Time Suckage
Blogging isn’t the Holy Grail, a magical Silver Bullet or a Savior. For some, it really is a time-suck, a distraction or a poor idea. For others, it’s like Sunshine for Sweet Success.
Sunshine for Sweet Success
Think of everything you do to attract, uncover and discover listing and selling opportunities as your personal real-estate-business-solar-system.
You and your blog sit at the center of your business-solar-system. The planets and moons in your business-solar-system are the networks, tribes, niches and online communities that orbit around you. I’m talking about your In-Real-Life (IRL) spheres like past clients, suspects, neighbors, your Bunco crew, Yoga classmates and other places you live, love, play prospect for business. Additional planets and moons in your business solar system are the online communities you share and interact with. For example Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, Youtube.com, SlideShare.com, Twitter.com, Flickr.com, etc.
Because competing real estate agents live and work within common solar systems, it’s important that you position yourself as the MMIC (Main Mistress In Charge) of your solar-system. Authoring a blog is like owning the Sun for your real-estate-business-solar system. When you own the Sun, you rule. Like our real Sun beams sunlight to all the planets in our solar system, your blog beams your personal brand of sunlight to all your important prospecting communities, tribes, niches and networks. The intensity, illumination and warmth of your sunlight is determined by the quality, relevance and frequency of the things you share on your blog. If you’re beaming sweet sunshine and your competitors aren’t, you’re going to win, right?
Your blog is where you can show (instead-of-tell) others who you really are and what you’re about . What you stand for and against. How knowledgeable and helpful you are and the emotional and logical reasons why someone should choose you to help them with their real estate needs. You accomplish all these things by sharing stuff on your blog (aka creating sunlight). Specifically, shared stuff includes things like; neighborhood news, photos of neighborhood parks, Festivals and Art Shows, real estate market updates, local restaurant reviews, answers to commonly asked real estate questions and the like. If you’re sharing and your competitors are not, you have a advantage, right?
Another blogging bonus, once you hit the “Publish” button on your blog post, your “Share” becomes part of the Online-Information-Ocean and becomes sharable via perma-web-link. Once you’ve shared (published) something on your blog, you and your friends and friends of their friends, can now rebroadcast-share your stuff (sunlight) around the inter-webs and within your/their social circles (planets and moons) using your perma-web-links. For example you and others can share and cross-post your permalinks with your/their tribes on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, etc. This is what ReTweets, Facebook Likes, Shares and Comments is all about.
Your blog also provides you with a powerful opportunity to further enhance your online presence by incorporating share-tools in your blog posts. I’m talking about using share tools like Flickr.com for photos, SlideShare.com for presentations and Youtube.com for video – all for free.
Bottom Line
Blogging beams your personal shade of sunlight to your IRL spheres, networks, tribes and niches. As a bonus, it makes your stuff sharable by others. Which is a beautiful thing. Of course their are other compelling reasons to blog too. Blogging makes you Findable, Discoverable, Sharable, Choosable and Referable. In my next share, I’ll expand on the Findable, Discoverable, Sharable, Choosable and Referable idea. Till then, grace, speed and success.
PS.
I was wondering what you think about blogging? If you do, what keeps you doing it? If you don’t, why not. Like I said at first, I know it’s not the right idea for everyone.
Thanks for reading. Cheers.
Fred Romano
July 21, 2009 at 3:35 pm
This is a great SEO tip, thanks for sharing. Makes sense to mix it up a bit to see how different keywords work.
Ken Jansen
July 21, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Thank you Jack. I had not thought of varying the words like home and house between the title and the URL. I guess I thought they needed to be the same, but I don’t know where my idea came from so it might just be an assumption on my part. So this is part of the semantic linking idea right? Thank you again for sharing. Great stuff.
ClarkeW
July 22, 2009 at 12:19 am
Nice tip Jack! I’ve spent time discussing this issue with a development company over this same issue as their content management system did the exact same thing. After I started to go through and manually make some changes to titles and headlines, it did have a nice impact on my rankings. So this is definitely a great tip to consider.
Jim Rake
July 22, 2009 at 7:37 am
Jack –
yep, “Big picture is where long-term results are found” kind of says it all.
Appreciate the “ounces”!
Joe Loomer
July 22, 2009 at 8:29 am
Thanks Jack – I was among the “lazy” ones you mentioned. Anything to squeeze an extra ounce of SEO!
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
Mark Jacobs
July 22, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Great Post…
Augusta Real Estate
Ken Jansen
March 17, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Hi Jack, 8 months later since I read and commented on your article. Still great stuff. My websites have continued to climb in the rankings. I started new blog with more SEO features than the last few and it is climbing in the google rankings. I appreciate you and the rest of the AG writers. Great stuff.
Ken