A great real estate blog will help position you and your team at the top of mind of consumers when it comes to buying or selling a home. Blog posts and high-quality content will help build your brand, demonstrate your expertise, and organize your knowledge base to serve the niche you represent in your real estate market.
Follow these 12 steps to help you start a real estate blog.
1. Choose a Name for Your Blog
You will want the name of your blog to either be your name or the real estate niche that you represent.
Once you've decided on a name for your blog, choose a content management system (CMS) that will help create your blog. We suggest you use Wordpress to create your real estate blog because of its interactive features, simplicity, and wide variety of plugins for real estate agents.
2. Design a Template
Each CMS comes with several templates to choose from. The template should match the colors of your company logo and be easy to read, navigate, make comments, and subscribe to your blog. You should also choose to use a font that best represents your brand.
If you want to purchase a higher-end theme for your Wordpress blog, you can visit Theme Forest, Template Monster, or Themify.
3. Adjust Blog Settings
In order to set the blog up correctly at the beginning, it is important to create and adjust the settings that will help in the creation of content and limit the liability from others being able to change or delete content.
Here are some of the settings that you can adjust for your blog:
- General
- Writing
- Reading
- Discussion
- Privacy
- Delete blog
- Media
4. Choose an Author(s)
It is very important to choose quality authors for your real estate or team blog that have been educated and trained to communicate their expertise.
Here are the potential authors for your blog.
- REALTOR® Team Leader
- Listing Agent
- Buyer Agent
5. Set a Schedule for Posts
Each person who contributes entries to the blog should declare how often they will contribute. For some authors, it maybe once a month. For others, it maybe once a week. It all depends on the level of commitment that each one is willing to share.
Focus on quality, not quantity. The idea here is to provide content that is so valuable that your readers will never feel the need to find content elsewhere. Each post should provide solutions, insight, or answer questions that your audience is looking for.
6. Create Posts
There are several topics that you can write on that are specific to each niche and author’s position within the real estate team. Each time a post is created, the blog gives that post its own specific webpage. For example, if a post by the Listing Agent writes about “Staging Tips for Sellers”, the Marketing Manager can take the hyperlink for that entry and share it within an email marketing newsletter.
7. Manage Comments on Your Posts
Hot topics, great entries, and controversial topics may generate many comments. How the comments are viewed, approved, disapproved, marked spam, or deleted will establish additional communication among the membership. One or many blog administrators may be able to handle comments depending on the integrity of the comment.
8. Create Categories
Think of the file cabinets in your office. For each important topic that you concentrate you may have a separate file cabinet or file folder to store paper to retrieve it at a later date. It may be so detailed that another person can walk into your office and find that paper without extensive searching. Categorizing new entries into common folders will help you and your readers find your posts faster.
Here are some common categories you may consider for Real Estate Professionals:
- Staging Tips
- FSBOs Only
- For Buyers Only
- For Sellers Only
- Things to Do
- Financing
- Property Values
9. Create Links
Every Real Estate Professional has other associations, companies, and municipalities that they support or do business with. Each of these also will have their own company website that people can visit to find out more information on the services that would provide their members with additional resources. You can also categorize links based on relationships.
10. Add Widgets
A widget is an application, tool, or feature from your blog or another website that allows you to customize the template and extend its functionality.
There are several different types of widgets. Here are a few examples:
- Text
- Communication
- RSS Feed
- Social Feed(s)
- Post Calendar
- Archives
- Statistics
11 Manage Risks
Each Real Estate Professional and team member will assume some, limited, or entire liability for what is posted online. Dedication to contributing high-quality content that is consistent with the message is crucial to the long term success of the blog and interaction among clients and prospects. Each Real Estate Professional who authors an entry, makes a comment, or shares information contained on the blog should be held to the same standards of professional practice and the Code of Ethics. Furthermore, the supervising Real Estate Broker and team members should actively monitor what is said or missing from existing information that appears on the blog.
It is important Real Estate Broker develop consistent rules and best practices to follow while creating new posts, posting comments, and deleting comments.
12. Market Your Real Estate Blog
Once you've followed the steps listed above, it's time to market your blog. You can use a variety of marketing channels to generate more awareness and get visitors to your site including.
- Social media
- Links or citations from other websites
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads
- Direct Mail
- Flyers
- Podcast
- Commercials
- Local Radio or Television
- Word-of-Mouth Promotion
Written and Published by: VanEd
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