Archive for October, 2007

This post was stirred on by a post from Joel Burslem over at FutureofRealEstateMarketing.com. He was writing about the death of the multi author blog, and it really got me thinking about local real estate blogs.

Joel pointed out that he is often overwhelmed by the multi author blogs simply because of the large amount of content. And to some extent I agree with him. One of the reasons I’m not a frequent visitor to the RainCityGuide and the BloodHoundBlog is because there is simply too much to read… it’s information overload. Sure it’s fun to visit every once in a while, but I would never consider putting either site in my RSS reader. Just way too much!

But, on the other hand, you have to consider the fact that most new readers to blogs come from search engines. And what is the best way to drive more traffic to a blog from search engines? Lots of keyword rich content.

A balance must be struck — between writing a consistent amount of posts in order to attract search engines, and also being careful not to turn off your current subscribers with too much content.

I tend to agree with Joel that the large group blogs won’t have the staying power of individual writers… but for all intensive purposes, we are still in the adolescent stage when it comes to real estate blogs. It still remains to be seen which will be more successful in the long term.

Danger #1 – Focusing too much on search engine placement. I see this with many bloggers. They unnaturally stuff keywords into every title and every post possible. They are obsessed with search engine ranking, and completely ignore the subscribers they do have. Sheer volume of content is not always the best thing when it costs you subscribers. Be careful

Danger #2 — Focusing too much on Subscribers and ignoring search engines. Just as dangerous as the first. I’ve seen many bloggers that fall into this trap simply because they are frustrated with the search engines, or are overly obsessed with subscriber counts. They completely ignore sound SEO advice, and seem to shy away from using SEO tactics for fear that they will lose a subscriber or two.

The Balance — Of course, both of these positions are extreme, but I meet people on a weekly basis that fall clearly into one camp or the other.

The Remedy — Keep writing consistently. Keep building subscriber counts with quality content and SMO. Pay close attention to your SE placement, but don’t become obsessed. The rest should take care of itself… and if not, just call me.

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Syndicating your content is pretty important these days. My students often get overwhelmed when I tell them all the places they need to submit their blog to including social bookmarking sites, activerain, carnivals… the list goes on and on.

Things can get more complicated when you try to market your blog on and offline, and you can quickly get burned out with manually adding your blog to hundreds of different places.

Well, here’s an easy way to get your blog out to everyone that you converse with on a day to day basis through email. A banner in your email signature that shows people your most recent posts, and provides them with a link to the blog itself.

First, you should have a feedburner account. If you don’t, get one.

Second, login and navigate to Publicize, then Headline Animator

Then, choose a clickthrough URL. By default, this will be your feedburner RSS feed, but I recommend changing it to your blog URL. You can also choose a theme, and customize it however you like.

Once you have customized it to your liking, click activate, and you will have a nice looking banner that rotates with your most recent posts.

At that point, you have a number of options. Feedburner will provide you the code to post the banner on blogger, typepad, wordpress, and a number of different email platforms. It works well for most applications because it simply renders the banner as a graphic, and so any email program that lets you add html to your signature will work.

Alas, there is no support for html in gmail which is my email client of choice. But there are a few work arounds.

Adding a banner feed like this to your email is a great way to build awareness of your blog. There are a number of other ideas to create calls to action within your email, like providing a link for people to subscribe to the blog via email, or an RSS of the most recent comments on the blog. The possibilities are endless. Be creative, and drive traffic to your blog!!

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Here’s a perfect example of why I don’t put Google ads on my site. I found this on the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog this morning as I was browsing. The big pink toilet just stuck out like a sore thumb while I was reading about Zolve.com!

Joel has one of the best RE.net blogs out there, so it’s nothing against him… I just couldn’t resist sharing.

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As we enter into the golden age of blogging, and the maturity of social media websites like Facebook, Linkedin, ActiveRain, and others.  I’ve begun to see a trend emerging among real estate professionals.  Many of them simply don’t care about social networking, reading other blogs, participating in a community, or contributing in any way.  Does anyone else see that?

In some respects I even see that happening in my own online experience.  The hundreds of feeds in my Bloglines reader just don’t do it for me like they used to.  I broke my addiction to points on ActiveRain, and I’m totally bored with websites like myspace.

Maybe it’s just me… but there seems to be a similar sentiment with other bloggers that I talk to out there.  The focus has shifted more towards lead generation, and monetization.  Gone are my 2004 blogging days where I was simply excited just to receive 1 comment.

As we usher in a new generation of hungry bloggers, what will we see?  Will they spend alot of their time in social media or jump straight for the money and bypass all the time wasting sites out there?

Maybe I’m just growing weary of the number of options.  Who is able to manage 50 different profiles anyway?  The People I’ve seen that do it effectively are the full time guys that make a living from it based on advertising or some other model…  That’s great for them, but what about the real estate agent that only has 2 hours per week to develop an online presence?

Waste 30 minutes on facebook customizing your profile, take 15 minutes on Activerain to make a couple of comments, take another 15 to invite 2 friends to Linkedin, take 30 minutes browsing your rss reader, another 15 minutes reading top stories on digg… and what does that leave you?  15 minutes to actually spend time writing a blog post.

As I see it, there are a few solutions to this problem…

Define Your Goal:

How will you achieve your goal?

Here are some strategies, assuming you want to generate leads through blogging:

1. Be diligent to write 3–4 new posts a week.  Most of these should be about a local market
2. Put yourself on a strict regimen to blog.  Look at it like an appointment with your computer
3. Block out your time:  1 hour writing, 30 minutes reading, 20 minutes commenting, 30 minutes researching, etc.
4. If you want to network with other bloggers or real estate professionals, only do it to generate referral business
5. There is nothing wrong with enjoying your blogging efforts, just stay focused on your goals.

How will you avoid getting sidetracked and wasting time?

1. Don’t visit Myspace or Facebook during business hours (unless you have an exact strategy for generating business from them)
2. Don’t waste time on Digg, Reddit, and other social bookmarking sites looking for something interesting to read
3. Don’t use your Stumble toolbar unless you have a clear strategy to use it properly to drive traffic
4. Don’t wander aimlessly around on the web looking for content… instead, set up an rss reader and block time out for reading
5. Don’t waste time participating in Active Rain only for the points
6. If you want to harness the power of the internet to generate business, cut out those time wasting activities that sidetrack you from the important stuff.

You have to ask yourself, “am I doing this for money, or is it just a hobby?”  The focused person who can answer that question definitively will be successful.

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Yeah baby…

http://www.inman.com/Member/specialreports/bloggers07/default.aspx

vFlyer has done it again. This company continues to impress me. I have written about vFlyer before, twice actually. At the time, I was a die hard postlets fan because of the speed in which you could post listings. But since then, vFlyer has grown up quite a bit and won me over completely!!! The level and speed of innovation is very impressive.

Since my first article, I have received half a dozen or so email announcements from vFlyer about improvements they have made, and all of them from what I can see are valuable to the real estate professional.

In their latest announcement earlier today, they have opened up the possibility of brokers using the tool for a full office of agents. It can also be set up for assistants or people that want multiple accounts.

This is yet another helpful tool from vFlyer, and the reason why I am referring them to all of my clients that need online classified flyer support.

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I’ve heard some talk lately from discouraged real estate bloggers that can’t seem to rank well in the search engines. They try blogging for a few weeks and then give up often times assuming that there are simply too many competing blogs and websites in their market area. In most markets, this is simply not the case!

Yes, it is true that there are a few places around the country that have fierce competition. Those would be in places like: Seattle, Phoenix, San Francisco, Florida, and a few others…

But for the most part, there are very few markets that are saturated with multiple blogs. In many cases, there are some fairly large markets that aren’t even represented.

What does this mean for you, the beginner blogger?? There is hope!!

Don’t get discouraged when you see other more experienced bloggers rank ahead of you. There is plenty of room for you.

I can’t tell you how many real estate bloggers I’ve met that have started blogging without even considering their target audience, what they are looking for, or how they are finding it. Often, when I ask a new blogger what their core target is, they just shrug their shoulders.

Understanding your target, and your keywords is key to outranking your competition.

Start researching!
* Decide on 5 primary keyword phrases

* Search for those phrases on Google, and catalog the top10 results

* Take those results and research them with this Page Strength Tool, or the Website Grader

* What do you find? Keep track of your results

* Try Wortracker.com or the free SEO Research tool I offer on this blog

* Try to find those specific keywords that have little competition

But… I’m a blogger in Seattle, and I don’t have any hope of ever ranking well… Nonsense! Here’s what you do:

* Start going niche. Forget the term: “Seattle Real Estate”. You will waste time and energy trying to rank well for that term.

* Choose instead: “Redmond real estate listings”, or “redmond condos for sale”. Yes, they do get less searches, but the competition will be much less.

* And here’s a secret that not many people will tell you: the more specific the keyword phrase, the better your chances will be of converting that searcher into a customer.

* Forget trying to be the top blog in Seattle, start researching and looking for those terms that you can rank well on.

* In my experience, the person that chooses to go niche with their keywords will triumph over the competition that is fighting an uphill battle to rank for the the most popular real estate related keyword in their market.

The quickest way to failure as a blogger is to not know your target.