What’s a real estate blog and why do you need one as an agent?
A real estate blog is a collection of articles and/or blogs published on a platform online that provides information on a single or variety of topics. In real estate, blogs can be used as a source of information for buyers, sellers, and real estate investors. In addition, a real estate agent blog can be used as a real estate marketing tool for online lead generation through SEO, but more on that in a bit.
If you’re a real estate agent, you can choose to create a blog for the above reasons. When someone’s looking for real estate advice or a real estate agent, they can stumble upon your blog. This can help you in generating real estate leads.
The 5 Easy Steps to Starting Your Real Estate Blog
So how do you start a real estate blog as an agent? Here’s the standard process:
Choose a host website or platform
There are numerous blog platforms out there. WordPress is one of the most common and most user-friendly. If you’ve developed your website from scratch, you can also add a blog page and use it to publish blogs. Research the different host/platform options, and see what works best for you.
Develop an SEO strategy
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice and process of increasing traffic to your real estate website organically, and it’s an integral part of running a real estate blog. This is one of the most important things to consider when creating a real estate blog. If you want potential buyers, sellers, and real estate investors to find you, you need to develop your SEO strategy in a smart way. With SEO analysis, you’ll be able to identify keywords and topics that are searched for, which will, in turn, help you generate real estate blog ideas on different real estate blog topics. SEO can be a challenging process; so you can hire an expert to help you develop your real estate SEO strategy.
Related: Improve Your Real Estate Website with 7 Local SEO Tips
Create blog content
After you’ve come up with a list of keywords and topics, you can begin to write real estate blog posts. Some topics to consider when starting out can include some of your real estate agent tips, analyzing local markets, among other themes and topics. Once you’ve written (or your writer has written) a blog or two, have someone take a look at it, and run some edits. You always want to make sure to have high-quality content for a successful real estate blog.
It’s important to mention that before you begin to publish blogs, you want to make sure you have enough content to start with. To do this, you may want to hire a writer (or more), depending on your needs.
Schedule and publish content
To help you schedule and publish content, use a content calendar. One tool to do this is through a simple spreadsheet. Indicate what real estate blog post you want to publish on which day. Take a bit of time beforehand to decide how often you want to be posting, and on which days. You can be posting twice a day, twice a week, once a week, etc. You can start slowly, and increase the number of blogs you publish as you gain more experience. And again, to be able to schedule content, you should have a log of blogs available.
Promote your content – getting more real estate leads
While real estate blogs are an organic marketing tool, you can still promote them on other media and social media outlets. If you have an agent Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, and Twitter page, make sure to share your blogs there. Some agents may also choose to use targeted paid ads through social media or Google AdWords. Promoting your real estate blog will give you more visibility as an agent, which will ultimately help with real estate lead generation, and acquiring more real estate clients.
Make sure you’re qualifying online leads. One way to do this is through Mashvisor – To learn more about our AI-powered Lead Qualification, schedule a demo.
Related: How to Get Real Estate Leads as a New Agent
Tips to Run a Successful Real Estate Blog
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Of course, you need to be creative when writing and starting a real estate blog, but you’re not reinventing the wheel. Most of the topics and information are out there. Look at other real estate blogs out there (including Mashvisor’s real estate agent blog), do your research, source some information, and share your own personal experience to differentiate your blog from others online.
Make your content easy to read and follow
A general suggestion for blog posts is to keep them easy to read. To do this, write shorter sentences and paragraphs, use lists and bullet points when you can, and use a less rigid tone. Use consecutive sentences and plenty of connecting words between sentences. Furthermore, you are recommended to use more active voice sentences than passive ones. This will keep your readers more engaged in the blog and will decrease your bounce rate.
Add CTAs
Add at least one call to action (CTA) in every blog post. A CTA is something you want the reader to do. It could be to sign up for a newsletter, to buy a product, to contact you, etc. Whatever your ultimate goal is, it should be conveyed in a CTA.
Add visuals
Use photos, infographics, and videos where suitable in your real estate blog to keep the reader engaged.
To Sum Up…
Learning how to create an agent blog is important for both real estate content marketing as well as for real estate lead generation. Remember that while the process may seem easy, you won’t necessarily see results right away. The key to blogs and content marketing, in general, is consistency and persistence. Creating a top real estate blog is definitely achievable. Solely follow the above steps for successful content efforts!
Do you have any other real estate agent blog tips? Let us know below.
Related: The Future of Real Estate Agents in 2020