Blogging has really come into the mainstream over the past couple of years. The availability of platforms for blogging to anyone with an internet connection has aided content consumers to become content publishers. Anyone with a bit of savvy can start providing information, and garner an audience.

As an additional marketing mechanism, estate agents have started to blog for business providing additional information to attract people to their website.

What is blogging?

According to Wikipedia the definition of a blog is as follows “Blogs are traditionally maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video with entries displayed in reverse-chronological order. “

From a self promotion point of view, they allow others to have insight into your business thinking, and subscribers receive information regularly as and when it is published.

Blogs in a business sense provide a frequently updated way to communicate with your customer base.

What blogging is not.

Blogging is not a quick fix.
Blogging is not easy.
Blogging is not just another way to seem ‘bigger’.

If you are thinking that its some magical way of obtaining better search rankings you’d be wrong, at least not in the short term. The reason that you hear that blogging increase search rankings are because over time, a good blog will attract links.

This won’t however happen overnight, and it certainly won’t happen if your content isn’t up to scratch.  Understand that a significant investment of time will have to be spent to really get it to work – and grow your business. Too many people dive feet first, without fully understanding that a poorly run blog is actually detrimental to your online presence. It’s going to take time before you see results.

Content Strategy for Business Blogging

Whilst many businesses trade globally, estate agents traditional deal with a local audience. That adds to the complexity of the information that you create if you really want to generate business. In other words, getting traffic from the other side of the world is not necessarily going to convert into new sales or rental. As a result, you need to think local in terms of the information you provide to attract local people, and a local following. For example, blogging about house prices in a particular area, or events happening locally. Targeted web traffic is worth more to you, and will drive business goals. Remember the more content you have the better – as its another entry in Google for you to be found by potential customers.

The other side of the coin is that getting links is one of the most important parts of an SEO strategy.  The more links you attract to your website the more likely your properties are going to rank well in the engines.

Often for maximum success, it is important to create content that both attracts links (from other bloggers), and eyeballs (from local people).

Know your audience

Knowing who you are talking should be objective number one. If you are dealing primarily with student rentals, your content will be very different from that of content if you are selling high end apartment blocks. Often the properties you are selling, assuming they are listed on your site (and they should be), will dictate your language, style (and sometimes content).

You should however have a think about the other people / bloggers that will land on your site. What is likely to float their boat? Surveys and other feedback tools such as Facebook or Twitter can help gauge your audience.

The importance of links

Bloggers have a magical way of informing each other when they receive a ‘mention’ or link. Commonly it is only possible to know when someone is talking about your content by looking at your stats package. Google Analytics for example shows ‘referrers’.

Bloggers however receive ‘pingbacks’ – a software solution which sends an email, and leaves an electronic trail behind to let you know when someone else has referenced you.  So what?

Well – basically a sure fire way of letting other bloggers know you are out there, is to link out to them. They in turn will indefinitely read your content, and perhaps turn into a regular reader.

The more bloggers and content producers you have as readers, the more likely you are to receive incoming links. It’s worth noting that these readers will not necessarily be your traditional customer base.

So why is that important? Well, one of the main parameters (out of over 200) – is the number of incoming links to a page. There more links you have, well the more likely the content is good, or is being shared around the web. This should be your focus in improving your overall SEO strategy for your site – with blogging being just one of the strategies which can aid this.

Attracting attention

Unfortunately to add to your woes, even great content will fail to get traction online if you don’t promote it. Essentially you are relying on the existing visitors on your site to spread your message, and encourage visitors back to your site, but if you have little or no visitors this is really hard work.

It’s a vicious cycle really.  In the first little while when you are attracting an audience, you’ll have to push hard at your content in other places around the web to get it under the noses of the people that count.

When you’ve reached a certain audience level, usually you’ll find that your content snowball is big enough to push itself down the hill.

Read and Comment on other’s work

There are a number of places that you can read what other estates agents and are writing. To do so lets you take stock of what is happening in the marketplace, and helps you network with other bloggers in the same industry. You should be commenting on other people’s work as well, as it will lead visitors back to your own blog – particularly if your comment is interesting. Here are some great home / estate agency related blogs that are worth reading, and are on our own list. We haven’t really come across many agents that are creating great information over here.

http://blog.propertyowl.co.uk/
http://agentsdiary.blogspot.com/
http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com/
http://www.theratandmouse.co.uk/weblog/index.php
http://www.modernestateagent.co.uk
http://rentergirl.blogspot.com/
http://londonbrickwork.blogspot.com/
http://gogreene.co.uk/
http://blog.mydeco.com/
http://cognacproperty.blogspot.com/
http://property-blog.chestertonhumberts.com/
http://www.cluttoncox.co.uk/site/library/blog/

Guest posting

When you are starting out, a great way to increase exposure to your blog, is to consider giving away your content to others. A guest post on the right website can get you in front of a whole new audience who wouldn’t necessarily have found you otherwise.

Gguest posts normally include a link back to your blog along with a small biography of your company. Bloggers love guest posts, as it takes the pressure off content creation for them, and you benefit as well, by getting a relevant link back to your website.

Promoting content

We’ve seen a few articles talking about social bookmarking as a way of promoting content, but few truly understand the inner workings of them. For the true benefit of web applications such as Digg or Delicious to be realised, you have to know what sort of content to create for each, and you’ll only really get to know that by being a regular member of the inner community, and reviewing what content works, and what doesn’t.  Generally speaking Digg and Reddit users enjoy sensationalist stories. Delicious users tend to be more resource driven.  You should only promote content on these networks if you think it will cater to these audience profiles. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of your time that would be better invested in creating content. The beauty of these is *only* if you content gets popular, you will receive an increase in exposure to your piece.

Increased exposure normally results in increased traffic, increased traffic from these generally means more links. More links = a boost in the search engines for that content, which equals more exposure and more traffic. A cyclical process if you will. Bear in mind though that not all traffic is created equal! – You aren’t going to get sales from these people, merely links and an increase in brand awareness. Promoting in local places, is going to be a bigger win.

Conclusion

Overall blogging as a marketing strategy needs time to become really effective, you’ll also need to be creative – and come up with interesting slants to attract an audience. However with an investment in time, and effort – you most certainly will reap the rewards, and may actually start to enjoy it as a very rewarding way of marketing your business.

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