Archive for May, 2007

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I hope this 8th part of our series on how to start a local real estate blog finds you being inundated with new customers from your blog. If not, don’t worry. If you have been following along in this series, your blog in only about 1 month old.

Our example blog: The Rock is doing fairly well. I’ve been trying to network with some of the other bloggers in my area as best I can. I had breakfast with Larry Russell from the Parker Real Estate Agent blog a few weeks ago. And I have been thinking seriously about organizing a meetup with the guys from Sellsius real estate when they come to Denver in July for Blog Tour USA.

Other than that, I have just been trying to be as consistent as possible with my posts. I’m currently working on a large list of community events that will be happening this summer in Castle Rock and the surrounding areas. I’m also planning to take some time to photographing some of the local communities, along with some of the new developments around town.

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Ok. In this part of the series, I want to discuss some of the many tools that bloggers have available to them. It seems that every time I turn around there is a new tool out there for bloggers. But I will do my best to catalog all of the most popular, and give you live examples of bloggers that are using the tool.

>> General Blog Tools

These are tools that just about every blogger should have, and any good blogging platform will provide:

• Tagging: Tagging your posts can have multiple uses. Primarily, it is for identifying with keywords what your post is about. You can go with the tag cloud which may be out of style, but can still be useful. Or you could try something similar to this. The Rain City Guide actually replaces their categories with a tagging system. The most common tagging technique uses keywords for Technorati. This works well because you are actually pinging Technorati, and telling them what your post is about; you can see an example on Teresa’s blog . I’ve also seen it done for del.icio.us the way Seth does it. Here are some tools from wordpress that might help.

• Categories: Categories are vital on any blog. Breaking down your information into manageable sections will help users find the information they are looking for. As I mentioned above, some people are now replacing their categories with tags. But in my opinion, the categories are still very useful on a human level for finding information. Here is an example of a very well thought out category section where they actually transformed the useless archives into helpful categories.

• Search Tool: Uhhh… yeah, this is a no brainer. Allow people to search your entire blog.

>> Important Add ons:

• Email Subscriptions: You’ve gotta have this. It’s easy to add, and it will improve your readership dramatically. I like using Feedburner’s email delivery service because it counts each email subscriber towards my overall subscription numbers. Actually most of my readers subscribe by email. You can also use a tool like Feedblitz.

• Social bookmarking tools: These come in thousands of shapes and sizes. Personally, I usually ignore them because there are so many options, and it just makes my brain hurt to think about it. As you can see on our blog, we’ve chosen to go simple with Alex King’s “Share This” Plugin. It works really well, and doesn’t clutter up your posts with annoying bookmark icons. If you really want to use some kind of bookmarking tool, my advice is to only use the ones that are important to you. I love the way Seth does his. He only includes the ones the matter to him: Stumble, Digg, Del.icio.us, and Technorati.

• I wanted to take a second to catalog the plugins that we use on our blog. Audio Player for podcasts, Bunny’s Technorati Tags for… tagging stuff, Dofollow which removes all nofollow tags on the blog, Feedburner Replacement which takes all of our RSS feeds and forwards them to feedburner, Popularity Contest ranks all of the posts by popularity, Posts by author creates a link at the bottom each post with the author’s info, Sphere creates a link at the bottom of each post to related articles. We use alot more, but they aren’t worth mentioning here as they are pretty basic. For thousands more… try these sites for Wordpress and Typepad.

• MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, AutoRoll by Criteo: Are all great tools to have on your blog. Mybloglog and BlogCatalog are pretty similar tools that are used mostly as blog communities. Autoroll lists blogs that have similar content on your own blog and vice versa. It has actually brought quite a bit of traffic since we started it last month… around 500 unique visitors. The reason I like these tools is because they add flavor to any blog. It’s fun with myblog to be able to visually see who has recently visited your site.

>> Optional Tools:

This list includes a few items that I have seen used on other blogs that you might want to consider adding:

• The Good Blogs: This lets you add a tool to your blog that lists articles that are generally related to your content. To me, it seems like a cross between Autoroll and Shere. You can see it in action on the Phoenix real estate guy blog.

• Meebo: This has been a popular one of late. Meebo became famous for their cross platform chat tool, but now they offer a chat that you can incorporate right into your blog. On our blog, we use a tool called provide support. It’s a web based chat tool that is geared towards helping customers. We feature it on all our sites under the hismove.com domain.

• Bumpzee: I really like this tool. It shows my most popular posts, recent visitors, and when I’m logged in, gives me private stats on the traffic to the blog.

• FilmLoop: I haven’t used this tool yet personally, but I really like what I’ve seen. I first saw it used with success on Kristal’s Denver real estate blog

• Wellcomemat: Is a really awesome tool that lets you embed videos directly into your posts similar to YouTube, but it also allows you to create chapters to skip ahead on your video. And it’s built for the real estate industry, so it works well for real estate websites.

• There are a host of other tools you can use… here are just a few: Linkedin, Spicypage, Twitter, Clustr Maps, Technorati Buttons, Flickr, Site Neighbors, Grzr, Skype, Blog Surfer, the list goes on and on…
  

>> Real Estate Related Tools:

There aren’t as many real estate blogging tools out there as I’d like to see, but progress is being made. Two of the tools on the list I only just discovered this past week.

• VFlyer Widget: I really like this new tool from Vflyer. It creates a widget that will scroll through all your listings. You can see an example on the Charlotte Real Estate Voice.

• Trulia Widget: This allows you to create a graph with data about your area, plot your current listings, search Trulia listings, and more.

• Rembex: is a webring and portal for real estate blogs. The Rembex search engine is the first ever search engine for real estate and mortgage websites. Both services have tools that you can add right into your blog.

• Zillow: Has a ton of different tools that can be used for blogs. The one’s I’ve found most helpful are the heat maps, and market information including graphs and charts that plot all kinds of data.

• Property Search Tool: If there was one great service that allowed you to integrate an MLS search into your site, I’d be linking to it here. But, alas, until the MLS becomes one unit, this will never happen. There are alot of services out there that will do this for you. My suggestions: don’t make people register, let them search easily without jumping through hoops, make sure there is a way for people to contact you on every results page.

That just about does it. I know I left out a ton of tools, so if you have one that you use regularly, feel free to share.

Thanks for reading, and happy blogging!

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Resources:

• RSS Feed to subscribe to this series

• Subscribe by email to this series

• Get Full Coverage on our Blog

• View the Blog we use as an example in this series

**If you are following along, and and have started your own blog, I’d love to hear about it! I will even add it to my blogroll so that I can follow along with your progress.

Thanks for joining me in this series on how to start a local real estate blog. I wlll take you through step by step instructions on how to set everything up from start to finish.

Follow along with me as I give you hands on examples as I start my own local real estate blog from scratch: THE ROCK - Castle Rock Real Estate Blog

If you need help at any time with your new real estate blog, please let me know and I would be happy to assist you.

Sincerely,

Justin Smith

justin(at)hismove.com

Today Google announced and launched a pretty amazing new feature to Google maps. The Street view.

You may be asking yourself, how do they take a satellite picture from that angle… uhhh yeah… it’s not a satellite photo. Google has broken out of the mold and has hit the streets apparently with the help of a company called Immersive. As you can see from the video and pics it is a pretty amazing tool. They currently only have 5 cities available, but I’m sure there are more to come. So far it’s:Miami, San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and Las Vegas

Joel Burslem points out on the Inman blog that it will have a “great application” in real estate, but I’m not so sure yet… After playing around with it for a while and considering the markets available, and the cities themselves, I see very little value for the residential marketplace. Sure, it is a great tool, but how much residential area is actually represented? It may have value in New York and San Francisco, as there are many city dwellers, but personally, I don’t see it as being practical.

If they bundled it into their current map API, it may be useful, but I don’t think we’re going to see an immediate stampede to use the technology by real estate agents… at least not yet.

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I get asked all the time… what is the best way to market a real estate business online? My answer is always the same: Blogs

The Christian Real Estate Network is proud to announce a new free blogging platform! Thinking about setting up your own blog? Now is your opportunity. Just visit http://blogs.hismove.com to learn more.

Already have your own blog? Add it to our Blog Directory!

Here are 5 reasons to start Blogging Today:

1. Search engines love blogs, and don’t like traditional websites. That’s because there is fresh content on blogs, and traditional websites just sit around and grow stale. Blogs rank better in the search engines, and if done right, they can rank extremely well for local real estate searches with minimal effort. They are also link magnets, and will help to grow your online presence very quickly.
2. People love fresh content. Be honest with yourself. Do you really think anyone is going to read your basic website with the “about me” page. The answer is no. But what if you had up-to-date market information and pictures about a community someone was interested in? Suddenly, your website is something to stick around for and maybe even subscribe to.
3. You have no time to lose! The industry is getting flooded with new bloggers. Have you been to activerain.com yet? It is a very basic blog platform for real estate agents. They have over 30,000 subscribers and their website isn’t even 1 year old!
4. Consumers are looking online for real estate. Some stats say that over 90% of people look online to do their own real estate research before contacting an agent. You could be that agent or loan officer that gets found when people search.
5. You have a free opportunity to start your own blog with our new blogging platform. Take advantage of it! You will always have free tech support when you need it.

So, you’ve begun your blog, and it has been online for a few weeks… now what? Where do you go from here?

Onwards and upwards. That initial excitement may be gone, and you may be wondering when your first lead will come, but don’t worry. Remember, blogging is a commitment. There are very few bloggers that become successful in the first few weeks. You have to build a strong reader base, and grow your content.

The interesting thing about blogging is that it really exercises your mind. You may have found that it takes alot longer than you thought to write a post. Don’t worry, that will change with time. Once you get some experience, you will be able to knock out a 1 page post in under 30 minutes. Or you could advance to the big leagues and write 102 posts in one day like Ardell or Greg.

Are you having any trouble coming up with topics to write about?

Don’t worry… you are not alone. Everyone comes up against writers block. Here are a few of my own blogging ideas, along with a few other ideas that may help:

1. Write about your neighborhood — Ok this one may be obvious, but just think… there are probably not alot of websites out there about your neighborhood, especially if you start getting into the smaller subdivisions. You know that mail that you used to throw away about your home owners association, or about community events?? Hang on to it. It probably has a wealth of information that you could blog about
2. Create a Community Calendar — This could be as basic or as elaborate as you want it to be. Compile all of the events you can get your hands on, along with information, phone numbers, websites, etc. Again, there probably isn’t anyone writing online about this stuff. It’s a golden opportunity for you.
3. Get ideas from the local newspaper — A local newspaper can be a great resource to a real estate blogger. Often they will have community news, neighborhood statistics, and other great info that you can use. Make sure to cite your references. On a side note, you may even consider forming a relationship with one of the editors… maybe one of your articles may be considered for their paper, or if you become a good local resource and one of the first bloggers in the area, they may even want to write an article about you.
4. Post your listings — You might as well! Your blog is a great place to promote your listings. Add lots of pictures and long descriptions, your current customers will appreciate the effort, and you may snag some buyers. Some real estate bloggers I’ve seen even add a side toolbar that sort of acts like a category for each of their listings. When a customer clicks, they are taken to all the posts written about that property. There is also a great new widget by Vflyer that can be placed right into a post. Here is an example from Leigh Brown.
5. Announce open houses and other events — These announcements can be short and sweet and only take a couple of minutes to write. A good friend of mine has wine and cheese parties all the time for his clients… that would be another example of something to announce. When combined with a tool like Twitter, this can be pretty effective.
6. Take tons of pictures — This is probably my favorite suggestion. It’s easy, it’s fun, and anyone can do it. Local community events, nice restaurants, local nature, new construction, neighborhood housing, local attractions. These are just a few ideas of what to take pictures of. Start carrying your camera around with you everywhere you go, and enjoy it! If you’re really motivated, and have some time on your hands, take some video too.
7. Local Real Estate news — You’ve probably written a couple of posts about this already. In my opinion, this is what most of your effort should be centered on. You are an expert in real estate in your market… it’s only natural that you would have a thing or two to say about it. Try to expand in this area as much as possible, because it will build your perceived expertise. Write about local market trends, statistics, new housing developments and construction, average time on market, home pricing trends, unusual listings, etc.
8. Community Statistics — This is pretty straightforward. People want to know stuff about their community. Plain and simple: crime rates, income, median home prices, weather, taxes, etc. Fedstats.gov works pretty good for this kind of thing. For something visual try Neighboroo.com
9. Local Interviews — I won’t go into too much detail here because I’ve written a pretty lengthy post on how to conduct a real estate interview. But I will say that it’s a great way to build trust in your community, and is something that every real estate blogger needs to consider.
10. Write about your personal experiences in real estate. This is another one of those easy suggestions because it can almost act like a journal entry about your business. Just make sure not to completely “go off” about a customer, or another agent. That isn’t professional. But what you can do is write about funny, interesting, or thought provoking experiences you’ve had in the field. Be creative… writing from the first person about your own wacky experiences is what blogging is all about.

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As I don’t claim to have a corner on blogging ideas (far from it), I thought I’d post a few links here to articles that I have found helpful when trying to stir up ideas on what to write about:

– Mary McKnight has an ongoing post that features a year’s worth of blog ideas

– Here are 10 killer post ideas from performancing.com

– Breaking Writer’s Block — by Mariana Wagner

– Teresa Boardman has a great article on blogging ideas, or rather, what not to blog about. (for Active Rain members only)

– 101 Blog ideas by Philip Liu

There are so many great resources out there for other blogging ideas. Be creative, have fun, and keep writing!

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Resources:

• RSS Feed to subscribe to this series

• Subscribe by email to this series

• Get Full Coverage on our Blog

• View the Blog we use as an example in this series

**If you are following along, and and have started your own blog, I’d love to hear about it! I will even add it to my blogroll so that I can follow along with your progress.

Thanks for joining me in this series on how to start a local real estate blog. I wlll take you through step by step instructions on how to set everything up from start to finish.

Follow along with me as I give you hands on examples as I start my own local real estate blog from scratch: “THE ROCK” - Castle Rock Real Estate Blog

If you need help at any time with your new real estate blog, please let me know and I would be happy to assist you.

Sincerely,

Justin Smith

justin(at)hismove.com

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I decided almost immediately after reading the first few posts that I would have to judge this carnival based upon what I thought would be a good quality post that would reach the consumer on a local level. After all, that is what real estate blogging is all about right? So, with that reasoning, I tended to lean more towards the posts with community information, and general real estate tips. Other judges may do it differently, but I strongly believe in the local real estate blog, (as you can see from my series on it), and those posts on the local community are really what it’s all about.

That being said… this was a really tough decision. These Project Bloggers have come a long way in just a few short weeks of learning. I’d be curious to ask each of them what kind of business it has stirred up so far.

By the way, in the way of a quick disclaimer… A couple of these posts were submitted over the weekend. I made a mistake when I emailed all the contestants and told them that my deadline was Sunday night for submittal, when the official rules said Friday… my fault. Sorry.

So, without further ado… here are the winners for week 1 of the Carnival of Project Blogger:

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#1. Buying a Miami Beach Condo? Things you Should Know By: Kevin Tomlinson

This was actually the last post I read out of the group, and it immediately jumped out at me. This guy knows his stuff. It’s very straight forward, and has good solid content in the form of local tips for condo buyers in the Miami area. This post in my mind encapsulates the spirit of the local real estate blog. It’s informative, well written, and personal. I also love the link at the bottom of the post for the free Miami Condo Guide. RE bloggers pay attention. These are the kinds of posts that will get you solid loyal customers.

I only have one suggestions for this post. I would have liked to see the title changed to: “Buying a Miami Beach Condo? 10 Things You Should Know.” Then simply number off all of the suggestions. People that read blogs love lists, and it can be an instant hook. Think about how to sell people on the title.

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#2. The Difference Between Flat Fee and Full Service Real Estate Services By: Julie Ferenzi

Julie has given us a really great post here. It’s written in a “How to” format without being too threatening or bossy. She’s made it personal almost in the form of a testimony… and that can be powerful. If there was an award for the best structured post, this one would win. Great pictures, layout, and spacing. It was easy to read because it was broken up so well, and all the important info was bolded.

I would have liked to see a couple more references in the way of links in the post. My guess is that since Julie’s experience as explained in the post had such an impact on her, that she has probably written on this topic before, and may be able to provide some more references to past posts or other helpful documentation. And one other small nitpick: the url doesn’t have the words from the post included. It’s not that big a deal, but it’s unusual for a blog, and including those keywords can give you a slight boost in SEO especially in SE’s other than Google.

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#3. Attention RSM Residents! The 2/5 Marines Need Our Help! By: Kelly Kilpatrick

This is by far the best community centered post of the bunch. It has Rancho Santa Margarita written all over it, and it is a great example of how a local real estate blog can be used as a community information hub. I would venture to guess that Kelly’s blog is one of the only places online where you can get information about this particular care package drive. That is what makes it unique. Also, consider the subject matter: helping our troops, love for people, and community service. You can’t go wrong with posts like this, just take a look at the comments it got.

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#4. Florida Property Tax Reform…Dead…For Now! By: Jackie Colson-Miller

I don’t know what it is about Jackie, but when I read her stuff I just get the feeling that she is a very, very intelligent person. Does anyone else get that? For example, I would guess that this post didn’t take her long to write, and that she just fired of some quick suggestions that are actually quite thought provoking. Anyways… Jackie’s post was impressive. She jumped straight into some property tax reforms she would make in Florida. It is clearly an opinion post that almost seems geared towards stirring up conversation with lines like this: “Do you have a better idea?” And from the comments she received, it looks like she accomplished that very thing. I even sense a little controversy with the subject matter, and that is always a good thing on a blog.

I would have liked to see the layout organized a bit better. Maybe a bolded headline for each suggestion, and then some text explanation below each. And maybe even a play off the list aspect of the post. “6 ways Florida Can Fix It’s Property Tax Problems”. Just a thought.

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#5. More Ghosts in Los Gatos By: Mary Pope-Handy

Here was an interesting post that obviously spiked some people’s interest based upon the comments it received. Writing about something like ghosts or something else unusual is always a great way to get people interested in your local area. This is a good example of how to write from a personal perspective. Bloggers are known for their un-orthodox writing styles, raw edges, and unusual topics. Just because real estate blogs are for generating business doesn’t mean that they can’t include some fun stuff.

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Overall I was extremely impressed with all of these Project Bloggers. It’s really exciting to see them all grow in their writing and blogging skills.

I want to thank Jim from the Real Estate Tomato for the opportunity to be a host. I look forward to many more great posts from these budding bloggers.

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How is your local real estate blog coming? Are you getting any traffic yet? How about comments?

In the next few articles we will be discussing some of the best ways to drive traffic to your new blog, how to comment effectively on other blogs, How to write effectively, and some other tricks of the trade.

First I wanted to give you a brief update on how our example blog is going. THE ROCK, is still moving right along. I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed this morning that it is #6 on Google for the search term: “Castle Rock real estate”. Not bad! Have you done any test searches for your new blog yet? Try using the keywords in the title of your blog… if you followed my directions on how to research a keyword, you should be in the top 3 pages already if you have been writing consistently. THE ROCK has had around 4 comments so far, and I have written 6 posts total. I plan on writing around 1-2 posts per day for the remainder of the week to build up some solid content.

So… have you thought of any unique ways to drive traffic to your blog yet? Here are a few tips that should help:

1. Social Bookmarking. When starting out, you can’t forget to add your posts to the social bookmarking sites. Here are the most popular: Digg, Delicious, Netscape, Stumbleupon, Yahoo MyWeb, Reddit, Furl, Newsvine, Lookmarks, Blinklist, RealEstateVoices — Most of these can be very valuable. If you happen to write a really good post that caters to a wide audience, you might get some good traffic from these sites.
2. Try networking with other bloggers. The easiest way to do this is to find all the real estate blogs in your area and contact the owners via email. Tell them that you’re new to the blogosphere, and are looking to make some friends. ‘Real life’ blogger meetups are getting more and more popular, and it’s a great way to start networking, and may even be a way to drum up some referral business.
3. Give something away for free. This could be anything from a small ebook, to a free market analysis, to a downloadable .pdf document that includes the 10 secrets to real estate success. Be creative… people like free stuff.
4. Start a contest. You may need to wait to get a few more readers before doing something like this… or else you may not get many people to enter. Offer a prize for the best photo of your area, award people for commenting on posts, give prizes to people that write about your blog… the ideas are endless.
5. Start blogging on ActiveRain. There is no other real estate related website where you can post an article and have 1,000 people view it within 2 hours. If the content is good, and the title is catchy, you will have a flood of people visiting your blog to check you out. You can actually take your posts from your local blog, and copy/paste them as an ActiveRain blog post. The one problem with ActiveRain is that it is focused on the real estate community. You aren’t likely to get any customers from it, but it’s a great way to learn how to network with other bloggers, and learn from the community as a whole.
6. Comment on other blogs. This is probably the best suggestion on this list. Commenting is one of the fastest ways to get known in the blogosphere. It doesn’t matter who you are… you have the ability to post a comment on just about any blog you want. Pick a solid list of about 20 real estate blogs, and 10 other blogs, and start commenting. Yes, it is time consuming especially if you want to write something more than: “great post dude”. Similar to the way that good blog content will bring success, good comments will also bring success. Your goal should be 10 solid comments per day. This requires at least 15-20 minutes, and probably alot more if you are thoroughly reading everything you comment on. I really need help in this area…
7. Content, Content, Content What you write will ultimately determine where you stand. You can follow all my instructions perfectly, but if your content is boring you won’t get anywhere.

The next part of this series will be how to keep your content fresh, exciting, and leaving your readers begging for more…

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Resources:

• RSS Feed to subscribe to this series

• Subscribe by email to this series

• Get Full Coverage on our Blog

• View the Blog we use as an example in this series

**If you are following along, and and have started your own blog, I’d love to hear about it! I will even add it to my blogroll so that I can follow along with your progress.

Thanks for joining me in this series on how to start a local real estate blog. I wlll take you through step by step instructions on how to set everything up from start to finish.

Follow along with me as I give you hands on examples as I start my own local real estate blog from scratch: “THE ROCK” - Castle Rock Real Estate Blog

If you need help at any time with your new real estate blog, please let me know and I would be happy to assist you.

Sincerely,

Justin Smith

justin(at)hismove.com

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I came across a really interesting tool the other day that will analyze any webpage to see if it is oriented towards your customers. It’s called the We We Monitor

The reason this is important is because so often, when people write content, they may not have much experience on how to write FOR a customer. Because of that, the content ends up being all about the person writing, or how great the company is that they are writing for.

When writing, it’s important that you focus on the customer. What do THEY want? Properly written copy can work wonders with online marketing.

So, give this free tool a shot… it will analyze everything for you, and give you tips on how you can improve.