Building Your Prospect Database With Blogging Part 1

July 28, 2009

Having a real estate blog is one of the best ways you can build your email database and build your business.  With your blog you can inform prospects on local real estate and demonstrate your expertise while allowing them to get to know the real you.  Today, you need not even write your own content, and your site can get automatic article updates!  But there are a few definite do’s and don’ts you need to keep in mind with blogging.

First, let’s define blog.  Blog is short for weblog.  Basically it’s a kind of online diary.  Blogs have been around since the internet began and have evolved from people writing personal things for all to see to a solid business tool business people can use for promoting themselves.

Use A Search Engine Ready Blog

One of the key things your blog should have is search engine readiness.  In other words, your blog entries should be readily indexable on search engines like Google.  If they aren’t, people may never find your website nor your articles.  There are many free or inexpensive sites who specialize in blogs.  I use WordPress and recommend it.  One of the reasons I went with WordPress is so many people blog with it.  WordPress currently hosts over 200,000 blogs.  The more popular a website is, the more readily pages related to it will get indexed in search engines.

Calls To Action

Make it clear you want people to sign up for your email mailing list.  They’re more likely to do that if you make it very clear what information you’ll be sending them and how often.  It’s a good idea to ask prospects to indicate whether they’re ready to buy or not.  If they are, indicate you’ll send them email updates of new listings.  If they aren’t ready to buy and are in research mode, indicate you’ll send them information on the local real estate market and any of your sold listings from these areas.

Relevant Content

Make sure your blog’s content is interesting to your target audience.  The best thing to have is information on your farm neighborhoods, particularly on the real estate market and price fluctuations.  Everyone likes to know what’s happening with the local market, even if they aren’t planning to move for several years.  For other information on your farm neighborhoods try the service Outside.in which I discussed in a previous article.  They provide you with ready-to-go articles on neighborhoods across the US.  You can even have your website automatically updated with these articles.

The most important consideration with your blog and website is definitely search engine optimization (IE ranked highly in search engines).  Learn about how to get high ranking in Google and Yahoo by taking my course Building Your Ecommerce Business.  This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 6 credits.

Filed under: Attracting Buyers/Sellers With Email,Realtor Websites - Best Practices,SEO For Realtor Websites,Using Email For Attracting Buyers/Sellers

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