The Easiest Way To Write 30 Real Estate Blog Articles Every 30 days

We all know that Teresa Boardman posts to her real estate blog every day.  But most aren’t so inspired, thus making the effort seem unrealistic. 

The base formula for blogging success is obvious: More relevant content = More of everything you expect (traffic, search engine exposure, subscribers, leads, reach).  So, like exercise, we know it’s good for us, we just can’t always get off the couch computer… and since you are already ON the computer, and not jogging, why can’t we get more than a post a week out of you?

This article is designed to give real estate bloggers an outline/formula for publishing as much relevant content as possible.  If finding the time to write is the challenge, then a new approach must be made in order to pick up the content pace.  If the goal is to publish every day then you either need to schedule time every day to write and publish OR you need to write in bunches and publish subsequently. 

Batching Base Content is the Solution

Below are 4 examples of posts that fall under Base Content. 
They have been selected because of their ease of creation, and feasibility of writing many at once.
If it’s easy, and you can create more than one at a time, your chances of keeping the goal of 30 blog articles in 30 days are good.

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1. Market Statistics -

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Develop a quick market snapshot for each area you cover.  If an area has a large amount of condos and single family homes, do a post for both.  If the area has a large price range, break it down into several groupings (e.g. under 250k, 250k-750k and 750k+).

The idea is to provide valuable information that differentiates itself from the content that agents just hand off in a PDF.  In most cases, you should be able to come up with a template of at least 3 areas, 1 or 2 types of properties and 2 or 3 price ranges. 

Examples:
Area 1, Property Type 1, Price Range 1
Area 2, Property Type 1, Price Range 1
Area 3, Property Type 1, Price Range 1
Area 1, Property Type 1, Price Range 2
Area 2, Property Type 1, Price Range 2
Area 3, Property Type 1, Price Range 2
and so on…

These are not the most exciting of posts, but the content is quite valuable and appreciated.  They are also so simple, that once you have the template in place, you can do several at once, and then space them throughout the month. 

Value of Market Stats:
Helps establish you as a real estate agent that covers many areas. 
Template posts that are easy to produce.
Content is relevant for active buyers/sellers.

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2. Area Events -

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Online newspapers offer a public calendar of events (here’s one for Sacramento).  You will find at least 10 events worth mentioning on any given month; fairs, art walks, festivals, theater, live music, dance lessons, wine tastings, chili cook-offs, train rides, holiday events – it’s so easy it’s ridiculous.  Even rural towns have plenty going on worth mentioning, so no excuses.

Area events can be tackled in batches as well.  Since calendars are generally maintained month to month, you’ll be able to get the relevant schedule of current events at once.

(Best advice in the article) If content is king, then a Batching strategy is is a great approach to blogging.  Taking the time to write multiple articles at once increases your productivity.  You’ll spend far less time writing 3 articles in a row than you would had you written them over 3 or 4 days.  Maintain an efficient strategy like this and you’ll save hours, weekly.

Value of Area Events:
Posting area events establishes you as a community expert beyond market data, school info and real estate news.
These posts are entertaining and informative to your entire sphere.
You can see big surges in search engine traffic from people looking for info on popular events.
Now that you know what’s going on in town, you might go have some fun yourself.

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3. SpinBack Content -

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These are posts where the agent brings in outside content from other blogs or media outlets.  
An example is posts that we’ve written expanding on ideas from Copyblogger. 

Subscribe to the RSS feed or email blast of several sources and you should be able to find a dozen relevant articles a month.

Examples of SpinBack:
Newspaper Story - Take a article in the local newspaper on the market and expand or counter what the author wrote.
Outside Blog - Take a post from another blog, maybe in a different city or a blog with similar content, and expand or counter what has been said.
Introduce Media - Find a video and share it with your readers but offer commentary on the content.

(Quick tips) – Do not re-post more that a short paragraph of someone else’s work.  The idea is for you to develop original content, not save time by posting what they already wrote.  Always give credit to the original author, and link to the original location.  Your articles are about your opinion, not just the recreation of theirs.

Value of SpinBack:
The original premise of the articles is already established, saving your efforts to develop your opinion.
Reading other bloggers/authors is the best way to improve your own writing.

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4. Timeless (or Evergreen) Content -

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By breaking down the elements of buying and selling real estate you can develop countless articles of lasting value.

Educational posts like these are ripe for “List Posts” and “How-To Posts”. 
They also beg for High-Impact Headlines like: “Warning! 5 Things You Must Know Before Putting in an Offer on a Home in San Diego”

Batching of these articles is possible as well, given that your responsibility is knowing this stuff inside and out. 
in a couple of hours, you should be able to pound out 3 or 4 articles on listing your home, 3 or 4 on searching for homes, 3 or 4 on contingencies… and on and on.

Examples of timeless content:
Tips: Listing You Home, Home Searching, Securing a Loan, Relocation, Buying Process, Selling Process, Real Estate Laws, etc.
Terms: Break down individual Real Estate and Mortgage terms and provide an example or "back story" to them.
Polls: Do countless polls on everything from the best place to get a steak dinner or the best place to enjoy a Sunday afternoon.

Value of Timeless Content
By definition, they extend the relevance of your entire blog.
Timeless posts are great for search engine success given they cover topics that people search regularly.
The impression of your expertise as a real estate agent grows with every timeless article.

By relying on just these four types of content, a real estate blogger can easily write 23 to 28 posts a month.

The challenge is changing your approach to blogging.

In order to achieve this level of content creation you almost have to batch it out. 
If you were to blog twice a week, where you bang out 4 articles in a sitting, you will have no problem fulfilling your goal.
But most importantly the time you would save, versus having to sit down 30 times a month to write articles one-at-a-time, would be huge. 

Original content, outside of the system above is encouraged as well.  But as we all know, it is generally these posts that are the most difficult to pound out.  So in order to keep the pace of 30 in a month, you’ll need to write original content when inspired, and not wait for that inspiration to keep writing.

Three other ideas for easy-to-create content:

Photo posts
Take photos of local landmarks and describe them.
Snap others of curiosities and get your audience to guess what/where they are.

Series posts
Write an article on each of the local parks.
Do a series on the history of the town/city, famous residents, local camps etc.

Re-Writes of old posts
Go back through some of your older posts and rewrite them.  I’m serious.  You know that some of them could have been better, or the topic has evolved beyond your original message.  Now that your writing style has developed, take an old topic and make it new again.  Your audience is never the same week to week, month to month.  So the chances are that today’s audience has never read your classic posts.  Give them a makeover and get a new audience to read some of your best, ‘old’ ideas.

Sustaining the pace of 30 blog articles in 30 days may not be realistic for some, but if you are able to meet half of the goal you have at least 15 posts.  15 a month is 180 a year.  That is better than great.  And, with batching, you can realistically keep that pace by blogging just one day a week. 

The bloggers that wait for inspiration, or just blog ‘when they have time’ are bound to fail. 
They’ll start out strong with 10 or so posts, only to find that months have gone by where they may have posted a few ‘guilt posts’ and nothing more.  A year later, the blog is a graveyard and a poor reflection of your dedication to your vocation.

 HUGE HAT TIP to Chris Daley.  This is his system, I just polished it into an article.

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Related Must Reads:
3 Years Of Real Estate Blogging - The Gift That Keeps On Giving
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made By Real Estate Bloggers
You Need To Lose 25 Pounds, And Your Blog Is Dead

Tags: Blog+Writing, Real+Estate+Blogging, Blog+Discipline

Comments

[Robin Fenchel]

Hey, Jim
That's a great goal to set.
I'm going to take up the 30 blogs in 30 days challenge, and see if I can comply (Do tweets count?);-)

[teresa boardman]

I re write old posts, in some I make some minor change like the first sentence and I put in a new photo. No one seems to notice. :)

[Madison homes for sale]

Great article! This is the first blog post I've ever read where I actually thought I should print it out.

30 posts in 30 days almost seems do-able after reading this article. I'm still not sure I can pull it off but this makes posting every other day seem like a no-brainer.

[Benjamin Ficker]

Jim,
Great post. I've book marked it and will definitely be referring back to it often.

One thing that I did that really helped my blog in the search engines and with the number of posts was what Mary McKinght (Haven't seen her on the RE.net in a while, hmmmmm) called spider posts. Basically, you publish a large piece of what you called Timeless (or Evergreen) content as a page. Then divide that up into 5-10 posts all linking back to the page. I did this for the condo buildings on my niche site when I was in Portland, PortlandsPearlDistrict.com, and within a week was on the first page for the term Pearl District and for each of the building names. Very Powerful.

@ Robin
That's a good question. Are they tweets that show up on your blog? or is it just a "took a new listing" type of tweet?

[Benjamin Ficker]

BTW, Jim, do you have a way to subscribe to follow up comments? Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but I would love to see what everybody else reading has to see too.

[Jim Cronin]

Benjamin,

Put it this way: "I HATE TYPEPAD FOR THAT REASON".

[Richard Bolen]

thanks much for using "stats" first. we make our living of that up here at the Lake!

[Dale Chumbley]

Let me share a few of my thoughts...

My blog was "born" back on 3-3-2007. It was extremely stunted in its growth... The poor thing just held on waiting for me to breath a little life into it. Something. Anything. Please feed me...

Between March 3rd and about 40 days ago I'd fed my poor little blog no more than 90 posts total. How is this thing going to grow and thrive? Not to mention, the traffic to a site that has nothing to see is... ummm... how should I say? Non-existent!

So, tomorrow will be the 40th day IN A ROW I've written a post on my blog. This is huge for me. I've wanted to but never prioritized it. I accepted a 21 day challenge/contest. I forced myself (at first) to do it. It wasn't super easy but guess what? Each day I did it got easier! I realized I could do it. So can YOU!

Similar to the tips here, I've set up 3 days each week so far that I know in advance what I'll be posting. This leaves only 4 days to fill in. I have enough things happening in my real estate world and in my community to easily fill in those days. The biggest thing I had to overcome was the permission (to myself) to write from my perspective, my voice and my world. I believe that me being me will be the most effective in people knowing who I am! Make sense?

Go for it! Just do it! Write AND Publish!!!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a "Foto Friday" post to do.

[Daniel Bates]

Dale, Prioritizing is the key, if it's good enough for Teresa Boardman to spend her time doing, it's good enough for me! I encourage other bloggers to create a calendar so that every friday they know that all they have to do is do a photo post as you've said. If you have extra time that day then you write tomorrows post too and so on, eventually you actually build up a stock pile of posts for when "life happens".

Over 2 years of blogging I've developed these same tricks on my own, and I'm sure that countless other bloggers have discovered these goldmines as well, that goes to show the validity of it though. Posts like these give me time to write the posts that I REALLY want to write.

[Portland Real Estate]

Great! I am always interested in finding new things to post about. I fell like I am a pretty good writer, but getting the content ideas and photos together is the hardest part. I also like to make sure that my blog posts dont look like they are from a formula.

[Artur]

I average about 1.5 post per day. I see it as a must since this is my best way of generating new clients. It can be difficult at times to produce quality content. Sometimes it's not a matter of not having items to write about, but about having the verve to do it. I put together a list of reoccurring posts I can do and these can easily fill up half the posts in a month, the others just come along. I've noticed certain topics tend to generate calls while others are more for fun.
I've gotten a few additional ideas from this article. Now the hard part is posting consistently on 3 different blogs.

[Bruce Lemieux]

Great post. Since I'm so hopelessly undisciplined, creating a regular "blogging schedule" is the #1 thing I need to do. In the corporate world, I had deadlines that forced me to action. As my own boss, I take it pretty easy on myself. Does anyone have any creative ideas on how to do implement a routine?

[Richard Stabile Bergen County Real Estate]

I like your ideas, I usually have plenty to write about, just my time is the issue. Your thoughts however, could help make it simpler to organize the flow.

[Jay Thompson]

Allow me to play Devil's Advocate.

I don't think you need to post every day.

I think you need to post *consistently*.

There are some very good blogs out there (real estate and otherwise) that only post once or twice a week.

Yes, in the beginning it is probably beneficial to post daily. But that is daunting for many, even with "themes", and schedules and all the great tips in this post.

I'd rather see someone post 2 - 3 times a week with GOOD posts, rather than feel forced to throw something up every day. If it's forced, it will come across that way.

In short, quality beats quantity.

[Minnesota MLS]

Thanks for the post Jim.

@Richard = I love you now for sharing your experience.
@JAy = Thank you for your tip as well.

Here's a video I stumbled upon recently for all bloggers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12yD8JyaVvY

Enjoy!
-Nicole

[Charles]

I have to agree with Jay. Better to have two to three good posts a month without fail than 20 or 25 okay ones. I think sometimes too much information can be detrimental.

[AccuriZ]

Thanks a lot! This will really help me with my blog. I've had it for about 3 months, with about three post. I see now that I have to just prioritize and differentiate with my content. I will certainly pass this along.

[Glenn Twiddle]

What a great article. God my monthly posts are looking pretty sad. I gotta get my butt into gear more often. Thanks for the inspiaration.

Glenn Twiddle
Real Estate Training Brisbane

[Real Estate Internet Marketing]

These are remarkable and useful tips, thank you for posting them. I want to start a blog and I think yhese post of yours will help me a lot along the way

[vancouver agent]

Awesome, 30 posts in 30 days shouldn't be a problem given the incredible article you have written to give me guidance.