Your blog is your garden.
It's time to fall back. Now with the change of seasons it's time to take a look at your blog.
You have and shared information. Your content has grown like the vines of a cucumber plant as you crafted your blog with well placed and tagged images, keywords, links and html headings.
Now is the time to evaluate. Ask yourself what you have reaped as a result of your efforts and what you can improve to harvest a bigger crop. I am going through this process for myself and my clients and wanted to share my blogging tune-up efforts with you.
The Top 5 Ways To Prune Your Real Estate Blog
1. Define Your Blog's Purpose
- What is the goal of your blog?
- Are you writing to recruit other real estate professionals?
- Are you seeking B2B referrals?
- Do you want a place where your current clients can visit for community information?
- Are you seeking new consumer prospects and clients?
- Is your blog a public diary for your artistic endeavors?
This exercise may result in the relocation of some of your posts to a different blog suited for a different purpose or marking some of your posts as member's only if you are using the ActiveRain platform.
If your blog's purpose is not clear to you it will not be clear to potential or current readers either.
2. Tweak Your Blog Post Titles
Is the message in the blog post title delivered in the body of the post? Are the keywords of the post topic in the headline? Have the words in the headline been repeated in the first 160 characters of your blog post and the last sentence of the last paragraph of your post?
Is your blog post title evoking enough interest and emotion to make someone click and read your post? Review the stats of your individual posts. What are your views vs. click stats? What are your most popular posts?
3. Create a Blog Content Strategy
You cannot wave a wand, exclaim hocus pocus, and expect that magically your blog posts will maintain a focus. It takes a well laid action plan that is designed to put your blog's focus into motion.
To maintain consistent real estate blogging,
- Research how real estate topics are searched on the Internet and what is written about them. Make two lists. The first list will be a list of topics to post on your blog and the second will be a list that categorizes the existing posts your blog.
- Create an editorial calendar that will keep you blogging on schedule.
A blog without a content strategy is like a garden that is not watered regularly. Eventually it will start to wither and it will lose the fruits of its labor.
4. Check Your Links and Your SEO
Are the links on your blog posts still live or are they broken? When you link out on your blog are your linking to resources with a good value to your readers AND a good page rank? Are you using the opportunity to link to other posts that are frequently trafficked within your blog? Are you linking to pages in your website from your blog posts? Check your metatags, check your tags, and check your anchor text. DailyblogTips has a handy SEO Checklist.
Are you using Header tags in your blog's SEO/SEM Strategy? There's very good and succinct advice on Header tags in this SEO blog post and this blog post about header tags.
5. Examine Your Blog Design
Your brand should have a prominent home on your blog. If your purpose for blogging is to gain new consumer prospects, clients and referrals business then do not make your brand, services or persona anonymous. Make sure that your blog's design reflects your brand in the header, the right hand margin, and at the end of the blog post in the footer with a call to action.
Don't make an assumption that blog readers will click over and read your profile.
Incorporate these elements into your blog. Make it EASY for blog readers to reach out to you:
- Your name, phone number, and email address
- Links to pages on your website
- Subscribe buttons for your blog
- Subscribe buttons for your newsletter
- Links/buttons to listing search and home evaluation
Some clients may come to you the zen way but you are still selling your services through your blog. That is the end game.
Blogging great content consistently is the key but all blogs need attention and care. Enjoy the top 5 ways to prune your real estate blog.
If you have any tips to add please do so in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this post check out these posts about blogging,
Does your blog need pruning? Consider a blogging tune-up.
Connect. Share. Learn.Welcome to ActiveRain, the #1 social community for real estate professionals.
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13 Comments on The Top 5 Ways to Prune Your Real Estate Blog
Very helpful hints. As I am new to the world of blogging I appreciate the advice. Thanks
You had me with the title - and the rest of this post was definitely worth reading and bookmarking to study when I have more time. Thanks for the useful information, Rebecca.
Excellent post, and a very timely reminder to us all. Pruning allows for regrowth!
Rebecca; Interesting perspective. My goal is to be a trusted source for local real estate and community inofmration in addition to being an informative source for buyers and sellers. The design part, I'm working on that!
Excellent advice Rebecca! Tweeking and checking our blogs links could be done in the spring and fall to keep all information current and active. Thank you for the information and providing terrific links to help improve our blogging content.
Larry- You are welcome and greetings, welcome to the blogosphere.
Kate- I am happy you found it useful. You must be a gardener.
Sea to Sky (Li)- Thank you and wow you put that very well. It does allow for regrowth.
Matt- Looks like you have defined two goals:)
Terrie- Thank you for reading and there are some wonderful resources available, many of the web 2.0 tools are free. What a deal.
Thank you very much, Rebecca. I am deep into blogging, but shallow with purpose, content, etc. This was extremely helpful and I have bookmarked your other posts to absorb.
Hi Rebecca...You are keeping me very busy. First it was in the kitchen (baking or doing something there) and now its in the garden. I'll never have time for real estate!
Your posts are very, very helpful.
Kate
Jane- I am glad that you found this useful and have also been able to bookmark the other blog posts as a resource.
Kate- Haha, your comment made me laugh and put a smile on my face thank you. Busy productive isn't a bad thing:)
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for the good information. To continue your gardening metaphor, I would say, I'm still reading the instructions on the back of the seed package and the How to garden for dummies book! LOL!
Anthony- We all start somewhere and we all grow with blogging and social networking:)
WOW some great tips on how to write my Blog. I will definately continue reading your posts. There's so much to learn and i'm constantly tweeking my blogging. Great post.
Found your FB blog interesting and thought I'd read a few of your older posts. BTW you should put a FB Button so I can follow you. That's something I need to learn how to do if you need a blog idea. Adding buttons to my blog and comments would be nice to know.