Note: This is a guest post by Cyndee Haydon, a Realtor who is a great example of Gateway Blogging in her niche. Even as the real estate market slows, she’s doing great! I invited her to write a guest post on her experience to show what happens when you do business blogging right and employ Gateway Blogging techniques.
Blogging for the Pot of Gold even in a Tough Real Estate Market
As a frequent reader and commenter on Michael’s Remarkablogger blog we started talking one day a few weeks ago and like any good blogging consultant he asked me about my real estate business and how blogging fit into it. He was curious and asked “How does blogging help a real estate agent?â€
My short answer is if you are someone who blogs to gain business then we blog for the same reason, to create a gateway blog to:
- Meet home buyers and home sellers
- Demonstrate my value
- Earn their trust
- Get the opportunity to do business with them
The beauty is I have found my Clearwater Florida real estate blog gives everyone who visits it a safe, anonymous window into:
- Who I am
- What my motivation is
- How I do business
- My competency
- My values
(By the way, I am also peeking back into your window and deciding if you’re the right type of client for me too.)
Only when home buyers and home sellers trust me do they contact me to learn more about what I know and how I can help them achieve their goals. This is when I am rewarded with the “Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow.”
So how did real estate agents get here and where are we going?
The Realtor’s Journey from Open Houses to Blog on Steroids
The real estate business has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. It used to be that open houses were effective in selling homes. Now, if you want to find buyers now you had better have a blog on steroids.
Why? In 1997, only 2% of home buyers used the Internet when they began looking to buy a home, however, in NAR’s (National Association of Realtors) 2005 Home buyer survey found 77%+ of home buyers said they now started their search online and 73% of all home buyers said they chose to work with the first real estate agent they interviewed or connected with. I’ve heard that number may now be approaching 90%.
So as you can see, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that my future clients are online and I need to be online,
too! When I realized that 3 out of 4 of our clients were starting their real estate search on the internet, it only made sense that I find the most effective way to be there and provide them with the information they were looking for.
But just like home buyer’s internet use had changed, we found that what they wanted had changed too. The old static “cookie cutter†websites won’t cut it anymore. Those were created in more of a “tell modeâ€. We found today’s home buyers wants to be part of the process and be engaged in an interactive dialog with us…hence the creation of our real estate blog on steroids.
Fast forward to today, as an industry we’ve seen the explosion of some of the best real estate blogs and social networks this past year. One of the most popular with both real estate agents and consumers is Active Rain which has over 55,225 real estate professionals writing thousands of local articles daily and posting them for consumers. So getting a blog is often free and easy, however, wanting to be a better blogger is what brought me to Remarkablogger.
One Thing That Creates a Successful Blogger in any Industry
One of my favorite books is Stephen R.M. Covey’s The Speed of Trust – the One Thing that Changes Everything. If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it. Covey explains that before business is done someone has to trust us.
The question becomes how do we facilitate that process or even better speed this mandatory process along? Isn’t that the problem all of us face online – How to get people to trust us so they are comfortable doing business with us?
Covey writes that to have trust you must first demonstrate 2 things: Competency and Character. I have found blogging allows me to demonstrate these for my readers daily. This is critical because while anonymity lets people feel safe enough to visit our blog, experience shows cynicism will keep them from doing business with you until they feel they can to trust you.
First, in the area of showing competency – Some of the things I have to be able to communicate are:
- Expertise
- An understanding of their needs
- Skills
- Track record
- Results
Also, when I write about a subject in an in-depth manner – I can show my knowledge and when I give insights and opinions I am also able to show my expertise.
I have found people are looking for a local real estate expert and that means more than just copying the latest Tampa Bay MLS facts and figures. That’s where our blogs are unique and hopefully written in a unique voice from our own unique perspective. Readers and future consumers are subtly asking to be led to the answers to:
- Where’s the local market analysis?
- What’s it mean to me, the reader?
- What are your experiences around this topic?
- Why should I choose you out of all other options?
Second – I can show my character by writing about how I respond to various people and situations, also when they see our client video testimonials they get an insight into how we treat our clients and I have an opportunity to make people comfortable with that my intentions are, my motives (also what motivates me) as well as my integrity.
So in summary, my husband, Jack, and I have had great financial success and found our real estate pot of gold this year as a result of creating a consumer-oriented real estate blog that shows our competency and character so buyers and sellers are comfortable doing business with us and, more importantly, comfortable referring us to others – now that’s my definition of pure gold.