Two weeks ago I was speaking with Your East Cobb REALTOR® who not only happens to be a member of Positive Real Estate Professionals but someone I regard as a friend. We were talking about how her blogging style and choice of topics has evolved since she first began blogging last April. I bring up Jodi Smith because her efforts are a perfect example of how blogging can help you to achieve concrete results in terms of business growth. Below are some of the common questions (and my responses) when people ask ‘What will a blog do for my business?’
What Is Blogging?
This is fairly straightforward. Blogging is writing; more specifically, blogging is writing posts/articles online. There is often a common confusion of terms that I would like to clear up. A blog is a collection of posts/articles. When you are blogging you are actually writing an individual post/article. So you don’t actually write a blog, you write a post/article on a blog. A good analogy is that a blog is similar to a magazine/newspaper and the posts/articles on a blog are similar to the articles in a magazine/newspaper. Hopefully this will clear up some of the term confusion.
Why Is A Blog Important?
There is an often used and written about phrase ‘Content Is King.’ I too have written several articles on this very topic and would encourage you to read Content is King for more information on this topic. The main reason that a blog is important for any website is that it is an easy way to add new content. New content to index is what the search engine spiders are looking for. New content and frequent indexing is a contributing factor to a site’s rank, Page Rank (PR) for Google. Rank is one of several key factors in how high a site returns in search engine results. Semi-regular posting to your site’s blog gives you the new content you need to help your site return higher in search engine results. The higher your site’s placement in search engine results, the more visible your site is, and the more likely it will be visited by potential clients.
What Role Do My Content Topics Play?
Your topics are important because they fill out the content vacuums that static webpages inevitably leave. A static webpage is basically an informative page that doesn’t change or changes infrequently. This is fine as long as the accuracy and relevance of the information on that page doesn’t change frequently either. A blog can definitely be a great way to give a deeper insight into various topics that your site’s visitors are looking for. Say for example you are a REALTOR® who deals with a lot of relocation clients, your potential clients will probably looking for all types of information on the area they are relocating to. To get a real feel for the area many people write posts that highlight historic buildings and/or places, local parks and other outdoor venues, restaurants, nightclubs, and shopping. Other people take a broader approach and write less about specific offerings and write instead about local youth and/or adult sports, the various houses of worship, or the availability of public transit. This is a way to make your website a destination for relevant information for your potential client base. This is also a continuing resource for past clients and an easy place for those past clients to refer potential new clients. It is important to also show your knowledge of your industry by writing things like market reports and legislation that may impact your clients. A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in your clients, or potential clients’ shoes when you are considering a topic for an article and ask yourself honestly if this would be something of interest.
Not The Journals Of Yesterday
I feel that it is important to draw the distinction between the journaling that blogging used to represent and blogging for business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with maintaining a journaling blog or a poetry blog but these should not be confused with a business blog. In many cases people hear the term blog and think of these personal types of blogs. It is true that in the early days of blogging these types of blogs were very popular, and they do remain popular today. I enjoy many personal blogs but blogging for business is far different from personal blogging. If you are blogging to attract clients to your real estate business then the funny thing your cat did, or photos of you modeling that robe you got for the holidays are not relevant nor appropriate at all. These types of articles will probably have the opposite effect of what you intended. Keep your posts on a business blog relevant and you will produce the concrete results in terms of business growth that you are looking for and have heard so much about.
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