Category: Blogging (page 12 of 84)

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Yes folks, it’s the question that never goes away: Why don’t you post more images? Short answer: I don’t like to read posts with images. Unless we are talking about specific property, images rarely add to the writing, and to me, they almost always take away from the writing.

When discussing property, you do need photos, and I do post images- now I post them in engenu. I take a lot of photos, I post a lot of photos of real estate, however, since they are used for buyers and I’m not the listing agent, they don’t always get posted on my blog. But this email wasn’t refering to real estate photos, the writer was lamenting my lack of just, ya know, images in general.

Here’s the thing: Real estate bloggers ask me about my lack of photos, but other bloggers never ask me this question, and I don’t see a lot of images in the blogs I read. So the way I see it is that since I’m not writing to other real estate bloggers, I’m writing to consumers, some of whom are in fact, non real estate bloggers, and they aren’t bothered by my Walls of Text, why do something that doesn’t make any sense to me?

I’ve been accused, and am occasionally guilty, of being stubborn, I suppose there is the tiniest, itty bitty chance that I’m wrong so I’m willing to listen to reason. I’ve heard and heard and heard some more from the RE.net about this, but I’d love to hear from the anyone outside the industry- are images a help or a hindrance to reading a blog?

And, because I love a good compromise and I love multi-tasking, I’m sharing a video- an image! The sentiment of this song is for Vance Shutes and Tom Vanderwell. We have begun sharing ideas about living a full life in the Rust Belt. And I suppose this song could be considered another Unchained Melody. But mostly, it’s here because it’s a very clever compromise between text and image. I’ve been told that a picture is worth a thousand words. Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A headline on a weblog post is a differentiator — this entry is different from all the others — but that’s not a very useful lens for understanding headlines. A serial number — A37592x — is a differentiator, too.

A headline can serve the same purpose as a headline in the newspaper, as a brief summary of the succeeding content — “Man kills wife, kids, self.”

That’s a useful function, but it’s not really doing the job we want a headline on a blog post to do.

Here’s a better way of understanding the communicative purpose of a weblog entry’s headline:

A headline is a testament from the writer to the reader than the content described in the headline is accurately reflected by that headline and that reading that content will repay the effort it entails.

But that’s still not enough. A headline on a weblog post, and on any persuasive copy, has to ensnare and entice the reader. The headline has to promise a substantive benefit that the reader will realize by pursuing the copy. Writing an effective headline is very much a Direct Marketing problem.

And we’re not done even yet. In addition to all the jobs it must undertake in the reader’s behalf, a well-written weblog headline should also engage horizontal search engines in meaningful ways.

So a properly-crafted weblog headline will:

• Summarize the content in an interesting way
• Promise the reader a practical benefit for reading that content
• Search well on the most-significant keywords in that content

That’s a big load to carry, but a good headline can make a post, where a bad one can break it.

I don’t want to represent myself as a good example, because I will frequently opt for clever rather than good, but the headline of this post is a nice example of a good headline: It tells you what I’m going to talk about, it tells you how you will gain by reading this post, and it is strong on keywords that are likely to be searched by people who may have an interest in BloodhoundBlog’s ongoing content.

The latter point is important. It’s easy to score well on long-tail search terms, but Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Our new contributors are true Bloodhounds, equal to all the others. We don’t have rules, we don’t play status games and we don’t want for anyone to feel less than perfectly welcome here.

But: We do recognize that the new Bloodhounds are going to have questions. We want for them to have questions, since their questions will kick off great discussions of how to manage the world of Social Media Marketing.

However: The question post can be the death of weblogging. You set something up and then you say, “Does that makes sense?” or “What say you?” or “Am I wrong?” Sounds harmless enough, but, for some reason, posts like that tend to die a commentless death. It’s plausible to me that you see them so often on weblogs where the host is desperate for comments that that trailing question comes to seem like desperation in the flesh — like a blind date who turns out to be a sweaty Trekkie with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Here’s a way to put together a question post that will spark a conversation rather than languish in perpetuity, unremarked on and unloved.

First, instead of ending with the question, start with it: Just exactly how do you establish a following on Twitter without looking like another pushy Realtor?

Second, take some responsibility for yourself: Here’s what I was thinking. I thought I might just go in and start talking about the things that fascinate me in the neighborhoods I work in.

Third, give your readers the respect they deserve: I know there are a lot of people out there who have been successfully tweeting real estate for quite a while, so I was hoping someone could give me some direction.

Fourth, get right back to the questions: Am I all messed up in my thinking? Is there something I’m missing? Is there a better way of going at things?

Fifth, go one down, graciously: I know you guys know so much more about this than I do. Thanks for taking the time to hold my hand.

Like this:

Just exactly how do you establish a following on Twitter without looking like another pushy Realtor?

Here’s what I Read more