amongst traditional demographics of first-time home buyers. Even those first-time buyer prospects who are employed and able to purchase may not feel like they are ready. Those who better understand the process tend to be more able to move quickly on decisions and follow the process they are familiar with. That can prove intimidating for someone who is entering the market for the first time. Perhaps the best way to overcome the discomfort factor is through education. The timid first-time home buyer wants to know if now is right. They want to know if the rising home prices they've noticed will continue to rise, or might level out. They want to know if there's a chance that the market might tank entirely, as it did just a few short years ago. They want to know if it might make more sense to rent for now, while waiting to see what will happen in their young professional lives, and if they'd be able to get a good return on their investment if they were forced to sell to relocate in a few years.

Don’t Become a WordPress Hack Victim
In recent weeks, there has been substantial buzz around the Web centered around a brute force attack on WordPress sites. These attacks are made by a network of more than 90,000 infected computers. They operate by logging in to the WordPress admin section with the generic login name "Admin", as that's how most WordPress sites are first set up. Those with weak passwords and an "Admin" username are getting hacked. This is just one method out of hundreds that hackers use to attack WordPress sites around the world. It's even possible to be a hack victim and not even know it, as your site can be used to infect other sites behind the scenes. Some hacking involves spamming activities which has caused sites to be banned by Google, creating an emergency situation and a lot of corrective action to get back into good graces. So, how do you know if your site has been hacked and how do you prevent it in the future? Wordfence is a very effective plugin, that is highly rated and easy to implement. Go to your WordPress plugins page, click on Add New and search for Wordfence. It will come up at the top of the search and is installed with one click. Other than inputting your email address to receive alerts, you really don't need to change the default settings, although you may want to go through and add a couple of check boxes should you wish to receive more alerts.

Give Your Real Estate Content Strategy a Local Focus
When offering advice on their craft, most writers, authors and journalists will say, "Write what you know." This same advice can be applied to your real estate content strategy. A REALTOR®'s next question might be, "Well, what do I know?" The answer is, a whole lot. Let's start with your skills and experience. If you're using ReachFactor to market your real estate agent reviews, you are probably aware that your clients appreciate your knowledge of the process, dedication to customer service, attention to detail and so on. Taking a moment in the middle of your busy day to reflect on how you do what you do is an excellent beginning to your content strategy in terms of what you're posting on your blog and social media sites. Next, and most importantly, is a local focus. This is the part of your social networking and real estate marketing that can showcase what really makes you a standout in your area, namely your knowledge of your area. This is a good time to ask yourself a few questions like: What does your area have to offer to young people, families and retirees? How close if your area to cultural centers and outdoorsy activities like skiing, hiking and so on? What is the industry like in your area, and who are the top employers? Who are the interesting community leaders and tradespeople in your location?

Increase your real estate business…by blogging?
Guest contributor Delta Media Group says: Blogging was all the rage six years back...in real estate and amongst several other industries. You probably remember headline after headline on, well, blogs by bloggers blogging about how blogging was the future of your business. In many cases, there was little or no data in those blogs. There was no proof that blogging was really becoming as profitable as claims made it out to be. And you might have given it a try for yourself on one of the dozens of blogging platforms that constantly seemed to pop up each month. You did it for some time, you didn't see the results promised, and you might have found it was difficult to maintain. Soon, you didn't keep up with it, and you noticed many of those bloggers preaching about blogging were no longer practicing what they preached as well. Is blogging making a comeback now? Perhaps it never left. An article released last week detailed how a website saw staggering results by publishing 150 blog posts in 50 days. The website saw an 800 percent increase in "leads directly generated via inbound marketing and content," a 901 percent increase in referral traffic, a 500 percent increase in blog organic traffic, and many more. The article piggybacked off another, which detailed the impressive results a company saw by posting 50 blog posts in 25 days, including a 481 percent increase in overall website traffic. The moral of the story: blogging still works. But blogging doesn't just work. In fact, it takes a lot of work to make blogging work. Fifty, or 150 blog posts take a lot of time to write, regardless of the amount of days you're looking to write them in.

Broker With a Blog
With all the talk about how sales associates should have a blog, no one seems to mention how important it may be for a broker or manager to have one. We talked with Scott MacDonald, president of RE/MAX Gateway in Chantilly, Vir., about his blog — Scotty Mac's Blog. MacDonald has been writing the blog for seven years and covers topics for real estate professionals such as handling multiple offers, the impact of the sequestration on real estate and more. "I have an ongoing video spot called Scott's Market Minute. Many times, I've been to new homebuilder model homes and agents will tell me they used my market facts in a listing presentation they just did. I love that, because if every agent is that educated about the market, it will help our industry." Here's what else he had to say: What blogging platform do you use? I use a self-hosted WordPress blog. My provider is GoDaddy. Who is your audience?My audience is real estate professionals and consumer. While my blog isn't directed at consumers, it still reaches them with information about the industry and market.

Blogs Versus Traditional Websites
Many Internet marketers have turned to the use of blogs as a way to post fresh content to the web. Blogs can be an easy cost effective way to get content onto the Internet. There are over 100 million blog based websites on the web today. Luckily for you, most are not well maintained and poorly focused. What is a blog? Blogs can provide you an easy interface to publish 'posts' to the web. A post can be nothing more than a few sentences and can be as large as you like. Typically a new post will appear above older content and eventually the oldest content will roll off the homepage. Older content is still available via navigation links on every page. The most popular blogging software is made by WordPress. It has the virtue of being free. You can customize the functionality by adding third party modules which are inexpensive or free. You need to find someone to host the site. It is not hard to find hosting for less than twenty dollars a month that will include an automated WordPress installation. If you are not tech savvy, hire the smart kid from down the block. He'll get you going in no time for mowing the lawn wages.

Why Your Business Needs a Blog
In spite of the fact that visuals (photos, video, etc.) are dominating social media and the web, the core of your real estate agent marketing—or your brand—is its voice. And there's no better way to establish that than a blog. Whether you read it on Facebook, heard it at a real estate conference or were advised by a colleague: Start a blog. And it really is simple. Set it up in Wordpress or another free program, add your bio and start cranking. But once you get into it, you soon realize it does take some work. What do you write about? How often do you post? How do you get traffic to the blog, and where do you promote it? Basically, how do you turn the time, money and effort into something that stimulates your real estate business and your marketing?

How to Double Your Real Estate Website Traffic
We've been building websites for real estate agents for quite some time now. Every new agent that comes to us is after the same thing: They want more web traffic and more leads. Increased traffic and better conversion rates seem to be the top of mind for everybody we come across. So today, I thought I'd give you a little advice about increasing traffic. Not just increasing traffic, BUT how to more than double your site traffic. While the site construction itself (e.g. meta data, keywords, page descriptions, page copy written that specifically references keywords, page naming conventions, etc) is responsible for much of the traffic you are going to get driven to your site, the fact of the matter is that elbow grease is a must if you want to get big increases in traffic. Managing your online presence is difficult and takes time. Supposed social media "experts" claim that it is easy and that anyone can do it. I disagree with this. While there certainly is a formula you can use to reach your goals, at the end of the day, it all boils down to persistence, dedication and work. In other words, once again, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." So what is this magic bullet, that will double your website traffic, even if it does require a little bit of elbow grease? It's very simple--BLOGGING! I know, I know. You are busy and don't have time for blogging. But what if you could double your site traffic or, even more, triple it? That would be worth it wouldn't it? What if there were sources that you can access to give you ideas of what to blog about? What if you could get a blog out in as little as 30-45 minutes per week? That would be worth it, right? Here are some tips on how you can make this happen.

The Easiest Guide EVER To Open House Announcements (Seriously!)
Karli Larson of ePropertySites.com says: Although some agents debate whether holding an open house can have an impact on selling a listing, there's no denying that if you do choose to hold an open house it's a huge disappointment if no one shows up! To make sure you're covering your bases when announcing your upcoming open house, we've taken our handy little Open House Guide and turned it into an acronym that will help you remember where to advertise. Just think OPEN: Online, Print, Email, and Newsletters Online Use your social channels to generate interest for your open house. Tweet about it, post on Facebook and LinkedIn, even blog it. Make sure to use a great "hook" that will entice your audience, such as: "Free Starbucks gift cards for the first 10 visitors this Sunday at my Laguna Beach open house!" You also need to post to your local online classifieds. Craigslist and most newspapers offer highly-trafficked online announcement boards that are perfect for getting the word out about your open houses.

6 Online Best Practices all REALTORS® Should Follow
We are living in a hyper-connected world. From blogs to Twitter, today's consumers know that they have the power to choose how and when they consume content. Just as the effectiveness of telemarketing, trade shows and traditional marketing dwindled over time, so has online marketing. In order to remain relevant and stay top of mind, today's real estate professional must know what tools they have available and how to make the most of them. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or your own real estate blog, following a few basic best practices will keep old school habits from making their way in to your online marketing efforts. 1. Stay Compliant Always remember to stay in compliance with your state advertising laws, the Code of Ethics and Fair Housing Laws. Using the internet to market your business also means you will need to keep your website up-to-date and in compliance. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 88 percent of home buyers searched for their new home online before enlisting the services of an agent. Ensure that you are easy to find and your credibility is supported via local and national associations. 2. Define Your Audience Who are you trying to reach? In real estate, one size does not fit all. Make sure you understand the needs of your audience and what drives their decisions. Take this knowledge and create a streamlined look and feel across your blog, website and social media channels.

Top 10 WordPress Best Practices for Real Estate Websites
Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at WordCamp Phoenix 2012. If you have never been to a WordCamp, go. WordCamps are dedicated to sharing all sorts of information, tips and tricks for WordPress. This was my third iteration of WordCamp and all have offered a boatload of quality information. As promised, here is my presentation, “Top 10 WordPress Best Practices for Realtors & Real Estate Websites.” WordPress Real Estate Blog Top 10 Tips

WordPress security – Ignore at your peril
Ever looked at your WordPress site and had this reaction? Hopefully you haven't, but if you are not paying attention to routine maintenance you really can't complain if some nasty hacker destroys all your hard work and expense. Last October famous real estate blogger Jay Thompson got hacked and spent 60 hours trying to sort it all out icon sad WordPress security Ignore at your peril Now that WordPress is powering 14.7% of the top million websites in the world as of last August, there are more targets for those hackers. So be sure that WordPress core developers take security very seriously and they regularly update the core software at the first sign of trouble. WordPress have also made it much easier to install updates with just a couple of clicks. There are some very simple WordPress security steps to follow:

4 Ways To Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing
Guest contributor Ricardo Bueno of Diverse Solutions says: If you want to get noticed by search engines & site visitors, you need to write lots of high quality content. But you knew that already. You also know that it’s one of the more time intensive tasks when it comes to managing a real estate blog. What will I write about today? Tomorrow? The day after that? Well, here are a few ideas for using other people’s content to add to your writing routine… 4 Ways To Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing: 1. Invite other professionals whose content complements yours, to guest post on your site.  So if you have a real estate blog, you might invite a professional home stager or mortgage professional to guest post on your blog. They can write about things like how to successfully stage your home for sale, financing options available to first-time home buyers, et cetera.

7 Things You’re Probably Doing Wrong On Your Real Estate Blog
Guest contributor Ricardo Bueno of Diverse Solutions says: Your real estate blog can effectively accomplish several goals at once: It can educate consumers about the local community (things to do, places to eat, etc.). It can educate consumers about the current real estate market (stats and trends). It can inform prospective buyers about homes for sale in the area. Think of it as a marketing resource that helps you engage in conversations about real estate with potential home buyers (that’s the lead generation part). The more conversations about real estate that you have as a result of new visitors to your site, the closer you get to making a sale. But too many blogs fall short. Site visitors come and go too fast. They don’t stick around long enough. Your blog isn’t generating any leads. But why? Here’s… 7 Things You’re Probably Doing Wrong On Your Real Estate Blog

Top 10 Articles About Blogging
Many agents and brokers are using blogs to connect with their peers as well as current or potential clients. Today we’ve puled together 10 of our favorite articles about blogging. 1) Don’t Just Write Blogs, Read ThemThe real estate market doesn’t necessarily slow down during the winter months, but blogging definitely heats up. Even though social media is still a relatively new medium, statistics are pretty clear that online activity increases during the winter due to people spending more time indoors. Online shopping, video streaming and gaming sites of course witness a boost in traffic, and so does blogging. Citizen journalists, real journalists and other experts have more time at the computer to craft their messages, and readers have more time to read them. 2) 6 Blog Tweaks That Will Make Your Readers HappierConsumers are visiting your website for one of four reasons: Search for homes. Find out how the market is doing. Find out what they’re home is worth. Learn about the local community. The easier you make it to access all of this information, the better. If they can easily access one of these four, you’ve satisfied their taste for information and you’ve earned their attention. 3) On Blogging Real Estate ListingsWant to start an argument amongst real estate bloggers? Ask this question: Should you blog your real estate listings? Short of whether or not to “force” home search registration, nothing seems to polarize real estate bloggers more than the “to blog or not to blog listings” question.Here’s the deal…

Recycle Your Blog
Guest contributor Chris Brogan says: If you’ve been fortunate enough to write your blog for any length of time, I can almost guarantee that you have posts from the early days that people haven’t seen that are still relevant. It’s not that they might be the best thing you’ve ever written, but they can still be of value. For instance, I wrote If I Started Today back in November of 2008. It’s still valid. Almost 3 years later, I’d do pretty much the same thing. So, that makes it a post worth resharing. But how? And what can I do to make it interesting for you to visit? Recycle Your Blog There are a few ways to recycle your blog. Way number one is to pull out information from a post you want to share, expound on it until it’s a standalone post, and then link to the original post at the end. So, in this case, if I wanted to do that with “If I Started Today,” I’d write up a section about “Five Elements Your Blog Needs When Starting Out,” and then I’d link to the post at the bottom to show what else you need by pointing to that post.

How to Determine What Theme a WordPress Blog is Using
Today we bring you another article written by Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate Guy. This article originally appeared on his blog. I hang out in various and sundry Facebook groups, forums, etc. where blogging is often a topic of discussion. Without fail, there are many folks in said groups that will ask, “What theme is such-and-such site using?” Here are a couple of tips for determining what WordPress theme a site is using. They aren’t foolproof, but they will help you determine the theme in roughly 94.26% of cases (yeah, I made that stat up. I don’t know the exact number. It’s the vast majority though…) Look in the Footer Many times the theme will be linked to or mentioned right there in the footer of the site in question. On this very site for example, you will see this: This site is running the Weaver theme by WPWeaver.info. Now you know.

7 Ways To Encourage Your Site Visitors To Stay
This post, by Ricardo Bueno, appeared originally on the Diverse Solutions blog. We all want more site traffic. More subscribers. And ultimately, more sales. We slave day-in and day-out improving our sites so site visitors spend more time poking around long enough to consider our offer. But then, ever notice how sometimes (or often), people leave 2-3 seconds just after they've landed? What's the deal? It's called: Bounce Rate. And it means: "Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert." What can you do to encourage your site visitors to stay?

Unique Content: Why Your Blog Needs It
Over the weekend I was talking with a friend who has a fairly successful real estate business, but who is always trying to make it better. He’s got the website thing going on, but he’s not doing any social networking or blogging. I said that he had to have a blog. He said he didn’t have the time. I asked if he had an assistant. He does. But he doesn’t have the time either. Well, somebody has to make the time because, as we learned with our recent post How A Blog Can Save Your Real Estate Business, it really takes several posts per week for months to build authority online. Geek Estate says fresh content is the key to drawing traffic to your website (via your blog). But it can’t just be any content, and it really shouldn’t be recycled. Your blog must provide a kind of pulse for your website, suggesting a living breathing person on the other side. Not just an RSS feed.

You May Not Know It, But You Are Blogging for Two Crowds
Guest Contributor Chris Brogan says: It strikes me that often times, we’re blogging for our colleagues and not our buyers. When I write a post that gets a lot of attention, it’s because it resonated with someone who does a similar job as me. While this is always wonderful and well-appreciated, it’s also dangerous, if you’re using your blog as a business lead generation tool. In short, it’s important to know which crowd you’re writing for, and how you’re going to reach the right crowd with the right message.  

Beware: Three Vices to Effective Blogging!
I stumbled across a local real estate broker's website today. It took about 30 seconds to notice three fundamental issues with the site. And before anyone gets twisted out of shape and thinks I'm just dissing someone's site, keep this in mind... One can learn by watching the good things other people do. But you can also learn by observing what not to do. This particular site is not alone, there are countless examples just like it scattered all across the Internet. LOTS of real estate practitioners have websites. There are many brilliant sites out there, and many that are not-so-swift. Be brilliant. What were the three glaring errors I saw?

What Is the Right Keyword Density for My Real Estate Blog Posts?
Take a look around real estate blogs and you’ll see nuggets of wisdom posted that look similar to this: The Phoenix real estate market is a mess! If you want to buy a home in Phoenix, then you should consult with a Phoenix realtor who knows and understands the Phoenix real estate market. Never buy a Phoenix home without utilizing a Phoenix realtor! Feel free to search for Phoenix homes on our Phoenix real estate blog, but be sure to call your Phoenix realtor before you go too far! Yeah, they’ll even bold all those keywords because some “SEO guru” told them that helps Google understand that those words are important.