Combine Your Blog with an Email Newsletter for More Leads and Traffic

How can real estate blogging generate leads with a newsletter? And, how can you create a newsletter without spending time or money creating content for it? To get to the answer to these two questions, let's first look at what you can be discussing and offering on your real estate blog.

You Need Timely Content

A blog is most valuable when you're posting to it on a regular basis. Whether you can manage one post each week or several, the rule is to post regularly. This gets the search engine bots to your site regularly, as they learn how often there will be new content on your site and they visit often. Content that's fresh and about current news or area events is what gets repeat blog visitors.

Develop a Content Calendar

This doesn't have to be some big formal thing. It can be in a calendar app or even a spreadsheet. The goal is to plan ahead for content and have reminders that you need to create it. Then choose ideas that will help you to grab local current items that will be of interest to visitors. This can be anything, including:

• Local zoning meetings and changes
• New area development, subdivisions, etc
• Any local event related to real estate or homeownership, such as home and garden shows
• Statistics about home sales from your MLS reporting
• Any local or national news about housing or home prices
• Your new listings when they go live
• Any seasonal content related to real estate
• Home improvement ideas or tutorials

The idea is to create a posting schedule, then fill it with ideas for posts that are interesting and timely.

You Need Instructional Content

Not everything is current. There is a lot of instructional information provided on real estate websites, and it can be done through your blogging as well. Intersperse content about the process, home valuation, closing table topics, home inspections, etc. with your timely content.

Instruct to Generate Leads

Write your instructional posts answering all of those questions you answer on the phone, in person, or through email. You get hundreds of them every year, and each one can be the subject of a blog post.

• How long does it take to close once we find the home we want?
• What can we expect from a home inspection report?
• How do we figure out our first price offer?
• How much home can we afford?
• What is a mortgage pre-approval and how do we get one?

Those are just a few of the many questions you regularly answer. Start noting them down when you get them, as each is a future blog post.

Leverage Your Blog with a Newsletter

Many real estate professionals publish email-type newsletters. Unfortunately, many of these are purchased services with canned content that's in hundreds of these newsletters around the country, or even in your local market. You can use your blog posts as your newsletter articles, and it's going to increase your site traffic and generate leads.

Create a Nice Newsletter Format and a Process to Fill It

Let's say that you're posting often enough to offer a monthly newsletter with four to six or more articles in it. These are your blog posts. Why is this good if they can just read your blog? It's better because few are returning regularly to read your blog. They will be better served if they can subscribe to get your posts via a regular newsletter in their email inbox. You will see an increase in your traffic, but you'll need to take these steps:

1. If your blogging software doesn't create one, create an "excerpt" of each post. It's a short, catchy description of the post content, or even the first paragraph if it builds interest to read more.
2. The newsletter will have just the title (linked to your blog post) and excerpt of each article/post. If you're using catchy titles and excerpts, they're going to click on them to read the full article.

These steps result in a shorter newsletter email, and it allows recipients to decide which articles/posts they want to read in full. Take these steps any you'll see an upsurge in your blog traffic and your lead generation.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.