blogging » Technology Tools for Real Estate

Because content is king, every blogger has to figure out what he or she will write about that will grow the blog’s readership and keep people coming back for more. In essence, they have to find a niche. That’s especially true for real estate professionals who need to attract a large group of followers to their blogs or Facebook pages.

One Chicago Realtor® has solved that problem nicely by making data her major focus. Fran Bailey’s Chicago Area Metro Real Estate blog regularly features easy-to-understand, visually-appealing graphs that help her readers understand the Chicago real estate market.

Offering data is a great way to pull readers in because so many homeowners want to know what their home is worth now, or how long it might take to sell it in this market, or whether prices have come down enough that they can finally afford a home in XYZ community.

Data can also be an easy blog post if you don’t like to write; charts and graphs often speak for themselves so you don’t need a lot of other copy. In addition, there’s no shortage of material; information about the real estate market is everywhere. You just need to be good at grabbing small bits of it and putting it in an interesting format.

Fran’s posts often feature a particular neighborhood in the city or just one suburb. Sometimes they’re about only one type of property. In a recent post, for example, she presented data on the price distribution of 4-bedroom homes in just one suburb. Fran does post articles about other things, but her frequent use of data gives her blog a predictability that readers can depend on.

So, what’s your niche?

Sometimes you fall and you can’t get up! By that I mean, sometimes you fall into a hole and you can’t think of a single thing to blog about.

Don’t despair. It happens to all of us. Sometimes it happens because you’ve been busy on a project or with a particularly demanding client. Sometimes it happens when you’ve taken a short break or a vacation and stopped focusing or your blog for a few days. Sometimes your creative juices just aren’t flowing.

I know the feeling because it has been happening to me; for several days over the last week, I attended a conference that had nothing to do with technology or real estate and for those few days, I didn’t even think about my blog. The result is that now, I need to reprime the pump in order to come up with new ideas.

What to do when you can’t come up with a good idea for your blog? Here are three suggestions.

Write about what you’ve been doing. If you took a vacation or spent some time with your family, write a blog piece about something funny or interesting that happened. In fact, including occasional pieces about yourself and what you do outside of your professional life helps people identify with you. But keep it short and don’t do it often. After all, prospects are more interested in real estate than they are in you.
Find the real estate connection in ordinary events. For example, the venue for the conference I attended was a Michigan Avenue hotel in downtown Chicago. I couldn’t help but notice the vacancies on and around the Magnificent Mile, including an indoor mall built on Michigan Avenue only a few years ago that is now shuttered. My observation could spawn a series of articles about the state of commercial real estate.
Write about your writer’s block. People who write for a living will tell you that one of the best ways to outwit writer’s block is to start writing about it. If you have nothing profound or earth shattering to say, write about that. It won’t be long before you have an entire article and you’re back on track.

Several months back, we wrote about 12 Terrific Topics for Your Real Estate Blog. But this is even better: 50 specific ideas.

Fifty-four, actually. That’s enough to get you through the rest of the year and easily into 2010. Some may require a bit of research and some will require you to use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of your clients. But all will help you position yourself as a mover and shaker in your community, and a knowledgeable real estate professional.

Describe how the Internet is changing (or has changed) the real estate industry
Write about how technology is changing how real estate agents work
Review the provisions for the first time home buyers credit and remind your readers to get moving if they want to get in under the wire
Offer a list with links to the best web sites for finding property
Write an article that reviews the best new homeowner websites, like HouseLogic or HomeSpace
Create a step-by-step lesson on how to log in and use the consumer features of your local MLS or your company’s property search website
Offer a list with links to local economic data
Offer your predictions for the 2010 housing market based on what you’ve seen so far
Write about neighborhoods or communities where buyers are finding real estate bargains
Create an article that offers resources for homeowners who need to refinance
Have a loan officer write a guest post
Offer links to useful, need-to-know information for homeowners who are thinking of renting rather than selling
Offer easy or inexpensive home updating ideas for sellers who will be putting their homes on the market this year
Post a list of questions prospective sellers should ask prospective listing agents
Write a down-to-earth article about the realities of selling in today’s market
Describe what to look for when choosing a home inspector
Have a home inspector write a guest post
Describe what to look for when choosing a lender
Post a list of financial documents and personal information prospective buyers will need to assemble in order to be pre-approved for a mortgage
Write an article (or a series of articles) about what buyers can expect when purchasing a foreclosure
Write an article (or a series of articles) about what sellers can expect when doing a short sale
Write an article for homeowners about how to contest a property tax increase
Describe how you help buyers quickly and easily find the perfect home despite the huge inventory
Offer several quick and easy home staging tips
Have a home staging professional write a guest post
Explain why buyers and sellers need a real estate agent (that is, describe what real estate professionals do that they can’t do for themselves)
“10 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Putting Your Home On The Market In This Economy”
Write an article for first-time home buyers telling them what they need to know about owning a condominium
Invite a real estate attorney to write a guest post
Consumers often don’t understand the difference between a real estate sales agent and a real estate broker. Write a post that explains the difference between these two types of licenses
Write a post about how you use Twitter and how your readers would benefit by following you
Ask a question and poll your readers to get their response
“8 Social Media Tools I Use Each Day and How They Help Me Help You”
Or, “Why I Don’t Use Twitter, Facebook, or Other Social Media”
Tell about a client who sold a home quickly in the past few months and how they were able to accomplish that
Tell about a pair of homeowners at risk who were able to restructure their mortgage and keep their home.
Invite your readers to submit their tips for frugal living in the current economy and write a post which includes the best tips
Create an article with links to green living resources for homeowners
Describe 5 things you do for clients that most other real estate professionals don’t do
Describe 5 things your brokerage does for clients that most other brokerages don’t do
Summarize the conferences you’ve attended, the training you’ve undergone, and the required courses you’ve taken in the past 12 months and how those experiences translate into better service for clients who work with you
Describe the biggest problem a client had in the past year and how you helped that client solve their problem
Share a testimonial sent to you by a client
Write an article about the recent FHA changes and how they will affect buyers in 2010
Write an article to help sellers understand that they don’t determine the selling price of their home, the market does
Lease with option to buy: explain what it is and how it works
Post a story with pictures of an important local event (e.g., the high school team winning a championship)
Write about a person or an organization doing good things in your community
List the “best places” in your community (e.g., the best place to picnic, the best bike path, the best beach, the best place to ice skate, the best place for tobogganing, etc.)
Invite your readers to submit their lists of best places
“25 Free Activities for Families” (or singles, or couples, or seniors)
Write about a local organization in which you’re active and encourage your readers to get involved
Write an article about a special property (e.g., historic landmark, famous former owner, luxury property, etc.) your brokerage is listing
Write a article that reminds your readers of their fair housing rights and includes links to fair housing resources

If you use social media to promote yourself or to attract and engage prospective customers, your blog posts and status updates gives friends and prospects a glimpse of what kind of professional you might be if they were to hire you. So every post should be well thought-out and critically evaluated before you press that enter button.

Readers have a limited amount of time and because there’s so much content online, they have to pick and choose. Why should they follow you rather than someone else?

Therefore, before you post, consider the following:

Value. Is this message important? Does it impart value to the reader? Does it answer a question or solve a problem for them? Does it give them information they don’t already have? Better yet, does it give them information they can’t get anywhere else? Does it make them want to comment or answer back? Does it make them want to save your message or share it with someone else? By reading it, will they see you as someone who adds genuine value and is worth doing business with?

Viewpoint. Let’s face it, everything you post is not meant to be a learning experience. Sometimes your status updates will be insightful or personal. So the question is, do you present a unique point of view? Will friends and followers relish your posts for your good humor or your unusual take on the day’s topic? Do you possess an outlook that sets you apart? Are your messages worth reading because each contains a special little bit of you?

Verve. Finally, are you exciting, energetic, entertaining? Do you move people emotionally or spiritually? Do your messages uplift? Do they make people laugh or at least smile? Do they make people think? Does the information on your site or its very design convey something that grabs people? Will this post make people want to read more? Will readers feel like they’re missing out if they don’t subscribe or check back another time? What is it about this post that will make readers want to come back again and again?

Certainly, everything you post is not going to meet all of these criteria every single time. Your aim, however, should be to gradually, through a series of posts, shape the image your readers have of you.

Keep in mind that the words and images you post become you, especially for people who’ve never met you. So craft your online image with care.

“Do as I say, not as I do.” That’s a refrain my dad used from time to time and I guess it was his way of admitting that he was far from perfect. In the same fashion, I also say that I’m not perfect when it comes to handling social media over the holidays.

Blogging presents the biggest problem; when I’m taking time off, I don’t want to have to write and research articles. Fortunately, there are ways to work around that.

One solution is to blog in advance. In WordPress, for example, you can write an article today and schedule it to be published automatically at some date and time in the future. My article Blog While You’re On Vacation shows you how to do it. To make this option work, of course, you’ll need to write all of your vacation articles ahead of time.

Alternatively, you can rerun articles you’ve written previously. TV and radio shows do it all the time so that media stars and their staffs can take vacation. If Oprah can show reruns, why can’t you?

Another option would be to find one or more guest bloggers to write in your absence. Guest writers can sometimes bring a fresh perspective to your blog and help keep your readers engaged. This option assumes, of course, that you can find someone to write your blog who isn’t also planning to take some time off.

In the end, I did none of these things. Instead, I took a break from Twitter and only posted brief Merry Christmas and Happy New Year messages on my blog. But if social networking is about establishing and maintaining connections with friends and clients, is that the best approach?