Mary's Blog

We all want big traffic, right?  You know the kind of traffic I'm talking about.  The kind that makes that Alexa graph climb and climb and your heart go pitter pat.  If that's all you care about, you're in luck because the truth is any moron with a blog can build big traffic with just a little bit of effort and lot of targeted content.  The rub is that big traffic typically means a large geographically diverse audience.  Is that what you really want?  Heck, no.  What the savvy real estate blogger wants is big LOCAL blog traffic.  So, how do you go about driving very targeted local traffic and even more importantly, how do you go about measuring what percentage of your total traffic is local?

1.  List yourself locally

Let the local web know you exist.  Make sure you list yourself in the following local directories.  This is probably one of the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways to build your local business.

Google Local

Yahoo Local

Superpages

Switchboard

Local.com

Read also: 5 Tips to blog for local traffic

2.  Comment on local blogs

Build your local credibility by commenting on at least 5 popular local blogs regularly.  What kinds of blogs should you look for?  Well, clearly you shouldn't go commenting on your competition's blogs, so my recommendation is to seek out popular non-real estate related local blogs.  If that doesn't make sense to you, think about it this way; most of your future clients are already living in your local area.  You want them to know your name and trust you even before they consider buying and selling a home.  The best way to do that is to get out there- both physically in your community and virtually in the blogosphere.  Commenting on other local blogs whether it be about a hot community issue or how you just learned to snowboard will help people get to know you. When you comment, you automatically leave behind your name and a link to your website, so there is no need to include it in your comment.

Read also: The rules of commenting for traffic

Look for local blogs on topics that you have an interest in or an opinion on.  The more you know about the subject, the more valuable your commentary wll be be and the more other readers will be interested in you.

If you live in a waterfront community, look for blogs about fishing, boating, sailing, SCUBA diving, water skiing, etc.

If you are into golfing, look for local golfing blogs.

If you are an avid reader, see if a local library or book club has a blog.

Are you a couch potato?  Not to worry, plenty of blogs have sprung up around popular television shows like the Sopranos and Dexter, see if there is a local blogger posting about a show you watch.

There are plenty of blog search tools out there, however these are some of the most popular and easiest to use. Use simple search terms like your farm area or areas of interest to find blogs that match your criteria.

Blogger

Technorati

Blog Search Engine

IceRocket Blog Search

Yahoo Blog Search

Blog Search

Feedster.com

How do you select local blogs to comment on?

This is simple, you look for three things:

1.  Is the blog about something you can add valuable commentary to?  If you are a seasoned boater and you live in a boating community- a local yacht blog is perfect for you.

2.  Does the blog have a wide appeal and solid participation?  If there ain't nobody but you commenting on the blog, move on!  Find a blog with enough participation to make it worth your while.  Remember the idea is to drive local traffic back to your blog.

3.  Is the blog owner a credible resource you could recruit to post on your blog?  Let's say that you find a local insurance agent that is blogging, you definitely want to start developing a relationship with that blogger.  Not only can you grow your local network, but you might even be able to trade blogs for a day to grow your respective audiences.

Read also: 5 tips to drive local blog traffic

3.  Pepper your text with local keywords

When you write the content on your real estate blog or website, make sure it is laser focused. Come up with three to five local keywords or phrases you want that page to be searchable by and repeat those words or phrases throughout the article. Don’t keyword spam, but rather use the terms naturally throughout the article. For example, notice how I repeat the term “real estate blog” throughout this article. I use it naturally, when it makes sense, because I want to be searchable by that term. Consider using terms like your farm areas and local attractions reguarly throughout each post.

Read also: Where does your site rank in the SERPs

Read more: Get the most out of your meta tags

4.  Checking your local traffic

Let's say that you have done everything you can to attract local traffic, how do you about measuring it?  Most web metrics programs simply measure total traffic, RSS Pieces actually has tools right in the back end that map traffic based on geography through geo ip tracking. Our mapping system allows you zoom in and actually see where your traffic is coming from.  It can help you to better understand your traffic and tweak your articles to attract more local hits.  Just check out the image of RSS Pieces traffic from the last hour below:

OK, so you don't have an RSS Pieces blog and you don't have this super cool technology, what do you do?  A tool like stats counter can help you to discover your local traffic.

RSS subscribers are the bread and butter of any real estate blog, so you need to focus on converting your visitors to subscribers. When a reader signs up to subscribe to your RSS feed it means that instead of coming to your website each day to read your news, your new posts are automatically delivered to their email or RSS reader. Basically, your RSS feed is your way of making sure that your visitors keep returning to your site and reading your content. So, let’s take a look at how you to increase your blog subscribers.

Shout out of the day goes to CopyBlogger for these articles on how to go from 0 to 6,000 subscribers in 10 months and four simple steps to more blog subscribers.

1. Prominently display your RSS subscription signup above the fold (meaning towards the top of the page so users don’t have to scroll to find it). Just about everyone recognizes that bright orange RSS logo, so always use a standard RSS logo- it makes people feel comfortable. 



2. Offer multiple subscription options. Allow more tech savvy users access to the raw feed while those less comfortable with technology can subscribe via email. 



3. Provide a dedicated subscription landing page. By creating a simple page that contains both your RSS and email subscription options and clearly explains your privacy policy and value of subscribing.
   



4. Make signing up easy with few steps. Check out this subscription pathway optimization research that determines that by reducing the number of subscription steps and limiting data collection to first name and email address, subscription rates climbed 711%



5. Provide a call to action on each post. At the bottom of every article, ask for your readers subscription. The theory here is that if someone made it to the bottom of your article, you are interesting to them. Interesting enough, perhaps, for them to subscribe to your blog feed. So, be sure to ask for that subscription!



6. Become a guest blogger. Market yourself to other blog readers by offering your services as a guest blogger on other popular bogs within your niche. For example, when the ever so gracious Pat Kitano allowed me to star on his blog in this article about real estate blogging, RSS Pieces subscriber base jumped by 16% and overall traffic by 22%. Not bad, huh? So, seek out other blogs in your niche and offer yourself up to science. Most blogmasters will welcome the chance to take a blogging break for a day. Just be sure to never recycle one of your blogs posts, duplicating your own content on someone else’s blog is the quickest way to piss off any blog host.



7. Create a podcast show. Podcasts are hot, just check out mine! Interview movers and shakers in your town or satisfied clients. Now, market that podcast by listing it in iTunes and various podcast directories. 

Read also: How Realtors can use Podcasts

Read also: How to create a Podcast

Read also: 21 tactics to increase blog traffic by RandFish of SEOmz

So, you’re ready to start your very own real estate blog. No one starts a real estate blog thinking “Yeah, I want this blog to be a complete flop.” But you have to face the fact that more than 50% of all blogs created will be dead within a year due to lack of traffic, lack of interest and lack of focus. There are 10 common missteps of rookie real estate bloggers.   Knowing what they are and how to avoid them will ensure that your new real estate blog survives and thrives on the wild wild web.

Read also: Do you know the 6 signs of blog death?

No contact form.

I can’t even tell you how many blogs forget to place a “contact” button, form or email address on their site. It’s very frustrating for a reader. So, the number one thing you should look for on your blog is a clearly visible “contact” button or link. The two best places for contact buttons are in a top menu bar or in the footer. 

Read also: 10 features of successful blogs

No site search

Another super annoying trait of rookie bloggers is that they often forget to include a site search tool. People use the internet because it makes finding specific things easy and fast. Give your readers the ability to search through all your past articles to find the specific topics they are looking for. Otherwise, you limit them to only reading your most recent posts or having to weed through your entire body of work to find the one thing they are looking for.

Never answers the WIFM (What’s in it for me) question

Good blog posts not only provide quality information but they clearly spell out what the benefits of reading the post are. Many newbie bloggers forget to remind readers why they would want to read their posts in the first place.  Explicit benefits far out weigh implied ones. So, remind the reader throughout your post how what the article will help them achieve the promise you made in the post’s title. The word “because” is always valuable when expressing benefits.

Read also: Killing me softly with your blog

Don’t stick to KISS copywriting

Keep It Simple Stupid is probably the most important copywriting rule you should know. After you write a post and before you press “save” you should ask yourself if the post is so easy to understand that if someone knew nothing about the topic they would still “get” the article. If the answer is “no” go back to the drawing board.

Read also: Avoiding the bi-polar blog

Writing is too dry

There is nothing worse than a dry blog. You have to inject personality and wit into each and every post. Use your authentic voice. What that means is- you want to type the way you talk. People want to feel connected to you personally when they read your blog, not as though a corporation is speaking to them. 

Read also: Humanizing a blog for intimacy

Heavy on advertising and light on education

Too often, new bloggers just cut and paste all their sales materials from their website onto their blog. Or they go ahead and pen posts about how great a Realtor they are and how happy their clients are. And while there is nothing wrong with telling people how great you are, you need to do it the right way - through storytelling, not by directly stating it. Tell the story of how you turned a buyer’s frown upside down. Tell stories about how you single handedly saved a homeowners house from foreclosure or salvaged a messy closing. That type of self promotion is what people want to hear! Show them that you know their problem and you know how to solve it. Also, make sure to post at least one step by step educational post once a week. You want to build your reputation as an expert by providing quality tutorials to home buyers and sellers.

Read also: How to write successful tutorial posts

No means of collecting leads

Now, this one is just sad. You spend all that time blogging and forget to make sure your blog has a simple lead generation tool. Allow people to subscribe to your RSS feed by email or a opt-in for a newsletter. In our case, we allow for higher level lead generation like personal search subscriptions or CMA tools.

Read also: How to write a blog that generates leads

Blogging in a bubble

Blogging is about community. If you just blog and never reach out to other bloggers or blog readers, you are blogging in your own little bubble. To build community for your blog you have to go out and make a few friends. Two of the best ways to do that are to join a free blog network like MyBlogLog and start commenting on other industry and local blogs. Where do you find other blogs? The easiest way to find local and industry blogs is to just do a search for your farm area or specific industry terms on Google Blog Search. 

Read also: The rules for commenting for traffic

No link love

Now, I’m not talking blog rolls- I hate them for a whole variety of reasons. What I mean by link love is that each post you write should link out to other blog articles or websites to offer the reader more resources or references for your data. You should also provide internal links to other articles within your own blog to keep visitors moving through related stories on your own site. You have a 68% greater chance of acquiring a reader as an RSS subscriber if they read more than one post on your blog in a single visit- so link internally liberally!

Read also: Using links to retain visitors and generate leads

Lack of keyword density in posts

A blog helps you climb the search engine ranks (SERPs) because it provides search engine with fresh content to crawl frequently. However, if you do not pepper your posts with the keywords and phrases you want to be searched by, you simply aren’t providing the kind of content that will help you climb the SERPs for those specific terms. The trick to climbing the SERPs for very specific terms is to strategically place those terms thought your text.

Read also: Where does your site rank in the SERPs

What RSS Pieces Knows About SEO, Google and Traffic

I’m not one for self promotional pieces, but I’m breaking my own rule today, because, well, I recently read a comment that basically said blogging isn’t about traffic or leads or search engine positioning. I can’t remember what the comment said blogging WAS about, but does it really matter? I mean, if you are going to invest hours each week into penning insightfully witty blogs, don’t you want to know what the ROI is? Don’t you want to know that all that marketing effort will convert, at some point, to money in your pocket?  I know I do. In fact, I’m pretty obsessed with my metrics. So much so, that when I planned the Yankee Blog Swap (on a whim, I might add), I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to chronicle the first few days of our new property, YankeeBlogSwap.com to show people what an RSS Pieces blog can do? 

The YankeeBlogSwap Baby Book:  the First 3 Days of Life of an RSS Pieces Blog

December 12, 2006

RSS Pieces found out is was pregnant with our first child, YankeeBlogSwap.com. OK, we just purchased the domain on Decembner 12th, but it was way more exciting to announce it my way!

See the WhoIs entry here

December 13-16, 2006

Blogs, much like fruit flies, have a very short gestation period. 

December 17, 2006

RSS Pieces gives birth to a bouncing baby blog! I launched the site live into the wild wild web and added a few pages of content on the 17th. 

Today, 48 unique visitors checked out our new baby and our server recorded 956 page views.

Dr. Widexl says you have perfect meta tag relevancy and you are well on your way to growing into a perfectly SEOed blog.

Within one minute of having posted my first blog on the site, Google crawled it and within 20 minutes, Yahoo Slurp had dropped by. 

December 18, 2006

Today, 200 unique visitors checked out our new baby and our server recorded 1541 page views.

Close family and friends come to visit us in the hospital! All our blog swap participants were notified that they could come and visit the site to login to the back end and add their personal profile. 

Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN continue to crawl each new post only moments after it’s creation. 

By evening, 14 pages of the blog are visible within Google’s primary index.

See our indexed pages here: Indexed Pages by Google

December 19, 2006

Wow, the whole world wide web knows all about YankeeBlogSwap.com! OK, I did announce the blog event site with a little press release on PRWeb.

Today, 382 unique visitors checked out our new baby and our server recorded 1720 page views.

Yahoo shows 14 incoming links

MSN live had 100 incoming links

Google blog search indexed 29 pages and recorded 48 backlinks

Technorati records 64 links from 27 blogs

$15,242.58

Read also: Boost traffic by 40% in less than 1 hour per day

Read also: Online event marketing: the key to more traffic 

Read also: Are you contagious: Viral Marketing 101 

What would it cost for you to launch a blog successfully?

$0 - $1500  Blog

Buy a blog. RSS Pieces basic blogs are $200 setup and our custom blog solutions are $699 setup.  Our monthly fee is $69/mo.  That being said you can setup a free or inexpensive blog with Blogger, WordPress or TypePad for much less. There are also more expensive solutions available.

$249  Press Release

PRWeb SEOed Press Release.  Get the word out there about your new blog by hosting an event or announcing a new service.  I highly recommend PRWeb's SEOed releases. I have had amazing results with them.

Hey, it’s finally here: The real estate blog extravaganza of the year… the Yankee Blog Swap.  Watch Sellsius take on Jimmy the Tomato, see Kitano tame Zillow and quick witted Geno go for broke in the city that never sleeps.  Oh yeah, did I mention that super blogger, Ardell DellaLoggia will play ringmaster on Redfin CEO Glenn Kellman’s blog?  And who is coming to RSS Pieces?  None other than our black belted friend, Joel Burslem of Future of Real Estate Marketing. 

This event is so big that RSS Pieces just couldn’t hold it, so, to chase these bloggers you’ll have to check out our new property, YankeeBlogSwap.com.  Everything you need to know about these bloggers and how they handle the pressure of blog swapping can be found right there.

Read also:  What Inman says about the Yankee Swap

Read also:  Yankee Swap Press Release   

What is a Yankee Swap?

For those of you not raised in the blustering New England cold with holiday Yankee Swaps, here's the definition of a Yankee Swap:

• Each guest arrives with a gift, in this case, it is a blog.
• Each guest and blog is given a randomly selected number.
• When the numbers match, presto- that's your blog for the day!

What is a Yankee Blog Swap?

YankeeBlogSwap.com is a site dedicated to connecting bloggers in related industries for the purpose of expanding their respective readerships with fresh viewpoints from various authors.  Bloggers can use the free Yankee Swap network to find guest writers for their blogs or participate in the frequent industry events.  It is a great way to network and drive publicity, traffic and backlinks to your site while promoting your industry as a whole to the buying public.

Why would you want to get your blog involved?

• Boost Focused Traffic

For baby bloggers this is a way to share in the star traffic power of industry giants while offering new audiences a fresh perspective.  And, just like a carnival or a blog tour, a blog swap can drive substantial traffic back to your blog and around the real estate blogosphere.

• Generate organic PR

When the big boys cooperate in an industry as polarized as real estate, it is news worthy.  Bloggers can combine resources to generate buzz for the event through press releases and on-site announcements. By jointly promoting a single event, each participating blogger draws in new visitors, benefiting the group as a whole. 

• Grow Backlinks

A side effect of joint promotion is that participating blogs will grow their organic backlinks.

How do you get in on the next blog swap?

Since we got the site, we may as well open it up to the greater community rather than let it just rot on the web.  So, YankeeBlogSwap will run monthly swap meets with up to 20 participating blogs.  Simply read over the rules here and enter your blog into the swap here by providing your name, the name of your blog, and a brief description of your blog. 

Who's involved?

Transparent Real Estate’s Pat Kitano vs. Zillow’s Drew Meyers

RSS Pieces’ Mary McKnight vs. Future of Real Estate Marketing’s Joel Burslem         

St Paul Real Estate Blog’s Teresa Boardman vs. Phoenix Real Estate Guy's Jay Thompson    

3 Ocean Real Estate’s Kevin Boer vs. SLC Real Estate’s Nigel Swaby

Issaquah Undressed’s Larry Cragun vs. Maury Properties’ Andrew Maury            

Chicago Home Weblog's Geno Petroche vs. NY Houses 4 Sales’ Christine Forgione

Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Blog's Jonathan Dalton vs. Real Estate Snippets Bonnie Erickson

The boys of Sellsius vs. Real Estate Tomato’s Jim Cronin

ML Podcast’s Michael Price vs. FamousAgents.com’s Elise Wright

My Tech Opinion’s Reggie Nicolay vs. Ubertor’s Steve Jagger

Redfin's Glenn Kelman vs Rain City's  Ardell DellaLoggia

CondoDomain's Anthony Longo vs. miOaklandCounty's Maureen Francis

The San Diego Home Blog’s Kris Berg vs.  Urban Dig’s Noah Rosenblatt

The Property Monger's Jon Ernest vs. XBroker's Jeff Corbett

Realty Blogging's Richard Nacht vs. The Mortgage Reports' Dan Green

Christian Real Estate Network's Justin Smith vs. Wanna Network's Tony Senna

Sacramento Voice's Gena Riede vs. Atlanta 575 Real Estate's  Brad Nix

Event marketing isn’t just for Bacardi and Budweiser anymore.  With the first Yankee Blog Swap right around the corner and the meme gone wild in the rearview, I think it’s time we tackle the power of online event marketing. If you need traffic or want to grow your blogging network, there is no better way to build your credibility than to host an event.  Those of you that have hosted a carnival know what I'm talking about.  Traffic and backlinks grow, new visitors show up, etc.  But carnivals aren't the only game in town.  You can coordinate some pretty successful online events if you just put your out of the box thinking cap on.  

What is online event marketing?

Web event marketing is really just online party planning. You can create an organic viral event like the recent meme that circled the real estate blogosphere or you can plan a structured event like a blog carnival, tour or swap.   The trick to any good party is just getting people to show up. So, what get’s people to the party? One word- Marketing. Let’s look at the how to’s of online event marketing for your real estate blog.

What are the benefits of online event marketing?

Saves money

Online events are the least expensive type of party you can throw. You don’t need any permits and you never have to feed your ravenous crowd. All you need is a good website or blog and a little marketing muscle.

Read also: Guerrilla blogging

Promotes your site

Free PR is something every blog could use. Create buzz that you can convert into focused traffic around your event by publishing a press release announcing the event to the community and asking participants to cross market your event on their sites.

Read also: Ultimate Guide to Blog Marketing

Sparks Participation/Extends your network

The whole idea of web 2.0 is that you make the web more social. By personally inviting or signaling your network of online friends to participate in a viral or structured online event you can spark participation. Ask your network to either cross promote the event on their blogs or directly contact their blogging network for participation. This not only pulls in more new visitors to your own site but also helps you to develop new relationships within the blogosphere that can benefit your site.

Read also: Viral marketing 101

Spikes Traffic

Events create a call to action, meaning, they spark a need to visit your site that day. Think about it, you don’t show up for a Rolling Stones concert on Wednesday when the event was last Saturday. People like to see the event “live.” So, online events, if promoted properly, can spike event day traffic substantially. And new visitors, if they liked what they saw, will come back time and again, who knows, they might even subscribe to your blog.

Read also: Boost traffic by 40% in less than 1 hour per day

Boosts Backlinks

If you plan an event where multiple blogs need to participate and cross promote the event, you can be assured you will walk away from the party with the gift that keeps on giving- backlinks. Oh, those precious little links from other sites back to yours that Google so dearly loves… Another way to boost backlinks is to issue a press release through PRWeb. 

Read also: Ultimate guide to building backlinks

How to come up with great ideas for an online event

You don’t have to be a marketing genius to come up with ideas for unique online events. Chances are there is a game show, traditional event or TV show you could easily transform into an online event. Look at Carnivals and Swaps, those are just brick and mortar events that we have translated into the online blog medium. So, don’t tear your hair out hiring a focus group to brainstorm “out of the box” ideas, simply flip on the TV or look at your newspaper’s local events calendar and let inspiration take hold.

Read also: What Madonna can teach you about blogging

5 Unique Online Real Estate Event Ideas

Creativity on vacation this week? Alright, here are my top 5 never been done before ideas for online events.

Celebrity Blog Roast: Structured event

Just like Celebrity Roast, you find a popular blogger and invite all his/her peers to a one day event of roasting. They can let their witty, sarcastic selves shine through and “roast” the guest of honor all in fun for the amusement of visitors. You can do this one of two ways on a blog: you could buy a new domain and start a monthly/quarterly event featuring a different blogger each time, giving the “roasters” logins to the site so they can add their jabs throughout the day or you could hold a one time event on your own blog and ask that “roasters” email you their $.02 so you can post them. 

I personally love this idea so much, that I am already coordinating a similar event. Want in? Just email RSS Pieces.

Survivor: Structured event

Round up 10 of your closest blogging buddies, design a challenge for each site and ask visitors to tour the blogs to complete all 10 challenges for the grand prize of, well, whatever the heck you want to give away- even if it is just a funky little graphic. What kind of challenges can have on your blog? Well, the idea is to create participation and commenting, so ask them to answer questions- they can be local trivia, funniest home story, logic games, etc.

Blog Debate: Structured event

We all love controversy and this one will stir up quite a bit of it. The idea of the tennis match is to create a multi-day event where you match up 4-8 bloggers into pairs of two and you give each pair a single topic to write about. The catch is, one blogger has to be pro and the other con. Ask visitors to comment on which side of the story they liked best and the winners from each pair move onto the next round and so forth until you have a single winner.

Reality TV: viral event

You must have some funny things happen in your office- get a digital video camera or video phone and record them as short clips. Or create your own reality show of either office happenings or a local review show of area hot spots like restaurants, golf courses and beaches. You can do this kind of stuff on a shoestring budget and get incredible results. Create your own reality show with enough humor, drama and character arch to engage people. Upload them to YouTube for best results and let your brand market itself across the Internet with video viral marketing. For example, after the holidays will be launching our office reality clip show- it will mainly feature our two favorite employees, Danny- the die hard Red Sox fan that can turn any SEO discussion into a Johnny Damon rant and Mike, our curmudgeon CFO who is so cheap we secretly suspect he buys two-ply toilet paper and separates the sheets.

Meme tracker: viral event

Now that you all know what a meme is based on last weeks response to the real estate meme, you get the networking and viral value of blogging’s equivalent of a chain letter.  If you want to start a meme, you do need to know a little bit about what compels people to participate and pass it on. The best memes involve a personal question about the blogger themselves. Why? Because most people, when given the chance to talk about themselves, will take it. Also, personal memes tend to translate across multiple industries than industry specific ones. 

Read also: What is a meme?

Conclusion:

If your traffic is stagnant, inject a little life into your blog with an online event. It may take a little planning but the increases in traffic, backlinks and new blogging alliances will be well worth the trouble.

I want to preface this article with my own opinion: I firmly believe that nobody is more qualified to write your real estate blog than you. You are a real estate professional with specific expertise in your farm area, so even if you decide to hire a pro, you should still take the time at least once per week to pen an article of your very own for your blog as well. That being said, I know it is not always feasible for a real estate professional to write 3-5 in-depth posts per week which is what you need to do in order to climb the search engine results and keep readers interested. So, here are the facts I feel you should know when hiring a professional real estate blogger.

Read also: The lazy man’s guide to blogging

Required reading if you are considering hiring a blogger:

Blog Post Types

Pay Per Post Blogging

How much is a blog post worth?

Pay Per Post Virus Spreads

Cost:

A professional blogger will charge between $16-30/post for niche specific SEOed content and usually can bang out an article on one days notice. 

Questions you should ask before hiring a professional blogger:

Will the posts be SEOed for my prime keywords?

You should always ask that they SEO your posts and provide up to 5 prime key words or phrases you would like to be searched by.  Do not take for granted that a professional will write with SEO in mind, so always ask.

What are your minimum word counts per post?

Most bloggers will tell you 250 is their minimum word count. I recommend asking for a 350 minimum word count. That ensure that you will get in-depth posts that create real value for readers.

Can I make topic recommendations?

You definitely want to make topic recommendations. Provide your blogger with links to your local newspapers, topics you would like to see them cover and other information you think would help them to write better articles. The more specific information you provide them with the better the posts they write will be.

Do you ghost blog?

Personally, I am on the fence about this one. I think there is value to making your blog look bigger and badder by having multiple people post on it (look at BloodhoundBlog and RainCity), however if you are expecting a ghost blogger, you need to ask. Oddly, not all bloggers will agree to ghost blogging under your name. 

Can I review your blogs before they post and if I don’t like them will you revise them?

You want the right to ask your blogger to revise a post. I know you don’t have time to read every blog they write for you, however, you should carefully review the first 3-5 posts they write. If you feel the “voice” isn’t right or the topics are soft, let them know and guide your blogger on how you would like them to read. This process helps you create synergy with your blogger for the best results possible. Once you are comfortable with the quality of the posts, you don’t have to review their writing as closely or as frequently. However I do recommend checking in with their posts at least once per month.

How often should you use a hired blogger?

I recommend that your blog have at least 3 new posts each week. The ideal number of posts per week is 5. You should post for yourself at least once per week and should not engage a hired blogger more than 4 times a week. Do not let a professional blogging company talk you into more than one post per day or blogging for you every day of the week. 

Who do I recommend?

We work exclusively with K2Bloggers. Why? Because of all the blogging companies we interviewed, they were the best and most affordable. They even built a special real estate blogging team for RSS Pieces clients. These bloggers are trained to write engaging SEOed content for the real estate market. Feel free to contact K2 directly if you are interested in blogging services.  They charge between $16 - $25/post. 

*  As with all companies I recommend, RSS Pieces does not take a commission for providing work to K2.  I firmly believe in remaining impartial when recommending other companies.  That way I feel free to revise my recommendations based on the merit of the service rather than on the benefit to RSS Pieces.

Wanna see an example of their work?

Dan Savino’s Real Estate Blog

Conclusion:

I am pretty middle of the road on the topic of paid bloggers.  I wouldn’t use one on my blog, but then again, my only job is to blog and promote blogging to others.  I recognize that real estate professionals have a lot more on their plate than just their blog, so, I don’t frown upon you hiring a professional blogger. I think that as long as you have asked the right questions and know what to expect, it is worth while. I mean, you do have more to do than just blog each day, right? Houses don’t buy and sell themselves. 

Read also: Ultimate guide to blog marketing

Read alos: Predatory blogging

I was memed this morning by my friend and competitor, Paul Chaney of Blogging Systems. For those of you that don’t know what a meme is: It’s a thought stream carried from one person to another, or, to be more precise, a “unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to the other,” so says Wikipedia. Basically, it’s the blogging equivalent of a chain letter.  The cool thing about blogging is that the meme can be tracked. Entire websites are devoted to doing just that. Some memes, however, are deliberate…sort of a social game to build community and engender relationships.

Meme benefits:

• Connect with other bloggers  and grow your blogging network
• Build your brand and blog traffic
• Introduce your readers to other bloggers
• Generate backlinks 
• Have fun 

My meme topic:

What 5 Things You don’t Know About Me

Track my meme:

Drew of Drew’s Marketing Minute

Starbucker

Trevor Gay of Simplicity

Phil of Make it Great

Kammie of Passion Meet’s Purpose

Success from the Nest

Dave of Rothacker Reviews

Andrea Learned of Learned on Women
Ann Handley of the Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Nedra Weinreich, Spare Change

Toby Bloomberg, the Diva Marketer

Paul Chaney, Strategic Blogging

Who I am tagging:

I’m shooting for the stars: Drew Myers of Zillow/Drew Meyers Insights,  Jim Cronin of Real Estate Tomato, Glenn Kellman of Redfin and Matt Heaton of Active Rain. Let's see who takes up the challenge.

What 5 Things You don’t Know About Me

1. My husband and I plan to enter ministry full-time within the next 5 years. We are active members of our church and my husband is currently studying to be a Southern Baptist minister at Trinity.



2. I am a bodybuilder. Well, some of you may already know this. But I’ll bet you don’t know that I am also a personal trainer whose loving husband built her a rockin’ high-end gym in our home so I can train Christian women for free. I use my passion for fitness as a ministry to help overweight Christian women lose substantial amounts of weight. This year alone, the women I train have lost a staggering combined 1192lbs. My personal fitness site is CuttingFitness.



3. I was a 2003 member of the largest traveling bikini team in the world, the Texas Bikini Team. Somewhere out there are even calendars and posters with my mug on them!



4. I am currently training to compete in the 2008 Fitness America Competition.    The national event takes place next November and will be broadcast on ESPN2.



5. I have lived all over the world, spending serious time in Udst Kaminigorsk, Russia and Cassablanca Morocco.

BONUS: I am secretly afraid of frogs. When I say afraid, I mean, terrified and hiding under the covers afraid of frogs.

Are you contagious?

Get your vaccinations and slip on the body condom, we are about to tour the infectious world of viral marketing. Viral Internet marketing is about harnessing the power of your existing visitors and social networks to explode your real estate blog community without spending a dime. Sounds pretty good, huh? Where do I sign up? Hold your infectious little horses, there are rules to this viral thing. And you gotta play by them to get the job done right.

What is viral marketing?

According to Wikiedia, Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of a computer virus. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. Basically, viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.Like viruses, viral marketing strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Examples of viral marketing

YouTube is the Mecca of viral marketing. What would Paris Hilton be without it? All her pseudo-ebrity moments have been caught on tape and passed around the Internet like wild fire all thanks to YouTube.

Need other more business oriented examples of viral marketing, well look no further than those silly Vonage commercials or:

• Burger King's The Subservient Chicken
• McDonald's "McRib Farewell Tour"
• The Ring Two movie promotion used another blank-label videotape ending with www.she-is-here.com, a website where users shared their unexplainable experiences with the cursed videotape
• Snakes on a Plane's "Get a call from Samuel L. Jackson" campaign put this little known film on the path to cult classic-dom.

The hallmarks of viral marketing

1. Harnesses the power of “free” and “giving to get”

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary.  Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products, information or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, newsletters, wallpapers, ring tones, information, "cool" buttons, software programs, e-cards, etc. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling". "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will do it much faster. Viral marketing is about delayed gratification. You may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if you can generate a groundswell of interest from something free that will help you profit "soon and for the rest of your life." Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs generate leads. Leads convert to sales.

2. Easily transferred from one person to the next

Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. In order for your message to go viral, it has to be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, RSS feed, software download. Viral marketing works well on the Internet because web communication is instantaneous and inexpensive. The key to viral marketing is keep the message short and compelling. For example: Hotmail’s compelling and susinct viral message included at the bottom of each email is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com."

3. Capitalizes on human motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing campaigns take advantage of common human motivations. The two most common motivations are greed ad love. The hunger to be richer, more popular, more loved, and have more friends is pretty universal. Therefore, messages that promise that readers will save money, make money or grow their friend network will have the most impact.  

4. Piggy-backs on existing communication networks

By nature, people are social. We thrive in social environments and seek out community situations where we can interact with others. This is the primary reason why the social web has become so popular. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or even thousands of people, depending upon thier position in society. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. The Internet is particularly adept at exploiting people’s social networks through permissions emails, e-mail aggregation tools, affiliate programs and social networks like MyBlogLog, MySpace, ActiveRain and WanaNetwork. By placing your message into existing communications channels like this, you can rapidly multiply its dispersion.

5. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites (example: blogtopsites). A news release or RSS feed can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals or websites and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. This is a prime example of someone else's newsprint or webpage relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own. This is the ideal viral marketing situation where you use other sites proliferate your brand or marketing message for you.

Example: Check out how popular the RSS Pieces Real Estate Blog Swap has gotten!

Top 10 ideas fOR real estate viral marketing:

1. Offer free services and information delivered via email

Free email marketing like newsletters, market reports and listing notifications are a great opt-in way of reaching visitors and prospects again and again.

2. Feature free personalized RSS subscriptions

Free RSS feed subscription (standard blog feature). High end blogs are starting to offer personalized RSS feed subscription where email notifications can be sent to subscribers for new listings that meet a their housing search criteria

3. Allow users to send personalized e-cards to their friends and family from your site

Let your users send free e-cards to their friends and family that use pictures of local attractions/photography, listings or the home they just bought. This is surprisingly easy to implement on any blog or website.

4. Provide an email to a friend option on listing pages

This is a great feature for couples that search homes from work and want to instantly email the listing to their spouse for review.

Example: MyRealtyBlog Listing Search

See how the listing page has an option on it to email it to a friend? You want to make going viral as easy as possible

5. Create your own reality TV show and upload it to YouTube 

You must have some funny things happen in your office- get a digital video camera and record them as short clips. Or create your own reality show of either office happenings or a local review show of area hot spots like restaurants, golf courses and beaches. You can do this kind of stuff on a shoestring budget and get incredible results. Create your own reality show with enough humor, drama and character arch to engage people. Upload them to YouTube for best results and let your brand market itself across the Internet with video viral marketing. 

6. Podcast interviews with local celebrities. 

Make sure they are funny and upbeat, and then upload them to various podcast directories. 

Read also: Ultimate guide to podcast marketing

7. Announce & Host Events

Hosting a carnival, contest or other event on your blog can drive serious interest and backlinks for your site. Be sure to always make a quality graphic to go with your event. It incites people to use it to advertise the event on their own sites. If you run a contest- make sure to issue winner graphics, most winners will post the graphic with a link to your site on their own as a badge of honor.

Example: Funniest Real Estate Story contest

Example: Real Estate Blog Swap

Read also:  What Madonna can teach you about blogging

8. Tickle the funny bone

People like edgy and funny. Try a humorous list of top 10 things to do in Town X during January. Or, let’s say you are a Florida Realtor: you could post a picture of an obsessed golfer searching for their bright orange ball under 2 feet of snow with a caption that reads “wouldn’t you rather be in St Petersburg, Florida?” People love to pass these kinds of posts on to their friends. Make sure that you provide some other valuable information about the local golf courses or an event coming to the greens near you as well. Make the post a double threat by giving the reader something to laugh about and providing quality information.

Read also: Guerrilla blogging

9. Spread a little gossip

There has to be something going on in your town that is gossip worthy. Does the PGA stop at a golf course in your town? Are there a couple of local celebrities causing a ruckus? Is a big build threatening to devalue homes in a neighborhood? You can gte this kind of info from either Google news or you local paper. Basically, if something interesting is happening in your community- talk about it. 

Read also: Pimp my blog: become a guilty pleasure and daily read

10. Get catty: start controversy

People love strife. We love to watch it and be a part of it, oddly. The hearts and rainbows, love fest blogs die because they get boring. So, create a little controversy and watch participation and new visitation climb. Controversy re-engages existing readers to invite friends and family to your site. It creates a buzz for your site. People love to be the one to say, “Did you see what so and so said on such and such blog?”  The plan is to create a "tightly knit community" and a "war" within it. The first step is to write "tutorials."  Post articles that give step by step instruction on how to prepare for a closing or stage a home for an open house, etc.  Write an article like this at least once per week to establish yourself as an expert.  This creates your "tightly knit community."  Once you have created community- engage it!  Incite strife with an article at least once per month.  People like managed strife.    Too much and it becomes uncomfortable and you become a curmudgeon, but a little helps create community. 

Read also: How to write a blog that generates leads

Nothing builds your credibility as an expert or drives traffic and blog subscribers better than a good tutorial post. Why? It certainly isn’t because we want to learn anything new.   We all have more than enough to do already. It’s because tutorials promise to make our lives easier, faster, better, richer, etc. So what sets a linkbait tutorial apart from the run of the mill tutorial?

Shout out of the day goes to this post on Copyblogger, How to write a killer how to article that gets attention 

1. A catchy headline

A good headline can increase website conversion rates by 73% according to this Marketing Experiments study. The best titles are very specific and promise to make life easier for the reader.

Do

How to buy a house at $50,000 under value

See how that title tells you what you can expect specifically. It expressly promises to save the reader money. That’s the kind of headline you need- something very specific that explicitly spells out the benefit to the reader.

Don’t

How to buy a house in Cape Coral, FL

Way too generic. You don’t promise the reader anything that will make their life better.

Example: Boost traffic by 40% in less than 1 hour per day

Read also: How to write catchy real estate blog titles

2. Stresses the benefits of reading the tutorial

I’ve said it before but explicit benefits far out weigh implied ones. So, remind the reader throughout your post how what the article will help them achieve the promise you made in the post’s title. The word “because” is always valuable when expressing benefits. 

Do

Make sure that you are not present during your open house because people feel more comfortable stating their opinion to your Realtor when they do not feel as though they are offending you, the home owner.

See how that sentence clearly states why a home owner shouldn’t be home during an open house. People like to know the reason for something. So, tell them. Telling people why you want them to do something a certain way builds your credibility as an expert. It shows that you have specific knowledge that will result in a predictable outcome that will ultimately benefit the them. And that, my dear friends, is the key to building trust.

Don’t

Make sure that you are not present during your open house.

This kind of statement really doesn’t tell you anything. It is simply an instruction and it begs the question “why?” It is way too generic to offer any value to the reader.

Example: Ultimate guide to blog marketing

Read also: The two most important words in blogging by CopyBlogger

3. Easy to scan text

People like to be able to scan over large bodies of text quickly to find what they are looking for. Make the copy easy to read by breaking it up with numbered lists or bullet points. Use a bolder font for topic headings and always include lots of white space. The easier your posts are to read, the more reads they will get. Visitors feel overwhelmed when they are faced with text that seems to go on and on forever, so use formatting techniques to break up the text into easily digestible chunks.

Do

In order to influence people into contacting you and feeling compelled to use your service over every other real estate agent in your area, you must establish 3 things:

• you are like them

(people like people they can relate to)

• you understand them

(people like people that uniquely understand their problem)

• you are an expert in your field and can solve their problem

(people trust people that they consider authorities)

See how easy that was to read and understand. Bullet points and numbered lists help people prioritize content. Tutorials are meant to be scanned and followed in a step by step fashion so breaking them out into numbered or bulleted steps makes your tutorials more useful and easier to follow.

Don’t

In order to influence people into contacting you and feeling compelled to use your service over every other real estate agent in your area, you must establish that you are like them, you understand them and you are an expert in your field and can solve their problem.

Not quite as easy to scan through, huh? The power of bullet points is that they keep you moving quickly through text and act as bookmarks so you can easily find exactly what you are looking for without re-reading the entire tutorial.

4. Lots of examples

Use very specific examples in your tutorials. If you want people to get the most out of your tutorials, show them what you are talking about instead of just telling them. You want to do all the “thinking” work for the reader. Spark their creativity with specific examples don’t make them guess at what you are talking about.

Do:

Ideas for real estate blog tutorial titles:

• How to buy a home in Cape Coral for $50,000 under value
• A Realtor’s secrets to selling your home for top dollar
• How I qualified for a great mortgage with bad credit

See how I complimented my instruction of how to write a good tutorial title with very specific examples? It takes all the mystery out what you are talking about and clearly shows how to do it. Examples build your credibility as a bona fide expert on the topic.

Don’t:

Buying or selling a home is a major life decision. People like to know what to expect. Prove your authority on the matter by guiding readers through the different processes of buying and selling homes with step by step tutorials. 

See how telling you what to do isn’t quite as effective as showing you how it’s done? 

Read also: Killing me softly with your blog

5. Solves problems

As a Realtor, you solve problems everyday. People want to readily identify you with the problems you can solve. So, tell them. Write posts in Problem/Solution format. Show them that you have encountered the very same problem they are having and solved it for another client.

Do

Problem: Your appraisal came in low

Solution:

• Ask for another appraisal.
• Protest the appraisal with documentation of your upgraded expenses.
• Have the buyers make a larger down payment.

See how that clearly laid out what the problem was and the possible solutions to it? That’s what you want to do. You want to show a reader that you know the specific problems they face and you know how to solve them.

Don’t

When you sell or buy real estate, remember that the certified appraisal is just one person's opinion of the value of your home. The opinion that counts for you is the buyer's: you want to be sure the buyer values your home above all others.

While that sounds good, it means nothing in terms of being a problem solver. You haven’t really solved anything, you’ve only re-stated the problem. Providing a clear solution that is easy to read and understand would go a lot farther in establishing your credibility as an expert on the topic.

Example: Is toothpaste holding your blog together

Read also: How to write a blog that generates leads