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I was just interviewed by Yahoo! and threw my hat into the ring on being the host of a new TV show where I call new buyers out on what they can really afford.
I am telling you this because without the exposure of my blog and podcast that would have never happened. Almost all of you out there have a blog tab on your website but, almost all of you never do anything with that. Why? You think nobody is reading it, you dont know what to say or you think its a waste of time. Well—I will tell you—yeah–nobody’s reading it because your not consistent–I agree that you dont know what to say–all too often I see completely crappy posts like “new listing–3/2 for 500K” and for those of you who think its a waste of time? I might get a TV show or a giant feature on yahoo. I certainly dont think its a waste of time and I wish I would have started earlier.
I am hoping to convince you of the power of blogging and how its can actually generate leads. Let me remind you why you should be blogging.
1. It builds your brand on the internet–we know that across the board –all age groups begin their home search on the internet. Our buyers and sellers are there—why arent you?
2. For your list and sphere of influence—a well kept blog keeps you top of mind
3. You can use it as a resource library. Imagine that you wrote a quick blog about the kinds of things you get asked most often. When people ask you those things again you could just point them to your blog or….if they are already your clients they may never ask you that question because they learned it from you already
4. It really will build credibility for your personal brand as an expert. If you are pitching yourself as the downtown condo expert and I find your blog and I see you have tons of interesting posts about downtown San Diego. Thats going to carry a lot of weight with me—here is an addon benefit of that–look doing a blog or this podcast is a ton of work mainly because its actually a job. I have to sit down and make sure that I deliver 3 episodes a week.
For you and your blog—-If you wanted to do the same and deliver 3 great blogs posts per week. You would have to sit in front of your computer and find stuff to write about. That does a couple of things–you become more well informed but, you also actually begin to become an expert in the area that you are writing about. Your writing will get better but, your ability to pitch will become better. OK Moving on
The thing that stops most bloggers or hangs them up is not having content—right. People get stuck on what to write about. Now for you–hopefully you have determined some sort of niche for your business. If you have a niche–you should be able to find a lot of stuff to write about if not, you could always write first time home buyer tips, financing a new home, how to baby proof your home, what to know about remodeling, how to choose a paining contractor etc. There are tons of stuff you can write about.
Maybe your not a good writer–thats ok. There are lots of great bloggers who dont write anything. Well—you might be asking–how am I supposed to have a blog but, not write anything. Its something called content curation. You go out and find articles that other people have written. Now you cannot just go out and copy and paste something bonnie blogger went out and wrote. There are copyright issues here and nobody wants to get into trouble. For a better look at content curation you can just google content curation primer.
Here is another benefit of putting the work into your blog. Most of my blogs or show notes are between 400 words to 900 words. By the way so far this post is about 736 words. So you have copy at least 400 words long—you can strip that down and get multiple facebook posts—you can further strip that down to get multiple tweets. So by putting in the effort to create a blog post you can update your whole social media strategy by boiling out salient points on whatever your talking about—and this further tops off your personal brand expertise.
OK–a bunch of you are still wondering how we can use a blog for lead generation. Ill tell you but, let me share the results from a few other people. There is a guy named Jay Thompson. He is now at zillow but, before that had a blog—thats still up. Its called phoenixrealestateguy.com –Im linking to it on the show notes.
Its a super popular blog and Jay says that he gets leads into the thousands every month with his blog. He says that 80% of his business comes directly from his blog and –heres the kicker is that he has gotten deals from blog posts he has written 3 and 4 years ago. What other kind of medium will yield those kinds of results and keep in mind its free! Well almost free. Here is what I would suggest. First create a blog on your website–just a blog tab and then go to godaddy and get a unique domain name. Toby s real estate blog Toby on san diego or whatever and post your content/blog post both on your real estate site and your personal custom blog—by the way–I went to godaddy and cut a deal with them. You can get a free domain name and hosting for your new custom blog for 3.49 per month. Just go to www.localhost/godaddydeal.
How else will a blog help you? You can use it to grow your list. Give them a call to action. What if you wrote a small ebook about “financing your new home” or “first time home buyer tips”. You give the book away for free but, you ask for their email address. Now your building your list.
What else can you do to begin grabbing leads from your blog? You could jack in an IDX feed and begin surfacing some homes in relevant areas. There are so many thing you can do on your blog to make it sticky, to make it relevant; to build your brand and position yourself as an expert in your field. Look guys–I know this stuff is not super sexy and this content can feel even dull at times but, these things are cornerstones to you building a successful and long lasting business. Thanks for sticking with me on this one–to be honest I got a little bored with this content but, I felt like I should at least spend some time talking with you about this stuff.
