10 Reasons You Should Start a Blog If You’re In Real Estate

I often get asked by real estate agents whether they should start a Facebook Page or get a website. Or should they start a real estate blog.

My answer is always the same: Start a real estate blog on WordPress!

For two reasons:

1. When you create content on Facebook, that content essentially belongs to Facebook. They control what changes are made to the layout of your Facebook Page, not you. (Recommended reading: The Most Dangerous Threat To Your Online Marketing Efforts). With a self-hosted WordPress blog on the other hand, you call the shots and you’re ultimately in control of whatever changes are made to your site.
2. A real estate blog will essentially serve as your website. In other words, think of your blog as a website. Only instead of having a static site that never changes, you can easily add new content to your real estate blog at any time that you’d like to keep things fresh.

If I were a new real estate agent and I was looking for a way to build my brand and establish myself as the local, go to expert for buying and selling real estate in my area, I’d start a real estate blog right away. Here’s why…

10 Reasons You Should Be Blogging If You’re In Real Estate

1. It’s a great way to build a brand and grow an audience. Lots of real estate agents have built a name for themselves by authoring a real estate blog. A few names that come to mind include The Phoenix Real Estate Guy (serving the Phoenix area of course), Modern Homes Portland, and Miamism (serving real estate in Miami). Focus on writing highly relevant and useful blog content over the long-term and soon enough, you’ll be known as the “go to” agent for real estate in your area.
2. A blog is much more than just an online journal of ideas, it’s a cost-effective way to market your business and attract a steady stream of buyer and seller clients. If you focus on creating highly relevant and useful content that appeals to the interests of buyers and sellers, a real estate blog will easily help you sell more houses.
3. It’s a great way of establishing yourself as a credible expert by consistently publishing articles that share your knowledge over the buying and selling process. The key is to write content that directly addresses the type of client you want to work with. In other words, if you want to work with buyers, write helpful articles that help explain everything there is to know about the buying process.
4. It’s a great way to showcase your expertise and stand out from the competition. What makes you different than every other real estate agent out there? With a blog, you really have an opportunity to show people that you know real estate better than anyone else in the area. Then, by developing your writing voice and injecting your personality into your content, you’ll really let people come to know, like and trust you.
5. It helps keep your content up-to-date and relevant. Instead of having a static website, you’ll be able to publish fresh new content to help readers stay current with the latest market statistics, new listings, financing information and more. By staying current with your content, you’re giving site visitors a reason to come back!
6. It’s a great way to improve your search engine rankings. Every time you write something new, you’re creating another link that gets indexed in search results. Your goal should be to optimize your post titles and post content so that they match the search phrases your target customers are searching for on the web. Then, the more consistent you are in terms of posting, the more likely you are to rank for those terms.
7. It will make you both a better writer and a better communicator. Writing forces you to think about how you can break a complicated process down into simpler, understandable terms. The better you get at this, the better you’ll get at communicating with clients as well.
8. It’s the source of great content to share on various social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Log onto any social network and you’ll consistently see people sharing articles that they find useful and interesting on a variety of topics. By creating highly relevant and useful content, you’ll have content that you can turn around and share on those social networks and you’ll be giving others relevant content that they may be interested in sharing as well. You’ll be creating content rather than curating content.
9. It’s a great home-base for all of the content that you create and share on-line. In other words, it’s great that you’re engaging on Twitter and sharing photos and other content on Facebook. But where do you drive all of that traffic? Where do you convert that traffic? The answer is most likely going to be your website. So while sharing and engaging on social networks is great, your end goal should be to drive people back to your website to use your IDX, and ultimately to contact you about buying or selling real estate.
10. It’s a great way to stay top-of-mind with both new prospects and past clients. You should be writing about more than just real estate. In other words, write about the local community and truly establish yourself as the community expert. In other words, establish yourself as the “Go To” guy/gal for everything real estate, things to do in the area, and more. Writing about those things will help you stay top of mind with both new prospects and past clients.

Ultimately, a real estate blog is a smart, cost-effective way to establish yourself as the go to expert in your market area. The more you write, the more people will engage with your content. The more people engage with your content, the more time they’ll have to consider what you have to offer — hiring you as they’re real estate agent!

And don’t worry if you think you won’t be any good at it…

If you’re good at it, some people are gonna read it. If you’re not good at it and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. – Seth Godin