An Easy Bake Recipe for Consistent Real Estate Blogging

Developing great real estate content on a consistent basis doesn't have to be a chore.  If you mix a cup of planning, with a generous tablespoon of research and a dash of commitment you are on your way to a tasty blog.

Here's An Easy Bake Recipe for Consistent Real Estate Blogging

Step 1 - Research Post Topics

What are the timely topics that are creating a buzz in the real estate industry? What are topics that will have some shelf-life and be archive worthy on your blog? 

• Check your favorite keyword research tool to see how real estate topics are searched and the traffic they draw.
• Do topic research using Twitscoop (which tracks twitter trends),google trends labs (tracks google trends/keywords), google insights for search, (gain insight into seasonality of your keywords). 
• Use Digg and StumbleUpon to see what real estate topics are attractive to the worldwideweb at large.
• Check for real estate specific topis on Reuters, APwire, and businesswire.com
• Find out what real estate topics citizen journalists are blogging.
• Extend your research beyond print by searching real estate topics in video and audio here, here, or here.
• Add your own three cents when you are out on the street and are inspired by real life events (i.e. pavement pounding, house showing, broker tours, client meetings, etc.  Transcribe your Epiphanies for future blogging reference by writing a simple notepad and paper that you tote around, recording on a smartphone device ( I am really loving the record feature on my Blackberry), or calling into a microblogging service from your mobile phone that will store and publicize your thoughts in a public time line.

Step 2- Add Two Lists to your mix

Make two lists for your blog.  The second list will be a list that separates your current blog into categories to make sure you are staying on target with your blog.  Both lists are essential.  These will keep you on target (real estate focused) with your blog as well as enable you to re-purpose your content into e-books, white papers, vlogs, and slideshows.

Create the first list in a mind mapping software or a whiteboard software so you can refine each of your ideas. The goal of the first list is to refine the topics you gathered from your research in Step 1 into solid ideas you can mold into solid real estate post topics. 

Create the second list as a simple football goal list in Google Docs.  This list will keep you on target (real estate focused) with your blog as well as enable you to re-purpose your content into e-books, white papers, vlogs, slideshows, articles and offline marketing materials.

Step 3:  Create An Editorial Calendar

The last step in the easy bake recipe for consistent real estate blogging will be a snap if you have completed Steps 1 and 2.  You will create an editorial calendar that will list both post topics and the keywords you should include in the posts.  This timeless post by Andy Wibbles contains an editorial calendar that you can download in Opensource or OpenOffice Format.

A few huge benefits to a blogging editorial calendar

1.  Keeps your blog on the task of remaining real estate focused.  Once you have filled up your calendar with real estate specific posts, you will have room to add off topic posts about family, technology, hobbies and interests and still remain in line with your goal-MORE REAL ESTATE CLIENTS, REFERRALS, BRANDING, BUSINESS.

2.  Helps to lighten the blogging load- Once you have created an editorial calendar you can upload it to a platform like Google Docs and share it with your second team of professionals- local business vendors, real estate vendors/suppliers etc. to see if they would guest post on some of your blog topics.  This will continue to provide depth to your content and keep the goal of 3-5 posts minimum/week front and center.

3.  It will increase your blog exposure on the worldwide web-  By October 1st or thereabout, Google Docs "...will allow published docs that are linked to from a public website to be crawled and indexed".  So upload your blog editorial calendar to Google Docs, publish it and link to it from your website for a common sense SEO/SEM move and one that will provide an opportunity to gain some exposure from perhaps some  news venues using search engines to look for sources for real estate topics.

Dust off your apron and get your blog on by following this easy bake recipe for consistent real estate blogging.

If you enjoyed this post, you should check out these three on blogging:

• Stealing Bases Won't Hit It Home Everytime with Social Networking and Blogging
• Aspiring Real Estate Bloggers Are Becoming Ventriloquist Dummies? Say It Ain't So- A Rant with a Few Solutions
• Top 7 Tips to Connect with Blog Comments
  

Need a Plan for Consistent Real Estate Blogging? Consider a blogging tune-up.