Tap tap..... hello....is there anyone out there??
You grab your keyboard and twist the blog a little harder.
C'mon, let's pop the lid and get my business booming!!
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You've heard the legend. Back in the early days of blogging ActiveRain was just packed with the mythical Google Juice and if you followed the lessons taught by the leaders, you were going to get found. Easy, peasy.
Flash forward a decade or so and perhaps it's not so easy.
There's a LOT more competition out there.
You've got the mega-real estate companies and portals with millions in their budget and you've got moths flying out of an empty wallet.
You've got to compete for the attention of people that prefer 144 characters or less. And Tik Tok, and Instagram, and Facebook, and...and...and....
Periodically some guru will proclaim BLOGGING IS DEAD!!! Maybe they just want clicks, maybe they're sincere, frankly, either way I'm going to go Rhett Butler because I know what I know.
BLOGGING DID WORK.
Blogging STILL works.
IF. YOU. DO. IT. RIGHT.
Now what's right for me may not be so right for you.
You tailor your blog posts for YOUR audience and what YOUR audience wants may be different than what MY audience wants.
If you live in wide open spaces where the smallest lot comes in 10 acre increments, you'd be wasting your time with my niche of low maintenance housing options.
My niche works because I live in an area with two metropolitan areas doing their best to merge somewhere between Cincinnati and Dayton.
The burden is on you as a blogger to understand your market, your audience, and what your audience seeks that you can provide better than the big portals and the folks with the million dollar budget.
YOU HAVE AN ADVANTAGE.
You are LOCAL. The national companies work off data, data that you should understand better than they and their algorithms can understand.
Recognize a weakness in your MLS and the information provided to the public?
There's your opportunity to gain business.
Where does the consumer find information about Y when the big companies only know X?
You know Y. You're living it and breathing it every day, the challenge for you is to take Y and put it together in a way that gets found and engages consumers.
Side benefit? Blogging gives you a bigger digital footprint. Combine it with other efforts (Google My Business for instance) and you're more likely to get found by agents seeking referral partners and people doing "near me" type searches.
Blogging isn't a sprint. No posting twice and sitting back waiting on the phone to ring. It takes reaching a critical point of relevant content that establishes you as a "go to" agent in the eyes of Google's bots and the consumer too.
But in time, you'll start to see the signs that it's working.
The signs aren't always so simple as "I have a house to sell" calls.
The signs might be "mistake" calls that think you're the HOA manager, or the builder's rep, or any host of other similar calls.
I don't mind the "wrong number" type contacts. They're solid evidence that blogging STILL works.
So find your audience. Find your blogging voice. Have patience, and watch for the signs that your blog is working.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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