My parents live off the beaten path in the mountains of West Virginia and over the years I've tried many paths between Cincinnati and their home to find a "best" route.
What's best? In my case, the quickest route is what I've sought, and I've established my preferred route by trial and error. Some experimental routes worked better than others, with the worst in the pre-Google Maps days I grabbed my handy dandy Rand McNally atlas and choosing the closest route to a straight line. To quote Pretty Woman "Big mistake! Huge!!!". Getting behind logging trucks on mountain roads that are a lane and half wide at best is NOT ideal! That "shorter" route added another hour or two to my trip!
Now with the Internet, we've got the wisdom of crowds to plot a path, whether it's for driving from Point A to B, or figuring out how to blog!
If someone asks about starting out blogging, there are key questions to answer:
Why do they want to blog?
Who is the audience they want to reach?
Where will they blog?
What do they care enough about to provide the motivation to blog?
Who will actually do the blogging?
Without establishing the answers to these questions, just picking up the keyboard and posting may be the equivalent of being stuck behind a logging truck on a mountain road, while you MAY eventually get to the destination, the end result may take much longer to reach.
For us personally, blogging success has come down to two key points:
1. Establishing a blogging niche. Low maintenance living (patio homes, landominiums, condos, etc.) narrows the competition and attracts home buyers that fit our preferred clientele (experienced, financially viable, and they know what they want).
2. Developing the expertise to support the niche. When the phone rings, you've got to be able to walk the "talk" of your blog posts. If someone calls me about the Villas of Royal Pointe, I know that the last condo sold in MLS was one to my buyer (a year ago!). Want to know about new construction patio homes? I know the builders and have key contacts at each major builder that can help my clients.
We took some blogging shortcuts at the beginning, blogging about anything and everything, chasing comments and points. Once we figured out the What, Why, How and Who, the shortcuts stopped and we found the based path to bring us business.
Blogging success also takes into account what we DID NOT want to do, and that was going head to head with the 800 pound gorillas of real estate. There's plenty of business to be found in niches and the cost to acquire is a lot lower than trying for the top of the mountain keywords that ZTR and other sites like them dominate while they spent millions to catch consumer eyes.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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