Thus far, most of my posts have discussed the different ways that you can use your real estate blog to advertise properties you’re currently selling or to increase general awareness of your agency. Obviously these activities should be the primary purpose of your blog, so the bulk of your writing time will be spent on them. But there are definitely times when it’s appropriate to break away from this formula to talk about something else in your posts — especially if you have an opportunity to promote yourself as an agent.

I don’t mean that you should list your certifications, licenses, and other qualifications; it’s best to save that stuff for your résumé. I’m talking about when you win local or national awards for outstanding service, sales volume, or completed transactions. Were you named the top Realtor® in your association? Did you recently join the multi-million dollar sales club? Then tell your readers!

I’m simply amazed at the number of Realtors® I know who don’t like to promote themselves by talking about their achievements. They’re afraid readers will just think they’re bragging, which is not a trait they want associated with their names.

While I can understand these types of concerns, I think they’re mostly unfounded. Sure, if every other post consists of you going on and on about how great you are, you’re going to turn people off and lose readers by the boatload. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a once-in-a-blue-moon post telling your readers that you’ve won a prestigious award or were selected as the keynote speaker for a national convention. These are noteworthy accomplishments that deserve recognition, so go ahead and write about them — or at the very least, provide links to make it easier for readers to follow up on their own.

Promoting yourself from time to time is an important part of real estate blog marketing and will help give you an edge on the competition. After all, prospective clients would much rather do business with the woman named Realtor® of the Year or with the man who received an award from the local Chamber of Commerce than an agent with lesser credentials. So the next time you accomplish something big, be sure to blog about it!

One of the most common reasons Realtors® get into real estate blog marketing is to help highlight various properties that they’re trying to move. This makes sense, as blogs provide a convenient, cost-effective way for agents to advertise to a wide audience. Plus, posts about specific properties are easy to write, and help keep your site active.

However, there are a few important guidelines that you should keep in mind when highlighting properties.

DO:

• Change your featured property on a regular basis. Nobody likes looking at the same pictures or post longer than necessary.
• Include reasons that you think the property is a steal. Sometimes it’s hard for people to make sense of numbers and statistics alone, so go beyond that data whenever you can.
• Compare similar properties to show why one is a smarter deal than the other. It’s even better when you can use a property from a competing agency as your “bad buy” example.

DON’T:

• Provide endless lists of featured properties. Highlighting a specific home can be a powerful real estate blog marketing tool when used sparingly. But if all you ever do is list properties on your site, you can bet readers will be turned off in a hurry.
• Leave a featured property up for more than a week or two. Doing so might lead readers to doubt your abilities as a salesperson.
• Forget to display your contact information prominently within the post so that interested buyers can easily get in touch with you.

By following these guidelines and mixing your featured property listings in with other high-quality content, your blog will become a hit with your readers!

All bloggers occasionally go through dry spells where they run out of ideas to write about. This is perfectly normal, and shouldn’t affect your readership numbers too much — unless the dry spell lasts for an unusually long time. Readers simply do not have the patience to stick with blogs that are only updated once or twice per month, so it’s definitely in your best interest to keep up a regular posting schedule.

One fantastic way for real estate blog marketers to keep posting and drive traffic even when they’re short on original ideas is to write about current events. Between the mortgage crisis, the record number of foreclosures around the country, and the slump in new housing construction, real estate topics are in the news nearly every day, which means you have plenty of posting material at your disposal.

Of course, you can’t simply link to a news article (or paste it into your post) and expect readers to flock to your site. You have to offer them something that CNN, Yahoo, and MSN don’t, namely, your personal take on the topic in question.

Here are three great ways to do just that:

• Explain the article in a way that makes it easy for non-Realtors to understand. If you’re dealing with a technical article that uses a lot of industry jargon, go ahead and break things down for your readers by defining special terms, etc.
• Tie the article in to local events. If you’re linking to an article about foreclosures, be sure to talk about all the foreclosures in your area and what’s being done about the problem.
• Use your expertise to predict a trend. If you link to an article that about mortgage rates, don’t just lay the information out there. Instead, tell readers if you think mortgage rates are likely to go up or down, and then give reasons supporting your position.

Talking about current events is a proven way to drive traffic to your blog. Just be sure to add your own twist to every post you make so that your readers will want to stick around for the ride!

If you’re serious about expanding your business and building your brand name through real estate blog marketing, then you’ll want to pay very close attention to your website statistics. You should already have some sort of stats package in place, whether it’s through your hosting company or a third-party such as Sitemeter. If you don’t, then I recommend you get one up and running as soon as possible.

Blog stats are important because they tell you three key pieces of information about your readers. First, your stats can tell you how many people come to your site every day, which in turn can give you clues on how to proceed with your blogging. If you’re getting lower numbers than you expected, then you know you’ll have to work harder on promoting your blog. If you’re getting a decent amount of traffic, then you know you’re on the right track and can continue along the same lines.

Second, your blog stats can tell you what kind of keywords are bringing visitors to your page. If you’re getting a lot of hits for keywords that you consciously try to promote, then obviously you’re doing the right thing. If you’re getting a ton of hits for relevant keywords that you didn’t even realize were popular, you might want to take advantage of the trend by writing about those words more than you usually would.

Conversely, if visitors are coming to your blog via keywords that don’t pertain to real estate at all, you might want to reevaluate your posts to make sure that you’re staying on topic. While the extra traffic is nice, it’s unlikely that you will retain readers this way.

And third, your blog stats can tell you where your visitors are coming from. Are they landing on your page via one of the three major search engines? Did they click through an online advertisement that you paid for? Did they arrive via a link on a social networking site that you joined? This information is important because it can tell you which of your marketing strategies are working well and which aren’t, thereby allowing you to tweak your approach accordingly.

All bloggers should pay attention to their stats, and I believe this is even more critical for those who maintain niche blogs. The only way you’ll be able to tell if you’re generating the right type of traffic with your real estate blog is to review your stats at least a couple times per week. Doing so will give you instant feedback on how well you’re connecting with your readers, and will help you become a better real estate blogger.

If you’re like most agents who are into real estate blog marketing, you probably started off by writing about your local scene. You discussed current home listings in the area, community events, and other items that were of interest to city or state residents. These are all perfectly valid topics to post about, and have likely helped you establish strong ties to your community.

Even so, your website traffic is not where you want it to be, and you’re convinced it’s because not enough people are searching for the subjects you’re writing about.

How can you get more visitors to come to your site from the major search engines?

One great way to do so is to position yourself as a real estate expert. By this, I mean create posts that contain tips and advice that will benefit your readers — buyers, sellers, and other agents alike — in important ways. You’ve got years of experience under your belt and have learned all the ins and outs of your trade, so you already have a deep well of information to draw from.

Keep in mind that blog readers love lists, so a post titled “5 Surefire Ways to Sell Your Home in 5 Weeks or Less” or “3 Secrets That Every Home Buyer Should Know” will be very popular, and will likely attract visitors from all over the globe rather than just your immediate area.

By sharing some of the wisdom you’ve gained after all your years in the industry, you’ll soon establish an online reputation for being a real estate expert, and your blog will become a top destination.

For every successful real estate marketing blog out there, you can be sure that there are countless others that never quite make it off the ground. A lot of Realtors just start a blog without much of an idea of what they want to do with it, so after an initial flurry of posts, they eventually lose steam and neglect their site altogether.

The best way to combat this type of creative flame out is to blog with clear goals in mind. This will help you focus your energy in the right direction by giving you a specific set of topics to write about.

Do you want to increase your firm’s name recognition and visibility in your own community? Then your blog should feature plenty of posts highlighting local areas of interest or issues that are currently relevant to your city or state.

Are you hoping to expand your business base and attract a national audience? Then you should write primarily about real estate topics that will appeal to a broader, nationwide audience.

Do you simply want to present potential buyers with an easy way to view your latest listings? Then obviously your posts should reflect that goal.

Once you start blogging with a purpose, you’ll find that post ideas will start flowing in — soon to be followed by increased traffic, visibility, and, ultimately, sales.

These days, there’s more to closing a deal than just selling a house. Real estate agents must also focus on selling the location, the particular town or city that the property is in. People want to know exactly what they’re getting into when they buy a house, which means it would be a good idea to showcase the neighborhood, top schools, and other notable amenities in the area.

This is where a real estate marketing blog can really come in handy, as there’s no way you’d be able to talk about all of these things in a typical print campaign.

On a blog, you can do something as simple as providing links to relevant websites such as local libraries, school districts, chambers of commerce, government offices, and neighborhood associations, or you can go a step further and dedicate an entire post to the most noteworthy places.

Your posts could include a detailed description of the services these places offer, as well as important phone numbers, addresses, and other contact information. Photos would help make the effect complete, so don’t forget to use any you have (or be prepared to take some as necessary).

Selling your location is just one of the ways you can put a real estate marketing blog to work for you. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding even more tips, articles, and advice that savvy real estate agents will want to take advantage of!

I’m thinking that I’ll be found for the title of my article pretty soon on all search engines. How? By making sure that my blog is optimized and making sure that my content syndicates to news sources and blog sources online. It’s no secret that a good well-thought out blog can lead to many sales leads for realtors. By simply learning the principles that Real Estate Blog Marketing teaches, you’ll be up and running in no time. The more you put in to your blog the more you’ll get out of it. We make it sound simple at times and sometimes it is. If you want to get started with a blog that will help you tap into more real estate leads….contact one of our representatives today.

When we started our company back in March of 2006, most of our time was devoted to helping and teaching real estate agents how to blog. The time factor was always an issue because most realtors work all the time. If you have a half hour per week to devote to “attracting” potential buyers or home seekers there truly is no other way to market yourself. I had one realtor that wanted to be ranked on the search engines for a particular subdivision. This was a pre-construction subdivision with homes starting at 700K on up. We taught her how to blog about it…”hey, I can’t reveal our secrets in this article” and she secured 2 lots that totaled over 2 million dollars. She wrote two articles on the subdivision and a couple of buyers did a search after driving buy and found her blog articles. So if you’re a real estate agent and claim you don’t have time, I suggest that you try harder. Your commission depends on it.

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!