Bizapls blogging for Real estate- some tips

Secrets of Easier Real Estate Blogging

Secrets of Easier Real Estate Blogging

As a realtor, blogging can be a great way to keep your website loaded with fresh, informative content that will engage your clients and help the internet search engines find you. But perhaps you are resistant to writing blogs because you wonder what to write about. You try to think of a topic that would be interesting, but after an hour staring at your computer screen, you admit defeat and give up. Never fear, help is at hand. Follow these BizPals tips for generating engaging blog posts and real estate blogging will get easier.

1. Look Locally: Information about your locality (state, city, county) can be a great topic for a real estate blog. Engage your readers with interesting facts about your neighborhood like how the weather is or the award winning schools. Write about the museums, sports facilities, and restaurants – all great reasons to buy a house in that area. That's several blog posts right there.
2. Media Matters: Check out local papers and local news for stories that you could use for your blog. Is a big box store moving into the area? Write a post about how this could affect your readers. Did the local newspaper run a story about how landlords are willing to do more these days to keep good tenants? If you have clients looking for rentals, explain how this story is relevant to them.
3. Ideas File: Start an Ideas File so you never have to stare at a blank screen again. If an amusing incident occurred during your day, or you heard an interesting story from a client, jot them down because they may become the perfect blog posting.
4. Your Busy Day: Whether you're organizing an open house, staging an apartment or handling a closing, most people don't know how your business works. Write down what you do each day for a month, and write a post explaining each of those activities, keeping the tone entertaining but informative.
5. End with a Question: Another blogging trick is to end a post with a question that tries to engage the reader. "What are the red flags you look for when you're visiting an open house? I'd love to hear about them!" Not only is it a good way to get people interacting with you, but you can take your reader's responses and turn them into another blog post.
6. You Have Mail: If you regularly get questions from clients, take their questions and answer them in your blog, turning your FAQ into a post. You should be able to do three or four blog posts every year in this format.
7. Vlog It: Think about shooting some videos that you can post on your blog. People like videos and the change in format keeps your blog looking fresh. Best to keep the videos under three minutes. Also the title of your video should give viewers an idea of what they’re about to see.
   "A Weekend Tour of Elm Street, Our Town"—yet another great blog post.
8. What's The Problem? : An effective hook that business bloggers often use is to answer the question "What problem might a reader have that your blog post can help solve?" If you're talking about home staging, pitch it as the solution for the family trying to sell a home that's not moving in the slow season. In the first paragraph, you should aim to make an emotional connection with the reader who's struggling with something. Then outline how and why you can help them. The rest of your post should fill in the outline and give the reader some useful content.

Now that you have some great ideas on how to develop interesting and useful subjects for your blog postings, here are two more valuable tips that will help keep those readers coming:

9. Tease the Story: Pick out an interesting part of your story and tease it in the first couple of sentences. "Four years ago, the Johnson family was living on fast food and doing laundry in the bathroom of their motel. Today their lives are different in almost every way." Magazine articles do this all the time, because it works. Once you've hooked the reader, they'll want to read on and find out how the Johnsons took advantage of low interest rates to buy their starter home.
10. Don't Bury the Lead: One of the most common mistakes of business blogging is a dull opening line that fails to capture the viewer's attention. Imagine that a potential client finds your website and looks at your blog and the first sentence they read is something like this: "Housing starts rose from 3.7 in the second quarter to 4.5 in the third quarter, leading to speculation that housing demand at the county level may be pacified in the foreseeable future." CLICK! That's the sound of your reader hitting the back button and a potential lead disappearing from your website. The first paragraph of your post should give people a reason to keep reading. If they're not hooked, they won't stay.

Good luck and keep blogging!