This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):
A custom weblog can be your home’s 24-hour real estate salesperson on the world-wide web
I have an unshakable faith in the three P’s of home marketing — Price, Preparation and Presentation.
If the home is priced above its value to the buyer it will not sell in this market — it probably won’t even show.
If it is not well-prepared — repaired, staged, cleaned — to the condition implied by the price, it will not sell even if it does show.
Presentation is your Realtor’s job — or yours if you’re trying to sell without representation. I don’t have space to go into a full-blown marketing plan, but here’s an idea that can make a big difference for very little cost:
Give your home a blog.
Every home for sale should have its own web site. What makes a weblog useful and practical is that weblogging software is so easy to use. And the price to get started? Nothing.
Sites like WordPress.com or Blogger.com will let you set up a blog on a subdomain — an address like 123MulberrySt.WordPress.com — for free. Or you can buy your own domain — 123MulberrySt.com — for less than ten bucks a year. You can host your own domain for a few dollars a month, but using your weblog provider’s hosted option will work just as well.
What do you want for content? Photos — and lots of them. Good pictures of clean, well-lit rooms sell houses. Your text should be just-the-facts, nothing overtly promotional. Not only can people see through hype, it turns them off.
With a weblog, you can document your house room by room — or by the benefits to be realized from the home’s features and amenities.
Best of all, you’ll have a 24-hour salesperson working for you on the internet. Put your blog’s address on your flyers, in any advertising you do, in your Craigslist open house notices, on Zillow.com and Trulia.com. The more you can promote your blog, the more traffic it will draw.
You still have to be priced right. You still have to be prepared right. But a custom weblog for your home could be a key element in your home’s presentation to the marketplace.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology, Zillow.com
Mike Farmer says:
This is a powerful marketing idea. The possibilites are many. You can also have space to show the surrounding area in detail. You can tell the whole damn story. Wow! I could’ve had a V8! (as I pop my head)
February 25, 2008 — 3:54 pm
Greg Swann says:
Next week’s column builds on the idea. One thing I talk about is signing up for a Google account so that you can build a detailed custom map — parks, playgrounds, schools, shopping, but no churches, of course. You can attach photos and web links to your markers, so people can really get a feel for the neighborhood.
We haven’t done a map like this yet, although we’re using Google custom maps for lots of other client-communication purposes.
We mainly build static web sites rather than weblogs, but, either way, we love and live by single-property sites.
Last Saturday, I wrote about software I have coming out that will make building sites like these very fast and almost unbearably easy.
February 25, 2008 — 4:08 pm
Craig Klein says:
I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of SEO in a local market but, doesn’t this leave the agent with a lot to do in making sure people can find the property’s blog?
February 25, 2008 — 8:44 pm
Greg Swann says:
If everything else is done right, the house should have sold long before SEO could make a real difference.
We use a strategy of hard links — sites like Zillow, craigslist, etc., — and physical collateral: the home’s flyer, door-to-door promotion using business-card-sized announcements and our yard signs.
Of course, you will also link from your listings page on your own web site or weblog, so that will bring you whatever advantage you might get from search engines.
Giving the house its own web site or weblog is sizzle on the steak, not an SEO tactic. In the long run, however, you will have great long-tail exposure on the street name: I’m getting BloodhoundRealty.com sites first, second, fourth, fifth and tenth for culver street phoenix.
February 25, 2008 — 9:10 pm
Brian Brady says:
“If everything else is done right, the house should have sold long before SEO could make a real difference.”
This isn’t a SEO play; it’s a branding play.
Go to a cocktail party, a Church BBQ, the grocery store, and tell your friends to go to 123mulberry.com
Your neighbors can e-mail their family the link; it’s viral.
Advertise in the (gasp) newspaper, with the URL
February 25, 2008 — 10:22 pm