So you think you can’t blog?

Blogging should absolutely be a part of your online marketing strategy. However,many agents find it difficult, quoting both a lack of time, and struggle to come up with a continual supply of interesting topics. Marketing and blogging expert Lisa Tremolada explains how to get over your fear, and get on with the job.

Let’s get clear – What is Blogging?

Let’s just say for the ease of understanding and for the purpose of this story, that blogging is really just a fancy name for writing an article about a chosen subject on your website.The term originated from the words ‘web log’.Web log means an article ‘logged’ or recorded on the web or Internet.

Blogging can easily be a part of your overall Internet marketing strategy, and can assist with many things such as:

• giving valuable information to your customers
• getting your name on page one of Google, so that your potential customers can find you(if you’re not on page
• one of Google your potential customers may not know that you exist)
• positioning yourself and your real estate office as the experts in your area or niche

Where can you get inspiration for the subject material?

That’s easy! Open up your browser and go to Google and type in these words – “Google Alert”.If you do not already have a Google account, it will prompt you to create an account.Once you have an account you can start to create alerts.

What Google will then do for you, is send an email to you every day at about 5pm with a list of all the topics you have listed in your alerts.Google then scans the Internet every day to look for any new subjects with those words in the content and when they find anything, theywill deliver it straight to your inbox.

What this means is, you can set up a Google alert for your suburb, your industry, etc.For example if you are located in Brisbane–set up separate alerts for Brisbane,Brisbane Real Estate,Real Estate,Realtor,and you might also like to include some real estate trainers and influential people that often comment on the topic of real estate in Australia.

What this does is give you fresh content about your area and your profession every single day.Say for example that a real estate expert commented that the market was slow, yet your office had made more sales that month than ever before.You could write a blog discussing their opinion and then your opinion.You might also receive a Google alert letting you know that your local council is planning something that you either agree with, or do not agree with.You could write a blog about that.I am not saying to plagiarise what they have written but it’s a great start when someone has given youtopic, that you can now either agree with or disagree with.

Remember, your content needs to be relevant.There is no point in talking about anything other than what you are positioning yourself to be the expert in.Your aim should be to become the expert in your area and niche.

Now thatyou have a steady resource centre for content.You need a strategy.

Strategy

Next, you need to develop an online marketing plan.

Map out a 12-month calendar, January through to December.Think about what is happening throughout the year.For example, we know that there is Easter, Spring, and Christmas.You can decide what you are going to write about for those months well in advance.

Other things you can choose to write about are suburbs in your area, a niche,for example, waterfronts or apartments, or a local business in your area. You can also ask local industry related businesses to contribute to your blog.That way you do not need to write a thing! They do all the work; you just post it onto your blog.

Remember that anything you put online in your marketing efforts stays online.The more content you add, the more the content builds up.Think of the compounding effect and the momentum this will achieve for your company.