It's not always sunshine and roses.
In my previous post about Ben Kinney's Soci@l, "10 Days of Pain for 1 Day of Closing," I highlighted one of the sections of the ebook that I really enjoyed. Never one to give half a picture, I thought perhaps I might discuss something I didn't like about the ebook.
Ben Kinney is obviously a talented guy who knows his stuff and although I agree with him on many points, there is a distinct point in the chapter "effective blogging – writing content that ranks and gets read" that I can not endorse.
Spending your hard earned money.
After a brief history of blogging and the word "blog," Ben talks about his experience (and success) with blogging. By utilizing the manpower of his local university, Western Washington University, Ben spent about $2,200 on getting 316 pages of content written by local college students. While I respect Ben's financial breakdown and the fact that it has worked for him, I believe it's the wrong approach. Perhaps I take blogging too personally, but knowing that he didn't write the content himself is kind of a letdown and sets a bad example for the beginning of a chapter about blogging and to quote the chapter title, "writing content."
Although many readers of Soci@l will (hopefully) not see this as their path, I find that agents are always reached out and looking for the exact method of other successful agents. A new agent reading this chapter might have stopped there and got out their credit card. Emulating your successful peers is widespread in real estate, but I hope that few will emulate Ben in this way (by all means emulate him in other ways!). If you do choose to head down this path, by all means - read what is written and make sure you are comfortable with posting this material to your readers.
In Ben's defense, Soci@l does continue you on with some great blogging "how-to" information.
If you can talk to your clients, you can blog to your readers.
Although blogging can be time consuming and hard to stick to at times (especially when you start and you feel like you're writing to nobody), the value of you being you is second to none in my opinion. Much like your clients like to work with you because they are comfortable with you, a reader's connection to your blog should be personal. Look at the title of the book - Soci@l. Is it social to hand your dinner guests a copy of today's newspaper and let them read it at the dinner table? Of course not. They want to talk to you about the news. You have conversation about the news and it leads to other conversations about other topics.
Watch a conversation between two people and write down where it starts (subject matter) and where it ends. Chances are they are two very different places. Now, think of all the points where the conversation shifted into a new direction. Each time the conversation moves to a new topic, think of it as a new blog post. Each of those point where it shifts can be a comment from your blog, a talk you had with a client or colleague, a news article you read, or an idea that came out of nowhere. Regardless of how it came to be, you can write a new post and direct the conversation to a new point.
Blogging is much like speaking, although there are a few finer points (outbound links, SEO, backlinks, titles, tags, etc.), which Ben Kinney does do a great job of covering in Soci@l (and if you're still in the dark, just search ActiveRain as a reference for some of the great posts written about blogging). Although, we may not agree on everything, I think Ben and I both would agree - the secret to blogging is to do it and do it often. You'll learn the rest.
photo courtesy of westerndave
This blog post is a review of Soci@l: Attract Friends, Followers and Connections to Your Business. Soci@l is a free download written by Ben Kinney in conjunction with ActiveRain and Jay Papasan. In exchange for downloading the free copy of Soci@l and writing this review, I have a chance to win a free iPad and I'm getting 2000 ActiveRain points.
Download a free copy of Social here and find out how you can have a chance to win an iPad and be guaranteed 2000 ActiveRain points.
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