Opportunity

If you hadn’t noticed, the landscape for reaching our marketplace[s] has changed so dramatically. In effect, the change offers both business and consumer an incredible opportunity. Because of the Internet, Search and RSS consumers have the luxury of unlimited information: what they want, how much they want and exactly when they want it. And while search allows for us to be there when they do, its’ only a part of what we [the business] can leverage on the Internet. 

"I’ve found that blogging is an excellent way to develop relationships with potential clients, real estate agents, developers, journalists, and people in the community. It’s a way to demonstrate my knowledge and expertise and to develop trust" Sharon Simms St Petersburg FL
 
Challenge

Unlike traditional, where time and space for an advertising message was limited, there are no longer limits to how much we marketers can share of ourselves. The message is always there, seven days a week and 24 hours a day. Advertising sound bites are fading as noise because a Home Buyers’ ability to do online research is only limited by how much we [the marketer] have actually put out there. Sure we should continue the hunt for our next client, but doesn’t making ourselves available to them when they’re hunting [for what we have to offer] sound nice too? And by the way sharing more means more content indexed. Longer, more specific search phrases indexed [i.e. Santa Barbara CA Oceanfront Home For Sale] demonstrates the intent to serve a specific objective and that can position oneself to convert better-qualified home buyers. Search doesn’t intrude, so it doesn’t look or feel like advertising. Trust can’t be outsourced to ads. We business bloggers must demonstrate genuine knowledge of our trade and, in Real Estate, of our communities. Home buyers don’t want to be told what to buy, how to think and they won’t tolerate having their point of view disregarded. The most effective amongst us will demonstrate consideration, sincerity, honesty and enthusiasm in order to engage.

"The visibility in search engines is only part of the equation. People want flesh and blood." Santa Clarita Real Estate Agent Connor MacIVOR
 
Challenge vs. Opportunity

But how do we meet this challenge? Is it difficult? Is it expensive? Actually Business Blogging in is not only simple, but cheap! Rather than the old environment where we were limited to interrupting people while they consumed media, we actually have the means to become an available and timely source of coverage - no longer an interruption, but a valued resource. We can demonstrate our genuine sense of service by sharing all the useful and timely information we have. Real Estate Blog what you see, hear, know and have to offer… simple!  Google doesn’t say it wants to organize the most technical, the most intellectual or the most eloquent presentation… only that they want to "organize and make the worlds’ information universally accessible and useful." And why is that?  It’s so they can successfully connect ALL searching consumers with the fresh, relevant and unbiased answers they want.
 
And why shouldn’t we see ourselves as a form of local advertorial trade media? Traditional media outlets might not agree, but does a journalist possess the immediate and real life knowledge we not only have but can easily publish? If we know our target is researching, why wouldn’t we publish our knowledge of our trade to the web?  In theory, search engines are an instant answer system, providing home buyers and sellers with the right answers. So, in this environment, where one’s knowledge can easily flow to where it is needed, what have you done to volunteer yours to the indexes? 

"More than 95% of our new business comes from the Internet, and it’s coming from blogs rather than websites. The bottom line of value is not comments or hits - it’s closed business that came because you blogged. Blogging has also raised my visibility and credibility in the community." Sharon Simms St Petersburg FL

Seize the Opportunity!

Blogs have reduced the cost for content creation and distribution to negligible lows. There are no longer limits to how much of ourselves we can share. In fact, very much like our consumer to us, we’re empowered with the giant opportunity of being prepared for them every day. The barriers between our daily knowledge and those who want it have been removed… so folks, as marketers, we must all Real Estate Blog

"Can I copy content that I find potentially valuable to my audience to my Real Estate Blog ?"

We get ‘the ‘Duplicate Content question’ quite often and our answer [generally] tries to address the question for both search engines and for humans. Obviously plagiarizing someones’ content is never acceptable and it CAN get you into trouble; however, you may be able to excerpt safely. An excerpt in 1) block quotes that is 2) significantly less than half the post and that 3) credits the author with a live link should keep you within generally accepted guidelines. Admittedly, this advice is based upon what the consensus agrees is accepted.

Google isn’t that far off, defining duplicate content as "substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar." They add, "Most of the time when we see this, it’s unintentional or at least not malicious in origin… In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries." And finally they add you should not concern yourself with occasional snippets or quotes being identified as duplicate content; however, in the event you go to far and are removed from the search results you should visit webmaster guidelines. If the problem is corrected based upon webmaster guidelines you are entitled to submit your site for reconsideration. 

But what does Google share about the consequences for duplicating content? Apparently, during spider crawling and then the serve of a search result, Google trusts its algorithm to rank similar pages accurately. Apparenly those filters also identify actual attempts at manipulation and when they do see it manual adjustments are made; however, Google admits it would much rather rely on filters than on manual rank adjustments.

Now, they don’t define "adjustments" and its’ probably by design, but one can certainly conclude manual adjustment lies somewhere between lower rank to complete removal. *Rule of thumb here- don’t make a short sighted mistake and risk your time, effort, money and future business by abusing duplication.*

In the post ‘When Duplicate content really hurts’ SEOMoz.org’s Eric Enge suggests, "Conventional wisdom among experienced SEOs is that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. There are exceptions to this rule. Search engines implement a filter… there is apparently a duplicate content threshold where Google’s filter will identify and actually penalize a site." He says, "I write this based upon a combination of heresay and also some experience we’ve had we could only speculate about." Enge also warns that Search Engine spiders only visit with so much crawl bandwidth or what he refers to as budget. If you waste those crawls on content that won’t be indexed successfully, you are sacrificing other useful content that could have been indexed. In a similar instance we [Real Estate Blog sites] also can only speculate about, we had a client copying the lead story from their local newspaper pretty regularly. Despite our warnings, one day they disappeared from the SERPs [search engine results pages] wiping out any potential they may have had for consumer search findability.

Client and Malibu CA Real Estate Blogger Judy Kunisaki mentioned just today, "my clients are constantly saying they found me via, or that they have read, my Blog." Her comment serves as a perfect example of one marketing asset that should NOT ever be risked and let’s face it, home buyers and sellers aren’t only searching they are researching!  So, I’m certain no Advertorial Blog owner would ever want removal. Demonstrate trustworthiness, knowledge and a value- adding local presence on the web because what the search engines don’t penalize you for, humans most certainly will. And please, don’t duplicate content outside the generally accepted guidelines, use care and use good reason!

This post is NOT meant to suggest free blog solutions are lacking as good content management systems. On the contrary, there are lots of good free social network and also standalone blog solutions out there. In fact, we use an Active Rain Blog because AR has a concentrated audience of sophisticated Real Estate Professionals we’d love to reach. This post only means to shed light on some things you may want to consider so that, as a Real Estate Business Professional with daily challenges & responsibilities, you are slightly more informed

17 useful questions to consider when investing in a Free Business Blog

1. do I own the long term destiny of my brand with a free business blog?
2. is there adequate customer service?
3. can I get all the features I need?
4. is there any design flexibility?
5. is there any effort to secure?
6. is there accountability to my business needs?
7. is there search engine, online brand or direct marketing education?
8. if not, can I succeed as an independent advertorial business blogger?
9. is it evolving with the web and search engines?
10. will my host ever change policies in ways I don’t like?
11. will my host ever decide to mandate [potentially competitive] advertising?
12. do I own my own content, does my host own it or do we both own it?
13. am I a part of someone else’s user- generated content?
14. am I just helping to build someone else’s brand?
15. is my domain a sub domain of the host’s network?
16. can I use a domain that serves the brand of my choosing?
17. do I have the flexibility to present content in a variety of different ways?

Free solutions may satisfy some of the above, but in many cases [professionally] you may not like the answers. In fact, unless you’re very skilled it’s likely you’ll need independent programming help with hosting, design, feature setup and that may not cover any commitment to service or education. These things won’t be free: as a business with the never -ending need to reduce cost, we often forget that a lot of what we’re paying for is service & accountability. Mostly and in one way or another, we often get exactly what we pay for.

In this day and age, people will search because they can and to a degree they’re interviewing us [professional] business people long before they actually get in touch. Considering a Real Estate Blog can offer your business tremendous Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations value, you might be better to place assets such as these in more accountable hands.

If you’re not capable of [or maybe just not interested in] managing it all yourself and you have serious business requirements you may find it simple and cost-effective to have Real Estate Blogsites build, host & serve your Business Blog needs. If so, drop me an email 

Is there a more qualified form of marketing than voluntary direct subscription to your Real Estate Blog? Sure, an active Real Estate Blog will serve your business in several ways. In a world where all home buyers have the immediate & convenient luxury of Search, target topic findability  [= advertising] has certainly become an obvious benefit. And yes, the development of an authoritative, enthusiastic and human online brand is a value add that cannot be underestimated

However, if you could attract just 100 or maybe even 1000 directly [and voluntarily] connected subscribers *isn’t it likely you’d have the closest connection to serve Real Estate prospects with what they desire and with what they are eventually going to buy?* And remember, if they like you enough to volunteer a subscription it’s a good bet many of them will recommend you to others

By all means, you should invite direct subscription to your Real Estate Business Blog! RSS is an immensely important sales channel with endless upside. If you’re not confidant the target market understands RSS you should offer an [RSS conversion to] email subscription option

Baja Sur Mexico Real Estate Blog owner Alfredo Cristo demonstrates recognition for the value of direct subscription by actively pursuing it. He understands the value to his business so well he sends an invitation to subscribe via email to his prospect database every couple weeks. The proactive effort has paid off as surprising numbers are volunteering their direct subscription to his Real Estate Blog

To bogged down to Real Estate Blog? Consider Ghost Blog- writing service!

With a good advertorial business blog, findability in the search engines is possible for any Real Estate business. Simply put, transferring your local Real Estate knowledge to the web works on many levels. If you consider a search engine’s interest in organizing all the webs information for their search traffic you’ll understand why their *spiders are tuned to crawl topic consistent and topic focused sites more and more often*; however, many Realtors are too busy. Others just don’t feel comfortable.

Blogging isn’t for every Real Estate Agent; however, we believe online marketing is! Now, many would argue that you get from business blogging what you put into it. And we don’t dare disagree, BUT there is no reason why the careful direction of others to Ghost Blog won’t serve as a perfectly viable solution. 

Real Estate Blogsites offers experienced Ghost blog- writing services so that you’re always fighting the competitive online marketing battle. After all, if consumers search long before they get in touch, it’s important to be visible with value- added knowledge when they do!

Our Ghost blog- writing service offers to:

1. Follow Client direction carefully
2. Focus titles & content on targeted topics, key words and phrases
3. Enter posts on a planned time line
4. Use Minimum word counts per post
5. Add links and images wherever possible
6. Manage meta tagging and categorization
7. Add ‘calls to action’
8. Spell check
9. Provide Month end posts summary
10. and much much more.

Interested, please don’t hesitate to get in touch

Some useful Business Blogging tips, ideas & information from our sister blog over at Kinetic Knowledge:

• Should you Real Estate Blog more for search engines or for humans?
• Why your Real Estate Blog is a form of media
• Search Engine Advantage: Real Estate Blog content or Real Estate Blog technology?
• The skinny on content and blog platform ownership
• Information about a new form of comment spam
• An impressive Real Estate Blogging success story in Los Angeles CA
• and over at CyberStars Blog… Allen F. Hainge interviews Kinetic Knowledge about why Real Estate Blogs are effective Business Marketing Tools!

It’s common to hear industry people fret over what to blog. While blogging education is always important, even the most experienced writers need to develop a productive ‘business blogging strategy & style.’ Buyers & sellers also want to believe their Real Estate Professional is - locally -knowledgeable. With a Blog it’s easy and affordable to develop trust as the local value- add authority.

Here are 13 fresh content ideas for your Real Estate Blog!

I. Real Estate Blog your everyday answers: Have you answered any Real Estate related questions this week? Probably several right? Those answers are your knowledge and your great content. Rather than sharing answers with just one person, make notes so that you can Blog those same answers to the web. Like- minded buyers & sellers are searching for those same answers everyday

II. Real Estate Blog for local news coverage or PR: It’s great Public Relations to be written up in the local news! As a strategy why not go so far as to notify the local newspaper of your Blogs existence. Newspapers are challenged for content these days so they’re always looking for good resources. If not just a list of good local blogs with links, comment on their blogs. One way or another, someone will be recognized locally for Real Estate knowledge in the local news. Get proactive and it might just be you

III. Real Estate Blog new value added services: Are you adding new, or improving old, Real Estate services? If so, it’s an important development that needs promotion. It certainly makes for good content, so why wouldn’t you blog to capture the folks searching for those services or to update those who are listening via subscription?

IV. Real Estate Blog the success stories: Client success stories establish credibility. Have you solved a clients’ problem? Have you improved something for a client with your service? Have you sold a great home? If so, why not share the success story that your Home Buyers & Sellers have had so that new prospects can easily recognize & trust your skill?

V. Real Estate Blog about the local news: One way to engage a community is to cover important local issues, or in cases where it has local relevance, national news. Careful here: positive coverage is generally the best course because leaning in one direction can cost you the trust of half or more of your audience. What’s more, you don’t want to alienate the local newspaper folks either, they can be your best friends [see bullet IV. above.] However, there is NO reason you can’t tactfully add commentary to top local issues. It demonstrates knowledge and can bring you into important conversations, which are likely followed by leads

VI. Preemptive Real Estate Blogging: Have a listings presentation coming up? Why not Blog something great about the area the folks live in? It can establish an indexed presence for that area, development, community or street and you can leverage that in the presentation. Good local bloggers want to be indexed for everything they can, creating a huge net for search queries. It also shows prospective clients you’re on the ball, likely to generate exposure for their home

VII. Real Estate Blog about local communities, neighborhoods & developments: Whenever possible, share what you know, hear & see in the surrounding areas of the community. Are their new developments, buildings, parks, community resources, doggie parks, landmarks, historic buildings, unique architecture, local heroes, events, fundraisers, races, useful public transportation or parking tips? If so, Blog about them

VIII. Real Estate Blog about new local businesses: Are there any new intriguing local businesses getting started in your area? Have you eaten, shopped, or received exceptional service somewhere locally lately that you really liked? If so, get in the habit of sharing your local community experience. You can be assured folks are searching for those products, services and, often, those very businesses. Be there when they do with your great local insight

IX. Real Estate Blog local business interviews: As a local business person, there’s no reason you can’t share lots of community- oriented information. Why not interview other business owners? Why not be the one to share information about their products, services & intentions? 4- 5 questions will do, but it demonstrates local knowledge, authority, team play, enthusiasm for the community and it adds value for those interested in moving to the community
 
X. Real Estate Blog with locally relevant images: Take local photos regularly. Uploading them to your blog is easy. Share them with fun descriptions and interesting facts, demonstrating your enthusiasm for the community. It could be a historic house, a development, a park or a local event with a description about why it’s special. And by the way, people really enjoy visual content

XI. Leverage commenting and social networking to generate interest in your Real Estate Blog: Identify good local news sources and, if they are interactive [as most blogs are], add relevant thoughts with links back to your own blog. Try to link to a post you’ve written that is related to the subject your commenting on. The author may appreciate your interest, but the audience might see you and develop interest in you too

XII. Real Estate Blog about new listings, open houses and on closings: Write about business successes like a new listing or what happened to get the listing and why the experience is, was or will be positive. Demonstrate not only success, but a willingness to learn and to share what you have learned

XIII. Real Estate Blog local sales data: Solely regurgitating local sales data isn’t going to differentiate you, but a monthly post with good data is welcome. Interpretation of that local data, normally limited to insiders, demonstrates an interest in sharing and being a value- added community educator 

Having a discipline for Real Estate Blogging is easy and it’s also important to your business. You’ll serve yourself by being in the search engine indexes, prepared to help the people looking for answers you have… and that they need. That AND you will help all those folks already subscribing to your Blog in anticipation of your useful information. In all, make a commitment to Real Estate Blogging and you’re likely to be perceived as the authoritative, forward-thinking, open & honest local business person… that you truly are!

I’ve been playing around with a new resource everyone should have a look at. Real Estate Wiki is essentially the largest online collaborative encyclopedia for the real estate industry. It’s free for registrants and, currently, you can add inbound links back to your own websites and blogs!

Real Estate Wiki serves home buyers, sellers, home owners, the millions of professionals that serve them and the real estate industry as a whole. Real Estate Wiki was apparently launched January ‘08 with several thousand entries, definitions, acronyms, biographies and FAQ’s about the real estate industry and the home buying, selling, renting and home ownership process.

It’s apparently the culmination of a group of real estate professionals dedicated to laying the groundwork for what means to be the the industry’s preeminent resource. These folks felt resources like Wikipedia.org, the world’s largest free online encyclopedia, had such a broad scope that they didn’t successfully serve a users’ ability to drill down into industry specifics.

Real Estate Wiki is known to be a privately funded, non-profit venture and it’s not affiliated with the Wikipedia Foundation; however and similar to Wikipedia.org, it hopes to gather support from real estate industry volunteers that believe in collaborative web- based resources. Particularly, folks that appreciate a great free real estate resource for everyone to use.

Even if you’re not using your domains and subdomains, no one else should use your property as a free advertising opportunity. It’s become semi- common practice amongst hosts while you’re in limbo, but advertising should cost money!

Here’s a great piece on the subject, including how to identify it and then protect yourself - How to Protect Your Business From Nefarious Subdomain Hijacking. SEOBook’s Aaron Wall is ‘by all means’ recommended reading!  For link building techniques and general search engine optimization info he’s generous with his knowledge

Is Open Source software an advantage versus Proprietary software? It’s a great question we’ve been asked and I’ll try to address it below, but for starters we consider Real Estate Blogsites [in affiliation with Kinetic Knowledge / Kinetic Blogs] to be a comprehensive Business Blogging services company. We assemble, host & integrate agile ever- evolving WordPress blog platforms for our clients, who benefit from having some of the original WordPress development team managing it all. We also include 4 tiers of ongoing education, highly proactive customer service and then we also offer SEO- trained Ghost Blog writing services, image- based video tour build/ placement in YouTube, Traffic Analytics software integration and much, much more 

To further set this up, let’s define Open Source & Proprietary Software with the help of Wikipedia.org:

‘Open Source software is made available under license (or arrangement such as the public domain) and allows users to use, change, and improve the software. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Someties free and sometimes not free, the aim of open source is to let the product improve, be more reliable or simply accessible, while still marketable.’

‘Proprietary software is any computer software with restrictions on use by its proprietors.’

But back to the core question[s]:

Q1: Is Open Source software, with a dedicated community of programmers, an advantage versus a Proprietary platform?

A1: It can be. With open source the obvious benefit is development cost efficiencies, but what’s also noteworthy is that you have many people solving similar problems. This way you don’t have to build everything from scratch yourself or rely on limited programming resources. There’s also the argument that Open Source solves problems in an open forum, rather than in a hidden one; therefore, it’s likely to be a very comprehensive and honest approach, free of most ulterior motives. According to Wikipedia.org, ‘Since Open Source software is open, all of the defects and security flaws are easily found. Closed-source advocates argue that this makes it easier for a malicious person to discover security flaws. However, most studies show that open-source software does have a higher flaw discovery, quicker flaw discovery, and quicker turn around on patches.’ And let’s face it, Microsoft has been hacked so…

Q2: Why would so many programmers dedicate themselves to an Open Source software platform?

A2: Well, for one they may be very savvy business people. By building and giving away great features or by solving problems for a popular Open Source software platform a programmer can generate exposure [potentially] to thousands. Many of whom may be business people so impressed they’d want to retain a reliable programmer for their own platform management or other interesting projects. There may also be collaborative opportunities in contract work arising from that same exposure and experience.

Q3: Is it simple to manage an Open Source software platform?

A3: This depends on what resources you have: to develop, host, maintain and evolve a leading- edge / reliable Open Source software platform there are challenges. Even for experienced IT people! Regarding Wordpress, there is more than one version. Officially there are two, but there are also a variety of open source variants and also variants of the original WordPress. Depending on which one you have, it may or may not have the latest coding update and/ or plugins, etc. These updates and plugin- features are constantly coming out of the community of Open Source programmers and are, in theory, manageable; however, manageable depends on you and/ or your resources. If nothing else, there’s a lot to know, to manage and to keep up with in an Open Source environment. Particularly if you want the most advantage possible in a competitive marketplace.

Q4: Is there a formal evaluation process for fixes, plugins and updates coming out of the Open Source community?

A4: Probably not, which means a business must either have experienced evaluation resources or retain them. Not to worry, there is a giant and dedicated community of programmers for hire.

Q5: Can a sophisticated business rely on a community of Open Source programmers?

A5: For great programming & features, sure you can! Based on our experience, virtually anything can be done; however, it’s unlikely any programmer would be accountable to the immediate service needs of a business without any agreed upon compensation. With software, most serious businesses need the accountability of immediate support when problems arise. In the case of a business blog platform, it’s a resource that has become ever- more crucial to marketing & public relations requirements. A sophisticated business should consider retaining experienced resources to leverage its’ advantages as well as those of the community.

Q6: Can Real Estate Blogsites handle my entire blog platform & service needs reliably?

Q6: Certainly we can and, as I mention above, we have some of the original WordPress development team on board. But, rather than take our word for it try John’s testimonial… "I had been blogging for some time using GoDaddy, which was extraordinarily cheap - $8 bucks a year for the domain and $4 a month for the hosting. Virtually no success had come from those efforts, so although the product was cheap, it was virtually a waste of my time & effort. They were able to import all of my previous data and articles into the new site and they designed the best blog layout for me! Great appearance and integrated links to my real estate website. Although pricing isn’t GoDaddy, the value brought forth by Kinetic far exceeds what you actually pay for. Traffic has dramatically increased; my skills and education have skyrocketed because of their education and leadership. Just like commissions, you get what you pay for. They will provide you with the professional appearance and knowledge to bring you successful results!" John Poltrock