Yes, all real estate agents should be blogging
Remember when blogging looked like a fad – just some kind
of vanity thing that let people post their thoughts to the world. Many of the early blogs looked like diary entries. I recall being shocked that a copywriter had a blog filled with grammatical errors and misspellings – and a friend telling me that it didn’t matter, because a blog was just personal rambling.
All that has changed. Now blogging is an important marketing tool – for agents and for anyone else in business.
That’s why – Just as all real estate agents should have their own websites, all agents should be blogging. And I believe they should be blogging on Active Rain as well as on their own websites.
No – I don’t work for Active Rain and I’m not paid a commission for recruiting new bloggers. I encourage it because I believe it’s beneficial to you. Active Rain is an “authority” site in Google’s eyes, so your posts are MUCH more likely to be indexed highly and found by prospective buyers and sellers than they will be if they reside only on your own site.
For one thing, blogging is a very important way to let the world know that you are a neighborhood or niche expert.
When prospects see you writing about everything from your new 
listings to the neighborhood dog park, the 4th of July celebration, the state of your market, and everything in between, they form the opinion that YOU are the person in the know. You’re the person who can help them because you know the territory and you know the answers to their questions – it’s that simple.
Your Active Rain blog, when done properly, will also help promote your own website. Each time you post on AR, your signature will (or anyway should) include a link back to your site.
If your site includes good community pages, good buyer and seller advice, or anything else useful to the blog reader, you should also link directly to those pages every time you blog about those topics. The more relevant links leading to your site, the higher you’ll rank with Google.
Of course, you do have to use good SEO practices in your title and your content. The good news is that if you aren’t sure how to do that, Active Rain University has videos to teach you.
After that, you can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media sites you use – giving your expertise even more exposure.
But… you tell me you can’t write.
Your grammar is terrible and you can’t spell. You can get around that, because nothing says you have to write the content yourself, as long as it belongs exclusively to you.
Write out the information you want to include in your post, then enlist a family member or hire a talented high school student to edit and polish it for you. My guess is your local High School English teacher could help you find someone with those skills. Or – if you have an assistant, get the assistant to either write or polish your posts.
Because I’m a real estate copywriter, I sometimes get inquiries asking if I can write blog posts for agents. Yes, I can, but only some of them. I can’t write from first-hand knowledge of the places and events in your city – and I can’t go take the photos to go with them.
Speaking of that – the photos are important. Show your community to the world through pictures! You don’t have to add many words if your photo depicts something beautiful or interesting.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles @ freedigitalphotos.net