Blog Content is Critical to Your Website’s Success
How many times have I heard, “I don’t have time to find good blog content?”
I understand, but your competition is making time to create blog posts once a week or more so you need to figure out how to find the time. If you have team members, all of you can sit down and go through these steps together for 20 minutes. If you are a single agent, then do it by yourself for those 20 minutes. You will be surprised what you come up with that will make great blog content. These will become the titles of your first blog posts.
Take a piece of paper and pen or start a new document on the computer and brain storm (just put down what comes to mind)
What questions do your Sellers and Buyers ask all the time. Make a list of these questions. This becomes the very best content for your blog because it focuses on the issues that your new/present/past clients want to know.
Where else can you find material for blog content?
Does your MLS supply statistical data on sales, etc.? Who wouldn’t want this information? Both Sellers and Buyers will sign up to have you notify them as the new data is released. Tell them what information they are going to receive, add a sign-up form and there you have a blog post for once each month. Can it get any easier?
Does your brokerage supply you with material that you are entitled to use? Don’t use something that sounds like a ‘newsletter’ with recipes (old school) and that everyone else in your company is sending out.
How about the designations you worked so hard to earn? Is there information from those groups that you are entitled to use in blog content? An example would be, if you are a senior real estate specialist, is there material from SRES that you can use for your clients?
Do you know about ‘Guest Blogging“? Ask the termite company to write a short article about preventing pest infestation, a painter to write an article about preparing the seller’s home for painting; a landscaper to write about some tips and tricks to update the curb appeal before putting the home on the market; a home stager to write a post about the basics of staging a home, etc. Using ‘guest bloggers’ allows you to share great information and gives the ‘guest blogger’ some exposure on your blog. (They get to put their name and contact numbers on the blog – a win-win for everyone.)
Identify your competition’s keyword phrases. Find 5 – 10 keyword phrases where your competition ranks high on the search engines and you don’t. Those keyword phrases are some more titles for your blog posts.
A Realtor can write about the communities/cities/subdivisions in the area. Buyers want to know the amenities in a subdivision. For each subdivision, you can write about the size of homes and land, general pricing, links to school districts, the MLS stats for that area, walk score, shopping, etc. Include some pictures of the area.
A blog post on negative things is also a good idea. List the things that can go wrong with an escrow. We have all experienced a lender who dropped the ball, a buyer who didn’t believe that they really needed to find out about insurance until the last minute, more problems than anticipated with an inspection, you know the drill. Buyers and Sellers don’t buy and sell every day so they are not prepared for the Murphy’s Laws of real estate. Prepare them.
How about a Step-by-Step of what happens when a Buyer wants to buy or a Seller wants to sell.
Showing an example of a Seller or Buyer net sheet on a blog post is a good way to educate the consumer. You can use a round number as a ‘sales’ price and then show the recurring and non-recurring costs for that number/sales price.
An article on Rent vs. Buy could convince a renter that they need to call you about buying a home because they never realized before reading your blog content that they would be better off if they purchased a home.
Educate the consumer about checking their credit and if necessary, how to get in touch with the credit bureaus to correct any errors.
Buying property in a Sellers’ market
Selling property in a Buyers’ market
Remember to be careful about the rules regarding recommending a lender, title person, or any other vendor, etc. If in doubt, check with your broker.
In the digital world of today, people’s perception of us comes from what they perceive from the digital world. You need to focus on your ‘digital brand’. How do you come across to others online? Become a ‘thought leader’ and validate your ‘expert’ claims. Stop saying you are the ‘area expert’ and prove it with your content creation.
When should you start? As a REALTOR®, you understand Compound Interest (your money’s ability to grow over time). What do you need to consider to make your content creation/inbound marketing investment grow?
Frequency
How often are you blogging? Are you looking for ways to add new pages to your site? Have you made any changes on the site in the last 20 days or the last 18 months even? Search engines, Sellers and Buyers need new and great information spoon fed to them. When you write a blog post, Google looks at your site again and indexes it. You are ‘Compounding Interest’ here.
The Value of the Information
Don’t do a sales pitch, educate the consumer. Make it about the consumer, not about you or your services.
Timing is Everything
Do you remember the first time you heard about a retirement plan as a new employee? Remember that the numbers worked best for someone who started at 30 years if age rather than 50 no matter how much money you threw at it later on? It is the same way with your starting time for your content/inbound marketing. Your competition started 2 years ago? And you are still thinking this isn’t the time to start? OK, prepare to be left behind.
Some Basics Instructions to Follow:
When creating your blog post, think like a Seller or Buyer, not like an agent/broker
Do it consistently
You can do this!