Top 10 Ways to Use Blogging in Real Estate: Introduction

Dammit, how did you get this idea out of my head? 😉

I held a blogging session yesterday and said to myself, “Self, you should write a series on AG about how/why to blog….”

Looking forward to your series! Should be a winner. (no pressure… 🙂 )

Looking forward to this, Mariana! This is a well-timed topic for me, I was waiting for Jay to actually write it but I’m glad he deferred to you!

Marianna; I am really looking forward to this one. I just wrote a post on my new blog REreflections
about my finding what I wanted to wirte about, but this is much more sensible. Can you write it really really quick to help me out? 😉

I’m looking forward to this, Mariana! I read your blog frequently being that I work with Brian Wilson, and you’ve got great insight and writing style!

Looking forward to the series Mariana. You’re blog is very impressive!!! I can always use help with my blogging skills! Can you also teach me how to get an extra 4 or 5 hours in the day to utilize my new blogging techniques? I have a feeling you could copyright that and make BAZILLIONS! 🙂

Okay, I REALLY think it’s important to track numbers, a- la Mike Ferry… What’s so hard about that?

You should be able to immediately identify.. # of prospects acquired (within a specific time period) …

How many were converted into listings or sales…

Out of those, how many actually closed?

Total amount of commissions.

What’s so hard about that? I do that with everything I do.. Blogging for me did not work. If it worked for you, I will try to copy what you do. I am in Massachusetts, so I would not be competition to you.. If anything, I’ll try to give you a referral.. What’s so hard about that?

Okay, thank you…. I’ll “bite”…

If you don’t mind me asking, and the only reason is because I get two different, opposing viewpoints all the time.. one that says “blogging is the way of the future”, and the other says “blogging is such a waste”…

Let me ask…

How many “internet” prospects have you acquired in a specific time period?

Out of those, how many have you closed?

How many called you without a specific property in the conversation?

How many do you “think” or “highly suspect” came from blogging?

Thank you and I’m sorry if i may have come across as a little difficult, but inefficiency is what I am trying to eliminate…

Jim

Jim,

I can see your frustration. The top dudes in your market don’t seem to be doing much with a blog or trying to ‘put it all out there’ I see the same thing in my city. If they are too busy for it or don’t take the time to learn how to do it properly, it means more success for you in the future.

Just looking over your site, I noticed you seem to be giving up on articles and posting listings lately. It may be easier but it is may not be accomplishing what you are going for . I would make a separate static page to show listings and update that… the you can have a tab at the top for current listings and they wont get in the way of your ‘real personality’ shining in your posts.

Also, you may want to analyze your traffic. You might not be getting as much local traffic as you would like. I’m not driven by all things SEO, but it definitely should not be overlooked. You might want to work in some regional and city-specific keywords in your post titles (without weakening them or sounding cheesy)… and pepper a few in the content tastefully. It may help you with drawing regional traffic.

The title of your blog could contain the words “MetroWest & Worcester County MA” also… it will help draw the right traffic.

Another thing, you may want to move your categories on the sidebar above the archives’ for better usability. I almost never click the archives.

All I am saying is that if you aren’t converting any leads from your site, you might want to constructively look at how you can improve your local relevant traffic flow, and the path from discovery to contact on your site. Some people are doing it successfully so we know it can be done. I believe if you keep it up and focus on improving user experience, you will be rewarded and see results. You already have great content, try tweaking the titles… and don’t be afraid to go back and tweak old ones.

Almost forgot today’s other item … prospect calls yesterday after finding homes new to the market on my blog. We wrote an offer today. That, I admit, doesn’t happen often but it’s nice when it does.

Did “blogging” do it? Well … yes and no. They went to the blog but what they wanted was the listings. So, you tell me? More importantly, does it matter if an offer was written?

Jim – first, you aren’t coming across as “a little difficult” — not at all. You’re trying to learn and improve, and that is NOTHING to be sorry about!

You mentioned you didn’t want to become another Bloodhound blog. And that’s a good thing. I can’t speak for Greg, but having been a Bloodhound contributor myself in the past, and knowing Greg personally, I feel confident that he would tell you that you shouldn’t attempt to recreate what he is doing. Bloodhound is an industry focused blog, written specifically for people in the industry — it isn’t good at, nor is it designed to be a prospecting / real estate marketing blog. It has a completely different focus and target audience than a local real estate agent/broker blog. Greg himself has written several times in the past, “don’t do what we’re doing” (I’m paraphrasing)

I can give you a few numbers from my blog, but I have to extend the same caution Benn did — every blog, and every blogger is different. It’s virtually impossible to mimic or repeat what another blogger does. In fact, it’s probably a very bad idea to even try. Get ideas, certainly. But to attempt to duplicate what someone else is doing simply isn’t going to work.

I installed an new IDX search solution on my blog on April 8, this provides a clean start date to give you some numbers.

In the 60 days between April 8 and June 8, I had 138 people register for the IDX search. It should be noted that I don’t force registration. People can search listings forever on my blog without ever providing any personal information. The only time they have to register is if they want to save searches and receive automatic updates on new listings. Some of those 138 likely came from our static site that employs the same solution, but the blog gets 5 times the traffic of the static site, so it’s probably safe to assume it generates 5x the number of saved searches, give or take a few.

In that same 60 days, the blog received 55,357 unique visitors and 188,099 page views (per Google Analytics). The IDX search page itself received 13,988 unique visitors and 78,829 page views.

(someone is going to look at these numbers and see a horrific “conversion rate” from visitors to registered searchers. And they are right. I could capture a ton more names and email addresses if I forced registration to see listings. But I have a fundamental philosophical problem doing that.)

I am not a “top producer” by any stretch of the imagination. We are currently carrying 22 listings, 2 of those were referrals from other agents (bloggers incidentally) and the other 20 are all directly related to our “internet presence”. Of those 20, I *know* 13 can be attributed to the blog. 6 are from either the static site or the blog or some combination — the “we found you on the Internet” folks. 1 is from another agent who I first “met” online. I suspect she might say it was from the blog as well.

Of our current three deals in escrow, 2 are from the blog, and 1 is a referral from another real estate blogger.

We are actively working with 6 buyer clients. By “active” I mean clients who are pre-approved, and are or will be placing offers within the next 30 – 60 days. Of those, 4 are Canadian buyers who I’m virtually certain came directly from the blog (I say that because the blog is the only place I “court” Canadian buyers). One is another referral (again from another blogger) and 1 “found us on the Internet”.

We’ve got several hundred “prospects” on auto-searches and email updates. Likely many of those will never work out — such is the nature of internet prospecting. But many will. Some maybe not for 2 years (our current record is having a prospect receiving listings for 29 months before we ever exchanged emails or a phone call and they became a paying client). We’ve had some people on listing updates for over 3 years. I suspect our 29 month record will be broken this year.

My blog has been online for three years. I got very little traffic or prospects in the first year. It *is* a lot of work. But like any form of prospecting, it takes consistency over time, and hard work.

I hope no one considers my posting traffic numbers as bragging. I assure you there are other blogs getting more visitors, and certainly more “leads”. But blogging is so much more than just getting prospects. I can’t measure how much I’ve learned doing this. Putting a price on that is impossible. The clients I’ve gotten are great (I’d be hungry with shoeless children without blogging) and are the primary purpose of doing this, but the knowledge I’ve gained, and the friendships I’ve made are priceless to me.

I’m in the group that thinks blogging isn’t for everyone. It’s not that a successful (however that is defined) blogger is “better”. Just different. Not every prospecting method works for everyone. I am horrific at converting expireds or FSBOs. I can’t do squat walking a neighborhood. I suck at working my SOI. I blog, and it works for me. Other people’s “mileage may vary”.

For me blogging (as little time as I put into it) is not just about finding a client from a particular article I wrote. It’s that and so much more. For example, I recently wrote a post on a listing I have in Brentwood Tennessee, it’s not a great post, in fact it’s pretty ugly (still working on a better way to do featured listings), but the point is that within two days that post was ranking #2 for the term Brentwood Luxury Real Estate and #5 for Brentwood Luxury Estate. So for me it’s about the increased visibility of my site from a particular post, which turns into online registrations. After that it’s up to me to convert those registrations to hot leads. I rarely get calls from my website users saying they called because of a post we wrote. It happens, but not that often. I see more traffic because I have improved my ranking from writing such posts. Blogging will help your site rank and is a crucial element in keeping you there as well as broadening your keywords.

First, Teresa … You are so NOT a has-been. You made me laugh at that one. 😀 I guarantee that there are multiple people both here on AG and other places that answer “How could i use blogging in Real Estate?” on a regular basis – I know that I sure do! I just decided to reformat it to a series of posts, here on AG. I would love your feedback…

Second, Thank you Jim, for your questions, and thank you everyone who helped answer them. I hope that you can figure out how to make your blog successful and it looks like there are more than enough people here to help. You sure came ot the right place!

I also completely agree that you need to track your numbers. I am looking at my numbers a bit differently than others though. We get 1,000- 1,500 “hits” a day to our blog and that is where the effectiveness of my blog STOPS. Blogging brings traffic.

Here is my issue:
Sometimes we get clients directly from that part in the equation, but more times than not, our clients start with our IDX. How I implement my IDX system to get people to register (with the correct information) is OUR talent, not blogging-related. How we “convert” to an appointment is our talent is not blog-related. How we turn prospective-clients into clients is our talent, not blog-related. How we negotiate contracts and get them to close is OUR talent, not related to blogging. Etc.. I cannot give a bullet-proof blue-print to making money with a blog, because blogging is only a facet of the business equation, and so much of the business of real estate is talent and education. Blogging just gives me the opportunity to show off my talent and education, by giving me a large audience to work with. As a blog coach, all I can do is help people build and maintain a blog that brings in traffic. What they DO with that traffic is up to them.

General Numbers? People ask how much business I get from blogging, and here is my answer… 100% of our NEW business (not return clients, referrals or SOI) comes from the internet. Of that, about 80% is due to my blogging.

Jay – I liked how you broke it down. So, I will do the same … Currently? Of the listings that we currently have, 15 of them “found us online” because of our blog – (either directly or indirectly). Between me, Derek and our buyer agents, we are working with over a dozen ready, willing and able buyers “because” of our blog. 5 of our clients that are under contract and clear to close “found us online” because of our blog. But again, “finding us online” is only a small part of the puzzle… an IMPORTANT part, but only part.

Benn – I love your questions and I look forward to your post on Monday.

Thank you, Ines! I remember that book review as well… SO MUCH FUN!

Mariana – Fantastic series of posts and great conversation everyone. To throw in my experience…I just converted my website over to a blog format after it lay stagnant and unknown for a few years. I now dedicate a tremendous amount of time to content development and research as well as search engine optimization and it has been quite a learning curve. But what I have done is committed myself to it, on my calendar as my primary xx hours of focused lead generation time per week. As a result, I have already seen my hits increasing quite a bit. Like others have said, what I then do with those hits is up to me and has nothing to do with blogging. I think SEO is key or your website will never get you leads, doing your homework and learning from others (like yourself) is essential, and as with all things, consistent time put in on a specific task over an extended period of time is the formula for success!

Thanks again for the great posts.

Never replace what is currently making you money with anything (blogging, social media, traditional media…) until you can see that it is making you money. Use your current “dead” time to blog – after business hours, instead of playing solitaire, instead of watching TV … I spend an average of about 1 hour a day on my blog.