Let’s begin by outlining what we consider to be a custom designed blogsite.

Upon starting, you and your designer consider and discuss the following:

Architecture
The specific design and organization of the main containers of the site.  This includes, but is not limited to the header, navigation, content containers, sidebars, and footer.
Branding
A brand can be represented by any combination of the following: a name, sign, symbol, color combination, slogan and general concept theme.
Calls-To-Action
In order to draw the attention of your visitors to the features of your website that bring them one step closer to doing business with you, you need to present visually attractive cues.
Style
Font families, color, and size make a huge difference in a site’s effectiveness. Subtle design details such as edging, shadows, and gradients) give a site a polished and finished look. Theme consistency from header to footer reinforce the brand.
Emotion/First Impression
Who are you aiming to attract to your site, and what do you want them think upon arrival?
This is clean and cool?
This is fun and informative?
This is elegant and professional?
This is unique and memorable?
Functionality
Will the site need special considerations for functionalities such as  property searches tools, listing detail templates, community page templates, dynamic lead generation forms, content libraries/galleries,  multimedia, and 3rd party widgets?
Once the above have been considered and determined, the designer develops a mock-up specifically tailored to meet your needs. A custom design means not using any prefabricated look, code, or layout.  The design is inspired solely by your direction, the above details and the examples you have provided as inspiration.

So why is it worth it to invest the time and money to have a custom real estate blogsite developed for your business?

Why not just grab a free template from the 100s available?
Why not just use an affordable template designed for the real estate blogger?
Let me explain:

Prefabricated Templates (real estate or otherwise) are not designed with your particular business needs in mind.

In order to be useful, a template needs to be as vanilla as it can be.  It can not take your particular business model and focus into consideration.  I’m not just talking about looking different (I’ll discuss that later), I am referring to how important it is to demonstrate to your intended audience that you have developed an environment catering to their needs.
After all, it’s all about the visitor, and what they have come looking for, and not what was a convenient blogging solution for you.

Templates are not flexible.

Technologies come and go.  Styles come and go.  Demands change.  Your prefab template can’t keep up.  A custom designed theme can much more easily be edited to keep up with your changing needs.

Sharing the same design as 100s of others will not have you standing out.

There are so many advantages to having the opportunity to develop your own brand/look.
1. You can be original/memorable/impressive/appropriate
2. You can tie together your other branding efforts
3. The better it looks the more professional/trust-worthy/authoritative/successful you appear.
4. The better it looks the better you feel about showcasing your unique content.

Templates coding structure can be a real bear to work with.

This challenge only presents itself when you try to push the limits of the template’s capability.  But once it does, it becomes all too clear how frustratingly limited you are.

For the most part, prefab templates are coded to be either incredibly simple, or very dynamic (a current example would be the Thesis Theme or the Headway Theme).
The simpler they are, the less complicated they are for the user, but the more limited they are in customizing after market.  The more dynamic they are, the more difficult it is to untangle, or manipulate into being used with your specific needs.  The hours invested in trying to force a template to work for you and your audience’s needs could have instead been invested in getting it right the first time.  Penny wise, pound foolish comes to mind.
When a site is coded properly, with your needs established in the first place, it is a joy to work with, and very easy to build upon.  Should new technologies present themselves, or should you out-grow your initial vision, with a properly coded site you have the confidence that it can always be improved upon without having to scrap it and start over again.
Here are a few examples of completely different custom designs developed to meet the particular needs of the blogsite owner and their intended audience.
LakeTahoeRealEstateBlog.com
SkiCrescendo.com
MocoRealEstate.com
TheRealEstateBakery.com
AmericanTrustEscrow.com
Your expectations for developing a custom blogsite, from scratch, should be that is will cost in the range of $1500 to $4000* depending on your specific design  and technology needs.
If you would like to learn more about developing a custom blogsite for your business, please feel free to drop us a line (530-828-6764) or swing by our website for details.
^{*This range represents what 90% of our clients have invested in their design development, and not to be taken as a quote for your specific needs.}

The post What is the Value of the Custom Designed Real Estate Blogsite? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Most of the time we focus on the positive here at the Tomato; what works, paths to success, tips and tricks, etc.  Well it’s time to help the audience stop making the mistakes that can kill their blog.
The most obvious cause of a dead blog is not writing to it.  But what usually happens before that is one fails to see results for their effort and therefor abandons the commitment.
So really, this article is about common causes for a lack of success with one’s blogging effort.

The Simple Answer: You’re Focusing on the Wrong Things.

Stop Worrying About Comments

Comments are nice.  They let you know that someone is reading.  They keep a post alive.  They give you a chance to learn from the audience and defend your opinions.  They are the pat on the back that makes you feel like the effort is worth it.
But the funny thing about comments is that with business blogs, like the real estate blog, the commenter is not your next client.  Often it is the friendly agent stopping by to offer his accordance, or to point out a detail you may have overlooked.  At times it may be a real question, from a real person looking for some direction… only to never hear from them again.  But it is rarely, if ever, your next client.
Your next client is going to email you directly, or call you.  And, this is exactly what you want them to do.
Your job as the blogging real estate agent is to be seen as the expert.  You want to be seen as someone who knows your real estate inside-and-out and who loves the community that you share with your readers.  It is not to start a discussion based on your opinions on topics that drive a chatty crew to your comment box.  Leave that to the political over-sharers.

Stop Worrying About SEO and SERPs Rank

Salespeople use the following words:
SEO, Optimized, PageRank, Metatag, Metadata, Keywords, SERPs, Authority, Inbound Links, etc.
You just need to stick with publishing as many words as you can about your niche in real estate and the area you love.  Once you fall for the need to make it ‘better for the search engines’ you will have a hard time ever overcoming the lure of the snake oil.
– Writing Your Real Estate Blog Primarily to Google is a Squandered Opportunity
– All You Ever Needed To Know About Blogging SEO, But Were Afraid To Say So
– Why Worrying About SEO Is Detrimental to Your Real Estate Blog
– Dichotomy of the Real Estate Blog – Do You Please the Readers or Search Engines?
– Three Letters I Don’t Think About When Writing A Post For My Real Estate Blog
– SEO Can Be Snake Oil – Part 1

Stop Writing About Your Interests Instead of the Interests of Your Reader.
Or, Stop Trying To Be Interesting Instead of Interested.

These two are so similar that I felt it would be easy enough to pair them together.
The goal of business blogging is to create an audience that will in turn want to do business with you.  The goal is not to entertain yourself.  It becomes entertaining once it starts working.  Until then, you’ll need to simply consider exactly what your target audience is searching for online (regarding real estate and the community).  Now work to get yourself in front of them for these exact reasons.
I guess there is a loop hole.  If your ideal audience is just-like-you… well then keep on writing about what interests you.  But then again, that’s how you end up with an audience of peers instead of clients.

Stop Trying to Cover Too Many Topics or Too Broad a Geographic Area.

Building a website that covers your wide range of expertise and capacity, coupled with the range of ground that you are willing to travel takes more time than you’ll ever be able to dedicate.
With 10 fingers and only so many hours to invest in developing an effective web presence, you need to approach your content development strategy with targeted focus.

Consider this: Starting a website is not going to define your real estate career and capacity, it is going to supplement it.  Once you have earned an audience you need to continue to feed it with resourceful content targeting their needs.  Once you are confident that you are engaging that audience effectively, you can choose to expand your target to include a broader area and/or new audience.
Instead, what I see happen so frequently is that in an effort to not appear limited, a real estate website is set up to be a resource for a broad range of audiences and areas.  More often than not, the result is a website that is thin on content, and provides sound counsel in nothing.

Stop Worrying About Including Bells and Whistles

Yes, including features where your audience can tweet, bookmark or share your articles is a good idea.  However, for the fledgling blog, the frequency with which your content will be shared is depressingly low.  So low in fact, that you’ll forget that you even have these features on your site well before anyone will actually take advantage of them.
Other shiny objects meant to take up space on your sidebar(s) do nothing more than just that.
Consider what needs your audience has and only provide the tools that satisfy.  The rest of the plugins, widgets, chiclets, icons, badges, and flash will not make your site any better for them.

You’re Not Measuring Your Actions and Results

Want to lose more than 10 lbs?
Follow a healthy diet and RECORD everything you eat, every bit of (or lack of) exercise, your daily weight, and weekly body fat percentage.  I guarantee this vigilance and data recording will keep you focused and encouraged enough to meet your goal.
Want to run your first marathon?
Start running almost everyday, and religiously record your times, distances and heart-rate… knowing your goal is to reach marathon distance.  With determination, your distances, pace and stamina will increase to the point where you’ll finally cover 26.21875 miles.
Want to generate new clients from your blog this year?
Create an environment resourceful* to your ideal reader, schedule and track your posting frequency (min of 3 posts a week),  track the traffic and corresponding data (keyword effectiveness) to your articles.  If you write to them, they will come, and want to do business with the expert (you).
Warning: do not get too deep into the analytics.  Paralyzation by analyzation is very real.  Write first, track later.
*hopefully you understand what I mean by this now.  If not, give us a call =)

You Are Failing To Market Your Content

Don’t rely on your articles to get in front of your potential clients on their own.
Sure, the SEs will pick up and display your content in relevant inquiries, but you can greatly increase your traffic numbers with a few simple actions.
In an earlier post I mentioned this basic list of effective, after publishing efforts:
-Social Media Status Updates
-Social Bookmarking
-Email Database Blast
-Ping Your Articles
-Make It Easy for Others to Share You Content
-Syndicate
-Add a Feed of Your Headlines to Your Email Signature
I realize that some of the above contradicts the advice above about being distracted by bells and whistles.  The idea is that once you are making the efforts that lead to a successful site, focusing on how to grow your audience with these techniques can be beneficial.

You Write Terrible Headlines

An ineffective headline will render your articles invisible.
Online, your articles are simply headlines before they are seen in their full context.  Therefore the headline is your only opportunity to influence your audience to click.  If you can’t impress in this instant, you will never earn readership and your site will fail.
We define a strong headline as one that has at least 3 of these 4 aspects.
Emotion – Get my attention.
Call To Action – Tell me why it is worth my click.
Keywords – Help yourself be found, SEs give weight to words in the headline.
Descriptiveness – Don’t make me guess what is behind the link.
For examples: What Copyblogger Hasn’t Told You About Writing Real Estate Blog Headlines

Your Poor Formatting is Unenjoyable To Read

If your articles look like homework, your audience will not stick around to read them.
Learn to format your content with the proper use of Headings, Images, Links, Short Paragraphs, Pull-Quotes, etc.
7 Crucial Tips for Writing Blog Content That Gets Read.

Stop Trying To Be Your Own Web Designer

There are 1000s of downloadable designs for the WordPress platform.   In my opinion, most of them are garbage (weak sense of aesthetics coupled with poor coding structure).  The frustrating part is that it you can spend dozens of hours trying to tweak the design for your tastes and needs, only to end up disappointed and embarrassed with your results.
To ensure your satisfaction with a design that enhances your content, and gives you the professional look that you deserve, you will need to hire a designer.
First impressions in this business are incredibly important.  Foregoing the expense of having a custom design developed will certainly put you at a disadvantage.

Stop Trying To Be Your Own Host/Webmaster

The commitment it entails to ride the road to blogging success is significant, no doubt.
Adding the responsibility of learning the following will certainly eat into the time that it takes be maintain a successful real estate career:
Hosting accounts
Installation of WordPress
Management of theme files
Technical SEO (sitemap creation/robots file)
3rd party plugin installation/management
Platform upgrades
Spam protection
FTP familiarity
Basic coding knowledge (CSS/HTML/PHP)
All this just to save a few bucks a month on hosting fees.  For most, this is a penny-wise-pound-foolish scenario.

Stop Looking for a Finish Line

A blogger is something that you call yourself when you are committed to creating content regularly.  Thinking of it as a finite marketing task is going to end badly.
When I am asked, “How long do I need to blog before I start generating business?” I always fear that what they are really asking is “How long do I have to commit to this for?”  The challenge with this attitude is that they are considering the mountain, not the journey.
All sorts of bad ideas arise when one looks at the task as a burden: ghost authors, copying content, automated blog posts and the loss of desire to develop the proper skills.
Once you stop looking for the finish line, and embrace each post as an opportunity to feed the audience that needs to hear from you, the whole task will be that much more attractive and easier.
If you want to master these techniques alongside a personal trainer, contact us right away to schedule a session.

The post What Kills Your Real Estate Blog? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

You Just Need To Stick With It

Ask yourself:

1. What are you trying to accomplish with your online marketing?
2. What is your intended audience looking for?
3. What is your contribution to the internet?

1. What are you trying to accomplish with your online strategy?

Generate business is the main goal, of course.
But, the sound marketing strategy for a real estate agent is to:

• First be found.
• Second be recognized as the Best resource,
• Thirdly as the Trusted agent,
• Finally, be Remembered (saved, favorited, subscribed, and most importantly, contacted.)

A well executed real estate blogsite can help you accomplish the above more effectively than any other single online marketing effort.

The agent’s options for being found online are accomplished in 3 ways:

• Show up in the search engines,
• Deliver one’s content to your online sphere of influence (read: social network),
• Or have others ‘talking’ about you.

No longer a secret, the Search Engine exposure that you get from regular blog writing
is heralded as surprisingly effective, and certainly worth the effort.
Related: All You Ever Needed to Know About Blogging for SEO, But Were Afraid to Say So.
Related: Real Estate Blogging and the Search Engines, the News Source Theory
The trick, however, is to plan out your goals of exposure in the search engines and write to them.  What I mean is, wishful thinking and writing about whatever pops in your head as interesting is not going to help you be found for the terms that lead to generating the Right Audience.  Just because you are blogging, doesn’t mean that you are gaining ground on the success you reach for.
I have written an enormous amount on how to attract the right audience (ideal reader, target reader), and the formula is simple: Determine what is keeping your ideal reader up at night and write about that.  If you write to them, they will come.  This is a promise.
Related: How To Approach Real Estate Blogging And Ensure Your Success, Guaranteed

When it comes to delivering valuable content to your social network,
again the blogsite can’t be beat as an effective resource.
A formula to success (when it comes to doing business within a social network) is to work to fill it (the network)  full of members that appreciate you and the content that you deliver, and to find a voice and frequency that keeps them interested in you and your content.
It can be a challenge to find this harmony, so here are a few suggestions that have helped me in my quest to surround myself with ‘fans’ and deliver content that they appreciate, and most importantly, consume.  (Keep in mind that these are things that I have done, and not to be considered the rule.  The only rule I know in social media marketing is that there are none.)

1. Be yourself.  You’ll attract the audience you deserve.
2. Don’t try to please everyone; you end up pleasing no one.
3. Consider what you enjoy about the professionals you ‘follow’ and consider applying these elements to your effort.
4. Don’t over share.  There are things that we don’t need to know about you.  Curiously. those that you attract when you over share are generally not the Right Audience.
5. Be interested before you try to be interesting.  This is a pay-it-forward approach; if you show an interest, people will in turn, show an interest in you.
6. Fans vs Friends.  When possible, treat them as separate groups.  Your friends care less about your business than they show you at cocktail parties.
7. Don’t be boring (read: inane).  People click on, read, ‘like’, comment on, and share things because their interest has been piqued.

There are exceptions to all of the above, of course.  Again, these are the guidelines that I have used to build and connect with a large social sphere.

How does the blog fit into all of the above?

Easy.  Your blogging effort is always one that is based around connecting with the Right Audience; developing compelling content that rings honest and personal.  Condensing your well organized message (the blog article) into a tasty, snack-sized snippet for Facebook, Twitter and the like, will be a perfect example of delivering the Right Message to the Right Audience.
The trend of status updates and pithy nuggets shared through Twitter and Facebook is certainly a way to get your audience’s attention.  However, the effort comes up short when you consider how little Trust you can build with 140 characters.  This is where the central strategy of the blog comes in as the perfect resource to establish authority, expertise and trust.

The breakthrough to social media marketing success is finding that perfect harmony: the Right Audience receiving the Right Content, where your audience starts to share your message for you.
Understanding the needs of the Right Audience, and delivering to them what they are hungry for inspires them to pass it along.  This has become easier than ever before with Tweets, Retweets, FB Share, Google Buzz, ShareThis and the like.  They consider themselves part of a network, surrounded by others that appreciate the same sort of information that satisfies them.
Learn to feed them, and they will do the rest.
No other online marketing effort is going to satisfy this formula as well as the well maintained, and well leveraged business blog.  It begs to be the center of your online marketing strategy.  Just Tweeting, or posting to Facebook, without the support of the blog will have you coming up short in your goals for success.  The blog represents the mother ship for you to be found and to be seen as the expert you deserve.

2. What is your intended audience is looking for?

1. Listings.

Expect that everyone that you attract to your site has an interest in property currently on the market.

2. Trusted Resource

I’ve been talking with a client that is trying to work out a slogan for her new company blogsite.  “No Bullshit” came to mind, and although it made us all laugh, and was discarded for it’s profanity… it was precisely what we wanted to say.

The real estate blog is your chance to be the answers to the questions that your target audience is asking.
You know what keeps them up at night, whether it be excitement or fear… now give them piece of mind, one post at a time.
Related: The Two Most Important Things To Consider About Your Real Estate Blogsite

3. What contribution do you make to the internet?

When you Google yourself, what do you find?
You are in control (most of the time) as to what appears when people start researching you – take it seriously.
The digital age has us all expecting to find answers on any person, place or thing, so we dig until we do.  Websites, LinkedIn Profiles, Facebook accounts, Twitter streams, blogs, comments left on blogs, forum participation, news pieces, Craigslist ads… all of it appears, and is generally pretty easy to sort through.
I can learn more about you in 5 mins online than you could tell me in that same amount of time.  What am I going to find?
Are you taking the time to set the impression that you hope potential clients receive?
Will they find a whimsical effort of social participation? (read: recklessly maintained Facebook/Twitter profile)
Will they find a very outdated, online brochure of your business? (read: limited template real estate site)
Or, will they see your commitment to your clients and their needs?  Will they find a wealth of authority bundled up in a comprehensive and relevant package?  Will they see your accessibility and willingness to help, education and service?
One of the huge benefits of the well maintained real estate blog is the enormous amount of content that you generate over the years.  This content becomes the authority for which you are known, giving off the impression for which you aim.  Turning this content into bite-sized-status-update-snacks on your various professional profiles will also help maintain this impression the deeper they dig.
The bottom line is that the blog represents the best solution for being found, being seen as the trusted resource, and gives off the impression that you care about your business and people’s experience when working with you.  The rest of your online activity should simply support this effort.
If you want to master these techniques alongside a personal trainer, contact us right away to schedule a session.

The post Why The Real Estate Blogsite Needs To Be The Central Element Of Your Online Marketing Strategy. appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Don’t get caught wearing the Bad Idea Jeans

Let me start by pointing out what aren’t shortcuts.

1. Having someone else provide content for you.

This perceived shortcut comes in many forms, and they are all shortcuts to failure.
Having your webdesign company provide content for you.
I am often asked if we provide the service of helping our clients with some canned content to help their site get off the ground, or to fill in those slow times.  They go on to explain that we should have content that is basic real estate information for the consumer, such as: “10 Things to Consider Before Selling Your Home”, “Closing Costs Explained for the Buyer” or a “Moving Checklist”.
This reminds me of the ‘Free Reports” that template website companies include for their clients.
The main challenge with this content is that it is not original, and the search engines consider it a duplication of something they have seen 1000s of times before.  This is a great way to weaken the authority of your blogsite in the search engines.
The second issue is that this general/evergreen content is nothing but overused drivel that offers no indication to your visitors that you care about their real needs.
So no, we do not offer canned content to pad your blog.
Republishing “Real Estate News” as blog content.
Republishing duplications of content that has already be indexed by the search engines is generally a very poor marketing strategy.
The basic sense is that the search engines want to provide the best search experience for their users, and posting multiple websites with the same content is counterintuitive.   As a result the search engines will either filter the content to not appear in the results, or even adjust their indexing and ranking of the sites that contain the duplicate content.  That’s bad.  You do not want the search engines diminishing your value as a result in their indexing because this will affect not only the articles that you have copied, but rather the value of the entire website.
The damages done to your blogsite by copying/pasting content off the wire go beyond suffering in the search engines for publishing duplicate content.
Your ideal reader, most likely, has no interest in national real estate topics.  So by filling your pages with information that is of little use to your target audience, you are basically proving to them that you do not understand their needs, nor care about providing something of real value.
At a minimum, if you can’t resist using RE news as content, you have to give it the old-college-once-over (uniquely edit it) and provide some value with a unique opinion.
Using a Ghost Writer.

So you need original content… why not hire someone to do all the heavy lifting?
Because blogs work only when they are an extension of you and your expertise.
Imagine sending someone else, other than you, out with your new client to view homes, answer questions, negotiate offers, coordinate the involvement of 3rd parties, etc.  As convenient as that would be, you know that as an expert agent, you are best suited to initiate, build, maintain and honor the relationship with your client.  They trust you, because you are so involved in the experience.
Blogging works the same way.  In order for your audience to trust that you are the agent with whom they must be working, they need to feel that you care about their needs, and that you are involved in the experience.  By having someone else play the role of “content creator’ then you are unable to establish that relationship directly.  In the end, this will work against your goal of forging relationships with potential clients through the internet.
Having a ghost writer help in those busy times… or to help edit your skeleton articles can certainly be acceptable… just never lose sight of the fact that the blog is an extension of you, and not just a receptacle of content, for content’s sake.
Using Syndicated Content
Services like BringTheBlog.com offer the promise of delivering real estate and mortgage related content to your blog automatically.
Although this content can be somewhat customized to your local area with dynamic keywords, therefore making it appear more unique and applicable to your readers’ interests, it is clear that it falls short of being a reliable shortcut to blogging success.  The same reasons that the above short cuts fail apply here: duplicated content, lack of personalization, and failure to connect with your target audience.
BTB claims that it isn’t meant to be used as a crutch for bloggers, but rather as a way to fill in the voids, and to inspire content that can be customized to each user’s needs.  What I see happening, however, is the tendency to rely too much on this service for content.  As a result your blog muscle atrophies from non-use and the sound strategy of the blog being an extension of you goes out the window.

2. Posting Listings as Blog Articles

There can be huge benefit to blogging your listings, as long as you go about it sensibly.
If, however, you think that your blog is an extension of your featured listing page and you fill successive posts with MLS content, you will fail to connect with any reader.
Before publishing listing info on your blog, ask yourself: “Will my ideal reader want to see this?”

If you want to ensure that they do, then you need to write something beyond the MLS speak.
Use the listing as a teachable moment; what can be learned from this home that is on the market?
Appraisal challenges?
Contingency issues?
Curb appeal?
Home improvement returns?
Home value comparison to the neighborhood?
There are a ton of oppoertunities to leaverage a listing as a blog article, but it starts with creating value and connecting to your reader.
After that, you can reap all the SEO benefits of posting the listing address, pricing, amenities etc.

3. Status Updates as Blog Posts.

Leave the inspiring quotes, cryptic messages, weather observations, puns, lolcats, rhetorical questions, general announcements to no one, etc… to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.
Consider why people are coming to your site in the first place: Looking for answers to their questions.
New readers most likely came in through the search engines, feed their need with content of real value.
Your repeat visitors probably already have a social media connection to you where they can see your personality pool over.
Your blog should be the mothership of your expertise, treat it that way.

So what is the shortcut to success with your real estate blog?

Hone the skills it takes to attract the right audience and then make them trust you.
Step 1.
Decide who you are going to write to.
Step 2.
Consider what their real estate needs, fears, anxieties and excitements are.
Step 3.
Schedule the time to create and publish pithy content about the latter for the former.
Step 4.
Be original for Pete’s sake.
If you want to master these techniques alongside a personal trainer, contact us right away to schedule a session.

The post What Is The Shortcut To Success With Your Real Estate Blog? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Don’t Get Caught On Your Knees Sifting For Gold
When You Could Be On Stage, Making A Lasting Impression.

I am so proud of the real estate industry.  You’ve come so far!
In the latter half of the 90’s decade, as the Internet promised to be a modern gold rush, yet curiously, Realtors showed little interest.  It wasn’t until just recently that the Realtor’s personal website was accepted as an obligatory expense.  The irony is that now it has little chance of being effective.
But today, I actually have faith in the real estate agent’s embrace of the Internet as an effective marketing tool.
As much as the $500 brochure website of yesteryear catered to the ego of the Glamour Shots® agent, it failed to jibe with their gregarious nature.  Affable and outgoing agents couldn’t recognize any immediate relevance to their obvious business model; network, network, network.
Yet now, with the rise of Social Media, Realtors are feeling much more at home online, recognizing the opportunity to leverage the Internet as a viable networking tool.
Where it once seemed that Realtors needed to be dragged into the 21st century, they are now marching forward in droves.  A rush, if you will.

But there’s a problem.

In the rush of 1849, where 100’s of thousands broke from their traditional lifestyle in search of riches in the hills of California, there was no guarantee of success.  For every nugget of gold discovered, there were thousands left holding a fruitless shovel.  River panners spent back breaking days sifting through the silt of the river bottom only to discover enough flecks of gold to keep him fed, and yet hungry for more.
As it turns out, those that were making the best living during the gold rush were those that sold the equipment (shovels, maps, mining tools, waterwheels, hydraulics, etc.)  to the prospectors.
This rush for Realtors to leverage Social Media for ready-to-act home buyers and sellers is proving to be a similar environment.  Shovels, pans and picks have been replaced by Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain, SEO and the endless list of consultants willing to sell you a few hours of their expertise (maps, if you will).
It might sound like I am tearing shingles off my own roof, for I am an “equipment” provider.  My intent, however, is to bring some clarity to the social media fog in which I see most participating Realtors aimlessly wandering around.
Almost no gold came easy.
And just doing what everyone else was doing made it harder still.
But there were fortunes made, when the proper systems were implemented.
It wasn’t about the map, the shovel, or the pan.
It was about organizing the community to work for you.

To be successful as a prospector there was a formula:

1. Get there early to stake out as much land as possible.
2. Build an outfit of contractors to do all the heavy lifting.
3. Provide tools and equipment.
4. Establish strong vigilance in an effort to prevent any ‘unaccounted-for’ gold.

Let me paint another picture.

For most, participating in social media is like going to a rock concert.  You find yourself surrounded by people that all have a common interest (be it AC/DC or real estate).  You like the familiar, loud music, you like the energy of the crowd, you feel connected.  But, at the end of the show, there are only a select few that the whole crowd remembers.  It was those on stage, leading the audience to be connected, who made the biggest impression.
So with your efforts in social media, you need to make the choice: Are you going to be on stage, making the lasting impression?  OR  Are you going home in an overpriced souvenier T-shirt, telling all your friends how great it was?
For prospectors, making a fortune during the California gold rush was so challenging because the effort and investment of organizing an outfit to do all the heavy lifting was out-of-reach for most.
Social Media on the other hand has made it all too easy to organize a formidable community.
Now, to be successful in leveraging that community to “work” for you, it is your responsibility to get up on stage, in front of them, night after night, and start leaving an impression.  If you go to the show just to hold a lighter, you’ll always be just a face in the crowd.

To be successful in social networking there’s a much easier formula:

1. Get there early to develop the largest amount of followers as possible.
2. Regularly Provide Relevant, Compelling, Eye-catching, and Impressionable content for the community to consume.
3. Update your status regularly with Relevant, Compelling, Eye-catching, and Impressionable bite-size content.
4. Participate (comment, message, tag, nudge and friend) in the Greater Community to grow your reach, relevance and influence.
5. Lather – Rinse – Repeat.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to learn to use these social tools of today.
Be certain, they aren’t going away.  The generation coming up under us will make sure of that.

Streets Paved With Gold

Tidbit of trivia for those that made it to the bottom of the article: Streets in Northern California mining towns were in fact paved with gold.  Slag from the mines was used to reinforce dirt streets.  Before the dust, dirt and mud again covered it completely, the kids in town would pick through the rubble, occasionally finding discarded treasure.

The post Lost In The Crowd: Realtors Fail To Effectively Leverage Social Media. appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

No one is denying that there has been a shake-up in the real estate industry.
Empty cubicles, where there once was a waiting list, tell the story better than I could.
A thinning of the herd is always a positive thing for those staying put, but the bottom line is that there will always be more agents in the field than ready-to-act buyers and sellers.
So we ask, what are you doing to ensure that you are a ‘stayer’ in 2008?
There is common saying that I can’t see being much more appropriate than now: Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Along with this national ‘shift in the market’, that has many agents looking for a new career, there is another ‘shift’ that will certainly lead to the frustration and demise of many seasoned and novice agents alike.

The Digital Divide.

In 1997, an agent having an online identity was the exception and today it is the rule.
Unfortunately, today 99% of these online real estate identities have been rendered mostly useless.
The typical agent’s website is a glorified digital brochure with it’s only useful tool being the ubiquitous home search button.
So the rhetorical question becomes: Of what use is a canned real estate agent website to today’s ready-to-act buyers and sellers?
Your challenge: Today’s internet user (real estate related) is looking for Right Now Answers to their Right Now Questions.  They are looking for and expecting Perspective and Insight from a changing industry.
Being a huge fan of Wired Magazine, I am going to lift one of their standbys in order to illustrate how the industry is failing to meet the expectations of the internet user and what can be done to improve the effort.
Introducing the Expired, Tired and Wired when it comes to the online presence of a real estate agent.

Expired:

Personal Domain Names
It’s not supposed to be about you.  Its supposed to be about what you are doing for me.  Using your name as your domain name already gives me the feeling that I am about to land on a site where you tell me all about your designations, awards, hobbies, pet’s name and top it all off with a Glamour-Shots headshot from 10 years ago.
The Intro Page
No Content = No SEO
Why are you making me click twice to get into your site?
Please tell me that you aren’t still using flash to welcome visitors.  That’s so 2001
The Canned Welcome Message
Your message has been used on 1000’s of sites.  Google ignores it.  And so does everyone who comes to your site.  Terrible first impression.
Local Links: Weather, Schools, Chambers…
If I wanted to check the weather do you really think I am going to think of your website?
Link Exchanges
First AdvancedAccess got nailed, now just recently it was RealEstateWebmasters.  It’s SEO gaming, people.
Free Reports
At least you aren’t charging for dated advice that you didn’t write, and probably never even read.
Canned Drip Marketing Campaigns
“Spring is here.  Time for a little Spring Cleaning”  – I just threw up in my mouth a little.  This type of useless marketing sucks.
These are just as bad as the free reports you didn’t write/read.  Worst part?  You are sending them to me and I never even subscribed.
Featured Properties
Is this as discriminating as it sounds?  This must make your other sellers feel like their properties aren’t as important.  Just send me to where I can see all properties.
Sounds On Your Site
Please, no songs, no sound effects, no spoken intro messages.
People like to choose when they hear sounds, especially when browsing at work.
More Than 10 Buttons in your Navigation
How many choices are too many?  Some things are just too obvious.

Tired:

Home Value, Property Request and Pre-qualification Forms
With all the above working against you when it comes to being resourceful destination for your visitor, do you really think that you are going to have people filling these out?  Not a chance.
Mortgage Calculators
Why don’t I just make up a number?   It will probably be just as accurate.
If I knew exactly what the rate was that I was qualified for, don’t you think I would have also already gotten past the ‘what can I afford’ stage?
Personal Logos
Leaning on your name is pretentious.
Framing anything other than your 3rd Party IDX Solution
Your site must be less than adequate if you are concerned I may not come back to it as a superior resource.

Wired:

Descriptive, Catchy, and/or Memorable Domain Names
Been here once?  Bet you never had trouble recalling it a second time.
Try these: RainCityGuide.com, PortOrangeJuice.com, UrbanDigs.com, ArlingtonDirt.com, RealEstateSnippets.com, and FocusOnCrofton.com
The Blogsite in Place of the Website

• Fresh, Relevant Articles based on your clients’ concerns and questions replace your ineffective Welcome Message.
• Categories loaded with descriptive articles covering cover the topics of interest to your visitor replace Irrelevant Local Links.
• Natural SEO and Inbound Links generated through participation in the RE.net replace Link Exchange Gaming
• Solid Real Estate Reporting that you stand behind replace Dated and Ignored Free Reports.
• Blog Email Blasts and Feed Subscriptions replace Canned Drip Marketing.
• Lead Generation forms are now suddenly more effective because you have used the above to build trust, relationships and loyalty.
• You know I could go on and on

Participation in the RE.net
Embrace your fellow agents in the online community.
The friendships, alliances and networks that you forge in this dawn of social media will payoff much faster and more frequently than establishing yourself as an online island.  Read your competition’s peers’ blogs, comment on their posts, encourage them to fight-the-good-fight.  This effort will earn and attract traffic to your online presence. You can even twist this into a “keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer” sentiment if you needed to.
Social Networking
This movement is more than a fad.  It is the reality you are going to find yourself behind with if you don’t get involved now.
Take the time to participate in a few, and grow your online reach.  I spend time working with Linkedin, ActiveRain, Facebook.

Staying Ahead Of The Media
Before blogging it was virtually impossible for agents to counter the media and their claims.
As the nation braced for the “resettling” of home values, for lack of a better phrase, real estate was caught with its pants down, and unable to curb the media frenzy.
When it comes to the perception of your potential client, you are not just competing with the agent next door; you are also competing with perception set by the local and national media.  Right now, there is plenty of money being made in real estate, just not in commission checks and equity.  The doom and gloom are great lead-ins to the 11 o’clock news and selling the Sunday paper.
Having your voice in the ears and eyes of your past, present and future clients will continue to have you being seen as their trusted resource for real estate consulting.  The news may not always be good, but building an audience that trusts your perspective is the goal.
—-
So, this whole article was originally inspired by conversations we had with many dozens of agents… and although we could have just ended it a sentence ago, the intention of starting it would not have truly been accomplished.
You see, over the last year, we’ve received several hundred inquiries to our site, looking for more information on taking advantage of the services we offer.  Recently, we personally attempted to re-contact every inquiry that did not end up becoming a client.  Hard to believe I know… but there were a few :).  What our team found, was a strong portion of those that never acted, still haven’t.  They are hanging on to their “Wait and see” mantra.
If you were to jump into a real estate career today, would you be volunteering for more floor time?  Organizing mass-mailers?  Sitting in others’ open houses?
Well, that’s what we are hearing over and over again as the Safe Strategy.  Agents are still willing to try and ride out the storm with more and more of the same old, same old.
The other alarming uncovering was the many stories of seasoned agents whom, with as many as 12-15 years in the industry, just 12 months ago were on cruise control, are now scrambling to get their business back on track.

Is Playing It Safe Really The Safe Play?

Or would you be making an effort to pave the way for your voice to be heard in the arenas where it is being sought?
Let’s look back at that Safe Play:

When the industry was healthy, it seemed that to generate a relationship with a potential client, all one needed to focus on was placing oneself in front of those looking to buy or sell.  The media was either positive or indifferent.
But in 2005–6, things changed. The media got involved and ran with the story of a housing bubble. Ellen Renish, speaking for NAR on the topic said “What happened to us is the media.”  Stories about a real estate “bubble” and its potential to burst caused consumers to “not do anything,” she says. “And nothing happened. The bubble stories really stopped things for three months,” Renish said. “It was pretty scary.”
What was most compelling about this situation in 2006 was the inability for agents to counter the media and their claims.
And then the bottom did fall out.  Predictably, the media kicked up their reporting in full swing.
Earlier this month, RIS media held a round table discussion on the topic.  Ron Peltiercommented “The media likes to create sensationalism, but the fact is we’re going through a national correction….There are only local stories, and they’re more relevant.”  Well yeah!  Of course… it is local.
The challenge is, real estate agents, for the most part, are not geared to “talk” local.  If agents are to counter the media, they need to COUNTER the media.  Fight words with words.  But just how do you do this when your marketing is based on recipe cards, newspaper ads and a clickable brochure with a home search?
With the media covering real estate more now then ever before, do you really think people are going online to just look for homes?  They are looking for knowledge and wisdom.  Simply put, your template website doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of offering them what they are looking for.  They are looking for PERSPECTIVE and INSIGHT not for links to the zoo or a free report on the 10 steps to getting your house ready to sell.
The gap of the Digital Divide is only widening.

The post Is Your Website Working Against Your Real Estate Career? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Our favorite “Tell-it-like-it-is” correspondent from the real estate blogosphere, Teresa Boardman, is back with her first Tomato contribution of 2008.  Recently there has been some discussion as to what approach we should take when it comes to considering the search engines with a real estate blog article writing style.
Teresa, a proven success with her straight forward approach, serves up a spoonful of perspective, keeping us all in check:

The Three Letters I Don’t Think About When Writing a Post For My Real Estate Blog

By Teresa Boardman
There are three letters that I don’t think about when I write a blog post, they are S, E and O.  I consider my posts and photographs to be a kind of creative endeavor and I can’t be creative if I am thinking about Google.  I do need to attract search engines but my main goal is to attract the people who are using the search engines.  With almost 60% of my traffic coming from search engine traffic I think I am doing just fine.
The people that I attract are much more important to me than the search engines. They are the kind of people that I want to work with and they want to work with me.  I don’t have to get all salesy with them or overcome objections.  They know what they want and they want to me to help them get it.
If I worried about how many keywords are in each post or how many categories each post is in or how each photo is labeled I couldn’t write a word. If I did everything just so for search engine optimization I think my readers would leave me.

Don’t get me wrong.  My blog is optimized.  Typepad is a great platform for SEO and even though mine is highly customized it has all the bells and whistles.  Beyond that my job is to provide content.  I know I am repeating myself but it is the content that makes it all work.  Not keyword stuffed content, but rather, stories of the ordinary.
When I write, I am thinking about buyers, and sellers and people.  I am remembering conversations or reactions that people with whom I talked to had to something that I said.  Real life situations end up on my blog and in my posts.  It is the ordinary and the every day that I write about, the obvious, and even the mundane.
It is the same way with the photos. They are pictures that can not be found anywhere else because they are pictures of the ordinary and not of the spectacular.  Homes that would not be seen in glossy magazines and pictures from around town that others just don’t take. The kind that a real photographer would not waste his or her time with but are still worth at least a thousand words.  Blog readers can relate to all of this and they get a sense that a real person is writing the blog, not some corporation that came up with a sneaky way to sell.
When people meet me in person they tell me that I sound just like my blog.  I have heard this and seen it written in blog posts.  My family and friends laugh at some of my posts because they understand why I choose the words that I do and what it means.
Blogs are about being real, and about transparency.  The best way to write a blog post is to let the thoughts about SEO go and think about who is reading your blog and what you would like to say to them.  Blog posts can almost be like an email to a friend.  When I say almost, it is because they are to a friend that you have not yet met.  The idea is to generate business by meeting people.  Pretty much the same as having an open house or sending out post cards, just cheaper and more fun and maybe harder to do.
Dare to be different and provide unique and fresh content on a regular basis. Photograph the ordinary in your home town and include it with the post.  That way people know that you are real and that you are really there.
Teresa Boardman is an exceptionally professional Realtor in the St. Paul, Minnesota area.
Her website: www.TBoardman.com
Her blog: www.StPaulRealEstateBLOG.com
Voice: 651-216-4603
Thank you Teresa.
As always, it’s a pleasure having you ‘on the Vine’.

The post Three Letters I Don’t Think About When Writing A Post For My Real Estate Blog appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

*Edit – For context, this article was originally written Nov 9th, 2007.
This past week’s Collaborative Article topic has been focused on the Future of the Real Estate Blog.
Inside the Tomato Matrix, the gang hashed out 2 specific questions:

1. What do you see as the future of the real estate blog?
2. What do you fear about the future of the real estate blog?

Before we jump into the article that is the highlights of the Tomato Forum discussion, I just wanted to paint a picture of the very near future of real estate blogging I see:

Imagine for a moment you are sitting on your couch, feet up, remote in hand.  You scroll through your Tivo’d favorites looking for updates from your favorite topics… San Diego Luxury Real Estate being one of them.  The console that sits 10 feet away is tomorrow’s television, an all-in-one entertainment center merging Internet, TV, Computer and Game Console.
Tivo has selected and recorded not only TV shows that meet your interests, but also feeds from websites, and blogs, or rather vlogs.  One of those selections is the “San Diego Luxury Home Minute” by Roberta Murphy.  It is a polished, professional, entertaining and informative clip bringing the latest on the SD luxury home market.  Intertwined in the video are remote clickable links to the graphs, tools and greater message that support today’s ‘Minute’.
You were impressed, and you want to add to the conversation that appears immediately after it wraps up.  Your options are video response, voice recording, and text by voice.
This is the future of experiencing the Internet.  As soon as we can push away from leaning over our laptops, and truly enjoy the 42” flatscreens that hang in front of us, the habit of reading online will start to wean, opening the door and demand for well presented video by the masses.

When done properly, the professional real estate video-blog
will soon set the bar above everything else in it’s arena.
Sure, there will be the traditionalists that hang on to the art of writing, but we are a culture that sits in front of the boob-tube… and if we are to truly transcend with online marketing, we need to take it to video.
(The challenges, we can hash those out in the comments)
Now back to our regularly scheduled program… the collaborative prognostication of some of our finest Tomato Bloggers.

Futures:

The Norm
Real Estate business models will need the blog to amplify their voice.  The word is out; Huge SEO coupled with Relationship Lead Generation is a winning formula.  Audiences online expect transparency as well as the opportunity to participate.  Brokers, teams, and individuals will make the effort.
Widgets
What are now seen as clumsy, bandwidth stealing, whimsical extras will soon become more refined, easy to install, resourceful tools.
Instead of books, buddies and weather we see widgets embracing tools that matter more to the consumer vs the community.  Look for widgets to focus more on: listings, localized info, mapping, market trends, and tangible resources.  Our sidebars are such valuable real estate, they deserve better than ‘who else reads my blog’.
Video Is Here
And here and soon to be here and here.
Google will soon be able to ‘read’ your voice.  This means that your monologues and dialogues will be searchable.  All the more reason to step away from the keyboard.
The Move Toward Hyper-Local Blogs
Will neighborhood specific blogs will become the norm, much like neighborhood specific farming?  It’s being shown that the more ‘drilled down’ the focus, the ‘hotter’ the leads.  For there to be room for everyone, as in the approach to the physical world of real estate, a localized focus can be a warm and rewarding place.
When the effort and content is geared to a very limited area, a new benefit will be apparent in the participation of the community.  As blogs become the best resource for a neighborhood, the neighbors will begin helping the Realtor with the quality and quantity of the content.  Visions of an HOA online, or neighborhood bulletin boards come to mind… all being sponsored by real estate agents.

Fears:

Mega-Blogs Will Dominate the SERPs
The brokers are coming, the brokers are coming.  How is a small time real estate blogger, posting a few times a week, supposed to compete with an office of 100 blogging around the same topics and neighborhoods?
Another fear is that the push for massive amounts of SEO rich content from broker blogs will create more ‘noise’ than message.  The noise will bring down the quality of the local blog content and in turn leave the searching audience jaded.
Google Giveth, Google Taketh Away
Here today, gone tomorrow.  Bloggers have been enjoying their run in the search engines.   Many of our clients boast 50% of their traffic being generated from unique search results.  Results are being seen the same day that articles are published.  Target search terms are consistently being achieved.  How long will this party last?
As Cyndee Haydon pointed out: all the better to focus on feed subscribers; Google can’t take them away.
Great Bloggers Are Not Necessarily Great Agents

The internet is the ultimate alter-ego, and predator breeding ground.  One can create a new personality along with a guise of expertise quite easily.  This coupled with the quick exposure in the search engines will give the less than qualified, and those with less than honest intentions a good chance to compete for your audience.
Similarly, the increasing penetration of ghost writers, canned content and splogs has agents fearing that audiences will recognize blogs as ‘watered down’ resources, and not dig to find the diamonds in the rough.
Vendors and Realtor.com
How many calls have you gotten from persistent salespeople looking to sling template real estate websites?  Now that blogging is being accepted as the ‘real deal’, will there be an onslaught of marketers aiming for your wallet?
Realtor.com makes a killing slinging less than effective web pages to hundreds of thousands of agents.  Are we really going to have to endure a move to their peddling of blogs?
An Enforcement of the Law?
As the little guy’s voice continues to resound effectively through blogging, will the large brokerage (s)he’s a part of continue to sit back and do nothing?
Terry McDonald believes that a broker counterattack will come with the broker blog out front, and a behind the scenes movement to use real estate law to put an end to individual blogging.  You see, many agents are working under a BIC- Broker in Charge system, or managing broker, where state laws require them to approve all agent advertising.  If they can classify real estate blogs as advertising, expect some force to be applied to suppress the individual agent blog.  Be sure they will consider this a fight worth having.
—We could go on, there were over 50 posts on the topic in our Forum from the gang listed below.  Nonetheless, the general consensus has been that as long as the efforts prove fruitful, the delivery of a personal, and regular message is here to stay regardless of its evolution.  The tools agents are embracing today are far more effective than the canned, template webpages of yesterday.  Let us continue to forge forward.
Tomato Co-Authors
 

Terry McDonald – Charlotte Communities
Paula Henry – Indy Real Estate Talk
Cyndee Haydon – Sandbars To Sunsets
Karl Burger – Pensalcola Real Estate News
Chad Lariscy – The Front Porch View
Daniel Bates – My McClellanville
Mary De Luca – Beltway Ramblings
Tracy Thomas – Blog Calabasas
Gena Riede – Sacramento Real Estate Voice
Doug Aegerter – St Louis Real Estate Voice
Jennifer Klaussen – The Arlington Dirt
Kevin Warmath – Live In Alpharetta
Hillary Shantz – The Oakville Buzz

The post What Is The Future Of The Real Estate Blog? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

I have a theory about the effectiveness of our blogging that is supported
as I look for its effect in the search engines (read: Google).

Regular Blogging + Core Focus + Ping
= News Source Recognition in Google.

I have to maintain that this is a theory, because I am not in anyway claiming to have inside knowledge on Google’s handling of blog content.  However, I can say that from personal experience, and from that of my clients, this theory consistently proves to be a convenient phenomenon.  So much so, that I know it can happen for you as well.
There is a dichotomy in the the world of real estate websites:
There are Real Estate websites that are generating natural traffic from the search engines and Real Estate websites that aren’t.
With blogging, there is an opportunity to be the former, if executed properly.
I refer to the successful reach of a real estate blog in the search engines as being recognized as a news source, as opposed to simply being a resource.
A news source is a blog that has achieved a level of authority in the search engines to the point where whatever is published is suddenly recognized as news, and therefor given preferential exposure in the search engines.
There are at least 2 opportunities to have this effect and reach in the search engines.
(You will find recent examples after the definitions)
1. Authority by Default
2. Authority by Focus

Authority by Default occurs when you publish an article on a particular topic where there is not enough competition online for the search engines to deem that others’ results are more authorative than your article.  If you are recognized as a sound, regular provider of content, and you post on something that is not already a popular topic, you can have surprisingly effective results.
Authority by Focus occurs when your site has reached the tipping point of recognition by the search engines as a competitive resource for the topics you cover most frequently.
The ‘authority’ where we have ‘tipped’ comes from the gross amount of content on topics such as: Blogging Advice, Real Estate Blogging Advice, Real Estate Blogging Topics, Real Estate Blogging Success, Real Estate Blogging 101 etc.
Whenever I publish articles that fall under the topics of authority I have established, they are sure to populate the search results, along with those articles I have written that are already there now.

Take these most recent examples as an illustration:

EX: Authority By Default

There is a newsworthy real estate event this August called Keller Williams Mega Camp.
I was asked by Gary Keller to guest speak and then I recently wrote a blog post about it. Before I wrote the post, I did some research to see what kind of exposure the event had already garnered in the search engines and blogosphere search engines (Technorati and Google Blog Search).  I found that there were a few articles and some chatter about past year’s events, but nothing too substantial with the exception of the Keller Williams Mega Camp website itself.
Within 12 hours of publishing, the article about about Keller Williams Mega Camp, the article already occupied the #2 result in Google for ‘Mega Camp 2007’.
I don’t know the exact moment that the article began to appear so competitively in the search results, but within 12 hours, is fair to say that this is the ability to ‘Break News’ on a topic.

EX: Authority By Focus

Teresa Boardman just recently posted an article to the Tomato called “The Real Estate Industry Does Not Understand Real Estate Blogs.”
Later that same day, the content of that article was being picked up by Google, and positioned incredibly favorably (front page) for the search phrases: real estate industry blogs and real estate industry blogging.  Even though these terms are incredibly competitive (nearly 12 million results), because of the authority established by the Real Estate Tomato for such terms, we were able to penetrate the top of the charts almost instantly.

I recognize these phenomena as the ability to ‘break news’.  Appearing in the search results so quickly and competitively for the above scenarios is the equivalent of CNN or Fox News breaking a story online, and it being posted favorably in the search engines.
How do I see this working?  The formula from above:
Regular Blogging + Core Focus + Ping = News Source Recognition in Google.

Regular Blogging

Regular blogging is a huge part of the formula’s success.  Search engines are hungry for new content, and by producing it uniquely and regularly you are essentially becoming a regular stop for the SE’s to consume your offerings.  The more produce, the more they spider and index, the more reach and more positive results you achieve.

Related Article: How Often Should I Blog?

Core Focus

Your core focus helps you develop your authority.  The density of your keywords depends on the amount of content that you have created based around not only the words themselves, but the topics as well.
Search engines aren’t just data collectors and organizers that don’t understand the relationship among words.  If you are blogging about real estate, search engines will recognize the relation of other common industry words such as listings, homes, agent, Realtor, house, property, mortgage, etc.  So by maintaining a core focus, and blogging about topics around and related to real estate, you are able to establish an authority on the general topic, hence giving you leverage with the related topics.

Why Am I Blogging?
6 Steps To Getting Started With A Business Blog
The Long Tail In Real Estate

Ping (XML Ping)

Pinging is the ability to notify subscribers, other blogs, news sources, directories, search engines, search bots and other services that there is data to be accepted and processed from your site.  Some blogs have pinging tools built in, others have the ability to add a list of services that you would like to have pinged, and there are services like Pingoat that allow you to ping dozens of services with the click of the mouse.
Again, the above is just a theory, based on personal and client results.  Such quick and favorable exposure in the search engines is the result of something we do here and something we train to do.

The post Real Estate Blogging And Search Engines – The News Source Theory appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

The Real Estate Industry Does Not Understand Real Estate Blogs

By Teresa Boardman
Our industry is made up of over a million Realtors and some other people too.  When it comes to blogs our role models and industry experts seem to be a collection of technology and media companies that are some what removed from the business of buying and selling real estate.  They understand how blogs work and even have awards for innovative blogs like the Tomato.
Even though this tomato blog is not a real estate blog it is considered an industry leader. I would agree, mainly because Jim is one of the few in our industry that understands real estate blogs and how they can help individual agents attract clients.  Jim attracts clients of his own through his blog because it is an excellent example of a business blog.  It is focused and never preachy and he provides us with the information we are searching for.  He has strong following but is also found through amazingly well in Google.
My own hyper local real estate blog is not an industry blog.  About 64% of my readers come in through search engines and many do not know that they are reading a blog, nor do they care.  It doesn’t matter because they find the information they seek, right next to my phone number and email address.  When they contact me they say: “I some how found your web site”..  Like me, they don’t care what my page rank is or my Technorati authority rating; they are just looking for information.  Some home owners and people who are relocating to St. Paul become regular readers.
The real estate industry has not yet embraced the idea of local blogs built by local agents. Heck real estate is local but when it comes to technology many of our industry leaders are focused on national web sites, and blogs.  Agents need to understand that consumers have concerns of their own and are looking for information, advice, homes and Realtors on the internet.  They are a different audience than the audience that many in our industry are focused on.
It is all right to have a hyper local blog and it can work just fine even if no one from the real estate industry notices it or reads it. I guess I am getting tired of reading about how my own blog as some kind of an anomaly, especially when the commentary is being written by people who are not real estate practitioners and have never written to my clientele.  Writing a business blog is not about wining carnivals or industry awards.  In fact it is possible that if content is geared toward real estate carnival winning and national awards, the blog will not attract as many readers who may need real estate services, but rather, attracts others in the real estate industry.

Do people who are looking for an agent care if we have posts that win blog carnivals?
The advice for agents who want to start blogs isn’t very good either. Most of it is written by people who do not have direct contact with the consumer, or who have never written a blog for the general public about but write for business owners and other bloggers.
People who write blogs are more likely to read them so writing to other bloggers almost guarantees a larger audience. Over the last few months I have concluded that I can do a better job with my blog by ignoring most real estate industry blogs and focusing on my own geographic area.  It isn’t easy to go against the tide but I have to if I want to accomplish my own goals.
Where are my role models? To be honest they are in other industries, and are small business owners just like me.
Most of all I think it is important for agents who want to have real estate blogs to not get discouraged and to keep the focus on the audience and the goals of the blog. I will admit, I do get discouraged at times.  Use tools like google analyitics to determine how well your site is doing and use hittial to decide what type of content to write and read the Tomato.
At the risk of  giving tomato man a big head, I  have to say that so far he is the only non real estate agent blogger that I have talked to that gets it. He may or my not get it as well as I do, which is O.K. because he lets me write on his blog when I have something to say, and recognizes that even though he is the industry expert an actual real estate agent  might be able to add value to his blog.  Jim is someone who supports our efforts as individual real estate practitioners and bloggers: another first in the real estate industry.
Thanks Jim, for your support and for having me on the vine.

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