"Striking a Balance" - Avoiding the Lop-Sided Blog - Blog Tips for Rain Drips

I'll keep this one short and to the point (okay, so maybe I'll just try hard)

"Is Your Blog Lop-Sided?" By that, I mean, "What are you writing about? Who are you writing to? Who is your target audience?"

I suppose a more foundational question would be, "Why are You here on ActiveRain?"

Please, don't take me wrong. I am not being critical of anyone in particular here. I just think it's a good thing to constantly evaluate what we do and why. Especially as it relates to our business and our yearly marketing plan. You do have a yearly marketing plan, right? Or do you just shoot from the hip?

I wrote a recent post reminding us all of the ActiveRain Weltanschauung. It's the mantra, guiding principles, and philosophy of our community. It serves to renew our energies/focus on the core purpose of our Network - real estate. In a nutshell, this platform exists to build a community that encourages and educates one another, and at the same time, provides a clearinghouse of highly valuable content for consumers.

With that in mind, let me ask again, "What are you writing about?" 

As a Community Builder for ActiveRain, I get quite a few emails from among our members asking if particular subject matter/topics are permissible or appropriate for our community. Sometimes it's recipes, other times it's jokes. Political and religious articles take a lot of hits as well.

It has been debated since the very beginning as to whether or not to allow post content that isn't real estate related. The founders of our network provided the following posting categories for us:

ActiveRain Community                                   

Obviously, the 'Off topic, humor, etc' category allows for posting content that isn't necessarily real estate related. Personally, I prefer a variety of topics/subjects on ActiveRain. I enjoy reading the human interest stories. Some of my most favorites articles have had little or nothing to do with real estate. For the most part, the content posted here will bear a direct reflection on the majority of our membership. As the Weltanschauung states, "the true value of the ActiveRain community rests entirely with its members."

It is not our plan to censor or prohibit our members for posting certain subject matter. As long as the community guidelines are followed, we will continue to embrace/promote the freedom of speech.

However, let me encourage you to consider balancing your blog. Go back through your archives and evaluate what you've been posting. Do your articles sound like a broken record? Are you constantly writing about the same topics or categories? Perhaps it might be beneficial to your readers and to your business, to write a greater variety/balance of articles? You might even want to develop a regular weekly strategy of blogging.

Let me make the following suggestions:

Create some good, quality 'Consumer-Oriented' articles that you can categorize and post to Localism.

Share some golden nuggets of sage, professional advice or experience with your Fellow Rainers.

Generate eye-catching and informative monthly market reports for your region.

Reveal something of your unique personality, and passions/interests outside of real estate.

And then, every once in a while, toss in a listing or two.

 

By 'Striking a Balance' in your writing, you'll generate a larger readership, and attract more consumer traffic to your blog!

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Allow me to clarify my primary point in this post: it starts with my lead-in question,

"Is Your Blog Lop-Sided?" By that, I mean, "What are you writing about? Who are you writing to? Who is your target audience?"

What I've observed lately within our community are members who publish very little, if any, real estate-oriented content to their blogs. Since this a network for Real Estate Professionals, our primary focus should be generating good, quality, relevant content that is related to real estate. This benefits everyone. It offers the exchange of helpful/practical expert advice among fellow professionals; it serves to educate consumer readers; and it keeps the Google spiders fat and happy! Of the five categories I mentioned, four of them are specific to real estate.  If you're only posting 'off-topic' material most of the time, then perhaps you should consider finding a social network that focuses on that particular topic? I apologize if my point wasn't clear enough.