Regardless of the recent debates about whether or not a real estate blog should be considered a solid foundation for a single agent to develop a realistic business model on, there are still many benefits of publishing content on a site you own… provided everything is organized properly.
I follow the CopyBlogger school of thought for designing strategic landing pages to ensure my target audience gets the exact information they’re looking for when they hit my sites for the first time.
While I do feature categories and tags in non-prominent areas of the footer or custom sidebars, I try to keep my main informational points of interest flowing from the top down in order to respect the time my readers have to spend online.
Homeowners and new buyers can easily get overwhelmed with the hundreds of details they may need to be aware of when it comes to the mortgage or real estate process.
One simple answer can easily lead them to five other questions that they didn’t know they needed to be asking.
Designed with the big picture in mind, your blog can effectively lead someone through their fact-finding mission in a painless and strategic manner.
Obviously, articulating this complex home buying thing in a manner that non-industry people can understand is great way to build trust with your potential clients.
Agents are obsessively consumed with “Personal Branding” to the point where buyers have to invest valuable seconds of their life on a site sifting through awards, testimonials, twitter feeds and media interviews before they can find a page that actually addresses their real needs and concerns.
However, I feel industry blogs have come a long way in the past five years.
But, we need to get better at focusing on homeownership education if we’re truly going to impact a positive change in our local real estate markets.
Here’s an example of my Mortgage 101 section, which has significantly increased in stickiness since I took out the sidebars and customized the page layout to serve as more of a site index with a purpose.
My ultimate goal is to be able to send borrowers and agents to my mortgage blog without having to include an explanation of where to go once they get there.
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This 11 min video had a huge influence in how I’m redesigning my sites:
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ronny says:
yeh its really important to develop a good content map and to organize everything i have.
i found so many site which are massy and things hard to find
November 2, 2010 — 8:21 am
Teri Lussier says:
Mark-
Excellent video, thanks for that. I’ve struggled with this for a long time, and to have it visually presented like this is very helpful.
November 2, 2010 — 3:30 pm
Mark Madsen says:
Thanks, Teri. The way he explained tags and categories really helped me see the big picture as well.
November 2, 2010 — 6:09 pm
Anne Peterson says:
This is a good mind-mapping of how a real estate blog will be able to reach its target audience. Aside from the paths or direction of sending the information. It is very important that you also care about the content and its usefulness to the readers.
November 3, 2010 — 12:00 am
Mark Madsen says:
Hey Anne – You’ve got a great looking real estate investment blog. i just joined your facebook group. Too bad my FHA blog doesn’t fit your audience, because I’d love to submit my feed to your news aggregator. Maybe I’ll consider creating a special tag for “investor Loans” so that we can feature our top content on your site as well. Nice job!
November 3, 2010 — 6:46 pm