I often field calls from realtors asking me if there’s more ways to gain additional traffic to their blog. Over a year ago when we started our company we wanted to make sure that all of our clients knew everything there is to know about blogging. Last year corporate blogging wasn’t big to realtors but now it’s becoming a necessity to have one. Let me offer you a few tips followed by a short story about a blog that I’ve been watching.

1. If you haven’t subscribed to my blog log or blog catalog do so now. It’s a great blogging community and a great way to gain additional exposure to your blog.
2. Learn more about your market and what your area has to offer. You’re posts will be found on all blog engines and it’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your area by showing people that you know what your talking about!
3. Read other blogs, check out news headlines and state your opinion. The wonderful thing about having a blog is stating you views on various topics.
4. Link to other blogs and comment on them. One clear way to gain visibility is to let other bloggers know you have one. Read what others have to say about a topic that interests you and begin a dialog.

Now for my story:
I’m an avid baseball fan/Red Sox fan and have been reading Red Sox Pitcher Curt Schilling’s blog 38pitches for three months now. In three months he has a 4pr and an alexa traffic rank of 59,000. That’s pretty impressive for a blog to move up that quickly in such a short period of time. He’s famous and gets a lot of traffic so thats why his blog has become so popular. I can’t tell you how many times ESPN has mentioned it in the past few months. This leads me to my final tip:

5. Find blogs of famous people. A ton of politicians have them and they’re open for conversation not to mention actors/actresses, rockstars, CEO’s etc…..Link back to them and comment on their blogs about posts they’ve done. You’ll be amazed by what can happen. Hey, I hope Curt visits our blog and comments on this post!

CNBC recently did a report on the real estate video market and mentioned one of our realtors in their story.  In fact, they displayed the video that we filmed for them and helped them optimize it on youtube.  He’s loaded three video’s in the past three months and 800+ people have viewed these three properties.  How important is that from a competitive stand point?  In recent posts, I mentioned the importance of video search and realtors willing to adapt to this new technology will stand to be more competitive in the market.  Do me a favor and search the video engines for properties in your area and tell me how many real estate agents are using this for a marketing tool.  Chances are, the agents that are using this are in the top 5% in transaction sales.  It just proves that you have to do everything to stay on top or atleast attempt to get there.

I read an article the other day that talked about how 20% of marketers were considering using viral marketing to brand their products and increase sales. Viral marketing is where the marketing message touches or resonates with the reader/listener to the point that they will forward your message to others that share the same interests. A great example of this is UTube or Google videos. You see a video that you think is funny and you forward it on to your friends, thus creating a viral effect. People share information that they think is interesting and images, text or audio can very easily be spread across wide groups.

Realtors can take advantage of this with their blog marketing by being original with their writing and podcasts. There was a car commercial in North Carolina with a highly annoying presenter. Most people, when asked about the guy said they did not like him or the way he talked, but they remembered the company and the brand. A lot of real estate success also comes down to successful branding. The more original and memorable you can be with both your writing and podcasting; the more you can stamp personality on the way you relate with people;  the more successful you will be, and the more you can use viral marketing to spread your brand online and offline.