The Eleven Commandments Of Highly Effective Real Estate Bloggers

The Eleven Commandments of Highly Effective Real Estate Bloggers:

1. Sub-Niche Strategy: You are already in a niche, Real Estate Blogging, now you need a sub-niche, an area of Real Estate, ie: Condos, First time buyers, FSBO's, NYC Real Estate, Real Estate Marketing, Home Search, Home Search Advertising, etc.  The more targeted your traffic, the more targeted your ads, and eventually the higher the ad revenue.  A good analytics program can tell you so much about who is coming to your site, what search words they used, where they're coming from and where they're going to.  Know Thy Audience.
2. Trusted Advisor/Expertise Strategy: You've found your place (your sub-niche). Now find your voice. Speak in one voice. If you haven't written to deadlines, or on a regular basis, you may find it hard to find the consistant voice your audience reads, recognizes and respects.  A big part of finding your audience is just that, finding your audience.  You'll write best about something your passionate about.  It's been recommended to me to spend 1/2 of the time on my blog reading other blogs.  Don't reinvent the wheel; just improve it; then put your own best spin on it.  At WebHomeUSA, Everybody's HomePage, we've taken the old saw, "KISS", "Keep It Simple Stupid" to new levels: "Keep It Clear and Simple Stupid" or "KIC-ASS"; and "Keep It Clear, Unique, Relevant and Simple Stupid" or "KIC-UR-ASS".
3. Posting Strategy: Regularly and Frequently (Post Early and Often): Newspapers are dailies, magazines are weeklies or monthlies, TV shows are on at 8PM Thursdays (Thursday is "Must See TV").  Once you have your place and your voice, you need your cadence, your beat and your rhythm.  Frequency is good, but Regularity is better; in Blog Posts too.  Your audience needs to know what to expect and when to expect it.  Typepad's Premium level even has a tool to publish your post at a future date.  With apologies to Mel Brooks and many other Jewish Comedians, "It's good to be Regular."
4. Post Headline Strategy: Each post needs its own permanent URL, or permalink.  (Many blog services, like Typepad, provide this automatically).  The post's heading becomes part of its permalink and page title.  The heading should be an action headline, like newspaper headlines. Headlines catch attention.  Don't even call a heading a heading anymore. Call it a "Headline".  Words have power.  Remember the old marketing guideline, AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.  Remember: Keyword-Heavy Headlines, too.
5. Link Strategy (External): Last week's Blog Carnival IX had a big lesson for me; I call the lesson: "The Missing Link".  The Carnival host forgot to make my post's permalink live.  From Monday 'til Wednesday, when the link did go live, I lost 2/3's of my traffic. (Most of my traffic comes from the first several days of the Blog Carnival.)  When you proof-read you need to proof-link too.  The Link has been called the greatest advance in communication of the last half century, greater even than the computer.  Link early and often.  Deep link whenever possible to the exact page of the reference.
6. Site Navigation Strategy (Internal Link Strategy): Make sure your Homepage and all your archives link on every page.  (Link early and often on your site too.)  Have you ever left a site because it was difficult to navigate?  If it's hard for them to find, it's always easier for them to leave.  I've heard it said: "If I can't find it in 2 clicks I'm gone."
7. Data Base Strategy: Content Is King.  Your blog should be a trusted database and essential reference site.  You want your audience to visit as often and to stay as long as possible.  You want to become virtually their virtual trusted and their virtual trusted adviser.  Your site shouldn't be just a collection of posts, but a readily accessible resource in your sub-niche.
8. Keyword Strategy: Google has defined Search.  Google Search is keyword-relevancy search.  If you want to be found on Google you need to play the Google Search Optimization Game (SEO, Search Engine Optimization).  Your posts like your Headlines need to be keyword dense.  A keyword-dense strategy can go too far.  Google and the other search engines can exclude you for "keyword cramming", but this is not just a liberal use of keywords.
9. Tag Strategy: I've separated this out from Keyword Strategy because this is what make Blogs great.  If you didn't know, Technorati is eating Google's lunch in the Blog Search category.  Basic keyword "relevancy" had little value for "recency".  Technorati Blog Search is very much about "recency".  In the Blogesphere it's very much about what have you written about me lately.  Technorati even has the category of "Most Recent Posts" about a tag.  In Google and the other Search Engine's efforts to keep up with the Technorati in the Blog Space, the Search Engines have added a "Recency" value to the algorithms giving Blogs a foot up on other Website.  (Why else would ZillowBlog.com have a Page Rank of 6, while it's parent site, Zillow.com, has a Page Rank of only 5?  ZillowBlog.com's home page changes almost daily changes.)  A Tag Strategy would be to add an RSS feed of ZillowBlog's most recent blog posts to Zillow.com's Home Page. Recency is why, "Search Engines Love Blogs."
10. Image Strategy: In a course I took, Blogging Boot Camp, by Windsor Media Enterprises, the goal for a blog post was "Three links and an image."  Striking images liven up your pages and get your site the "A" in "AIDA": Attract Attention.  Google has an Image Search Engine, and again you want it easy for Google and the other visual search engines to index your illustrations and make it easier to find you.
11. Dialog Strategy: As a child, my orthopedist had a sign in his office: The Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt not get thy cast wet.  The Eleventh Commandment for Bloggers is the essential of why Blogs are special.  It's all about the dialog.  Blogs are Websites where it's easy to post, easy to comment and easy to establish a dialog with your friends and all the friends you haven't met yet.  Don't be like Tom Stevens, NAR's President, with his blog I call "The UnBlog."  His blog makes him "The Blogger In Chief" of Realtors, but he hasn't enabled comments, trackbacks or provided any other way to dialog with him.  The biggest complaint about Realtors is that they never get back to you.  When you cultivate your audience, you cultivate what your advertisers will pay for.  This Blog Carnival is a great place to make friends and influence bloggers.  Link to other posts and sites and they'll return the favor.  If we continue to do this maybe the "Link" will become the greatest advance in communication since the printing press.

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Comments

[new condos]

Thank for tips..this post was awesome. Whats your take for balancing between Google SEO and seo for Yahoo, Msn, & AOL?

[condo Philippines]

Nice post. Thanks for those tips. This information is a big help. I will apply those Eleven Commandments. Thanks so much.

-filicity-

[Philippine Real Estate]

Nice picks. I haven't heard all of those, but I trust your judgement. Thanks for posting

[investment Hanoi]

Thank you for these tips. Blogging is one of the most effective marketing tools in real estate nowadays, but only if it is done following certain guidelines.