Or…

The good ones are too expensive and already too busy to take on new business.

The problem with paying someone to blog for you is that if you don’t know what it takes to be an effective blogger in the first place, it is hard to be a good judge of who you are hiring.

Content is king.

But…crappy content is just crap.

People will take your money and they will Plagiarize.
They will rip it off Wikipedia.
They will copy your competitors.
This is crap and it can get you in a lot of expensive, hot water.

People will take your money and use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate content.
This shortcut leaves you with questionable claims.
This shortcut does not identify sources.
This shortcut is not fact checked.
This is still crap and can make you look like a fool.

People will take your money that do not have native command of American English
This cheap route leaves you with odd grammar and spelling mistakes.
This cheap route doesn’t grasp cultural nuances.
This cheap route will cause you to edit it yourself.
This is crap and it will make you look like you paid for a cheap service.

People will take your money that have no understanding of basic SEO or Copywriting.
Lack of SEO understanding can bury the best written article.
Lack of Copywriting skills will bore your readers.
This is crap and you’ll think that blogging just doesn’t work.

We are the pioneers of Real Estate Blogging; teaching agents how to be incredible bloggers since 2006. Now we want to write for you!

Don’t pay more than you should to a contractor in high demand.

Don’t take the cheap route and regret the crap you get back.

Let us do it! In 2022 we wrote over 1,250,000 words for our clients!

• We research it
• We write it
• We polish it
• We optimize it for Google
• We publish it to your website

You get to sit back, look amazing, and take all the credit.

If this sounds interesting, let’s have a 10 min call to show you how we’re the reason you’re going to be found in Google.

Curious to learn more? Visit: TomatoCopy.com

The post Why It Is So Hard To Find Someone To Blog Effectively For You? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Half quit after 2 posts.

Another half after the next 2 posts
Another half after the next 2 posts
Another half after the next 2 posts
Another half after the next 2 posts
Another half after the next 2 posts
Another half after the next 2 posts

That leaves us with only 0.75% blogging after just 14 posts.

I made that stat up, but it might as well be true since of all the 1000s of agents I know, only a handful still blog regularly.

You’re asking the wrong question when you want to know, “How often?”

The answer is probably “not at all” if statistically no one will ever stick with it long enough to see the results they’re asking about. It’s just going to be a waste of time, and a stalled blog with a handful of posts looks worse than no blog at all.

But maybe I got you all wrong.

Maybe you’re one of those people that follow through with their New Year’s resolutions.
Or you’re someone so focused that you commonly achieve Moksha with Inbox Zero.

The right answer is “as often as you can maintain.”
Success in Google is a relationship with Google. (That sounds weird in my head, too.)

You have to continue to feed it content, centering around a target audience’s interest.
If you can do it once a week, every week, and it’s the good stuff… the stuff your customers want to click, then you will be rewarded with great organic traffic.

Want that reward doubled? Blog the good-good twice as often.
Just don’t burn out too quickly. The longer you seed, feed, and share the longer you will enjoy the spoils.

I’ve written 100s of articles for Real Estate Tomato. And I have taken years off at a time.
Guess which period I get my most Google traffic.

If you’re part of the 99.25% and you recognize the power of blogging but know that you aren’t going to be consistent at it then you need us.

• We research it
• We write it
• We polish it
• We optimize it for Google
• We publish it to your website

You get to sit back, look amazing, and take all the credit.

If this sounds interesting, let’s have a 10 min call to show you how we’re the reason you’re going to be found in Google.

Curious to learn more?

The post How Often Should I Blog If I Want To Succeed In Google? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Your sellers have new questions.
Your buyers have new questions.
Your neighbors have new questions.

You need to have good answers.
Answers that make sense.
Answers that you can support in face of all the misconceptions they already have.

Blogging is not just for being found in Google because of the sweet SEO it brings.
It’s about educating your audience.
It’s about building trust through knowledge.
It’s your chance to shine in a world of uncertainty and contradictions.

So whether it’s buyers confidently wrong that the market is certain to crash, bringing home prices down with it, or sellers that think it’s a market still in their favor, it’s your job to bring clarity.

And along with clarity, you can also bring honesty and say “we don’t know” when you don’t. Being wrong is worse than being silent.

The real benefit in this situation is helping clarify your own understanding of the questions your customer has. By taking the time to consider, empathize, research, write, and publicly publish the answers to their questions, you are making yourself a better agent for them.

Successful blogging is simply answering your customers’ questions.
The more they have, the more you should be blogging.

But Jim, who has time for all that?

I’m glad you asked.

We do.

The post As The Market Shifts So Do Your Customers’ Questions. This Is What Blogging Is For. appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Hell yeah I am!

You’re just chapped because it’s something you know you should do, but never do.
I’m the same with going to the gym for some.

I wish someone could go to the gym for me, workout for an hour, and I get all the benefits.
I’d pay that dude $100 an hour, probably more once I saw those sweet abs come into view.

Blogging is work.
But the sweet abs traffic is worth the effort.

Some masochists even come to love it.

All the idea planning, the first draft, the editing, the SEO, the formatting, linking, finding the perfect image, etc… for some it’s like the joy of gardening. For others it’s like the hell of playing in a disgusting, muddy, worm filled, flower box of crap.

When you learn the simple steps of an effective blog format the only real trick is just showing up. If you put your gym clothes on, and drive over there a few times a week you are going to get results. Staying home in your athleisure binging Marriage or Mortgage is the equivalent to doom scrolling InstaBlah when you could have just busted out 4 paragraphs about the fact that low inventory is keeping prices high even though those stupid interest rates keep climbing. I mean, where are all these people getting this money to afford this market? I don’t know… don’t ask any questions. Just blog it.

For the first few weeks you think, looking back – I’ve barely written anything.

After the first year you look back and think – holy crap – look at all that progress. Look at all that growth. Look at all that traffic. Look at all those leads.

Imaging the feeling of having a blog full of amazing content that proves you are truly the Local Area Specialist that you claim to be. The feeling of someone choosing you because the impression they have of you is the local expert that understands their concerns, questions, and needs about the community. The feeling of being found dozens of times a day by customers asking the question that you have answered with your blog.

Who am I kidding?

We all just wish there was someone who could go to the gym for us, and yet we end up with the sweet, sweet abs.

That’s where we come in!

• We research it
• We write it
• We polish it
• We optimize it for Google
• We publish it to your website

You get to sit back, look amazing, and take all the credit.

If this sounds interesting, let’s have a 10 min call to show you how we’re the reason you’re going to be found in Google.

Curious to learn more? Visit: TomatoCopy.com

The post The Hardest Thing About Blogging Is Keeping At It – But It Is Worth It appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

GC – The formula for successful blogging can be taught by Jim and his team in a short period of time. My initial expectation was that it would take several months to learn how to use the back-end tools and another few months to create compelling content that would get picked up by the search engines. BUT, it turns out that the back-end WordPress tools are very user friendly, and the training had us creating a ton of resourceful posts within a few weeks. It certainly takes discipline and dedication to consistently create new content – but it has been so worth it. The beauty of real estate blogging is that you can work on your content during your down time. You definitely get what you put into it.
4. Why do you feel focusing on a specific niche is the best approach when it comes to content marketing?
GC – Focusing on a specific niche makes you the expert in that category. It magnifies you as a specialized agent and eliminates the competition.
5. What success have you experienced for all your efforts?
GC – In the few months since we started blogging we have already generated leads that have lead to over $20,000 in commissions.
6. Once you went live, how long did it take to start seeing the strategy start to work?
GC – It took about 2 months before we started getting the phone to ring.
7. What was the best thing you learned in your development period.
GC – We learned the creating videos got us quick rankings in google. Videos also got us quick results – people really responded to them.
If you want to see what Greg and Ana have been blogging about, or if you want to learn about New Construction Homes in Southern Dade County, check out their website.
At the time of this interview they had published about 70 posts in 6 months, which works about to about 3 times a week.
They are placing on the front page for a ton of targeted keywords/phrases, and haven’t spent a dime on pay-per-click.
This is success that will stick, even if they slow their pace blogging. They have out-paced their competition, and confirmed their authority in Google.
They own the niche, and Google has rewarded them for their efforts.
If you would like to see results like Greg and Ana, drop us a line, we’ll help you make it happen for you and your niche

The post Attention REALTORS! Blogging Is STILL The Best Way To DOMINATE In The Search Engines appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

1. Calmly – Writing App

When I write blogs, I typically use a notepad program before publishing to my WordPress website. I find it easier to focus using the plain, no frills, no distraction approach of the simple notepad.
That is until I stumbled across this online writing tool: Calmly. Calmly is professional text editor that is so inviting to just WRITE.
You can format content, add images, save your work, etc. But it’s the simple writing interface that me won over.
Check it out – maybe it’s a match for your blogging needs as well. https://calmlywriter.com

2. HemingwayApp – Readability Tool

If you are concerned with the “readability” of your blog posts, then this is a great desktop app for you.
The HemingwayApp grades your readability on a grade scale of 1 to 24 (higher is worse). Then it highlights the text in your post that it recognizes as troublesome. It even offers suggestions and solutions for your writing.
I don’t use it. But it does seem useful enough to recommend. http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
(Edit: I just used it to clean up this post a little. Worked like a charm)

3. IrfanView – Image Editor

I have been using this light-weight image editor for 20 years.
It is fast, and easy once you get a hang of using keyboard shortcuts (instead of mousing through the menus).
I use it to resize, crop, and optimize every image I publish. http://www.irfanview.com/

4. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer

I think I have a pretty good handle on writing headlines that get clicked. But it’s always good to get critiqued and get some additional advice on how to improve.
It’s simple – just paste (or type) in your headline and this app spits out a thorough analysis of your effort.
I used it to see how it works… but haven’t relied on it since. I could see it being useful to new bloggers that want to make sure their headlines are effective. http://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

5. Piktochart – Infographic App

I recently posted about the undeniable effectiveness of infographics in social media.
This free tool has a ton of bells and whistles to create stunning and informative infographics. There’s a bit of learning curve, and making a nice infographic is a time investment, but it is nice to have a tool like this to work with.
Typically I use Photoshop for my graphic design work, but I am impressed with this tool and plan to give it a try for my next Infographic. https://piktochart.com/

6. Canva – Graphic Design for Dummies

Love this tool.
It makes graphic design fun, easy, and successful for those who don’t use Photoshop, and don’t have a lot of time.
Basically, if you want to say something with graphic design and get it shared onto your blog, or in your social media sphere, you need to try Canva. http://canva.com

The post 6 Real Estate Blogging Tools and Gadgets Worth Considering appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Create an infographic.

A few years ago I created this infographic about How To Ensure Your Success As A Real Estate Blogger.
After publishing it on this website, I pinned it to Pinterest.
I had at times noticed that it was repinned quite a bit, but never paid much mind to it. Then yesterday I looked at the stats and see that it has been re-pinned over 3,100 times. Holy cow! I looked at the stats on all my other pins and see that of nearly 300 pins my second highest pinned image is 66 times (and the 3rd highest is just 33 pins). That’s almost 50x the amount of pinning!
The thing is, creating that infographic took me 50 times longer than any of the images I posted on Pinterest. So you could say I got out of it what I put in. And I haven’t created another infographic since then because of the time it took to do that first one (a few hours).
That is until today!
Turns out making infographics is no longer the massive chore it was just a few years ago.
Using a tool Canva.com you can create a great looking, super-shareable infographic in about 30 mins. If the results are anything like my first infographic, I plan on doing a lot more of these.
NOTE: My next scheduled blog post covers a ton of great ideas on what subjects to cover with your infographics for Real Estate. It’s sure to be an awesomely informative post. Make sure to subscribe to be notified so that you don’t miss it. Click here to subscribe.

How to Make a Successful Infographic

The above infographic was designed to be easily noticed and digested. Below is a little more insight on the included 8 points: 

Get Inspired

Rather than staring at a blank canvas, look at what others have done successfully before you. Save a few favorites for inspiration and borrow from them the ideas you need. This site has a ton of great examples that will get your creativity flowing: DailyInfographic.com. This Pinterest Board has a ton of Real Estate related Infographics.
Once you have a solid inspiration, you can use Canva’s infographic templates to design your vision.

Wireframe

Sketch out the whole concept on paper. It’s much easier and faster to work with the rough draft it than with the design program. I also found that I was able to come up with several solid ideas for future infographics as I was sketching out this one. Now I have a notebook with a bunch of pages of ideas all ready to go.

Use Canva

Canva.com – they are just what the novice designer needs.
Drag and drop content, simple editors, tons of free templates and graphics, and most importantly: guidelines to keep everything in place. I loved using it to create the infographic above. You can also buy premium graphics for as little as $1. I was able to keep my project free by designing some of my own images for the icons – which is another nice feature: upload your own graphics.

Think Mobile

My website analytics show that 40% of my audience is mobile. But the analytics on my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest profiles show that number to by upwards of 75%. So at this point, I would design the infographic for the mobile audience. Keep the message clear and simple. Overly complicated infographics with lots of images and data will not be appreciated by your mobile audience.

Contrast

Contrast gets you noticed. Contrast draws attention to the flow of the message. Use bold colors, bold fonts, attractive images, and enough white space to keep your audience on track.

Blog It

All your best content should originate on your blog. It will last forever there, well organized, well indexed (SEO), and clearly attributed to you. From there you can share it everywhere else.

Share It

Great content is meant to be shared. Get it in front of as many as you can and then let them do the rest of the work. I shared that original infographic just 1 time on Pinterest, and it was re-pinned over 3100 times. I’m going to dust it off and share it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Recycle

Not only does the infographic make for great blog content and social media fodder, but it can be incredibly useful on your website pages. If you create an infographic on the Home Selling Process, this would be an amazing asset to your Selling pages on your website. If you have your website in mind when you consider your infographics, you can really make use of them over and over.
NOTE: My next scheduled blog post covers a ton of great ideas on what subjects to cover with your infographics for Real Estate. It’s sure to be an awesomely informative post. Make sure to subscribe to be notified so that you don’t miss it. Click here to subscribe.
 

The post How to Be Successful Posting On Pinterest – The Infographic appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

With real estate blogging, when someone asks
“Does it work?” they mean, “Does it generate business?”

It does.
Here’s why:

Your potential clients have questions.
You have the answers.
Your blog is the vehicle that delivers the answers to your potential clients.
It delivers them through Google.
It delivers them through Email.
It delivers them through Social Media.
You build trust and earn new clients through reliable counsel.
The formula is simple:
For Google: The more your create >> the more you are “spidered” >> the more you are “indexed” >> the more you’re found >> the more you’re read >> the more you’re trusted >> the more new business you generate.
For Social Media: The more your create >> the more you are shared >> the more you’re found >> the more you’re read >> the more you’re trusted >> the more new business you generate.
NOTE: There are just 2 little caveats to making sure that the above is going to to work out as planned.
1. If you don’t have a well defined target audience, you won’t be answering the questions that they are asking.
Learn more about how and why to define a limited target audience.
2. Every bit of your content needs to be unique. The ideas, and the topics, and the questions you answer don’t have to be unique. It’s the content that you publish that needs to be unique if you want to have any chance at success.

If you can’t make the content happen because you don’t have the time, or interest, or language skills, then you need to seek someone who does. Having strong content on your website is crucial for connecting with your visitor and that is the first step in “generating leads.”

Don’t just hire whomever to help with your website’s content. Hire someone who cares and understands your business. Hire someone that you are willing and able to spend time with to train to write on your behalf. This relationship needs to be healthy and maintained in order for you to get the results you want.

Let us do it!

• We research it
• We write it
• We polish it
• We optimize it for Google
• We publish it to your website

You get to sit back, look amazing, and take all the credit.

If this sounds  interesting, let’s have a 10 min call to show you how we’re the reason you’re going to be found in Google.

Curious to learn more? Visit: TomatoCopy.com

The post Why Does Real Estate Blogging Work? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Or whats the shortest post I can publish and still see good results?

The following is an argument for short real estate blog posts… even though I know that longer posts will perform better.

The 300 Word Myth?

The idea that a post needs to be at least 300 words in order to be seen as long enough for Google is one that I see and hear frequently. The idea is that is falls under what Google calls “Thin Content.” But the idea of Thin Content is content that doesn’t satisfactorily provide value to your website visitor. If your blog article is one that doesn’t require more than a couple of sentences to make a point, or answer a question, then how can it be seen as lacking value?

I think that to best understand what Google means with their goal of stamping out Thin Content is to look at the spirit of the rule. If your website is a consistent violator of publishing content that is copied from elsewhere, or syndicated from another account, or causes your audience to bounce (as opposed to stay and read), then I would say that you are violating the spirit of the rule, and you deserve what Google penalizes you with.
But if your content is unique, frequent, and engaging (people actually read it, share it, and/or subscribe to it) then the length of the post it takes to make that happen is irrelevant.
My take: If you get blogging, then counting your words is a distraction you shouldn’t be bothered with.

What Do The Experts Have To Say?

Turns out, when it comes to current Ranking Factors, the experts make no mention of article/page length.
However, an interesting note is that in a study of over 1,000,000 articles, those that were less than 1000 words were shared/liked less than those that were greater than 1000 words, with the longer posts being the most shared and most liked.
So yes, there is great value in lengthy posts. But at what cost to the blogger?

Get and Stay in Shape

I commonly relate blogging to getting into and staying in shape.
Let’s use running as an example.
Try running 1 or 2 miles a day, every day, and you can make that a habit that sticks, and yields results.
Try running 10 miles in a day. Now get up and do it again tomorrow, and the next day. For almost all of us, that’s not going to happen.
Now try doing it once a week (running 10 miles).
You might last a month before there’s a reason to take a week off. Then you miss another week… and soon the habit is dead, and so are the results.
Achieving blogging success requires establishing a habit.
The most important thing you can do to be a good blogger is to hit publish.
Struggling to reach word counts is a hindrance to production.
I want you to see results. I want you to get an audience to read you, and trust you, and do business with you.
This won’t happen if you don’t become a blogger, and that means establishing the habit of publishing at least a few times a week.
If that means that half your blog articles are falling in the 100-200 word (6-12 sentences) range… then so be it. The idea is that you are still doing this in a year’s time. The idea is that you are giving Google a reason to rank your site. The idea is that you have something to show your audience that you are the expert.
Don’t make this the gym membership that you pay for, guiltily, and fail to use.
Be unique.
Use your niche.
Your competition is thin when you target properly.
The threats of thin content penalties apply mostly to one trying to rank for very competitive terms.
Longer posts will come, and may perform better, but they shouldn’t be the bar that keeps you from being successful.

Yes, But Longer Is Better

Ok so there’s the argument for shorter. Now here’s why longer is better:

Research shows it will be shared more often. This is huge in SEO.
It will be seen as more authoritative, driving your rankings higher.
It will naturally have more keywords because there’s more content.
But can you keep up a pace of 10 miles every time you run?
As a Real Estate Agent, you wear a lot of hats, and I just want you to “stay in shape.”
And don’t worry… your competition can’t keep up that pace either.
If you want to keep reading about this, here are some interesting articles I found when reading about word count and SEO:
http://www.copypress.com/blog/4-statistics-every-blogger-should-know-about-content-word-count/
https://www.snapagency.com/blog/whatll-be-the-best-length-for-a-blog-article-in-2016-for-seo/
https://moz.com/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2392782/should-we-still-worry-about-thin-content 

If you can’t make the content happen because you don’t have the time, or interest, or language skills, then you need to seek someone who does. Having strong content on your website is crucial for connecting with your visitor and that is the first step in “generating leads.”

Don’t just hire whomever to help with your website’s content. Hire someone who cares and understands your business. Hire someone that you are willing and able to spend time with to train to write on your behalf. This relationship needs to be healthy and maintained in order for you to get the results you want.

Let us do it!

• We research it
• We write it
• We polish it
• We optimize it for Google
• We publish it to your website

You get to sit back, look amazing, and take all the credit.

If this sounds  interesting, let’s have a 10 min call to show you how we’re the reason you’re going to be found in Google.

Curious to learn more? Visit: TomatoCopy.com

The post How Long Should A Real Estate Blog Post Be? appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.

Each landmark holiday provides you with the opportunity to drive a huge amount of targeted web traffic to your real estate website.
Your broad target market is residents and future residents of your community. During a holiday, the community tends to act in a similar manner. A timely blog post that covers these acts will bring you web traffic.
The summer holiday of the 4th of July is fast approaching.
What do we all do on the 4th of July?
We watch the firework display put on by the town.
What’s the best way to enjoy the display? Location Location Location.
My bet is that if you can get a post published by this weekend about the best places to watch the fireworks in your town, you’ll see a surge of traffic. And to maximize this opportunity, you must share this blog post in your social media sphere: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Get on it! There’s no time to lose.
PS – Think ahead for the next cultural holiday opportunity, and get blogging to be found.

If you can’t make the content happen because you don’t have the time, or interest, or language skills, then you need to seek someone who does. Having strong content on your website is crucial for connecting with your visitor and that is the first step in “generating leads.”

Don’t just hire whomever to help with your website’s content. Hire someone who cares and understands your business. Hire someone that you are willing and able to spend time with to train to write on your behalf. This relationship needs to be healthy and maintained in order for you to get the results you want.

Let us do it!

• We research it
• We write it
• We polish it
• We optimize it for Google
• We publish it to your website

You get to sit back, look amazing, and take all the credit.

If this sounds  interesting, let’s have a 10 min call to show you how we’re the reason you’re going to be found in Google.

Curious to learn more? Visit: TomatoCopy.com

The post Timely Blog Posts Yield Great Traffic appeared first on WordPress Real Estate Website Design | Real Estate Tomato.