When you first start blogging it might seem like a LOT of work, and a lot of work with no visible return. You're starting at zero and there's a lot of downward pull to stop you from achieving orbit and being found by referring agents and consumers who might want to buy or sell a home in your area.
You've got to learn how to blog, to identify your target audience(s), gather information, develop enough content of the right types to establish a reputation and get your posts found.
That seems like a lot to learn doesn't it?
But here's the good news, there's plenty of information readily available to get you launched.
I didn't initially know what I needed to do when we joined ActiveRain many years ago, but I knew we NEEDED to blog. While we've lived in Ohio for 30+ years, we're not native to the area so we didn't have a big sphere of influence. I'm not going to hard sell my real estate work at my engineering & we have zero relatives in the area, so reaching out to "strangers" and establishing a better web presence was going to be key to survival in this business.
Initially I probably put too much emphasis on writing posts for comments and not for attracting consumers. I don't regret the relationships established, but as I've admitted before, my time for being social is very restricted. I lurk, I comment rarely, and I'm here to help whenever I can, and if that doesn't meet someone's criteria for giving referrals all I can do is shrug and move on.
But what I did learn was that others here had found the "magic" recipe that worked for them. It wasn't necessarily sexy, but it was effective, and they freely shared what worked for them.
Obviously, what works for you may not work for me and vice versa, but there have been plenty of roadmaps shared here in the Rain.
So years ago (literally), I did a lot of heavy lifting with blogging and IDX pages. We worked our low maintenance living niche. We published information about subdivisions we'd want to work in. We learned what posts attracted clients we DIDN'T want to work with and shut those posts down. We watched our stats, we adjusted, and we put plenty of material on page 1 for long tail searches. That content continues to rank today and is still the major source of our business.
For the most part, I haven't actively blogged to the consumer in almost 3 years, but those calls keep on coming and so do the closings.
At some point when life slows down a little more, I may go on another subdivision/long tail post and IDX page rampage. It's relatively easy work, and has a long term positive impact on our business.
We've not done anything you can't do yourself (or can't hire others to do if that makes more sense for you). Find your path and blast off!
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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