Twitter is all the rage… and yet most blogging agents aren’t using it becausethey don’t grasp the value. Here’s another way to approach the Micro-Blog: Instead of catering to the audience in a Twitter Community, consider those that are actually coming to read your blog. Short updates from you about the market, your efforts as an agent, new listings, and news flashes are just the sort of thing that your readers will appreciate. Now pop them on your blog, and syndicate that back up to Twitter instead of the other way around. (More on this in coming weeks) Hot tip: When it comes to your blog, avoid the community babble that gave you the creeps when you first looked at Twitter: “Having a hard time deciding what cereal to get.” Your audience came for tangible real estate topics, not the stream of consciousness that you feel the need to share. Try: “Cleaning out the gutters for the today’s 2pm open house at 123 Elm St, Eastville.” With high quality and too-easy-to-use video cameras available for under $150, you’d be a fool to not start including local video clips on your blog. Whether you post yourself vlogging, or replace the photo-op with a quick clip, your audience will appreciate it. Hot tip: Try to keep videos under 2 minutes. That digestible expectation will have them watching every video you publish. At Inman Connect last summer, we held a panel on Taking Your Blog to the Next Level. My take then (and still) is that there is way too much Realtor-on-Realtor action happening in what are supposed to be local level real estate blogs, aimed at developing an audience of potential clients. It took several paragraphs to cover all the bases in an article, so I will save the space and provide a link to the benefits of getting other local voices to carry the load of your blog content. Hot tip: Once you know you have a local audience that cares about your efforts, it won’t be difficult to get others to provide valuable content. Trying to put the cart before the horse will be a hard sell. I’m not talking about just popping a map on the site to showcase a location. Google maps are so incredibly versatile now, that the range of resources you can create for your audience is endless. To whet your appetite, here is a link to Lori Turoff’s post that describes her Open House Map for Hoboken, NJ. Hot tip: Next week, I will be publishing a comprehensive overview on how to leverage Google Maps on your real estate blog. It will include several exciting map examples like Lori’s above. I feel that the proper use of Google Maps will be what makes your site an invaluable resource unlike any other in your community. What separates a real estate blog that generates appointments from one that doesn’t? More often then not, it is Call-To-Action. As bloggers you are writers/reporters, but most importantly, you are real estate agents that need to have appointments with clients. Writing alone will not always be enough to get someone to act in a manner that leads them to working with you. Place visiblecalls to action in your navigation, in your sidebars, in your footer, in your articles, in your videos and in your email blasts. Hot tip: Spend some money to have someone design something nice for the calls-to-action on your site. These graphics can be what get people to ‘act’ so it is worth a small investment. Mix in a theme to the graphics that you use for your calls-to-action. Cool looking icons, or a mascot will stand out, and yet not be seen as ‘pushy’. 1. Microblogging
2. Video Blogging
3. Extending Your Soapbox to Other Community Experts
4. Using Google Maps
5. Including Unique Calls To Action
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