Real Estate Bloggers — Why Are You Blogging? What Currency Does Your Banker Accept?

Since BloodhoundBlog isn’t about blogging for its owner’s business — the following doesn’t apply. In fact, Greg seems to abhor even the suggestion this blog might be construed as financially beneficial to him. He wants Bloodhound to be the best place to go when you want real estate information or expertise. His mission is to inform and educate — period. I’m sure there are other blogs who also exist only to distribute valuable information to their readers. This isn’t aimed at them either.

Let’s begin with what everyone who knows me realizes pretty quickly — I’m not a tech guy, and surely not a blogging expert. However, after blogging for a year now, I’ve noticed a few things in the so called blogging world. Wanna be a blogging expert? Just call yourself one. No kiddin’, that’s just about all you need to do.

In my first few months these so-called experts would write blogging commandments as if they’d found them on the third tablet Moses lost on his way down the mountain. You would have thought the 11th commandment was for blogging experts only — hidden in a secret place known only to them. At first I took them seriously. My mistake. My audience started to ask me what was up. What was up? I was listening to the experts, that’s what.

Kris Berg’s post on this subject was spectacularly on point. She then followed it up with the perfect satirical application of what she learned from the experts in San Francisco.

Since I’m not in the house side of the business my subjects are……..different. They’re like a full dinner. They involve, at least much of the time, some relatively complex principles and concepts. They can’t be half a small bowl of broth. Uh, usually it’s the principles adding up that make a concept. Duh. Yet, I was constantly feeling like I was being criticized by the experts because my posts were too long. They said I needed to be short and snappy. As Kris quoted the experts: “Readers are scanners…….five paragraphs……max.”

Here’s some exaggerated examples of what they wished I would adhere to. I’ll use the ‘be brief — folks have the attention span of a gnat’ approach.

Leverage is good — sometimes.

Cash flow is great — but not always.

Cost segregation isn’t for everyone — look up definition on your own time.

1031 exchange means you don’t pay taxes — today — not always the way to go — you figure it out.

Buy low — sell high.

Get a ‘good’ lender — they’re much better.

Don’t buy investment ‘stuff’ in a bad market.

Buy investment stuff when it’s the right time — avoid the wrong time.

There’s a week of posts right there! 🙂

Frankly, the thing most of these experts have in common is the seeming distain they have for those who read blogs. Real estate blog readers are, in most cases, thirsty for knowledge. Each post simply can’t explain everything concerning whatever the topic, but it can produce excellent questions — which the knowledgeable blogger can then answer well. Many times a reader’s comment has inspired another post. It’s their questions and comments that tell me not only what interests them, but what they they want to know. It also tells me what they don’t know to ask. One of the foundational principles on which I base my posts is my readers getting answers to questions they didn’t know to ask. Now that’s gratifying.

When they can come to someone’s blog and find crucial information on topics of importance to them as readers — especially information they didn’t know they didn’t know? That’s knocking it out of the park.

Fast forward to the recent real estate convention put on by Inman called Real Estate Connect. Based on what I’ve heard from those who attended (I didn’t) the impression I got was there must have been two Real Estate Connects. One for techies and one for help in blogging in general. They had panels populated by, you guessed it, experts on blogging.

Before continuing, without exception, the folks attending have told me only very good things about some of the new hi-tech stuff they learned there. Of course, Greg will have a totally different view than those with whom I spoke. 🙂 Also, everyone I’ve asked about their experience there, said that overall it was good, and that they felt their money was well spent.

Here is where the expertise of these guys, uh, apparently goes over my head — and I’m only half kidding. Let’s take the topic of Search Engine Optimization — SEO.

First hand reports about Connect from three different people, two of whom I know personally, the other by phone, emails, and blogging. All three are nationally known real estate bloggers I respect. They pretty much agreed they were getting a lot of the same old blogging info they’d been reading for the last year. But their perceptions alone wasn’t what got my attention.

There were two real estate pros there who made declarations of fact, about the results of their real estate blogs, one an agent and one a mortgage broker. (One I verified with my own baby blues, and the other I simply believed, as I know him personally and trust him implicitly.) They weren’t called liars, but they were given short shrift by not only the experts, but from some in the audience. What did they have the audacity to say out loud and in the presence of this august panel?

The mortgage guy said he’d generated 1,000 leads in the last 12 months. The agent said she’d been receiving 2,000 hits daily on her blog. Are you kiddin’ me? I don’t know about you, but if somebody said they’d caused 1,000 leads to come their way, or 2,000 daily blog hits, they wouldn’t get out of the room without at least giving me a hint as to HOW.

Yet they were glossed over like a six-year-old’s cheap birthday cake. It makes a suspicious person think it’s possible some of the experts couldn’t match those results. Ya think? 🙂

As you might have intuited by now, I’m a little sensitive when it comes to SEO and all the reasons why it’s the best thing since sliced bread. In fact, I’ll say it right now and right here: If there’s anything more overrated in real estate blogging than SEO, I wouldn’t know what it would be. Of course, bloggers can’t ignore it’s place in the big picture. But it’s simply not the be all end all.

The guy with a thousand leads in the last year? He’s a loan broker, right? If those leads are weaker than weak, and he only ends up turning 7.5% of those leads into loans, he’s done 75 loans with folks coming to him because of his blog. If the average loan amount was $300K and he only made a quarter point on his side, and a point on the back side (from the lender) he’s made $281,250. I’m guessing at his batting average here. I don’t know what conversion rate he enjoyed.

Do you think he went up to bat a thousand times and got less than 75 base hits? What’s that saying about a blind squirrel?

Even if he only converted 25 of those thousand leads, he still made nearly $100K extra income that year. Ah, show of hands — who wants to sign up for those results?

And I’ll bet it’s at least an even bet the condescending experts who quietly shuffled him off to Buffalo as quickly as they could, have much better blog rankings and far more impressive authority than he does — and his are fairly impressive. I say that because it’s what I run into regularly myself.

My blog? I’m so far down in the rankings, and so relatively low in authority it used to get me down a bit at times. Then I had an epiphany. I felt foolish as it dawned on me. One day my blogging advisor asked me a simple question about my own blog.

She asked me how much I’d made this year as a result of BawldGuy Talking. I literally broke into laughter, as I knew she was playing with me, as she is wont to do. (This is because she can, as my brain couldn’t kick-start hers.) Her point was elegantly simple.

We in the real estate business — brokers, agents, and those who offer services to us and our clients, blog for one thing and one thing only. Despite their sometimes intentionally distracting objections — they’re blogging for business — new and profitable business. Period. And that’s a good thing.

So, to the experts who dissed my two fellow bloggers, (Unintentionally?) I ask them, with respect, a few short questions.

Do you deposit your blog ranking into your bank account?

Did your authority help buy your last luxury car?

Did your impressive use of SEO expertise result in an extra six figures of income the last several months?

And finally — can your banker even tell you what a blog is?

It’s my contention 99% of other well known real estate bloggers have both higher authority than I do, and enjoy literally 2-10 times, (if not more) daily hits than I do. I say this with confidence because I’ve researched this. Apparently everyone does this better than I do. 🙂 And I’ll bet it results in consistent new business for them, or most of them would’ve stopped blogging long ago. Cuz the dirty little secret real estate bloggers won’t tell you is — blogging ain’t for sissies.

That said, I’ve decided to try out a new blogging term. Let’s see if it has any legs.

What do ya think of measuring the success of a real estate blog by its $EO? You know, SEO that a banker understands?

It’s how I measure mine, and it’s why I’m still blogging. I love what I do immensely. It’s almost drug-like in its hold on me. Blogging allows me to meet and help folks all over the country — an experience new to me, as I’ve always been 100% local until just a few years ago. Going to Phoenix, Denver, Boise, and soon hopefully Kansas City, Austin, and Panama would not have happened nearly so quickly without my blog. It’s not debatable.

Taking folks from where they are today, to a retirement they hadn’t thought possible is a high I won’t soon give up. Blogging feeds that addictive need by providing so many more fixes. 🙂 I live for the moment a new client realizes how his/her life is about to change. One moment like that every few days, and I’m good to go.

Real estate pros from all parts of the country, offering all the different but related services, might want to think about focusing on $EO a little more than SEO — you might just find your banker is happier to see you coming. Which means you were able to help a whole lot more people in the process.