Shock and Awe Marketing Tutorials in Plain English

OK, so you probably won't care a lick about the next couple of pieces I am writing.  But my sociology and marketing muscles need flexing, so here is a resource for those of you that want to understand the differences in home buyers/sellers from a demographics and psychographics standpoint and how you can use that data to craft real estate blog posts that resonate with your market.

Have you ever considered if you would write differently if you knew your primary audience was male?  Have you thought if you would take a different approach to your blog if you knew most of your readership was between the ages of 35 and 49?  No?  Well you should.  Knowing the demographics of your primary audience is essential to sculpting content that converts visitors to leads.  For example, if your primary readership is male between the ages of 25 and 34, you might want to consider writing more aggressively, injecting more humor and using more video whereas if your primary readership is female between the ages of 35 and 49, you might want to do more storytelling and pen more "how to" posts.

What are demographic profiles of real estate blog visitors?

Demographics looks at characteristics of people that include age, income, education, occupation, household size, home ownership and home value, among other factors.

Knowing your site's demographics is Marketing 101.  Fortune 500 companies hire high dollar marketing firms to analyze their demographics so they focus their marketing to appeal to their most viable customers.  Similarly, you should focus the content on your website to appeal to your primary readers.  Luckily for you, you don't have to spend beaucoup bucks to know what your demographics are. MSN's Ad Lab can give you a ball park estimation of what the demographics are for both your prime key terms and your real estate blog.

Tools: Statistics, Demographics and Psychographics Websites

*It may also be useful to compare the online data to the US Census data to understand your market's specific demographic landscape.

Resource: US Census Data

How to use MSN's Ad Lab to determine your current demographics and your target demographics

1.       What is the demographic profile of your site's visitors?

Use the Audience Intelligence Demographics Predictions tool by entering in your domain name and clicking the URL radio button, then press "Go."  This will return the current estimated demographics for your real estate blog.

EXAMPLE: Let's take the Miami Real Estate Blog  as an example: this blog's demographics are:

51% male, 49% female with 60% of traffic above the age of 34.

2.       What is the demographic profile of Internet users searching for your prime key words?

Use the Audience Intelligence Demographics Predictions tool by entering in your primary keyword and clicking the Query radio button, then press "Go."  This will return the current estimated demographics for your prime keyword.

EXAMPLE: Let's take the term "Miami Shores real estate" as an example: this term's demographics are:

57% female, 43% male with 60% of all traffic above the age of 34.

Resource: QuantCast (free): What are the demographics of people visiting similar sites? I love this site and highly recommend using it!

Resource: Geographic segmentation: Prizm (free).

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The first month of your real estate blog's life is actually the most important.  What you do during this period of time can affect the way Google will see your blog for the next year, so it is vitally important that you build hyper local, keyword rich content in a structured and cohesive way. So, the following is a step by step guide to building your first month's worth of blog content.  So, I thought I would put together a fail safe way to construct content that is hyper local, rich in information and will form the foundation of a successful blog.

How to use this guide:

I basically provided 31 exact blog titles for you and where I felt my intention might be unclear- I detailed how the post should be constructed. To use this guide, you want to start posting between 3-5 times a week.  Select 1 topic from the first section (About Me) on Day 1.  On day 2, select one topic from the second section (Neighborhood Information) and so on, until you get back to the top About Me section again. Work your way down the list on each of the sections and by the end you will have a full blog of hyper local real estate content that WILL get you found on the search engines.

THANKS TO VANCE SHUTES OF SALINE MICHIGAN BLOG I WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THE BELOW OUTLINE CAN BE DONE IN ANY ORDER AND AT YOUR OWN PACE - YOU JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU HIT ON EACH OF THESE TOPICS WITHIN YOUR FIRST 60-90 DAYS.  THE MORE CONTENT YOU BUILD FASTER, THE BETTER.

* FYI: when I type FARM AREA, that means you insert the town, city, neighborhood where you sell.

Read also: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

This post is a MUST READ that will give you a proven formula that uses proven SEOed copyrighting techniques to help you build a perfectly structured blog post that will get the attention of both Google and readers.

Read also: 365 ¼ ideas for real estate blogging

Running out of ideas?  Here are a whole year's worth.

Read also: Real Estate Blog Content

Think writing real estate blog content is like pulling teeth?  Then check out this post on the 6 steps to building fail proof real esate blog content that generates leads and search traffic.

Category Recommendations:

I suggest creating the following categories if you don't already have them.  These are probably the most standard and universal categories on real estate blogs and the following content will fit nicely into one or more of them.

I. About Content

Build the necessary About Content first since you want it show up last on your blog.

1.       About Me/Us

Read also: How to write a killer real estate blog about page

2.       About Our Team (if applicable)

3.       How to choose the best FARM AREA Realtor for your next home purchase or sale

Most consumers, especially first time home buyers don't know the first thing about how to select a Realtor, so get down and dirty in a specific how to post that details what to look for in a Realtor, why a buyer/seller needs one and what to do if they find themselves in the wrong Realtor relationship!

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This is the deal. I am calling out my friend, Vickie Townes. I gotta love her because RSS Pieces was born out of our desire to put together a real estate website her. That being said, Vickie IS the WORST blogger on earth (and she actually prides herself on that title!). I tell people all the time that if Vickie blogs once every 4 months, we have to show up on her doorstep with clowns and a bounce house to throw her a party. So, why am I calling out dear, sweet Vickie? Its simple, I want to show you how a few RSS feeds from her MLS keep her blog alive, thriving and generating leads against all conceivable odds.

Over the past two years, I have tried everything to shame Vickie into blogging, but, truth be told, she was already a successful Realtor when we launched her blog, so she simply does not have the time to blog. Therefore, when we developed the RSS integration code for 1ParkPlace, Vickies site was the perfect crash test dummy. I mean she never used it! So, I threw up two RSS feeds, one for homes for sale in Cape Coral and one for condos for sale in Cape Coral and viola, 20 minutes later, Vickie had her first lead through 1ParkPlace. On the flip side of that, a Realtor that blogs daily, Greg Neuman is generating 100+ more real estate leads per month just from just his RSS feeds.

Read also: How to generate leads from your real estate blog: we have proof

Why do we work with 1ParkPlace as our real estate lead generator?

When it came to choosing which lead generator we wanted to work with, we evaluated them on two primary factors:

1. Does the search feature offer a map based search interface and the ability to drill down into neighborhoods

2. Will it allow us to pull custom searches in RSS format so we can have automatically updated indexable content on the blog page

One system stood heads and shoulders above the rest, 1ParkPlace. It is the lead generator of champions which not only offers the features we were looking for but also offers lead incubation services like drip email campaigns. So, in our relationship with 1ParkPlace, we have jointly developed a simple and automated system for integrating RSS feeds from MLS on blog pages. The result is: Google LOVES these pages! When I say LOVES, I mean it hearts and kisses these frequently updated, keyword rich pages. These pages account for almost 50% of all search traffic to sites that use them. And have proven to drive upwards of 150 quality leads per month for some sites.

FYI: IF YOU WANT 1PARKPLACE RSS FEEDS ON YOUR BLOG, YOU CONTACT 1PARKPLACE DIRECTLY AT 888.425.2300

What does an RSS MLS feed look like on a Real Estate Blog?

Check out Greg Nuemans RSS Feeds. He set one up for every condo complex he sells in, here are a couple:

Treo Condos for Sale

Gaslamp City Square Condos for Sale

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What is a widget?

A widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. Basically, it is cool tool that you can place on your blog by simply copying the code from another website and placing it on your site. They are great ways to easily and freely add features and functionality to your site without having to hire a web developer to build it for you.

See the new widget in the sidebar here at RSS Pieces: it shows SEO news feeds!  It's pretty cool and relevant to the content of the site and you'll probably find it useful.  That is exactl ow you want visitors to feel about each and every widget you place on your site.

Where do I find widgets?

There are about a million places to get widgets, but these are my favorite widget directories:

www.widgipedia.com

www.widgetbox.com

www.yourminis.com/minis

Where do I place widgets on my real estate blog?

You can put them anywhere from the posts to headers/footers. However, the most common places for widgets are in the sidebar.

What kinds of widgets are appropriate for a real estate blog?

OK, you don't want to go widget crazy and place every neat widget you find in your sidebar! Be discriminating in your widget selection and always ask yourself "would this widget be helpful for the consumer coming to my site to buy or sell a house?" If the answer is "no" step away from the widget, no matter how cool it is.  Widgets are there to improve the user experience and keep users coming back to your site, therefore they MUST be useful and related to the overall context of your site.

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A study conducted over the course of 20 years followed Harvard grad incomes and found that while 90% of grads made $X annually ($X was not defined) after 20 years, the other 10% made 10 times $X. What separated the 90% from the selected 10% was that the 10% wrote down their goals, made specific plans to reach them and checked in with those goals each year. So, what separated the millionaires from the average Joes was their ability to set and track their goals. The same thing holds true for your real estate blog. You must set goals and track your progress in order to reach your blogging potential.

Baseline:

When you start your blog, you are starting form a baseline of 0. You probably don't have any backlinks, PageRank or vistors.  Basically, you can't find yourself on a search engine with two hands, a flashlight, a compass and a map. And, honestly, that's good. You know where you are at. So, let's look at what types of goals you should be setting, how to plan to achieve them and how to track your progress.

GOAL 1: Establish credibility and create a voice for your real estate blog. Put a face to your business. The first truth of the real estate industry and blogging is that you, as a Realtor, are selling the same product to the same audience at the same price as you Joe Blow Realtor down the street. You should use a blog to somehow differentiate yourself from the other Realtors in your farm area. People have relationships with people not organizations. Blogging can give you a face and voice into your marketplace- it is a powerful tool that allows to connect with your audience.

Here are some other articles I wrote that can help you develop your "personal voice"

Learn to blog for local traffic

Humanizing a blog: how blogging is like bodybuilding

Blog Writing 101

GOAL 2: Blog frequently to drive RSS subscriptions and traffic. While most bloggers say the minimum post frequency should be 6 articles per week at no less than 250 words, that isn't always feasible for a Realtor. I feel a more reasonable minimum is 3 articles per week (350-500 words). Just make sure that those articles are indeed information packed and useful. If you don't have the time for quantity- go for quality.

Add a minimum of 3, 350-500 word posts per week or 6, 250 word posts per week

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