Starting a real estate blog takes time, energy, and yes, money. Half the battle is setting things up from design, navigation & layout, to a solid foundation of content. The other half of the battle is keeping things up-to-date.
If you don’t do the upkeep, you’re going to lose site visitors (and money) to your competitors. Period.
Here’s some of what you can expect…
It’s Gonna Take Time & Energy
- Consistency matters. This means showing up day after day, week after week, and writing for your intended audience. What you’ll come to find is that you’re going to attract the type of client that you’re writing for. So if you want to work with buyers, write content for buyers.
- Writing takes time. Sometimes a post might take 30 minutes, other times it might take a few hours. Your best bet, is to schedule time to write and get in the habit of writing just a little bit each and every day.
- Building an audience doesn’t just happen over-night. Dale Chumbley wrote one blog post every day for 365 Days. In that time he grew a community to over 16,000 Facebook fans and tons of blog readers. He established himself as the local community expert. But again, he showed up day-in and day-out for 365 days without ever missing a beat.
- Jay Thompson is the biggest tinkerer I know (in a good way). He’s constantly testing new things, changing things to find what works and what doesn’t. Ask him how many hours he’s spent on his website to date? (Too many to count I’m sure). Now he’s sporting a fresh new design and I’m sure he still feels like there’s work to do. My point here, is that you’re website will always feel like it’s a “work in-progress” and that’s ok.
- Sometimes, you’re going to hit a creative wall. You might call it a funk. “What do I write about next?” Or “I don’t know what to say.” These are all phases that you’ll experience along the way. (Hint: Real Estate Blog Topics is designed to help you burst through those phases).
- It might be months before you generate your first lead from your Real Estate blog. Ines Hegedus-Garcias says it took her 6 months before generating a lead from her blog: Miamism.com.
- People won’t always comment on your posts. After all, what can you say about a Real Estate Market Report or a Mortgage Update? Not a whole lot. Sometimes, people don’t want to comment publicly (or even at all). That does not however mean that they’re not reading. Look at your analytics, what posts do people seem to be enjoying the most? Focus on delivering more of that.
It’s Gonna Cost Money
Among some of the services you can expect to pay for include…
- Web hosting with someone like Bluehost
. Cost = Less than $100 for the year. For managed hosting, nightly backups, site security and more, check out Web Synthesis (by Copyblogger Media).
- A premium WordPress Theme like AgentPress. Cost = $99.95 one-time fee.
- An IDX product like dsSearchAgent or dsIDXpress (Disclaimer: I work for Diverse Solutions).
- For website security and malware cleanup, I recommend Sucuri Security. Cost = $89.99/year.
- Email marketing from someone like Aweber or Mailchimp. Cost = Between $10 – $20 per month. MailChimp does have a free version of their product, but it includes an ad at the bottom of the emails and you can’t schedule drip emails so I recommend upgrading to the paid version.
Of course, you don’t need to pay for all of those things but if you’re serious about treating your blog as a lead generation tool, those are the ones that I recommend (at a minimum).
Over to you…
How long have you had your Real Estate Blog? What services do you pay for to run your blog every month? If you knew then, what you know now, what would you do differently in starting your Real Estate Blog?
Great post Ricardo. Now a year into blogging seriously I cannot emphasize enough the importance of allocating the appropriate time and choosing carefully what you do yourself and what you pay others to do for you (ie. design). I also cannot emphasize enough the need to really determine who you want your blog to reach and to create a post schedule accordingly.
Personally, I took the advice to “ready, fire, aim”. This was the biggest mistake I made. The problem with “just starting” is that you jump right into the pressure of creating content, and can get caught up in that and lose site of the need to create strategy about where you are going. As a result, it is that much more difficult to consistently create content.
Colin: You bring up a VERY good point as it relates to design! This one can be tricky. Top designers cost a pretty penny, but sometimes, it’s very well worth it to invest in a solid design up-front. At the end of the day, first impressions matter and having a good design can mean the difference between converting a site visitor or losing them.
As for creating content, here’s my take:
1. Define your audience. Do you want to work with buyers, or sellers? In what areas?
2. Make a list of everything you know about real estate (buying & selling). Make a list of everything that you know about the area(s) you service.
3. Make a list of some of your hobbies. Favorite things to do in that area, etc.
4. What kind of content does your audience respond well to? What kind of questions are they asking that you can provide answers to?
Every day, add to that list. Use that list to generate content. Start there, and you have a pretty good guide to get you started 🙂
Ricardo,
Well put … and certainly hits home for me … especially, the Time & Energy, BUT more like the discipline.
There’s been a number of posts, lately, suggesting many should quit; however I much prefer your approach. Tell them they’re not alone. It is an excellent way for staying connected to your clients and market; BUT it is work.
It’s my first visit to your blog. I really like what you’ve created and will be sure to suggest it to others.
Paul
Thanks Paul.
Yep, it is work. And I’d argue that the writing isn’t the hard part. It’s the sitting down to right that’s the hard part. We freeze over what to say, wonder if it’s good enough, and a whole other myriad of things. That’s just the inner critic. Find a way to silence it, and you can move forward.
As for the discipline, many Agents who write successfully and draw business from their work, simply make all of this a part of their “prospecting” time. By now, it’s baked into their routine. So yes, it’s not overly difficult. But it does require a good deal of work.
Thanks again for visiting, look forward to connecting some more!
Hi Ricardo:
Good blog on the problem we Realtors face. I can’t agree more on consistency and putting in the time. And of course you have to get all the back office technology right re: SEO and search engines. It pays off in the end.
The most important cost for my blog is my PPC campaign. By far the highest ROI I’ve got when it comes to blogging.
Hey Jonathan,
Interesting… Can you share more details with us? In particular, where are you directing that traffic and how are you converting? Sending them to a landing page? Do you have an IDX with registration set up? Or a simple email capture form?
Just curious. Hoped you’d share some of what’s worked for you 🙂
Hey Richardo,
Mailchimp does have a drip-like feature with the free version using the autoresponder. I have a drip campaign set up that way.
The free version? If so, I’ll update this post. Last I tried to set up an auto-responder it required me to upgrade to a paid account.
I’m using it with the free account version.
Ok, cool. Works for me. Thanks for the heads up Ben!
I always tell budding bloggers that they need to set a goal in the first three months, like 25 blog posts. Maybe a target of 100 by December 2012. Really!
It is always sad to go to an excellent blog post to see they haven’t written for months. Make the commitment and, like Jay Thompson, keep tinkering until you feel it is better than it was last week.
I just started posting again on my blog (http://www.arlingtoncondo.com/blog). For me, the problem was finding interesting topics to blog about that would engage my audience and finding the time to write. Now I think I have a system down that will allow me to blog once a week again. Great post!
Amazing write-up! This could aid plenty of people find out more about this particular issue. Are you keen to integrate video clips coupled with these? It would absolutely help out. Your conclusion was spot on and thanks to you; I probably won’t have to describe everything to my pals. I can simply direct them here!