If you're blogging for business, you've got two primary audiences:
1. Home buyers and sellers
2. Professionals that can send you referrals
Now if you're blogging market reports, listings, subdivisions, niche housing, local events and such, home buyers and sellers will ideally find you at the end of a Google search. They know where you work (approximately), so you're good to go.
Now that category 2 can be a bit trickier, and there are things you can do as a blogger to reinforce where you work and hopefully get your name associated with your service area.
If you ask me for an agent in San Antonio, I can name several Rainers with no issue.
Beverly Hills land? Got a name.
Upper Maine? I know someone.
Florida? Lots of them.
And so it goes. Bloggers that have done what they needed to do for me to remember WHERE they work, so if I ever have a referral, I know the first ones to call.
Often, especially with new Rainers, there's a missed opportunity (or two or three) to help us associate their name with their service area. Either there's nothing on their profile or blog header or comment block at all, or something really generic that might mean something to locals, but doesn't mean jack to me.
For instance, Tristate might be the local term used in your market, but care to guess how many different areas of the U.S. have a "tristate"? Or an East Bay? Or Bay Area? Or Lake Country?
As a for instance, take a look at the blog header for Myrl Jeffcoat :
She's made it clear in multiple spots that she serves Greater Sacramento. It's in her blog title, the blog description and on the profile snapshot to the right. If you don't know Myrl is in Sacramento, then it's only because you're not paying attention.
We try to do the same thing:
In our case, we throw in a screen cap of part of our market area.
And in our blog signature block we actually embed a custom Google map of our primary service area (yes, we can and do go a bit beyond the shaded area on a case by case basis).
All of the fields with the arrows are either editable from your "Blog Settings" link on My Home, or from editing your profile (you can reach also link from My Profile (edit) on My Home.
If you're not taking full opportunity, take a few moments to populate those fields in a way that works for you. Do it properly and every comment you leave will have in your comment header all the key details about who you are and where you work.
Until next Tuesday, if you have a question, just Ask An Ambassador!
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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