Blog post should adhere to the following real estate blogging best practices. Why? For several reasons.
Take a look:
- Post should be written in a relaxed fashion using the “soft sell approachâ€. It’s all about creating a casual environment where site visitors are “ok” with leaving a comment.
- The blog should serve as a platform to demonstrate that you’re the “local real estate expertâ€.
- In your post, use the same font styles and sizes for every post to maintain site uniformity. Hodge-podge of fonts sizes, colors and styles makes the blog look less than professional.
- Post should be written in a format that is “scanner-friendlyâ€. It is recommended you include bullets and numeric points along with images to compliment the post subject. Long “War & Peace†post are boring and will never be read.
- Use smart linking strategy from your post to your website and deep link within your flagship website when possible for SEO juice.
- Content can be hyper-local, regional or national in nature. Generally speaking, blogs are driven by hyper-local content.
- Blog on local events, market conditions (include stats/charts), blog on local interest stories like property tax assessments or HOA disputes, home builder parades and other real estate related events.
- When you attend a local event, take a camera or video camera to document the event and upload the content to your blog via YouTube.
- Refrain from doing what many blog site owners do which is to use her blog site to “only†highlight their listings. Consumers typically don’t respond well to “featured listings” on a blog.
- Refrain from using the same content on your post of your blog and on your Active Rain blog. It doesn’t help with SEO to cut & paste post from one platform to the other.
- Never copy and paste article directly out of Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word has unseen “junk†code embedded in the application that does not “play well†with your blog editor. Simply copy and paste your post from Word to Notepad. Then copy it from Notepad to your blog. Or type directly in the WSYWYG editor of your blog platform.
What rules do you use to blog by that maybe I omitted from my list?
Helping you blog smarter,
Bobby
I am glad you mentioned for real estate professionals to use the soft sell approach. Too many real estate blogs still seem to focus on the individual rather than what is important to people looking to buy or sell.
I would add the rule of using stylized heading tags or a blockquote to highlight important aspects of a post.
Thanks for the great tips! You guys are full of very useful and helpful information!
Thanks as always for the valuable information!
I also believe that a good rule of thumb for real estate blogs to not allow public comments about listings. It is nice to have testimonials and it is nice to have excellent clients, BUT there are always a few out there that want to do whatever it takes to either make you or your clients look bad.
This is a pointer I picked up somewhere today in my reading on blogging. I notice that you do in your blogs. Someone said “end your blog with a question to better engage your readers”. I’m not an experienced blogger and am always looking for pointers, so thanks for the list.
UtahLuxury.com – You make a valid point. Sellers need not be exposed to someone who has trashed their home. Glad you chimed in!
Hi Larry – Your comment is one of the reasons we blog! To get the word out and bring value to real estate professionals everywhere.