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Ok. So, by now you should have a blogging platform picked out, a web address for your blog, a title, and a short “About me” page. If not, read through the last 3 posts in the series for instructions.

Now, we will focus on some pre-launch items. These are the types of things that you’ll probably want to have done before the official launch of your local real estate blog.

1. Add your “About me” page. Most templated blogs will have a place for this. If not, you can simply write an actual blog post about yourself, and link to it from the home page. This should include a picture, and basic info. Make sure to list plenty of contact information as this will be one of the primary ways that people can contact you.
2. I recommend purchasing your own domain for the blog. Better yet, if you already have a real estate website, try to incorporate the blog into the website. My favorite way to do this is to create a directory off of your domain name like: www.mywebsite.com/blog I don’t recommend setting up a blog on a subdomain for SEO reasons that I won’t get into here. One of the reasons you want to have your own domain for you blog is because if you decide to change platforms down the road, you can still keep the same website.
3. Ask yourself, does your blog have all the features you want it to? Maybe after visiting some other blogs, it’s given you ideas on some of the things you want on your blog. Maybe it’s a button at the bottom of each post that lets you submit it to social bookmarking websites. Or maybe it’s a special subscriber counter. Whatever it may be, now is the time to look into those extra features. There is such a wide variety of extra features, that I will have to review them at a later date. **Many of these may only be for more advanced users, so don’t worry if you don’t know how to add features like these yet… they are simply bells and whistles.
4. Whether you know it or not, your blog has an RSS feed. If you don’t know what RSS is, check out our guide to rss before you read on. Most blog platforms will already have easy to use built in RSS feeds that you won’t need to alter in any way. Make sure that your feed is easily accessible on your website so people can easily subscribe. I also suggest signing up to a service like FeedBurner. Among other things, FeedBurner gives you a special URL like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hismove that allows people to subscribe across many different platforms and offers a great way to keep track of your subscribers. Another thing you will find useful with feedburner is the ability to add an email subscription form to your blog. Just get the small piece of code from the Feedburner website, paste it into your blog, and you’re ready to go. A good alternative for email subscriptions is FeedBlitz. One more note on FeedBurner… if you are using wordpress, you might want to consider this plugin.
5. Does the blog have any kind of call to action? This is extremely important. After all, you’re trying to create new customers right? Your blog should have some kind of hook (besides good content). My favorite is the free property search tool. Offer a link to a tool that lets the customer search for properties right in your area. If you already have a real estate website, chances are good that you already have some kind of IDX MLS search tool. Simply link to it from your blog. My one suggestion with this is that you DON’T require the customer to give any contact information before they view the listings. Set yourself apart. I promise that this will add a huge level of stickiness to your blog and website. Here is a great example of a property search “hook” on a blog: St. Paul Real Estate, and as you can see, I’ve added a link on our example blog to search for listings: “THE ROCK” Castle Rock Real Estate Blog
6. Go to Technorati.com and sign up for a free account. Then “claim” your blog. This will allow technorati to start tracking links to your blog, and lets other Technorati users find you.
7. Add your blog to some of the different blog directories out there: DMOZ, Bloghub.com, StumbleUpon.com, Linkwith.us, GetBlogs.com, BlogFlux.com, BlogTopSites.com, BlogTopList.com, TopBlogArea.com, BlogCatalog.com, BlogHub.com, BlogRankings.com, Bloggernity.com, BlogExplosion.com, Blogarama.com, , bloggeries.com —— Real Estate Related Directories: Zillow Local Real Estate Blogs, Rembex, Real Estate Blog Directory. You can also try some of the paid directories.
8. MyBlogLog is also a great service that you should sign up for. It turns your blog into a kind of community center. You can visually see who has been visiting your blog, and you can interact with them easily. This is also a feature that is really nice to have on your site, so when you sign up your blog with their free service, you might want to consider getting the code to paste into your blog.
9. Sign up for ActiveRain.com it is an invaluable resource for real estate bloggers. It will also give you access to post community information on their other website: Localism.com We will talk about the benefits of both these sites in a later article.
10. Don’t get sucked into placing advertisements on your blog. I know the potential adsense revenue is tempting, but it will just clog up your site, and the $12 extra dollars a month just isn’t worth it. If you can rack up 500 readers, then you might want to re-evaluate it… but placing ads on a new blog is a very bad idea.
11. An optional step you may want to consider… Sign up with Flickr. It’s a great way to take all the pictures you use for the blog of your local area, and allow all your visitors to view them. You can create an entire album and let your visitors see what your market area looks like. I signed up for an account for my Castle Rock Blog, and put a link to the public picture viewing page from my blog home page.

There is a host of other things you can do to get your blog ready, but the best thing you can do is to simply start writing. So, in the next article, we will discuss what you should be writing about, and how to launch your new blog with a big splash.

I’m just about ready to launch my blog: “THE ROCK” Castle Rock Real Estate — I’ve added it to all the directories, set up an email subscription tool, opened up a flicker account, added a property search tool to the site, written an “About me” page, added a MyBlogLog tool, and added all the features that I want…. I think we’re about ready to launch!!

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