The Real Estate Blog - Real Estate Tomato

Finding Time To Blog As A Real Estate Professional

10 points if you know why I cropped the clock like this This might just be the most ironic post we’ll ever publish here on the Vine.

Teresa Boardman, the real estate blogging goddess from St. Paul, sent over this post to help us get some fresh content on our pages. It couldn’t have come at a better time. With all of my time spent on the recent growth of our company and the development of some very exciting projects, including an entire Tomato Makeover, it’s nice to have a few reliable contributors.

Finding Time To Blog As A Real Estate Professional

By Teresa Boardman

I am contacted by people from all over the country who would like to start a business blog or who already have one but are struggling with it. People make the same type of comment about not having enough time, not understanding how I find the time or saying that is takes too much time.

Marketing and prospecting have always taken time. In general it is recommended that real estate practitioners spend about two hours a day prospecting. We tend to want to work the business we have until it runs out and then start prospecting and advertising. Consistent prospecting, even when there is enough business is the secret to consistently having clients and making what can be a kind of roller coaster ride a bit smoother.

Where do I find the time to blog?

It is part of my daily routine and part of my weekly schedule. I don't use time blocking, I find that too restrictive… but I do plan which tasks I will complete each day and writing is always on the list. I also have a list of buildings and places that I want to photograph. I think I have the best job in the world because taking pictures is on my to do list as a priority task. I just love it when someone challenges me on the amount of time I spend writing or taking photographs. I like to ask them how much time they spend doing open houses. I don't have time for open houses and they don't give me near the ROI as writing blog posts does. There isn't time during my working hours to do anything that doesn't directly or indirectly generate revenue.

For people who are serious about having a business blog a plan is essential.

If the blog always comes last (when you ‘have time) it is likely that posts will not be made on a consistent basis making it less likely that the blog will generate readership and revenue. Writing on a blog that doesn't get read and does not generate revenue is a waste of time. It is similar in this way to other forms of farming. I have read that it takes about 18 months of mailing every month before geographical farming starts to pay off. Most agents give up after 6 to 9 months which means they more or less threw away the time and money they spent on farming. It works the same way with a blog. It can take months or even a year for a blogging to pay off. Once it does it just keeps on giving. A single post on a blog with consistent quality content can lead to multiple real estate transactions. it never goes away, it is out there in cyber space and people continue to find it and react to it.

Everyone has time for a blog.

We all have time to show houses, get listing contracts signed and attend closings. Writing a blog is just as important. I can't imagine not having time to show houses. Most of us figure some way to work that into our schedules. Why doesn't writing a blog post get the same kind of priority? It is just as likely to generate revenue as showing homes. From a big picture point of view showing homes can lead to one sale in the near future but writing a blog post every day, can lead to home sales for years.

Don't tell me you don't have time for your blog.

You do have the time. It just isn't a high enough priority and you are not taking it seriously and should not have started a blog in the first place. Writing a blog or any prospecting activity is part of the job and should not be treated like leisure time activity that is done only when there is enough time. Get off of Jim's blog right now and go to your own and start writing (you too Jim!). You just wasted valuable time reading my rant when you could have been writing or out taking pictures. You do have time or you would not be here reading this.

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Teresa Boardman is an exceptionally professional Realtor in the St. Paul, Minnesota area.

Her website: www.TBoardman.com
Her blog: www.StPaulRealEstateBLOG.com
Voice: 651-216-4603

Thank you Teresa.
As always, it’s a pleasure having you 'on the Vine'.

Exactly Why You Should Bore Blog Readers With Real Estate Statistics

Things have been a bit quiet here at the Vine for the last couple of weeks, and that only ever means one thing: We’re Growing Again. We’ve recently brought on 3 additional members to our team in order to bolster our strengths in design, service, and training. Our publishing pace always suffers when I have to be so “hands on” in training and transistion. Look for a surge next week!

Fortunately, we have the support of guest bloggers. This week, Margaret Woda (FocusOnCrofton.com) makes her Real Estate Tomato debut with an excellent post on her person experience with blogging about her local real estate statistics. Take it away Margaret!

Why Bore Blog Readers With Statistics?

By Margaret Woda

My community real estate blog “for and about Crofton, Maryland” is picking up steam with more hits and page views each month. Creative, articulate, helpful – these are adjectives I’ve read or heard regarding some of my posts, and reader approval can be very addictive. So why would I want to risk this approval by boring Focus On Crofton readers with real estate statistics? In a word…

“RESULTS”

Apparently consumers don’t find those statistics as boring to read as I do to blog about them.

Once Upon A Time

As a blogging newbie, with little experience even reading any real estate blogs, I wrote a Crofton Real Estate Market Update as my very first post. I simply expressed my opinion about the implications of statistics from our regional MLS for the previous month. Believe me, I have no shortage of opinions, so this was an easy inaugural blog for me.

A few days later, I received a client contact through the ActiveRain dashboard, so there was no doubt as to the source of this business. That inquiry turned into a listing within a week of my first blog post and, needless to say, I was quick to acknowledge the benefit of blogging. It didn’t occur to me at that time, however, that this topic was a factor in creating the new business.

How-to, Why, and Where blogs followed, but the next consumer to contact me through the contact page of my blog said he read my real estate market update; in fact, he was angry that his agent hadn’t kept him informed about the market by providing this data to him. He continued reading my blog posts over the next several weeks and listed his home with me when the earlier listing expired. Now I knew that I was on to something with this informative real estate market update.

On a roll

Funny thing about these two listing appointments – the sellers were ready to list with me when I walked through their front door, without even viewing my listing presentation. It seems they were already satisfied that I’m a local real estate expert, after reading the real estate market update on my blog.

With two out of two new client contacts within a month resulting from one real estate market update, I started writing similar posts with statistics for adjacent zip codes. Lo and behold, more seller clients came my way, along with two $800,000 listings in nearby zip codes. When asked, they said they found me through the search engines. Again, a single market update for their zip code was the only possible source for this new business.

I could go on and report subsequent updates and new clients, such as two current listings from this source, but surely you can see WHY I continue to “bore” readers with real estate statistics each month in my Real Estate Tomato blog, Focus On Crofton.

Finding the data

My regional multiple listing service publishes statistics on the 10th of each month for the previous month, so creating a real estate update is easy for me. I choose a clear easy-to-read and understand one-page format of zip code data, as my resource, although county and regional information is available, as well. Your multiple listing service probably publishes such information periodically – even if you’ve never seen it. Look on their website, or call and ask where you can find it.

Calculating the information yourself by running your own MLS search for the previous month is a little more time consuming, but it’s not difficult. I know, because I’ve done it myself for categories not reported by my multiple listing service – detached homes, townhouses and condos, for example, or individual subdivisions.

If you set up an Excel spread sheet,as I did when I wrote that first real estate update, it’s quick and easy to add new figures each month. I created a separate spreadsheet for each zip code, and set up several categories: # of Units Sold, # of Days on Market, Average Sold Price, Median Sold Price, and Sold Price vs. List Price.

Presentation

Consumers responded to a simple basic real estate market update in narrative format. Yet I suffered from “graph-envy” when I saw the colorful graphs and charts used by other real estate professionals in their blogs, because I felt they made the information more attractive to the eye.

Real Estate Market Study Another blogger pointed out the graph wizard available in MS Excel and soon I, too, was producing colorful graphs for my reports. However, t’s worth noting that consumer response did not increase when I added these graphs.

As the market flattened in recent months, graphs no longer seemed to add that visual interest to my blog, so I started creating tables in MS Word or MS Publisher. These aren’t as colorful as the graphs or as boring to the eye as the narrative – and they work for today’s market. But you can get creative… Last month, I even added a little 2–frame comic strip to my real estate market report.

Whatever the statistics may be and however you present them, those numbers are simply the foundation of any real estate market update. It’s your narrative that makes any report interesting… your professional opinion about what it all means to consumers. Here are some examples: Crofton Real Estate Market Update - October 2007 (detailed, with graphs); Crofton Real Estate Market Study - March 2008(short, with a single chart).

Occasionally, I’ve include information from the real estate market updates in a blog about a specific topic, such as Gambrills Residents Worry About Pollutant. This post includes some of those “boring” real estate statistics for three adjacent zip codes, effectively making a point with facts, rather than expressing an opinion.

The Bottom Line

Demonstrating knowledge of the local real estate market is probably one of your goals for even having a blog, yet sometimes I think real estate blogs sound a bit like travel brochures, touting places to visit and things to do in our communities. Yes, those posts say “I know my community” - but they don’t say “I know timely and relevant real estate information.”

There’s no more effective way to communicate our local real estate expertise than creating a real estate market update for our blog. It may be one of the more tedious posts we put together each month, but who cares about that when consumer contacts are a direct result. They find our reports to be interesting and relevant, and we may be the only (or best) source of that information for consumers in our market.

The bottom line? RESULTS. What better reason could there be for boring blog readers with statistics!

—

Thanks a ton, Margaret!

Margaret is an exceptionally professional Realtor in Crofton, Maryland.
Her writings and real estate tools can be found at www.FocusOnCrofton.com
Voice: (410) 451-1900

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Tags: Margaret+Woda, Real+Estate+Statistics, Real+Estate+Blog, Blogging+Advice

Posted by Jim Cronin on April 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBack (0)

Writing Your Real Estate Blog Primarily to Google is a Squandered Opportunity.

Hitting-google-missing-the-mark Thanks to the recent frequency and quality of guest posts, I’ve had the pleasure of taking a little time off from shouldering the content on the Tomato. Keeping in stride, we have another treat for you. Todd Carpenter, ubiquitous RE.net participant, and owner and author of the globally appreciated mariah.com (a web 2.0 real estate network of websites), just emailed over this solid piece weighing the value of blogging for Search Engine exposure.

Writing Your Real Estate Blog Primarily to Google is a Squandered Opportunity.
By Todd Carpenter

What’s the difference between a blogging expert and a real estate expert?

Blogging experts may or may not understand how the real estate industry operates. Take, for example the theory forwarded that, for the sake of superior Google search results, bloggers should not write about their community. That instead, they should stick to posts that are only about real estate itself.

You’ll get no argument from me that a real estate blogger should blog about real estate. Blog about your listings. Blog about your open houses. Blog about market conditions. Blog about foreclosures. You’re a real estate agent, of course you should write about real estate.

Blogging this way and you’ll get search engine traffic. However, blogging only about real estate means leaving much of a blog's marketing power at the table.

Some experts scoff at the idea of blogging about the community, or local businesses, or even writing a restaurant review. These topics may not drive in large numbers of web driven leads, but let’s face it, you can BUY Internet leads. You’re not in the Internet leads business. You’re in the real estate business.

Step away from blogging for a minute and think about how successful real estate agents market in the real world.

Referrals are key to driving a successful real estate business. I’ll take one referral from a real live human over a hundred from Google. Referrals from past clients are very powerful, but you can use you’re blog to create a referral stream from people you’ve never worked with before.

Referrals from other local businesses.

Writing a review of a restaurant has very limited SEO value. It’s a value to you’re readers, but that’s not the best reason for doing it. Any time you put someone’s name in lights, there gonna be impressed, and they’ll want to return the favor. Writing a restaurant review endears you to the owner of that business. You’ve just grown your sphere of influence, and all it took was a few kind words on your blog.

On lenderama, I let mortgage vendors write their own reviews. On Denver Modern, I feature the listings of local real estate agents, and feature local businesses. All of this is useful to my readers, but I also do it to connect with my peers in the industry. You can just as easily do this at the local level with restaurants, dry cleaners or even skateboard shops.

Proving that you’re a community expert.

For the longest time, most real estate web sites allowed agents to TELL consumers they are experts for a certain location. Blogs let them PROVE it. I could write a blog about Houston real estate (I live in Denver). I could get it to rank in the search engines. What I can’t do is prove that I’m an expert on Houston.

Blogging is as much about closing leads as it is about generating them. Proving that you ‘re the expert on this community is how you set yourself apart from the competition that merely states it.

Developing a regular readership.

While some experts will tell you that hardly anyone will regularly read a real estate blog, they’re basing this opinion on the feedback they get from real estate bloggers who only blog about real estate.

Why do you send out community newsletters? Why do you send out football schedules and refrigerator magnets? Communicating to your client and prospect base is the cornerstone of real estate marketing. Blogging is the ideal tool to take this proven marketing technique to the web. But for the same reason you include football schedules in your marketing mailers, you have to include interesting topics in your blog. If you create an interesting place to visit, readers will follow suite.

Tying it all together.

When it comes time for an avid reader to list their home, where do you think they will look first? When it comes time for an out of town buyer to choose a relocation agent, will they choose the one who said they knew the community, or the one who proved it? When a local business owner has the opportunity to refer an agent to one of his own customers, don’t you think the agent who featured them on their real estate blog might be at the top of their list?

When it comes to structuring your blog, look to the way you market in the real world. The key to building a successful blog is mixing lead generation, business referrals and avid readers into one big marketing monster. There’s simply no reason to leave half the upside a blog can offer at the table while chasing search results that will probably come to you anyway.

—

Thanks for your contribution to the Vine, Todd.

Todd Carpenter is a Realty Tech Consultant and creator of a network of Real Estate Sites at mariah.com.

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Tags: Todd+Carpetner, Blog+Marketing, Real+Estate+Blog, Blogging+Advice

Posted by Jim Cronin on March 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBack (0)

Can My Real Estate Blog Help Me Talk Like a Woman?

John Coley, still my favorite Lake Martin, Alabama blogger, sent over this gem, and I couldn’t wait to post it for your enjoyment.

Can My Real Estate Blog Help Me Talk Like a Woman?

By John Coley

I recently got rejected on a listing presentation, and it hurt.
Unless you're a realtor that signs up 100% of your listing presentations, you know what I mean.

This one was particularly painful because it was to list a couple's lake home and help them buy another. The combination of the two homes would have been about $2 million in gross sales, which buys a lot of groceries in Alabama. It also hurt because I felt I had a really good relationship with the husband. He contacted me out of the blue. We talked a lot. He liked the way I marketed other homes in the area. So I was surprised to hear that I had lost at the last minute to someone else.

I swallowed my pride and tried to salvage the episode by getting some good feedback.

I said, "I'll be honest.. I am really surprised. I thought that you all had made up your mind to let me help you. Please do me a favor. Can you give me the full unfiltered truth, even if it hurts my feelings? How did I miss this one?"

And he told me, bless him. He's one of the few people out there that will really tell you what they think. I am so glad he didn't spare my feelings; what he said flabbergasted me as much as it helped my career.

He: "My wife didn't want to go with you."

His wife?? Up until then, he had been my main contact. I had offered to meet with them both in person, but they declined for the sake of time. How could she not like me if we had never met?

Me: (cringing) "Why didn't your wife want to let me help?"

He: "I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but it's because you're a man."

What? Have I just become a victim of discrimination? He's kidding, right? No, he wasn't.

He went on to say that his wife felt that she could not work well with a male agent. In their past real estate transactions, she liked dealing with women.

I thanked him profusely for his honesty. The conversation ended on a positive note, but I was frustrated. As a man, how can I overcome that objection? Sure, there are a lot of great female realtors in the world. I know many. But there are also a lot of great male ones, too. I really think that I could have done a great job for these folks.

So how can I lessen the chances of this happening again? Do I bashfully disclose that I am a man right off the bat, then go through some fancy Power Point slideshow to prove it won't be a problem? Sounds silly. Do I ask potential clients if they mind if I am a man? Of course not. Who would admit to that to my face, even if it were true? It took a lot of pleading on my part to get my prospect to tell me, and even then he was embarrassed about it.

A year ago, I would have felt helpless. Now I know that I can employ my keenest weapon to pierce the issue - my blog.

Because of my blog I could be wrong - after all, I'm only a man - but it occurred to me that maybe she feels she cannot relate to men as well as she can to women in that situation. Maybe their rapport would suffer. So what does good rapport consist of? Mostly great communication. What is my best communication tool? My real estate blog - which can help in 3 ways:

1.) Instead of pouting about losing, I can focus on winning the next one. I can go further than merely promising good communication, I can prove it by blogging to communicate on prospects' terms, on their concerns, not mine.

2.) I should have tried harder to talk to both spouses, or at least ensured that both had read some of my blog posts to demonstrate that I would be focused on their needs instead of my own ego or commission.

3.) I need to post more frequently, and more personally, about the selling process - so readers can feel engaged enough to know what kind of agent I will be for them.

In short, I'll use my real estate blog to help me talk like a woman.

I know it will work, because it has already worked with people that are now clients. I have had strangers to call me and tell me that they “really like how I think.” How did they peer inside my head? My blog.

It remains to be the most effective way for me to answer the questions that people didn't even know that they had, or are too embarrassed to ask in person.

If anyone else has any tips on how to use my blog to be a better communicator, please reply below!

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Thanks John, it’s great to have you on the Vine.

John is an exceptionally professional Realtor in Lake Martin, Alabama.
His writings and real estate tools can be found at www.LakeMartinVoice.com
Voice: 334–221–5862

Tags: John+Coley, Real+Estate+Blogging, Blogging+Advice

Posted by Jim Cronin on March 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)

All You Ever Needed To Know About Blogging SEO, But Were Afraid To Say So.

I know what you are thinking…”not another SEO article, please…”

SEO focused companies have secrets.
They want you to think that you need them to get you to the top of the search engines.
They want you to think that you need to learn the complex details or you will fail.
They want you to think that there is so much that goes into it, that you'd be a fool to not put your faith in them.
They want you to think that your success depends on their knowledge and tools.
They want you to think that their advice will make "all the difference".

SEO-Advice-Take-It-Or-Leave-It Well folks, the truth is, when it comes to blogging, SEO consulting is a lot like cold medicine. When you catch a cold, if you don't take medicine you are going to be sick for seven days. However, if you do take cold medicine it is going to only be a week before you're healthy.

The fallacy of SEO advice is that Correlation does not always imply Causation. Just because you took your cold medicine, and then got better in a week, it does not imply that it improved your health. It just made you feel like you were doing something positive.

When it comes to blogging, many of those that are currently holding the top spots in the search engines have done it without much concern for SEO. In fact, it may have never even crossed their minds.

Well Then, How Did They Do It?

They blogged, they blogged and then they blogged some more.
They blogged on topic. They blogged on the topic for which they were looking to be found.

So, if you want to be found in the Search Engines for terms that you expect will generate an audience that will develop into leads, then you need to blog those topics.

Is it really that simple, Jim? Yes it is.

But what about all those advertisements and remedies we hear about that are designed to help us be found in the search engines? Should I not be taking those as prescribed?
You can. And they may make you feel better about everything. But an active blog, on target and on topic is a healthy blog.

So what's the SEO equivalent to "stay home, get some rest, and drink lots of fluids"? Surely you can't completely ignore some advice.

Not-Much-Concern-For-SEO There are some basic guidelines, but once you read them, you'll realize that they mostly common sense, and not some packaged remedy.

1. Blog on topic.

If you want to be found for something, blog about it. If it's Sacramento Real Estate, or St. Paul Real Estate, or Chico Home Searching, or even Blogging Advice then make sure you are blogging about those topics.

2. Use keywords in the titles of your blog articles.

Search Engines, like your readers, put a lot of weight on what it says in the title of your post. Put your topics in there and you will see success.

3. Make sure your site was set up properly by your web designer.

Go over these two subjects:
1. Meta elements (titles, tags, keywords, etc.)
Is all of it relevant to your needs and meet the general guidelines?
2. Pinging and Crawling - Are you notifying the 'powers that be' when you hit publish on your blog? Are they listening?

4. Be social.

Get people to notice you by getting out an commenting. This leads to all sorts of beneficial consequences that we've already written about here and here.

5. Blog, blog and blog some more.

The more content, and instances of it, the better you will do naturally.

I have intentionally left out dozens of other suggestions that you can spin in the comments.

We recognize that in order for blogging to be something which trail-blazing real estate agents are going to embrace, then we need to keep the routine realistic and comprehensive.

Keep it simple. It works.
(I can hear the shouting already...)

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