Takeaways:
- Blogging is a marketing tool to educate and engage Web visitors as well as to convert traffic into leads and sales.
- A lead bait is not a bribe — it is an added value to an already existing or derived value you give to your readers in exchange for their contact details.
- An excellent post with stellar promotion will lead to opportunities to network and build your email list.
I have been a real estate agent for five years now, and I have developed a real estate digital marketing strategy, which involves turning my blog into a lead generation machine.
Blogging as a marketing tool is not only used to educate and engage your website visitors, but also to generate traffic and convert that traffic into leads and sales.
Having discovered how to blog effectively and successfully, here are my top blogging tips to write an awesome post. The post will be engaging, it will get shared and linked to — and ultimately it will convert visitors into leads and sales.
1. Research a topic
OK, now you have this great blogging idea in your head. First, write the points down, and then Google that idea to see what already exists about that topic.
Don’t assume your idea has never been written about before. The key here is to Google your topic idea, see what your competitors have written about the topic and make it better.
Open all the top 10 listings, go through them to see if there are any shortcomings such as outdated or inaccurate information or lack of clarity and direction.
By making yours better, you will be able to generate social shares and backlinks to your blog post.
2. Add keywords to your post
After coming up with a better blog post than your competitors, the next step is to add keywords to your post so that you can rank high on search engine results pages.
Your target keyword should be in the title and the first sentence of your post.
Then use synonyms, keyword variations and acronyms on the rest of the body of your post to make it look natural.
Use Google to find synonyms, word variations and acronyms of a keyword.
3. Optimize your post for social sharing
Add social share buttons on the bottom and side bar of your post. Another way to optimize your blog post for social share is to add a click-to-tweet button like we have here at Inman, add social share buttons to images and a floating sidebar share button.
4. Offer a lead bait
A lead bait is not a bribe — it is an added value to an already existing or derived value you give to your readers in exchange for their contact details.
A lead bait is more like trade by barter. It is the only way you can entice your post readers into giving up their contact information.
Offer your blog visitors lead bait to capture their contact details for nurturing. Contact information includes but is not limited to name, email and phone number.
Here are examples of real estate lead bait:
- E-book
- Consultation
- E-course
- Webinar
- Case study
- Market statistics and industry report
- Buying and selling guide
5. Promote your post
Geeks in the SEO industry believe if you write a great post, people will find it, link to it or share it. But doing that alone will get you nowhere.
A great post alone will not get you higher rankings on search engines and more traffic and social shares.
An excellent post with stellar promotion will lead to all of that and more opportunities to network and build your email list.
Here are some tips on how to promote your post:
- Reach out to influencers in your niche to share your post.
- Reach out to those who shared your competitors’ content to share your post.
- Use Facebook-sponsored post to promote your post.
- Use guest blogging to promote your post.
- Mine your competitors’ backlinks.
- Ask your blog readers to share your post.
- Use tools such as Google Alert and BuzzBundle to jump into discussions related to your post topic.
- Promote your post on forums and Facebook groups.
Getting it right with blogging will help you build your email list, which you can nurture into sales or use to get referrals. More leads and referrals equal more business and a happy real estate agent.
Do you have any blogging tips that have worked for you? Please share and continue the conversation in the comments section below.
Ibemere Obinna is a Real estate agent and a digital marketing expert. He blogs about real estate digital marketing and SEO on his blog, realtymarketingtool.com.