1) Writing Brilliant Posts and Average Headlines-Headlines are the Marketing Piece that creates the desire to click “more.” Advertisers spend millions of dollars each year to find the one sentence, the 15 second elevator pitch that will (not sell their product, but) get consumers to take just one look at the meat of their marketing… What will motivate your readers to click…? A few guidelines here... a. The headline MUST match the story. You can’t write a headline that says, “Naked People Inside! “Unless there are…. You get it. Make the headline strong and curious, but truthful. b. Make your Headline keyword rich… Keywords are king... Include YOUR blogs’ keywords within the title, permalink, etc… c. Use common English…Make your Headline understandable to everyone…not just informed readers… Don’t use acronyms or abbreviations that some may not understand…

2) Not getting Personal-Blogs ARE personal. They are LOGS of your thoughts, your experience, and your feelings. They are YOUR opinions… All these things are personal. Take a chance and let your expressions flow… Show your Readers, YOU.

3) Talking AT, not TO- Blogging is not BROADCASTING. It is a conversation, a discussion. You are simply speaking first. Treat your blog this way. Speak TO your Readers as if you expect them to speak back… Make sense? 

4) Trying to be Interesting. When I do the 4RealzED seminars with Dustin Luther, this is my FAVORITE part of his blogging presentation. Dustin’s lesson to our audience, AND ME, is to stop worrying about being INTERESTING, and blog about things that you are INTERESTED in. Be INTERESTED. Your passion, knowledge, and general interest are contagious.

5) Promoting YOU. Blogging is a community and to build a community you need to reach out… To reach out, you have to get OUT of YOUR community and read other peoples blogs… When you find something interesting, write a blog post and LINK to the blog that inspired you… Link Out, Link Out and then Link Out some more… This is the single most difficult concept for my clients to understand… “Why would I send my readers to someone else’s blog?” TO ENGAGE THEIR READERS….

6) Trying to always write BRILLIANT PROSE... Blogging is a discussion (see a theme developing here?) Write as if you are speaking to me, not as if you are writing a book… Heck, if I want to read great prose, I’ll keep McEwen, Marques, or Nabokov by the bedside. If I want to know about you and what is INTERESTING to you? I really prefer to hear it in your unfiltered voice…

7) Stating Opinion as Fact… The written word is instant history. Your blogs will be filtering around cyber-space long after you have “left the building.” Daunting thought, huh? Your grandchildren’s, grandchildren could be rummaging through cyber space to figure out who his or her ancestors were and find YOUR AR Blog… downright spooky. Ensure that your facts ARE facts, or state them as opinion. Make sure the statements are not only true, BUT DEFENDABLE… Your blog lives and dies, with your readers trust in you. BE BEYOND REPROACH...

Jim Marks is the founder of Virtual Results, a company dedicated to creating online strategies and websites that work, for Real Estate Professionals...