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Is a blog today’s must-have in the real estate business?

Do Real Estate Blogs and On-line Press Releases Really Build Business?

Is a blog today’s must-have in the real estate business?
Some proponents say yes.

St. Paul, Minn., practitioner Teresa Boardman says she has closed six transactions since May for clients who found her through her blog and she's currently working with six more prospects. One of them lives in France.

She suspects that some practitioners don’t have success with the Internet because their Web sites are too mundane. To grab prospects' attention, your Web site or blog must be interesting and provide useful information, she says, not just generic buying or selling tips that prospects can find anywhere. In her blog, she writes about architecture, local developments, predatory lending, and more.

Another practitioner who considers her blog an important sales tool is Fran Bailey, an associate with Baird & Warner in Arlington Heights, outside of Chicago. She blogs daily at www.ChicagoMetroAreaRealEstate.com, keeping her observations to a few succinct paragraphs, usually about little things that come up during her real estate workday.

Recent posts have included a discussion of a client's potential commute time between the West Loop in downtown Chicago and suburban Downers Grove. Then there was the "how not to stage your house" photo of a sink full of dirty dishes and a case of empty beer bottles that greeted would-be buyers in at another property.

Others practitioners find an audience by tackling topics that could potentially trouble buyers. For instance, Dan Green has been blogging about tough financing issues on The Mortgage Reports for the last two years.

If you blog and don’t see results, Chicago’s North Side Coldwell Banker associate Jeff Kerr advises patience: "You have to be blogging consistently for six months to a year, with good content, not just boilerplate, to generate transactions,” he says.

Source: Chicago Tribune, Mary Umberger

Online Public Relations: What Not to Write About
By Search Engine Articles and Press Releases

If you've never initiated an online public relations campaign for your company, figuring out where to begin can be a daunting task. You'll have to select a wire service to distribute your online press releases, search for appropriate industry publications where your company's experts can publish articles, and schedule enough time to publish these two items regularly. While the last item may be the most daunting, first things first: what topics do you plan to address in your online public relations campaign?

Focus on the Readers' Interests
Your primary audience for online press releases is journalists. Thus, your online press releases should focus on topics that are of interest to them, such as product/service innovations, awards your company has won, charitable contributions/initiatives, unique features of your product/service, case studies, and novel or notable promotions. Unless there is a crisis at your company, online press releases should not be used as a platform to distribute the company's opinions to the masses, as this is not news. Engaging in this practice could jeopardize the company's reputation as a valuable source of information and reduce journalist interest in future press releases.
In contrast, the expert articles portion of the online public relations campaign should focus on potential customers as its primary audience. This audience is primarily interested in solutions for its problems. Thus, the article portion of your online public relations campaign should focus on helping potential customers by educating them about a new or complex topic or explaining how to do something. The trick to writing these articles is to avoid blatantly promoting your own product. Keep your commentary objective and informative and let your credibility as an expert, not your marketing message, pull the customers to you.

Avoid the Ordinary
Press releases (and to a lesser extent, expert articles) have become very formulaic in recent years. Nearly everyone announces new hires and clients, but unless you just hired Jack Welch or signed a deal with Microsoft, you're probably not going to generate much buzz from journalists or the business community at large. Keep your topics for online press releases fresh and try to avoid repetitive subjects that don't resonate with your target audience.

Leave Out the Competition
You never need to mention the competition by name in your online public relations campaign. Ever. What you do mention are the weaknesses of the competition. Online press releases could announce valuable features the competition's products don't have or your articles could discuss industry best practices, some of which the competition doesn't follow. These practices will help frame the search criteria of your potential customers and make them value the features and benefits of your products/services. Let marketing worry about if/when the competition should be brought up by name in advertising while you focus on promoting your company and its advantages with your online public relations campaign.

Avoid or Embrace Controversial Issues
In most cases, you'll want to avoid controversial issues in your company's online press releases. As stated earlier, your company's opinions should not be in a press release. However, controversial topics can be addressed in an expert article, assuming they are handled delicately. Such issues can help your expert (and company) establish credibility by giving the expert an opportunity to objectively address a well-known industry problem and to provide insight into a possible solution.

Know When Not to Distribute
Don't detract from your online public relations campaign by distributing expert articles or online press releases just because “we always put out four releases and two articles each month.” This mandate could mean announcing the results of a company softball game, which doesn't make a compelling news story or convince customers that they should buy your product or service. If you don't have a solid topic, wait and write the article or press release when you do. To avoid a shortage of topics, keep a running list of potential subjects for future articles and online press releases and write down any new ideas as they come to you.

Make It Memorable
If you follow the advice above but don't take the time to develop a compelling title for your online public relations content, then many of your potential readers may skip past it in favor of content that does. As you develop your articles or online press releases, take the time to create several headlines and keep them short, yet descriptive. That way, you'll hook more of your potential readers and get more value from your online public relations campaign.

Brian Cooper is the director of online public relations at Medium Blue, where he promotes the company's clients on the Internet. He has a bachelor's degree in marketing from Georgia State University where he graduated summa cum laude.

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Comment By Michael Stuart - Read more...

10 Things Not To Do On Your Real Estate Blog

Teresa_Boardman

Normally I don’t write articles about other articles online. It just seems sort of bandwagon-like. Today I have to make an exception due to the timeliness of an article written by our own Teresa Boardman over on ActiveRain. The article was written in the Members Only area of ActiveRain, but I feel that the content is very much public worthy, so we’re bending the rules and delivering it to you.

Teresa, who has recently made a stand on Localism in Real Estate Blogging, was driven to write the following real estate blogging guidelines as a surge in inane content plagues ActiveRain.

1. No one cares about you or your health or that your father just died. They don't care that business is bad or that a client just screwed you over. Who wants to read about another's misfortunes? We all have our own to deal with. Leave it off of your blog.

2. Skip the commentary that everyone writes. There are millions of posts that are commentary on national news items and who is who in the real-estate industry. Are you adding value by writing about Trulia, Zillow or Redfin along with 10,000 other people?

3. Buyers and sellers in your local market may not care about blogging. Writing about your blog or about other bloggers is interesting to those of us who have blogs but probably not very interesting to those who may be looking for local or real estate content. Real estate bloggers have fallen into a predictable pattern. They start with real estate content and after two months they start writing how to write a blog posts and then they start writing about other blogs.

4. Don't compete. It may seem really cool to be toward the top of real estate blog directories that measure hits and compare us against each other, but does it bring in the clients? Are all hits equal? How does having a bunch of real estate industry professionals reading your blog help win business from the general public? Why compete with all of those blogs that are mostly about blogs when there is almost no competition for the local real estate content that the buyers and sellers who live inside your computer search for constantly?

5. Stop imitating CNET. The real estate industry in general is not noted for their technological superiority. Most people interested in technology are savvy enough to check out TechCrunch, Engadget, Gizmodo and a slew of other blogs and web sites if they want to learn about the latest and greatest gadgets, hardware and software. The topic is covered to the point where the best way for a real estate blogger to add value may be through commenting, because the comments on these blogs will be more widely read than the technology content on a real estate blog. This also applies to ActiveRain, trust me I know you are all smart, but I get my technology from the technology industry.

6. Stop gauging success by the number of comments. In the real world comments are not all that common on most blogs. Lack of comments does not mean that no one is reading or that the blog is not working, it simply means that people are not commenting. For every comment I get on the St. Paul real estate blog I get at least 5 emails. I'll take the email because my responses allow me to build relationships on a more personal level.

7. In my opinion advertising a listing is a no no. Their are subtle ways of doing it, without doing it. Like writing a story with a link to the listing. My listings are everywhere on the internet and one does not have to go far to find tons of houses that are for sale. Advertising listings makes a blog blend in with all the schlocky template real estate web sites out there.

8. Smaller might just be better - Writing to a huge audience doesn't make sense. Most of my competitors are afraid to be a Minneapolis blog or a St. Paul blog or a neighborhood blog because they think they might miss out on business and want to cast a broader net. Smaller is better and that niche blogs are the way to go since there are already zillions of web sites with real estate information for most metropolitan areas on the planet. It is all generic type content and is easy to find.

9. Stop blowing your own horn. Last weekend I wrote a facetious post about marketing me - "I am all that and a bag of chips." I know that the post is ridiculous and one reader even asked me if I had lost my mind. I honestly think that I demonstrated how not to write on ActiveRain or anywhere else. I don't really care if you are all that and a bag of chips.

10. Don't write a novel. Blog posts do not have to be literary master pieces to win business. A typo will not forever ruin your reputation, I think I am living proof. Most adults will not take the time to read your entire lengthy literary masterpiece on how the MLS works. Short posts with pictures seem to work best.

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