5 Blogging Mistakes... and How to Fix Them

Blogging has been a pillar of a powerful marketing plan for some time now, and has the staying power of a long-term, sustainable strategy. It helps drive traffic to your site, effectively nurtures leads and can be an incredible brand enhancer by helping to position you as a thought leader.

However, you can't just blog for the sake of blogging, nor can you think to cheat Google's algorithms with keyword stuffing just to get ahead in the search engine race for its coveted number one position.

Think of a blog as your own personal take on the field of real estate. You are the subject matter expert and have a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips. While it might seem easy enough to open up a blank page and start typing, there may be a few blogging faux pas that are slowing you down.

1. It's Too Self-Promotional

Have you ever spent time with someone where all they do is talk about themselves? Just a constant stream of consciousness going on and on about what they're doing and what's going on in their lives like everyone is supposed to be enthralled by it? It's brutal—nobody can stand to listen to it. In fact, the best conversationalists are the ones that get excited about their audience, ask questions and position it around them. The same goes for your blogging. What type of value are you adding to their life? What type of conversation do you want to lead?

Fix:

Instead of talking about yourself and what's going on with your company, give your audience something valuable to read. Differentiate yourself from the clutter out there by providing educational content on the real estate industry, trends you've seen in the market, tips for staging your home or ideas for first-time homeowners. Think of it this way—when you're starting to write an article, ask yourself, "Why should they care about this?"

2. There Isn't a Flow to the Blog

It can be easy to fall for the "brain dump" trap and just pour endless thought patterns out on the page; the only problem is that it comes across as sporadic and nonsensical to the reader.

Fix:

Write like you talk. Keep your narrative very conversational like you would be speaking with someone. It helps keep your copy organic and natural.

Another trick to combat the lack of flow in blogging is to design a structure to your blog on the key points you initially want to highlight and then work backwards from there. Once you have the framework in place, it's easy to fill in the blanks. You can then create a compelling introduction and a call-to-action that reiterates everything you wrote about.

3. Tough Time with Topics

One of the fastest ways to help contribute to the bounce rate on your website is to have a lack of compelling topics on your blog. They're either too broad, repetitive or they're just downright boring. Real estate agents live a very vivid and active professional life, so there should be no shortage of ideas and imagination.

Fix:

How many times have you wanted to voice your opinion on the market or share your advice with someone? Well, this is your platform to do so. Blogging is a unique way to take all of the thoughts you have in your head and translate them into written form. Jot notes throughout your day when inspiration hits, look back through past emails and dig through your CRM for blog topics—you'd be surprised at the amount of gold that's hidden in there.

4. There's an Inconsistency with Your Frequency

Blogging regularly makes Google really happy. When you consistently write high-quality content, you're more likely to show up on the first page of Google and, in turn, will see an uptick on your website traffic. However, if you cannot prove to this search engine behemoth that you are committed to regularly producing high-quality content, your rankings will suffer.

Fix:

Plan an editorial calendar and look ahead at what you have coming up. Do you have a client appreciation event coming up that you'd like to promote? Was there a report published recently by a real estate board discussing market trends that you would like to put your own spin on? Create a plan for the month—and actually hold yourself accountable by setting deadlines.

5. There Isn't a Point to the Article

The problem with writing a blog that lacks in direction is that the reader doesn't know what to take away from this. It's not passing the "why should I care" test.

So when they get to the "now what" stage, they don't know what direction to head in because there wasn't a consistent message to takeaway.

Fix:

When you're building out the framework for an article, put yourself in your readers' shoes. What information do you want them to walk away with? Have a consistent theme running through the entire article with every point supporting your main argument. It starts with having your end goal in mind and reverse engineering it from there.

While it can seem daunting to stay up to date with the demands of frequent blogging – there are ways to get help. Today's high-class real estate CRMs have fresh and never recycled content to help you stand out from the crowd.

To view the original article, visit the IXACT Contact blog.