Is Your Real Estate Blog Doing Its Job?
When was the last time your real estate blog generated a useful lead that you were able to turn into a sale? If your answer isn't "yesterday," maybe it's time to take a good, hard look at your real estate blog. Blogging requires a significant investment of time and effort. If you approach blogging solely as an altruistic service provided to potential real estate clients, you're missing the point. While good blogging certainly provides potential home buyers and sellers with useful tips and information, it's really just the bait on the end of the hook. The core purpose of real estate blogging is to generate leads. If you've got a dynamic blog that enjoys a lot of traffic but produces few leads, it's time to shake things up.
Blogging is a good traffic creator. It's valuable as a tool to lure potential home buyers and sellers to your real estate website. But your blog is just the bait. Attracting potential clients isn't the end game; you have to reel them in to generate client leads. Leads are generated when a visitor is motivated to respond to a post, access or request a service or information, join a group or community, sign up for a seminar or class, obtain a newsletter or coupon, or participate in a survey or poll. If you want your real estate blog to generate useful leads, you have to create opportunities for site visitors to take that next step and make contact. You want to motivate casual blog readers to give you their contact information. Contact info = leads!
The most successful way to generate sales leads from your real estate blog is to peg every information offer to a request for contact information. Even if a newsletter sign up box just asks for email addresses, you'll start building an email list that you can use for Internet advertising, promotions, listing notices, coupons and more. Generally, the more valuable the information, the more willing visitors are to provide extensive contact information. Match information requests to the value of the content provided. For example, a potential home buyer is more likely to provide his current address and phone to receive a Home Buyer's Guide or access to local real estate listings than a copy of your newsletter.
