Simple, Smart Blog Content Creation Ideas August 23, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging.Tags: blogging
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Blog Content for Real Estaters
Some “Niche Content Creation” Ideas For Real Estate
Before you read the rest of this, imagine that you have 1 person on your team assigned to one of these ideas, with the requirement that they deliver the related content to (the site you own) on a regular basis. If that person is you you find a handful you really like and scale back the types. This will be an endless supply of content that the search engines will love, your prospects will appreciate and your compititon will hate. So…here’s a list of possible topics you and your team might be contributing to a blog site on a regular basis..) Interpreting Data From Your MLS and the general mood amongst buyers and agents in order to deliver a public update on the state of the local real estate marketplace
- Daily/Weekly Transaction Report – Cut and Paste the Reported Transactions from Your MLS. (This will garner lots of organic traffic especially long tail stuff related to property addresses in your area.) Be sure to include “Real Estate Sales Transactions” in the title of each post, wherever you are, people are searching those keywords.
- Restaurant Of The Week – Want to charm the pants off of a local restaurant owner and provide a valuable resource for folks relocating to your area? Do a restaurant review once a week… and be sure to include a picture of your dish and why you loved it so much. Chances are good that especially for smaller restaurants and markets, your post will rank organically for people doing a direct search of the restaurant name.
- Business Of The Week – Same of the restaurant idea, recommend doing actual video tours of each biz, highlighting the coolest service/product to buy from the place. (Can you see this helping you gain Top Of Mind status with the local business owner, then a bunch of referrals as he talks you up to other patrons?)
- Local Dog Parks – Psst… People moving to your area with pets are going to do a search engine search for dog parks in the area. Talk about a non-competitive keyword! (Laguna Beach Dog Parks) WOOF!
- “Where In (Insert Your Area Here)?” – Take a random photo of a person, place, or thing in your area and post it to your site. Offer a prize to the first reader who guesses what the picture is. (Be sure to offer an email signup for folks to receive your latest pics so they can be one of the first to take a guess.) [Example of this in action here]
- Weekly Neighborhood News Update – Give each agent in your office an assigned neighborhood, require a piece of hyper local content. Run with this for a month and see what happens to your recruiting/retention efforts.
- Resident Interviews – Interview someone in your area. Ask them what they like about their town. What they like to do. Where the best places to get manacures, dry cleaning, etc are. Stuff like that. (What an easy way to generated spiderable content that’s interesting to inlookers!)
- “Contract Chronicles” – Grab a clause from one of your real estate forms and tear it to pieces. A nice way to demonstrate competence while creating content that’s sure to be indexed and searched. (If you don’t already have an article and a downloadable copy of the standard “Residential Lease” for your state on your website, do this now!
Repeat: If you invest a few minutes creating content for your website today, it’ll pay off for years to come.
Repeat: If you invest a few minutes a week to create content (you are doing this stuff anyway, just talk about it in cyberspace), it’ll pay off for years to come, help you establish local market dominance, (and make your website the most valuable asset your business has… Honestly, that piece of crap could be worth 6 figures a year from now if you play it right
Photo blogging tips to grow your business August 4, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging, photography, real estate video, virtual tours.Tags: blogging, photography, real estate video, Video
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Los Verdes Golf Course
This article is your reminder. It’s August and hopefully you’re out and about in your market and neighborhood showing property or meeting with people. As long as you’re out there, bring a camera.
Sometime before next selling season — maybe during the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, or maybe in that panicky search engine optimization/social media/viral marketing epiphany you’ll have in March or April of next year — you’re going to wish you had a nice photograph of something in your town. Maybe record a little video, too, if you’re ambitious. But definitely start taking some snapshots of the areas where you work. Obviously, I’m not talking about specific houses — hopefully they’ll be off the market and sold. I’m talking about the things that make your neighborhoods and cities unique and cool. Things you might like to write about on your blog. Maybe not today, of course, but sometime in the next year.
Media the you create now will have a better chance of helping you put the best face on your neighborhoods and cities. Having these resources on-hand now can make your winter season content-creation work go much easier. It also will allow you to get a couple months’ jump for any seasonally focused posts you might do. For example, you can release your classic fireworks blog post a few months early, along with photos of the neighborhoods that have good views.
Here are a few tips to help get you started grabbing images that you can use throughout the next few months to help prepare you for next year’s selling season: Carry a camera with you all the time. If it’s your iPhone, that’s fine — you just need stuff for your blog. It’s more important that you have a camera than that you have the best camera. Start taking advantage of “golden hour,” the first hour and last hour of sunlight. If you’re an early riser, take advantage of that and shoot pictures just after dawn. This early light will give you some great stuff to work with. The last hour of sunlight may conflict with your dinner plans, so go out to eat someplace where you can take photos of the neighborhood.
Make a list of blog posts you might like to write over the winter for next season, and then go out and take supporting photographs. When you download the pictures to your computer, change the file names from something like DSC101009.jpg to something descriptive like Best-Coffee-Shop-in-Newport Beach.jpg. Make sure to include the city in the name of the file, a property tagged photos and video are very search engine friendly. Shoot a wide variety of subjects. The only thing keeping them all together would be that they are in the markets you work in. If you really can’t think of anything to shoot, go to your favorite place in your neighborhood. Then take a picture of the most interesting thing you see, walk 10 steps, take another picture and so on.
Don’t have time to take pictures now? Find a high school kid you trust, hand the kid your camera. Offer him or her some money to go take pictures of cool stuff in the neighborhood. You’ll end up with some useless stuff, but you’ll likely get something good out of it, too.
Free How to Kit for WordPress.org July 29, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging.Tags: blogging, social media, web 2.0, Wordpress
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Wordpress .com vs .org
Everyone these days wants a blog, but when it boils down to it, there is only really one choice when it comes to choosing a blog platform, in my opinion that is WordPress. WordPress is a blogging platform that allows you to have a pre-built website for free that will allow you to focus on the more important items like content, and if you desire it, sales and profits. Something very import to be aware of the the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The .com version is a no brainer, the .org version is where you truely mazimize the impact bloging in the social media world of today. This great FREE stuff to help you get started with WordPress.org. Recieve How to Video, eBook & Checklist > Click Here
8 reasons you need to consider WordPress July 28, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging.Tags: blogging, california image maker, lead generation, seo
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WordPress and Real Estate are a match made in internet marketing heaven. WordPress’s flexibility, seo elements, and relative ease of use, coupled with an unbelievable community of users (and corresponding online documentation) have allowed it to become the world’s most popular content management system… And real estate agents in droves are using wordpress every day as the backbone for their entire online web marketing efforts. Read Article > Click Here
Need content for your hyper-local blog? July 26, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging.Tags: blogging, lead generation, web 2.0
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Think Local
Focusing your blog on a local or even hyper-local community is all the rage right now in real estate blogging. And for good reason. If you spread yourself too thin over a large geographic area, the “synergy” (to use an over used word) of all of your efforts is just not likely going to pay off as well as if you are laser focused on one specific area.
For some incredible resources that will elevate your content to home town hero status. Read article > Click Here
Get social media results in real estate June 30, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, YouTube.Tags: blogging, facebook, LinkedIn, social media, twitter, video sharing
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This is a must see! How are real estate professionals using social media to get results. Whether they are sharing videos, listings or advice with their communities and prospective buyers or sellers, real estate pros are making progress in using social media for real results. Check it out >> Click Here6 simple tips for Video Blogging June 26, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging, real estate video, video.Tags: blogging, real estate video, Video
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Using video in your real estate business is a great form of marketing and lead generation. Here are some thoughts on how to get started: Check out the video > Click Here
Google Juice – Photo blog your way to the top February 1, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging, photography, real estate video, video.Tags: blogging, photography, real estate video, Video, video sharing
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Great article:
There is no question that blogging can be a powerful tool to help you and your Website stand out from the crowd and generate new business. And, as many have already discovered, it can be time consuming and a lot of work —until now. Posterous is great tool to make basic blogging easy, efficient and effective. It is what I used to make this post. http://digg.com/d31HRfq
100 Real Estate Blog Posting topics January 8, 2010
Posted by caimagemaker in blogging.Tags: blogging
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Blogging is a wonderful tool for real estate marketing. Not only does it increase your exposure on search engines, it create an interactive social media environment and you start to build a valuable reputations for yourself as a reliable source and professional. When it comes to blogging you are bound to develop some writers block now and again. It’s important to blog about topics that relate to you industry, neighborhoods, market trends, etc. while keeping it fun and interesting for your readers. This is an extensive list of topics that will jump start your creative juices > Click Here
