Archive for Content - Sites/Blogs
I can’t tell you how many real estate websites and blogs I click away from because they are hard to read.
If you want visitors to stay on your site or blog and want to keep them coming back, here are five very simple tips.
Five Tips for Making Your Real Estate Internet Sites Easy to Read
- Don’t use tiny print. Use a font size of at least 11. Many people have difficulty reading small print including the huge number of Baby Boomers who are looking at retirement. Many of these people are looking for places to retire to and will do a lot of searching for real estate online.
- Don’t use a color for your text that is anywhere close to the background color. At times I see small darkish grey text on a lighter grey background and nothing drives me away from a website faster than that.
- Break up long paragraphs. Long, drawn out paragraphs are intimidating. And they make it difficult for readers to quickly scan and find information they are looking for. Just as in advertising, having a lot of white space helps make reading easier. You can also number lists to make them easy to read.
- Break up long sentences into shorter ones. And don’t hesitate to start sentences with and or but. I know this isn’t grammatically correct, but it is how people speak. If what people read is more like listening to a conversation, it helps them understand and retain what they read.
- Use bold text for anything really important so it stands out. This will help draw a visitor’s attention to key areas on a web page. Having said that, don’t overdo it. Too much can just clutter a webpage of blog post.
Now that you have read this, I suggest that you go to your website or blog and see what you can do to make them easier to read.
This post is by guest blogger Sam Chapman.
Sam specializes in Lake Travis waterfront homes.
We’ve been working very hard over the past several months to develop a new set of services focused on empowering real estate agents and brokers to take control over their real estate social media marketing. We’re pleased to announce these new services today!
The issue we hear about most from real estate professionals is that they know they need to get involved or increase their involvement with social media, but they’re not sure how.
The number of social media alternatives can be overwhelming. And, the ongoing time commitment to stay involved can be crippling. We’ve focused our services on helping you to get your social media activities under control!
Real Estate Social Media Marketing Services
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Our approach is to structure a tailored set of services based on your objectives, and the level of participation you want to have in the social media world. This could be the push you need to get your social media marketing under control; visit our Real Estate Social Media Control page for more detail, call us at 888-716-2418, or send an email to get started!
This guest post was written by Richard Soto, Broker – VIPRealty, marketing Houston real estate and recruiting experienced agents in Houston, San Antonio and Dallas
Developing Key Content for Your Real Estate Website
Content is king. The kings were once cash, and those who could afford advertising space. Now even the most humble of real estate marketing budgets can benefit from additional web traffic and more revenue through real estate search engine optimized (SEO) web content.
Writing and posting web content is a vital skill for real estate web owners and marketers who want to get their website noticed. Why would you, as a web marketer, want to get noticed? Here are a few good reasons:
- Increase your real estate web sales and revenue
- Improve branding
- Increase contact lists and customer base
- Become a recognized expert in your real estate community
These are just a few of the benefits of a successful content marketing campaign. And with the results of a content marketing study performed by Technorati, it is no wonder that more businesses will be expanding their content marketing efforts in 2010 and beyond.
- 71% of businesses say their blogging efforts have increased their visibility within their industry.
- 56% of respondents said that their blog has helped established a leadership position in their industry.
- 6 in 10 businesses plan to expand their efforts and increase spending on content marketing in 2010.
With so much to gain for your content marketing efforts, here are six tips that can help improve your content marketing success.
1. Create a Plan
It is useless to simply post articles or other web content without a sound plan. Develop a content marketing plan that you will use for your web marketing efforts.
2. Write Sticky Headlines
Your headline or title is probably the most important part of your content. If you can convince a web user to read the rest of your article or other content based on an interesting headline, you are 90% successful.
3. Research Hot Keywords
What is happening right now? Write content that is a hot topic for web users. Look to places like Google News, or even research trending topics on Twitter, to get the most used keywords you can use in your next post.
4. Write a Story
Your web content should be rich in keywords, but also be written in a style that captures a reader’s attention. Use story techniques like character development, conflict, and dramatic conclusion to get readers engaged with your content.
5. Make it Worthwhile to the Reader
The reader will ask him or herself, “so what?” Give the reader a benefit for reading your content. Can you provide new ways to style hair? Save money shopping for clothing? Easy home improvement tips? Let the reader take a nugget of valuable knowledge away.
6. Be Consistent
Writing a great real estate article or blog post is a great start in your SEO content marketing efforts. However, you must continue to provide great content again and again. Don’t stop with one or two good articles. Keep the flow going and be consistent in your content posting efforts
Real Estate Marketing: Bottom Line It For Me
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Do you have any idea what “bottom line it for me” means? That is a phrase someone I worked with once used all the time. I think he thought it was a nicer way of saying “Please, get to the point.”
In 2009, Dow Jones did an analysis of 711,123 press releases to identify the phrases that were so overused, they had become an ineffective way to communicate. They called it the Top 25 Gobbledygook words and phrases.
While you may recognize the pain as you review some of those words and phrases, don’t get too smug. The real estate industry has its own set of problems with gobbledygook!
When you’re writing any type of real estate marketing content, whether it’s for your real estate website or blog, or print advertising, make sure you’ve eliminated the goggledygook!
In real estate, there are problems with overused words. But, I think the biggest problem in the real estate industry is jargon.
Here’s the first dictionary definition of jargon: the language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group.
The second definition is: unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; gibberish.
If you’re using a lot of real estate jargon in your writing, your readers probably find it to be gibberish! So, it’s a good idea to proof anything you write looking for real estate jargon. Let’s make a list of real estate jargon. I’ll start.
Overused or Generally Confusing Real Estate Terminology
- Real Estate Industry Designations – GRIS, SFR, ABR, CCIM, CRB, CRS… and as you know, the list is very long. Without any explanation, what do you think those letters mean to a website visitor, for example?
- Distressed Property Terminology – Short sale, REO, distressed property, deed-in-lieu, etc. If you have a page on your website offering to assist homeowners in distress, do you think you should call it Short Sales? or Avoid Foreclosure?
- Buyer’s Agent – As far as Joe public is concerned, any agent who represents a buyer is a buyer’s agent. Are you surprised that people don’t want to sign a buyer’s agreement?
- Amortization – The act of making unwanted advances????
- Escrow - NAR helpfully defines this as: An item of value, money, or documents deposited with a third party to be delivered upon the fulfillment of a condition. What??? Sometimes, even the explanations don’t help!
Leave a comment with your favorite overused or jargon real estate phrases!
I was on ActiveRain recently and saw Tim Maitski displayed as a featured member. He was billed as the “Video Agent Guy”, and I wondered what that meant. So, I visited his ActiveRain profile. Tim is branding himself as the Video Agent Guy for several reasons.
For one thing, he has a website called VirtualBuyersAgent.com. He sells himself as the agent who will do a video tour of any home a buyer is interested in and displays it on a web page just for that buyer.
For another thing, he has a website called VideoAgentGuy.com. That real estate website is a blog that Tim uses as a video blog. He tapes videos while he’s driving around Atlanta and posts them on this blog.
You need to remember that Tim lives in Atlanta, and given the traffic situation, I know he probably spends quite a bit of time in the car – perhaps even stuck in traffic.
Take a look at that video blog. The first thing you will notice is that each blog post contains a video and a summary of the video content. He’s doing the right thing from the perspective that the summary will be used by the search engines, and it’s also useful for people who don’t want to spend the time watching the video.
What do you think? It’s a very unique approach. To do something like this, you’d need to be very comfortable talking on camera. You’d need to find a way to rig the camera in the car. And, you’d need to be sure you could talk and drive at the same time. Tim seems to do quite well doing both.
On one hand, it does make good use out of the time you spend in the car. On the other hand, I’m not sure I wouldn’t kill myself. Would you do something like this?
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