Real Estate Blogging Made Easy
Blogging for Business in a Nut Shell
There are over 100 million blogs with a new one being created every 1.4 seconds. You may think that the last thing you have time for at the end of the day is to blog. But I’m sure it wasn’t that long ago when you may have thought the same about email.
If you have a Web site for your real estate business already, is it an efficient marketer? Blogs are becoming far more popular because they can help you and your business be found on the Internet.
Google and search engines alike, love blogs for the dynamic and regularly updated content and reward them with higher page rankings. This means that your prospective clients will have a better chance of finding you.
Give a blog the proper attention it deserves and soon you’ll have all the online exposure you desire. And, Internet buyers and sellers will identify you as the market expert for your area. That being said, creating and maintaining a blog can entail quite a bit of work.
Are you in?
Get Your Blog Rolling
Before you decide to jump on the blogwagon, you should think about your current obligations, time, and writing desire.
- If you are overwhelmed by the thought of taking on another project (no matter how effective), blogging is not for you.
- If you are not willing to make the time to focus on sharing valuable real estate content, blogging is not for you.
- If you have little or no desire to format your useful real estate knowledge online, then blogging is not for you.
- If you really want to manage a blog and occasionally share your real estate insight….you should go for it! And I know a great solution to get it done!
One Solution: Bring the Blog
“Bring the Blog” is a blog for you company that will write your daily content! Dan Green, Founder and Chicago local, realized the difficulty in writing relevant real estate news every day and created Bring the Blog to relieve that burden. I recently ran into Dan at the Inman Connect in New York and asked him to give me the skinny on his service.
“If you take a look at The New York Times closely, you’ll notice that many of its articles are sourced from wire services – that’s exactly what we do for real estate Websites.” –Dan Green (Founder, Bring the Blog)
It would be ideal to write your own blog content citing the latest trends in the real estate industry, helpful home buying tips, niche highlights and more. But putting the time and effort into writing great real estate content can be overwhelming when mixed with an already busting at the seems schedule. That’s where “ghost blogging” can help. Nevermind the negativity that goes along with the term, but let’s call them “support writers” anyway, and you can be the “blog editor”.
After all it’s the editor that makes the final call when it comes to displaying published content. And the same goes for Bring the Blog. You are in complete control of your blog, and free to include every Bring the Blog article, or pick and choose while inserting your own flavor when possible.
Bring the Blog currently offers blog content for both real estate and mortgage professionals. The content is geared towards consumers and is always written in plain English. They take stories that Americans hear about on the news, and help them understand how the news applies to their life directly.
Dan Green explains, “We’re all conditioned to believe that a recession is bad, but if you’re shopping for a home in the midst of one, you’re pretty excited because a shrinking economy pulls mortgage rates down with it. So, we write educational pieces because that’s what consumers want to read. And then we dress it up with charts and graphics to make it easy on the eyes. Good content + Good imagery = Winning Web site.”
So there you have it. Your reason not to blog for business has been foiled and your solution is just around the corner. To watch a demo, follow these instructions:
For the real estate demo, visit www.bringtheblog.com and login with username “redemo” and password “blogging”. Catch the real estate blog change you make at realestatedemo.thewrittenblog.com.
For the mortgage demo, visit www.bringtheblog.com and login with username “demo” and password “blogging”. See your mortgage blog changes in action at http://demo.thewrittenblog.com.
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Nicole
Touche, Thanks for the foil!
Louis
Posted on Feb 12, 2008 by Louis Cammarosano
Nicole, I’ve seen the information about “ghost bloggers” debated back and forth ad nauseum. This, however, is the first time that I’ve seen the idea compared to the wire services for newspapers. That’s quite an appropriate comparison. I enjoy writing my own content and showing my personality in my blog too much to use a service like Bring the Blog, but I can see its value in the marketplace for blogging.
Posted on Feb 12, 2008 by Brian Block
It is so hard to find time to keep posting, but i would have a concern with a service like this causing issues with the search engines. Duplicate content can cause issues and with multiple blogs all posting the same content you just might cause some issues.
Posted on Feb 12, 2008 by Ken Smith
As a Dan Green disciple (for blogging), I see the value of a blog as a content management system. Is it the best way to connect with consumers…no. However, is it the most cost-effective? In many cases, yes.
Posted on Feb 12, 2008 by Brian Brady
Ken makes a good point. The temptation to re-use content in multiple blogs would be too much for some people. Search Engines will find it and may determine the first source to a secondary site rather than the first, to the deteriment of the site owner.
Posted on Feb 12, 2008 by C Richey
@Nicole: Thank you for the coverage of Bring the Blog. It’s always nice to get third-party endorsement and considering the source—I am humbled. Thank you.
@Ken and @C Richey: The issue of duplicate content is a tricky one because it’s so vague. For example, a Bring the Blog user recently posted as high as #20 in Google’s search for “mortgage blog”. It was higher than MY rank on my personal mortgage blog so go figure.
Overall, we expect that our members will add their own content to their Web sites to help search engines differentiate. Again, it’s not like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal don’t source articles from the AP wires for help, too.
In the end, the best way to get traction from a Web site is to promote it to your database incessantly. SEO is a noble cause, but marketing to people that already know and trust you is the surest way to build a recession-proof business.
We help make that happen.
@Brian: Consider it mutual admiration.
Posted on Feb 13, 2008 by Dan Green
I am wondering if the use of this service, really serves the real estate agent with localized articles – which might be of greater interest to the prospective buyer or seller.
News items from the wire services are broad in nature or national perspective, rather than the local news or items of interest.
Posted on Feb 13, 2008 by Glenn
Well said Dan! And, if the solution fits…wear it!
Supplementing Bring the Blog articles with your own is a great compromise.
Posted on Feb 13, 2008 by NikNik
Having a 3rd party produce blog content for “your” site is self defeating. A blog is supposed to be a personal interaction between owner (and hopefully operator) in order to forge a relationship/connection for mutual benifit.
But if a 3rd party is writing the content the owner would be in the dark if an inquiry was directed to the owner and the owner has no idea what the inquirer is talking about.
Ghost writing makes it easy to get content but the purpose is lost and I think users will see that.
Posted on Feb 13, 2008 by Toby Barnett