I am sure this is like preaching to the choir, but maybe that one person who is on the edge or doubting will read this. Individual Real Estate Brokers need to start down the blog trail now or hang it up later. The next five years will see explosive web growth and all the rules are changing (again). This will catch most brokers and well as most business people off guard...in fact they won't even know what hit them! AS of today, very few brokers know what RSS is and fewer yet understand the power of blogs. Welcome to the the fully alive, ever changing, free form, fully connected, liquid web. Just one more step to the joining the cosmic ether of interconnectedness. You must start now!
Blogs will separate the wheat from the chaff.
My very good friend Ed Kohler from Technology Evangelist has the most simple and elegant post on WHY you will need to Blog in the future. Read this Post. Make sure and read Ed's closing line too. Brokers that follow proper blogging techniques will move from being unknown to well known. So who are you now? Short of some power point presentation or print materials you hand out to your client...who are you? Once again, type your name into Google or Yahoo and what do you find? If you are not finding 20, 30, 40 pages deep of content, comments and information about you...than you have a very poor resume. The good news is that proper blogging will move you to the top of the heap, in any area...and in the all so tough organic search world, without years of SEO games. If you provide the content and information, you will place higher than traditional aged sites.
There is a catch, which is, you will have to work. You can not FAKE a good blog. You will have to write, be involved in town meetings, attend local school functions, attend HOA meetings, interview local business owners, video random FSBOs, take photos, shoot loads of video, interview local politicians, operate skypecasts, record podcasts, interview your buyers and sellers and just in general know anything and everything about your local market. Localism to the extreme. Niche information provided by a local expert is the key to your future success. In fact, new brokers and even non licensed persons can blog on community information and start building their resume well before becoming licensed. The sooner you start, the bigger your page rank.
The liquid web will provide relevant information to consumers
So what is it that blogs do that static web sites don't? Read this excellent post by blogging evangelist RSSPieces, Mary McKnight. In summary, outward pinging services trigger the search boots or crawlers to index your blog every time you post information. While static sites sit and wait to be indexed. What's more exciting is the fact that new WEB3.0 standards will crawl other sites and index all web information automatically. A good example of this is the knowledge base that Amazon uses; People who bought this book also bought this book. So imagine, a web that does the same. People who liked this blog or this article also might be interested in this blog or article. You won't have to rely on search engines to bring you relevant results....the web itself, will know the most relevant information (without Google). Take some time to read about these two geek acronyms:
SIOC Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities-To create an ontology that fully describes the content and structure of most online community sites - including not limited to weblogs, bulletin boards, mailing lists, newsgroups, etc
FOAF Friend of a Friend-The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.
Geek Speak aside, blogs will be great for your business
Although the behind the scene things are complicated, in the real world you won't have to know anything other than how to write, upload photos as well as using a video camera and maybe some editing software.
Here are just a few of the truly amazing benefits of blogging
- Builds relationships with prospects
- Lets other agents know that you are combatant
- Keeps in touch with current clients
- Generates press, buzz
- Generates more content for search engines
- Generates linkable content
- Makes you a local expert
- Hones your writing and speaking skills
- It's inexpensive (look out for the scammers)
- Builds an ever growing online resume
- Keeps you involved in your local community
- It shows your true personality and separates you from the hoard
One last parting note. Baby Boomers represent 79M people. Some are all ready leaving the planet or have spent their wad. Who's Next? Gen X and Gen Y represent 111m people. Ed Kohler, and his article above is called "Real Estate marketing that might work on me", meaning I am a X'er....and your packet of seeds and notepads just won't work any more!
If you would like more information on starting your blogging career, don't hesitate to call me at 800.598.2083 If you find this information relevant, please subscribe to my blog www.realestatezealot.com or skype me at IM: markeibner.
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