This article originally appeared on my blog Transparent Real Estate on July 16. I have reposted it here for the review of Active Rainers.
I don't post often on Active Rain because I only write after 9:00pm and can't manage the potential pressure of responding to boatloads of comments. It's the reason I posted the reviews on Transparent first.
Caleb Mardini contacted me last week and asked if I might provide a penultimate sendoff review for the Project Bloggers. Caleb really did wonderful work coordinating the contest... I appreciated Caleb's thought to offer, and am eager to do so. I must admit I was not active enough with Project Blogger due to personal business convergence this spring. My friend and Project Blogger London Whitted experienced the same convergence and we'll continue to work on the Future of Commercial blog.
With this review, I lump all the new Project Bloggers into one group and make four conclusions. I try to discuss what I think are the pitfalls of new bloggers.
1) Content is king... and it's too tricky to judge content
I'll say it simply... blogs are read for content. Design, amazing pictures and videos, and widgets enhance a blog's presentation. The specifics of whether this article or widget works is subjective and the judges performed their reviews according to their own personal code. The real measure of the content's appeal is acknowledged by a growing readership.
Project Blogger really wasn't meant to provide the definitive blogging success blueprint - many of the Bloggers themselves admit they didn't really change much. So what if one judge says one thing and the next judge says the opposite? Another Blogger comment suggested an idea that the judges be agents themselves because they would judge the blog from the perspective of an agent... ridiculous. The contest sometimes turned mildly contentious because belief systems were colliding about who was the real authority or what was the real deal... when in reality (or Zen), the blog just evolves based on the private mission of the blogger. It will live or die by content.
The judges collectively did great jobs reviewing the myriad details of the blog but for the most part, it's hard to lavishly praise or criticize content because it's so ... personal.
2) Hyperlocal blogs don't link out well, and thus are underperforming
Hyperlocal content makes for useful and often entertaining reading... but blogging success requires a secondary effort that surprises many new bloggers - interacting with other bloggers to drive traffic. The reason? Most real estate blog readers are the bloggers themselves... the consumer readership hasn't solidly kicked in yet and the bloggers are building their online presence in anticipation of the consumer finding them.
All the Project Bloggers are so hyperlocal centered, most of the authors have found it hard to link to other real estate blogs... (in essence, it's hard because other blogs don't discuss their locales in, say, Plainfield, IL). Yes, the agent's blog mission is lead generation and the target readership is the local consumer, but most Project Bloggers are guilty of not diversifying some of their work to attract a wider, non-local audience. It's easy to find well read agent blogs who practice "linkage":
- Jim's Real Central VA links all over the place yet remains true to Charlotteville
- Kevin's 3Oceans adds many perspectives on Redfin, Zillow and new technologies
- Here are Jay's Phoenix Guy's last six articles - 2 are for consumers, the rest is for a national audience...
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update 7/17: want to mention three pioneering hyperlocal blogs that everyone knows. St Paul, MiOakland and NYHouses4Sale don't go beyond their city limits but they are well recognized as models for local real estate marketing.
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So which Project Bloggers got the linkage based on the Technorati authority (acknowledged to be the number of websites inbound linking into the blog)?
Note that the continual publicity of Project Blogger contributed a minimum of 11 links. (I'm surprised Mary"s Live in Los Gatos lacks authority, does it have something to do with the Realtown platform?). There are exceptions, but well trafficked blogs tend to attain inbound links.
3) Write articles, not blog postings (click link for article)
One thing I've tried to do with Transparent is to create articles with some research behind it and then provide conclusions. Many blog education sites recommend writing "flagpole" articles - articles so strong, they continue to attract readers long after they hide in the archives. No matter how insightful and well developed the hyperlocal content is, it generally doesn't become a flagpole read nationally. All the Project Bloggers need to work on these flagpoles.
Perhaps it's because the Project Bloggers are new, but none of the blogs had "Top" or "Best" Article sidebar lists. Some also didn't have the basic "search box" or an archive sidebar. Here are some blogs that list their top posts :
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Pat, I really liked your approach to the week's judging. In fact, here is my "bright idea":
Set aside all the previous weekly judging/polls.
Set some new, specific judging criteria based on what everyone has now learned over the course of the project. Do a final judging based on that criteria including everything; design, content, development over the 14 week period.
I don't think this will be a popular idea :-)