Should You Be Blogging?
Once you’ve read this post reply and let me know if you agree or disagree with our thoughts on blogging.
Tons of people have been touting blogs as this awesome business building tool. Yet, others seem to feel blogging is a complete waste of time.
Who’s right?
After dozens of conversations, searching high and low for good information on real estate blogging, and reflecting on my own experiences, our feeling is you should probably have a blog on your web site.
However…
You need to keep it in the proper context, just like social media. Don’t get sucked into wasting tons of time on something that typically only produces a modest trickle of business.
See the vast majority real estate blogs are very poor traffic or lead generators.
However, a blog can be a solid source of quality leads if you craft relevant messages and then lead your prospects to take action.
Frankly, the idea that you should be the ultimate “community resource” with your blog is unrealistic. There are too many good community web sites who already control most of that traffic. To compete for that traffic isn’t practical.
So what’s more important is to focus all your energy on what’s relevant to those blog readers you do attract.
You’re a real estate agent and when people read your blog they are reading it for a reason. Therefor it’s okay to talk about real estate.
Keep the focus narrow and all about your visitor’s wants and needs. Again, stop trying to be all things to all people with your blog. Ask yourself…
What’s the goal?
It should be the same goal as every other marketing channel you have, to create a live conversation with someone who’s interested in buying or selling real estate, right?
So how do you do that with your blog?
Stop posting recipes, pet stories, or funny happenings from the county fair.
Sure, those things can be interesting. But the fact is most people will never bookmark your blog or see it as their go-to source for local info.
Instead, take that brief moment of opportunity, while your prospect is reading, and convey something that’s highly relevant to their buying or selling decision.
In that moment do everything you possibly can to get that prospect to respond to you, because when they leave your blog…
They are GONE!
Thinking they’re going to come back is delusional. Your mom might. Your close friends might a couple times…but the prospects of your market…nope.
The prospects of your market are hit and run artists. They hit your site, they hit you blog, and they run.
So while they’re there you’ve got to focus every ounce of marketing energy you’ve got on getting them to respond to you!
If you waste your one and only chance…well…good luck!
Quit trying to play the big content company’s game posting every day.
Forget it.
The better approach is to post highly relevant articles once every 2-3 weeks and get prospects to respond to you so you can have a live conversation. Then meet them for coffee or get them to come to your office.
The bottom line is if you don’t talk to people…they don’t do business with you!
So when you’ve got a prospect’s attention…focus all your resources on getting them to a live conversation with you.
Create a “call-to-action” that causes them to respond to you for more information, and then guide them down the path that leads to an immediate conversation.
Emailing, texting, or pinging them on social media is NOT a conversation!
You’ve got to engage prospects and lead them down the path most likely to create a live conversation immediately! If you don’t these hit and run artists, ‘er I mean prospects, are instantly lost – back into the sea of Internet noise.
There are 5 basic steps to crafting a highly effective call-to-action, regardless of your marketing source.
To help you with bring it all I’ve put together a special free report “Five Simple Steps to Successful Lead Generation,” because the fundamentals of lead generation via your blog are the same as any other marketing source.
So if you want to ramp up the number of buyers and sellers in your pipeline you can check out that report here…“Five Simple Steps to Successful Lead Generation”
Happy Holidays!
Gary Elwood
President/CEO
Proquest Technologies, Inc.
PS Don’t forget to reply to gary@proquesttechnologies.com and give me your thoughts on blogging.