FeedBurner is a free product, now owned by Google, that allows you to achieve greater exposure for your BLOG. The tool has some extensive tools to analyze your BLOG data, but here I thought we would focus on the aspects of FeedBurner that allow you to promote your BLOG. These can be accessed from the "Publicize" tab.

1. Headline Animator - This allows you to create a banner ad that rotates the latest headlines that are on your BLOG. This is wonderful to put on your websites so you can get people to visit your BLOG as well.
   

   

   ↑ Grab this Headline Animator



2. E-mail Subscriptions - This tool will allow you to include a small form on your website or BLOG to allow people to subscribe to your new posts by just entering an e-mail address. As more people are more familiar with E-mail, than RSS readers, this can allow you to gain more subscribers quickly.


3. BuzzBoost - This tool allows to republish your feed as HTML. Again, you could put this on your website so visitors can take a look to see the latest activity on your BLOG.

FeedBurner has many different tools available for FREE, but even just using these 3 will help to gain more exposure for your BLOG.

Labels: real estate blog, real estate internet marketing

OK so you can't possible think of something to put on your real estate blog. How about statistics? There isn't a home owner or home buyer out there who doesn't want to know what the real estate market is doing yet statistics is one of the hardest things to find on the Internet. I know that some MLS systems even have built in reports and if you are allowed to use graphs or charts from them even better. Even if you can't use their charts you can quickly create your own using Microsoft Excel or another spreed sheet program. So we thought we would give you:

1. Statistics are hard to find - Try seeing what sold last month in an area without using the MLS. It is so difficult it is unfair. Think how home owners and home buyers would view your knowledge if you let them know about what is going on.
2. They are valuable - Everyone needs to know what is happening. Tired of losing a listing presentation because someone said the market is doing better than it is. What if you became the source?
3. Consumers want them - Home buyers and sellers need to know what is going on and they are searching for it. They are just having a hard time locating it.
4. Others aren't doing it - It is always better to be first rather than last. Just because everyone has access to the data(Realtors(R)) doesn't mean they are letting people know about it. Let consumers know.
5. They always change so it is always something new to write - One of the hardest things to do sometimes is come up with something new to write. Thankfully someone is always buying or selling so numbers will change. Even if no one is buying or selling you can still show that as well!
6. It makes for great charts & Graphs - Having visuals is great because it makes your blog different and more interesting to your readers. You can create charts in literally minutes with Microsoft Excel.

So go forth and add stats to your blog or website and become the source for information.

Labels: real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing, real estate marketing

So are you tired of just writing sentence after sentence in your blog? If you are your readers might be as well. After all we are in the new era of the web were bandwith is high and people have high speed access at home and at work so why would we only just write text? The answer is you probably shouldn't be just writing. So we thought we would give you 5 great resons to use multi media in your blog.

1. It adds a visual impact - nothing adds impact like a great picture. After all a picture is worth a 1,000 words right? So why not throw up a picture of what you are talking about. If you are talking about the benefits of improving a kitchen maybe a nice before and after picture.


2. Video says it for you - That's right a little video never hurt anyone. In fact you can upload your video to http://www.youtube.com/ and they will host it for you and give you the html to put in your page. We put up video on our Long Beach Home Blog so you can see a sample of what to do. That clip took about 40 seconds to record, 2 minutes to upload to youtube, and another 60 seconds to copy and paste the HTML they gave me into the blog. So for under 5 minutes I think it is worth it.


3. Sound is a great way to introduce your blog - we put sound on our blog as well using some easy to use software by in InstantAudio.Com. This software is great and is easy to use. By the way we use it to describe our properties on our regular websites as well.


4. Others aren't doing it - Want to be first? That's right many people aren't yet adding pictures, sound, and video to their blog. This makes you stand out among all of the other blogs that are available for a user to select. After all you are competing for readers and what better way to improve your blog by adding something that no one else will do.


5. Your readers want it - so if all of the other reasons don't convince you to do it your readers do want it. People want more out of websites and blogs than just plain text. They want entertainment with their information so give it to them!

In case you also are thinking we don't practice what we are asking you to do we have some video for you as well!

We hope that convinces you to add some multimedia to your blog. You can always check out ours for ideas at http://www.homeofthequeenmary.com/ and another great one we like is http://www.raincityguide.com/.

Labels: BLOG, internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution

As you are developing content for both your BLOG and your real estate website, think about what visitors are looking for in relationship to the time frame that they may be looking. A wonderful post on the Real Estate Tomato brought up how you can take a look at the relationship of terms someone is searching for to the time frame that they are willing to purchase in. Here are some highlights derived from their post that were arrived at by Cydee Haydon:

• Blogging about a large area like a city (Tampa Bay was used as her example) - resulted in buyers who were 12-24 months out.
• Blogging about a city within Tampa, like Clearwater she was able to get buyers in the 12 months and under time frame
• Blogging about a neighborhood or condo complex like SandPearl she was able to get buyers from 1-6 months out.

If you think about how someone does research for real estate on the internet this makes alot of sense!!! This type of data has occured in our websites as well. As people search for the Long Beach real estate they can be on a longer time frame, but if they request a specific building like 1400 Ocean Blvd they have already become familiar with the city of Long Beach and now know they want downtown long beach area and preferrably a specific building.

So have fun creating content for your BLOGs and your websites that bring in clients of all time frame.

Labels: content, real estate blog, real estate marketing

Now hopefully you have a real estate blog that is either integrated with your website or is separate from your website and marketed differently. One of the things that we find is hardest for agents to do is to come up with new topics to write on and because they don't have new topics they stop writing and their blogs aren't updated on a regular basis. Here are 5 content ideas you can use for your blog and the great part is you can keep reuse them every single month!

1. Monthly Sales Statistics - This is one that you make sure to report every first of the month. Keep it consistent and you will have a regular following that checks to see what the figures were at. Let agents know you will be posting it so they can check it as well.
2. Loan Products - Banks are continually offering new products so that buyers can buy or builders can build. Get your favorite lending partner to post every month on what is new out there.
3. Loan Rates - A great resource to reference is www.bankrate.com. They always post the latest available rates from different lenders. If you had a few lenders send you what the latest rates where one a week or once a month you would have a regular topic that people are always interested in.
4. New Construction - Most areas have some form of new development occurring on an ongoing basis. Blogging on it and reporting it are key to more great content.
5. Fun Events - It doesn't always have to be about real estate. You can mention a carnival or fair that is going on and mention what area of town it is in. Since it has to take place somewhere it is related to real estate and people always like to have a source for information.

Have fun with this 5 Blog Topics for your Real Estate Blog. It is more important to keep posting than to not post at all so good luck with your blog!

Labels: marketing real estate web site, real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing

As you are adding to your web presence, it is important that when you do add content that it is viewed by as many people as possible. Here are 5 tips to increase your page visibility:

1. Focused Content - Don't try to accomplish too much in 1 page. When you write a page concentrate on a particular topic (like california first time buyers, or condos in Long Beach) so the meaning of your page will be clear to visitors and to the search engines.
2. PPC Ad - Create a PPC ad on Google and Yahoo and direct it to your page. A nice targeted group of words and phrases can bring that traffic you are looking for.
3. Site Map - Make sure to update your site map to reflect that you have added a new page. Optimally you will have physical HTML page as for a sitemap as well as an XML sitemap. Keeping this up to date will help your the spiders to see you regularly update your website and bring them back more often :)
4. BLOG Post - As are are all BLOGGING, put up a blog post providing a snippet of information about your new page. Maybe it is about a new loft development or a new loan program, whatever it is, give a hint about it on your blog and link back to your website!
5. Internal Linking - Hopefully the content you are creating is somewhat related to other areas within your website. Link from one of your other pages in your website (optimally one that is indexed already) and link to your new page!

Following these 5 tips everytime you ad new content will belp increase the visibility of your new pages. With powerful Calls to Action, you will be able to quickly get some contacts out of those new pages ! Good luck.

Labels: BLOG, Google, PPC Campaigns, real estate blog, Sitemap, xml, Yahoo

RSS Readers

You don't have to have to book mark all of your favorite BLOGs and have to go back daily to check them right? You don't have to! Using an RSS reader you can subscribe to BLOGs and keep up to date as easily as checking your e-mail.

RSS is defined as Rich Site Summary or it's most popular - Really Simple Syndication.

RSS feeds have been in existence for a number of years, but now are finally hitting mainstream. If you have a BLOG, then most tools, easily allow your BLOG to be picked up by an RSS reader. As many of you may be new to finding RSS feeds, we thought it might be helpful to point out a few RSS Readers so you can make it an enjoyable experience keeping track of your Favorite BLOGs.

Google Reader - A wonderful FREE tool so you can keep track of the RSS feeds that are of interest to you. You can add it to your Google Account so you can check in like you were checking your e-mail.

NewsGator - They have a FREE version as well so you can sign-in and start using their powerful tool.

BlogLines - Create a personal web page easily that is updated with the news sources that are of interest to you.

Have fun adding your favorite BLOGs. Sign up for our real estate BLOG dedicated to the Long Beach real estate market - www.LongBeachHomeBlog.com

Labels: BLOG, real estate blog, RSS feeds

Active Rain is a real estate BLOG community where you can learn from your fellow agents across the country. At the time of this post there are almost 43,000 members across the country. The website is easy to use and it helps you to demonstrate your expertise in an area.

Localism
Localism is the consumer side of Active Rain. The big benefit here is you can write about your local area. Some of the items you may want to write on would be:

• New Construction in your area
• Home Sales in your neighborhood
• New Home Loans that are available

Every post that you put up can reference going back to your website for additional information. This way you can provide great FREE information on your BLOG and encourage visitors to dig deeper by going to your website.

Labels: active rain, BLOG, real estate blog