Texas Real Estate Blogs

“If you don’t have a blog, you might want to reconsider. That’s because Google ..has a particular love for blogs.” - Inc. Magazine, Feb ‘08

Forget most everything you have learned in sales when it comes to the Internet, because when you apply these techniques online, you push customers away. While 60% of agents have an online presence, 93% of their business is generated from other activities. How can this be when over 80% of home buyers are looking online for houses?

It’s simple really, in sales we are taught to take control, but on the Internet the home buyers are in control and they like it that way. Most agent websites offer home search tools, but in order for a home buyer to use that tool they must provide their information, and since they don’t know you, they don’t want to give it to you. Have you noticed that if you require registration to use your home search tools, you have dead celebrities looking to relocate?

With the proliferation of real estate search options, from Realtor.com, to Trulia, Zillow, Google, MSN, Yahoo!Real Estate, and the thousand’s of broker sites, home buyers have too many choices to give you information to simply search for homes. Buyer’s don’t need your website to search for homes, so why do so many agents make that the focus of their website?

It’s because they were told by technology people that that was that they needed to to. But how many of these real estate website providers have ever prospected for home buyers or sold a home? Most of them are great web site graphic artists, and can create what we think are awesome tools, but are they necessary?

So the challenge for an agent is how to reach out to home buyers where they are - the Internet. To reach them we need to break those buyers into the same groups as we do for any of our prospecting activities.

1. People we know - Most real estate agent websites have turned their focus to this group. You meet people, ask them to look at your website because they will find tools they will find useful, and let your website act as an online brochure. It is on all of your marketing material. There is nothing wrong with this way of thinking. A good website can enhance your credibility, to show your an expert. But when they get to your site, is there anything there to keep them there, or does it look and feel like every other real estate agent website? Does the website really present you as the professional you proclaim to be, or does it say, all I really want is your contact information?
2. People we don’t know - This is why most agents got a website in the first place. They wanted to reach out to people out of their sphere of influence to generate leads. So agents have spent thousands of dollars to have these websites with flash intros, gimmicky pictures, IDX search, pay per click advertising, and still only 7% of buyers and sellers use these sites to choose an agent. So we know buyers are out there, but how do you reach them, and more importantly how to you turn them into clients?

The solution - A real estate blogsite. A blog provides you a way to reach out to both of these groups. Here’s how:

1. People you know - You can still brand yourself with a vanity domain (www.yourname.com). Put it on everything, your business cards, your flyers, your signs, your emails, postcards, everything. But when they go your real estate blogsite, they don’t just see your name with a bunch of letters after it, they can get real information. Here on your real estate blogsite they can find your take on the current housing market, strategies that you used to sell a listing, an example of how you worked with a family to find them a their dream house, what the schools are really like, not just statisctics. They will get to know you, to read about how you work for your clients, and that you are a professional. It goes beyond a good picture and a claim of being “million-dollar” producer to giving them real insight into you - it lets them know why their friend said, “hey, if you need a good real estate agent, check these agents out.” It reassures them that if they choose you to represent them, that they are making a great choice.
2. People you don’t know - Here is the tricky part. Home buyers and sellers have to search for something that is on your website. Most real estate agent websites try to go for the most common search terms, such as “my town” real estate. The problem is that there are literally millions of websites that are competing for those search terms. So with only 10 spots on the first search results page, the odds are against you getting a top spot with a traditional website.

Here is the good news. According to Google, 50% of all web search terms use unique search terms, such as “my town subdivision and school district name.” With a traditional website, good luck showing up, but with a real estate blogsite you can write a post about “your town’s subdivision and schools” and be found. They read your post, and there on your real estate blogsite, they see other articles that interest them, They read them. They get to know you. Your blogsite provides them with professionals insight, something they can’t get on a traditional website or through looking at listings, and if they have a question, they can add a comment to that page. At that point they go from “suspect” to “prospect”.

Isn’t that what you really want?

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