Blogger's Building Blocks
A frequent theme we hear from bloggers is difficulty finding the time to blog. The time it takes to think up a post idea, pull the information, etc. There's no reason for blogging to be different than your daily real estate work. We bet you have systems in place. You have checklists for setting up a new listing, so why not have systems in place to help you blog. Why not have fundamental blogging building blocks?
So here's some things we've picked up that help us keep showing up daily:
SOURCES: You need topics right? If localism posts are for you, there are literally dozens of sources that can send topics right to your inbox. It may be email, it may be Facebook it may be Twitter, but they're out there once you identify them. We've got monthly newsletters, daily updates, status updates routinely coming to us from our local organizations and other bloggers, and sometimes you even get a direct request to cover an event! A rich source of info: find your local 365 Things to Do in (name your area) bloggers or your local Family Friendly Facebooker type blogger! Add local newspapers and local magazines and you can have a daily stream of ideas. Pick the best ones and go with it! Remember your audience and tailor the post to them.
EYE CANDY: Keep snapping those photos every chance you get. Use pictures of current and past listings to illustrate your market reports. Pictures of landmarks related to the location of events, businesses, etc. For general posts, there are plenty of free and pay sites that can give you great photos and clipart. (for instance the building blocks photo was free from www.morguefile.com....odd name, but good source...thanks to Judi Barrett for the tip!). Make sure you name and file them in a way you can actually FIND them too! And don't forget to resize them smaller so your post loads faster.
LINKS: Have your key websites bookmarked for frequent reference. And if you have an IDX site, have you added custom searches? (don't look at us, we haven't done this YET either, but know we should....it's on our to do list!). Add those custom searches to your neighborhood posts.
STANDARD BLOCKS: Your typical software coder doesn't recreate everything from scratch. Certain subprograms are ready to copy and paste. You can do the same! When you're doing market report or event/location type posts, why create everything from scratch? Create a template you like for the market reports and update them. For events/locations, some things don't change. Address, hours of operation, etc. can be created and copied post to post. Add the original items as needed and recycle the rest!
CALL TO ACTION: Don't forget this part if you're writing a consumer oriented post!! Whether you're writing a market report, a local event or a general real estate related theme, remember to insert a call to action. For our localism posts, we use a P.S. right after our names to remind them that YES, LIZ AND BILL ARE REALTORS®! We're NOT the event organizers, but information providers. Agents who KNOW their area, so just give us a call so we can help with your real estate needs!
We hope these tips help make your blogging life a bit easier!
Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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