Here we are with the last installment of The Blogging Basics. Hopefully you've learned a thing or two. If not, keep reading and maybe you'll learn a thing or two in this post! Here are the final two tips in this series to making your real estate blog a success.

9. Love the Links
I know it probably seems like a dumb idea to encourage people to leave your blog by providing them with links to other blogs, but trust me, it will pay off. I try to link to other blogs at least once per post. Sometimes I can't do that, and that's okay. Sometimes I can link to 10 other blogs, and that's great. Just keep it in the back of your mind to link out in your posts. The reason you want to do this is twofold: first, you're being friendly to whoever you linked to by providing that link. Second, you're showing the search engines that you're related to whoever you linked to. Not related like cousins, but related by a common interest. So if you link out to another real estate blog, the search engines see that and know that you have a common interest with the other blog, and that helps your page rank. You also need to link to yourself. This is a good way of keeping people on your blog, and showing that you have other interesting topics to write about. If you check out this post I did on our blog, you'll see that I linked to our own blog twice. Look at that, I just linked to my own blog in order to show you how I linked to my own blog! Its pretty easy to squeeze those links in once you get the hang of it.

10. Write Often, But Not Too Often
I try to publish a new post about twice a week. Sometimes there may be three in a week, and sometimes there may be one. But for CyberSunshine, two a week is good. When you're writing a blog, you have to remember that people don't always have time to keep up with your every thought, so I don't overload the posts. It's never a good idea to write 800 posts a day, unless your blog is super successful like Problogger. At the same time, you don't want to only write one post every other week, because then people stop visiting your blog since you never have new content. It gets old going to a blog and seeing nothing new day after day. And if your readers are bored with your lack of content, I can assure you they won't be your readers for very long.

Thus concludes our series. I have a few more series ideas in mind, but you'll have to wait and see what I've got up my sleeve. In the meantime, if you have a series or a post you'd like me to write, email it.

Labels: Making the Most, Real Estate Blog

Part four in our series is going to be all about you. More specifically, it's going to be all about who you are, who you should be, and what you should do with your online self. Let's just get right into it then...

7. Develop an Online You
I'm sure the offline you is just fine, but for the sake of this post, let's just say that you're a dull, drab, uninteresting, anti-social cave-dweller. Or something equally unpleasant. And let's say that your only interest is being a hacker. So you basically blog about being a hacker and whatever it is that hackers talk about, and it's all very techy and complex. Of course, the only other people who have any inkling what you're blogging about are other hackers, so that's going to be your primary audience, right? Well in that situation, maybe it is. But you are a blogging real estate agent, and you have a life, and friends, and maybe a family or at least a cute little dog. You don't want your audience to be other real estate agents, unless you're blogging to make friends and have no interest in getting leads (which of course, is not your case!). So you need to be a human and you need to be interesting. Don't write drab market reports all day long. The general public has no idea what those even mean. You need to write about things that interest you (so you look like a real live human being), and you need to write in a way that's engaging and interesting. Even your market reports can be entertaining. Check out Teresa Boardman's blog to see what I mean about finding your online personality.

8. Take That Personality on the Road
So now that you've got yourself a nifty new persona, it's time to take it on the road. Commenting for traffic is not a new practice, although it may be to you if you're just venturing into the blogging world. The basic idea is that if you go to other blogs that talk about the same stuff your blog talks about, and you leave comments, then people will venture to your site to check you out. And then, of course, they will fall in love with your blog and subscribe via RSS immediately. Hopefully. Anyway, the important thing here is that your comments shouldn't be bland "Great point, I love your posts" type comments. Nobody cares about that. You want to say something intelligent so people stop and say, "Oh, who's that person who has all these interesting opinions?" You know what I mean? Now get out there and try it. You'll probably even make some new friends.

And again, we have come to an end. Check back next week for the final installment of this series, and I'll do my best to make it worth your while.

Have an idea for a series or a post? Email it.

Labels: Blogging Ideas, Making the Most, Real Estate Blog

Today's post is the third in the series, and we're going to talk about two things that are crucial to a successful blog. Those things are headlines and keywords. If you don't have good ones, or you're not using them right, it will only hurt you in the end.

5. I'll Think of a Good Title Later
A good headline (or title, or whatever you want to call it) is critical to your blog posts. Basically, if you have a title that's not interesting, nobody wants to read the post. But you also don't want to make up a title so weird and out there that nobody gets it either. There's a fine line. Read this post on Copyblogger.com. It's about this very topic. The key to writing a good title is simple. Make sure it says something to get attention, and also tells the reader what the post is about. For example, if you wrote a post on the Stanley Cup and your opinion of the Penguins, but title it "Hockey is a Great Way to Lose Your Teeth", that isn't very helpful. It's funny, I suppose, but not helpful. A better title would be "Stanley Cup Recap: Penguins Waddle Away Empty Handed". For the record, I am neither a Penguins fan or a Red Wings fan. I'll keep you guessing on this one. Now, the reason the second title is so much better is that it tells the reader briefly what the post is about, but its also interesting enough that the reader thinks it will probably be somewhat witty and informative, so they might read it. But keep in mind that if you are writing about the Stanley Cup, you should probably not be doing it on a real estate blog! Which brings us to tip #6...

6. Got Keywords?
Your keywords are by far the most important part of your blog. Think of them as the "About Me" section of your blog's personality profile. The way keywords work is that when you use them repetitively, that tells Google that your site is about that topic. For instance, lets say your site is about Custom Real Estate Web Design (because that's what my site is geared towards, so that's what we're going with for this example!). Now, you'll want to use those terms as frequently as you can within your site and/or blog in order to convince Google that that really is what your site is about. For me, using Custom Real Estate Web Design in a blog gets a little difficult, so I have backup keywords too. My favorites are Real Estate Blog and Real Estate Design. They're easier to incorporate, and it doesn't seem too obvious when I use those. So make sure you keep it short and sweet. A long phrase that you keep repeating over and over in your Real Estate Blog (see that?) gets really annoying to the reader. Also, don't capitalize the first letter in each of your keyword phrase, that makes it really obvious! For more in-depth reasoning on the topic, check out what Lorelle has to say. She's a smart cookie!

Well that was week three for this series, which sadly means it is drawing to an end soon. Only two more posts left. That's okay, there will be a new series to take it's place. If anyone has any ideas for a new series, I'm open to them, by the way!

Labels: Blogging Ideas, Making the Most, Real Estate Blog

Well here we are with part II of the series, and I have some great ideas for you this week! I'm glad to see you've come back. Enough small talk, don't you think? Here are your next two fantastic tips to make you the best blogger in the real estate blogosphere!

3. Make Sure It's Pretty.
I know, this sounds somewhat superficial, but the fact of the matter is that if you have a less-than-attractive blog, people won't want to see it again. There are several rules to follow to ensure you have a beautiful blog, and I won't go into all the details right now (check back for that post later on), but you should at least know the key points. Keep your color scheme simple. Black text on a white background works best, since it has the most contrast and won't hurt the eyes of your readers. Also, be sure that the site is easy to navigate and that a reader won't get easily confused looking for something on your site. If the reader gets frustrated, they won't be a reader of yours for very long. The object is not to keep a person on your site for as long as possible, but for you to get as many people as possible to come back.

4. Don't Be A Bore.
I know you have a real estate blog and that you're trying to sell real estate. But you don't always have to write about real estate. Break it up a little sometimes! I've met a few Realtors in my time and I know they have interests other than the housing market. A few of you may even have a sense of humor! So take a break from spewing out market statistics and staging tips, and try something a little offbeat. You know that funny (but not offensive) email you got from your sister in Tucson last week? Why don't you share it with your readers? Fridays are best for these types of posts, since most people don't feel like working on a Friday. They'd rather goof off and have a laugh (you know it's true). Check out this post from Ines Garcia. I love this, probably because I live in Florida and find it to be disturbingly true. Or this post from Chris Griffith, about the mailboxes. It's a series, which makes it even more fun since the readers get a new mailbox every week.

We have come to the end again, so I will see you next week when we continue this series. Till then, you know the drill. Questions and comments are always appreciated. Have a phenomenal week!

Labels: Making the Most, Real Estate Blog

So you are now the proud owner of a brand new real estate blog, huh? Well you're going to need some tips and advice, and as I told you before, that's what I'm here for. Let me introduce you to our first blog series. I'm going to give you ten extremely helpful tips, as well as examples when I can, that will make your real estate blog a hit. I am going to give them to you two by two, so they will be easier to digest. You can check back weekly for the next two tips.

1. Digg It.
When you write a new post, it's very important to submit it to social networking sites so others can find it and stumble on to your real estate blog. Digg is the easiest, and you'll get the most exposure from it. You'll have to go to Digg.com and create a free account, and then you're ready to Digg. Each time you write a new post, login to Digg and follow the steps to submit your new masterpiece. I do this with each of my posts, and when this one's complete I'll Digg it, too. You can also Digg posts written by your favorite fellow real estate bloggers. Most blogs will have a little button that says Digg at the bottom of the post. If you click it, you will be prompted to login to Digg and the site will recognize that you loved the post you're Diggin'. It's kind of like voting. Except that popularity is more important than delegates in this case.

2. Say It Right.
Once upon a time you were taught that grammar, spelling and punctuation are important. And then you probably forgot it, as did most of the world. Well, it's time to dust off that part of your brain, because one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to look uneducated. I don't mean that you should use big words and sound like a dictionary. That's boring. What you do need to do, is make sure you use words properly and by all means, please use your spell check! The good folks at Microsoft were nice enough to provide you with all these fancy tools, like a spell check and a thesaurus, because they intended you to use them. And if you don't write in Word, that's no excuse either, because most of the popular blog platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.) come with a spell check. You can also use http://www.dictionary.com/ or http://www.thesaurus.com/ for extra help if you need it. I can't tell you how important this rule is! Look at it this way... You are trying to become an expert on real estate to gain traffic (and hopefully leads), which is why you blog. You want to look good so people keep reading what you're saying. But if you're saying it with the wrong words or you're spelling everything wrong, you won't look too smart will you? If you don't believe me, check out what Brian Clark had to say on the subject.

Congratulations, you have just learned your first two blogging tips! See, I told you it would be easy. So I'll see you here next week for the next two. In the meantime let me know if anything I have explained is confusing, or if you disagree with me, or if you loved it. Especially if you loved it.

Labels: Making the Most, Real Estate Blog