From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource, how to use a unique web-based tool or service to attract readers to your real estate weblog:
Ingredients: A service that you can code into a tool to save someone time, effort, money or, alternatively, provide entertainment (plus a solid developer, preferably skilled in AJAX).
Process: Tools aren’t always able to attract visitors independently, so much like mashups, you’ll need to do some promotion. Fortunately, there are dozens of online tool lists and plenty of folks blogging about their creation (like the aforementioned Ajaxian). The tool itself needs to serve a real purpose (or make people laugh) and it needs to be unique. If you’re in the retail industry, imagine a tool that could be used to help visitors custom create a product, or organize a set of products in a useful, humorous or fun way. For B2B, cost calculators for customers can be useful, but are often un-exciting. Imagine how you can expand the use of your services to fit a wide audience, then make it fun and interactive.
Results: Tools can generate traffic slowly over time, or they can have huge bursts. Often, they spread virally through email and social networks if they’re built right (and look great — so pay attention to #4, too).
I gave one of these to my dingleberry son, but he hasn’t done anything with it. It was an idea I had over the summer, and I didn’t have time to write it myself.
It’s not difficult: What I envisioned was a PHP utility that would take a marked-up text and return it without the mark-up, but with each marked-up term or phrase having been recoded as a Wikipedia look-up. For general webloggery, Wikipedia is fiercely useful, but coding a lot of links is a pain in the butt. This, by definition is what software is for.
If you want, you can bug the little booger to get busy on this project…
Technorati Tags: blogging, sellsius 101, real estate, real estate marketing
jf.sellsius says:
A tool to make linking easier would be nice. We have an idea for a blog tool that should be fun. We are working on it with a fellow blogger.
September 26, 2006 — 1:52 pm