Anyone who becomes a real estate agent for the quick dollars is most likely just as quickly disabused of that notion of easy riches! You either work hard (and smart) or you fail.
It's no different with blogging. Blogging is NOT a quick results, magic silver bullet approach to rapidly building your client base. It's more like compounding interest, you keep making deposits and over time the impact becomes significant.
I've been making those deposits day after day for over 7 years, and more and more I can see the results of that work. Yes, it's been delayed gratification, but blog posts written years ago provide results TODAY. They're no tsunami, but a steady drip drip drip that fills the pail.
ActiveRain (via our main blog and our AR Outside Blog) drives traffic to our Wordpress site (yesterday's traffic referral views):
While those numbers aren't HUUUUUUGE, they're a fairly constant incremental supply of contacts that give me the chance to add a client. Every post in the graphic is AT LEAST two years old. The Sailboat Pointe post is one of our leading causes of phone calls. The Villas at Royal Point post hit was a title company looking for HOA information (so obviously not EVERY match is a potential client...but MOST are).
The key is the posts gets consumers to our patio home section of our Wordpress site, and from there they can browse the other pages.
I'm no Google guru, but here's my anecdotal evidence. We get more calls now than we did prior to developing our web presence via blogging. The generic posts are still plugging away and giving us a bit of authority about Mason and Lebanon Ohio and the other places we blog about.
And of course the niche we've worked has had a big time payoff for all the work.
Go ahead, search "Cincinnati patio homes" and you're going to find us page 1 in one form or another (blogging, websites & IDX pages, Pinterest). Get specific about a smaller community like "Lebanon Ohio patio homes" and we're obviously THE source for buyers to call. Z makes page 1 once after 5 of our entries, and we own every other organic spot according to my Chrome incognito search (YMMV based on search bias).
Niche blogging is leverage.
You can move the Internet with a long enough blogging stick and the patience to see it through.
I may have to wait for the results, but there's still gratification in getting new business years after planting the seeds.
Blogging and patience make a great team.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!
Bill of Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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