Shannon Register, Broker/Owner of Register Real Estate Advisors in SPring Texas and the host of "Houston Real Estate Radio" on AM700 KSEV, presents about blogging to the NAR Tech Edge event in Houston and Las Vegas. http://rrea.com http://rrea.us/nar

2. No matter what, the very first
piece of social media real
estate I would start with is a
blog.
Chris Brogan, Founder, New Marketing Labs
and Author of the New York Times Best-seller
“Trust Agents”

3. • 10% of Realtors blog regularly (NAR 2011)
• Most of those do not blog effectively
• The most common blog post is on the
agent’s listings
• 3% of blogging agent’s business comes from
their website.
• 80% of my business comes from my
blog/website

4. Blogging Platforms
Real Estate
Free Self Hosted
Specific
Wordpress.com HAR Wordpress
Blogger Active Rain Movable Type
BlogSpot Trulia Joomla
Tumblr Realtor.com Drupal

5. Which to Use? – My Online Strategy
• Blogging as an SEO
Strategy
• Wordpress Self Hosted
• Use real estate multi-
author blogs for
syndication
• Fully integrated website
using WP as platform

6. Most Successful* Real Estate
Bloggers…
• Have an integrated website
• Self Host
• Learned to adjust the site themselves
* Generates a significant portion of their business from
their blog

7. Beauty of Wordpress as CMS
• Plugins
– Adds functionality to your website
– Tens of thousands available for almost anything
• Themes
– Themes are a set of files that determine how a
website will be displayed.
– Usually the only modification that needs to be
made to a Wordpress website

8. Why Bother?
I am a literary genius that feels
obligated to grace the world with
my wisdom.

9. Search – a marketing
method that didn’t exist
a decade ago, provides
the most efficient and
inexpensive way for
businesses to find leads.
John Battelle, Journalist and Founder,
Federated Media Publishing

10. Free Blog / Non-integrated Site
SuzieTheRealtor.Blogspot.com
CONTENT
BLOG
TRAFFIC
SuzieTheRealtor.com
“MONEY SITE”

11. Self Hosted Integrated Blog
BLOG/“MONEY
SITE”
COMBINATION
CONTENT
SuzieTheRealtor.com
TRAFFIC
LEADS!

12. The Center of Your Online Universe
Drive traffic to your website!
On air
Stationary
promotion
Business
T-shirts
cards
LinkedIn Signage
Email
Twitter
Marketing
YouTube Print to web
Facebook Website/Blog EVERYTHING!

13. A steady stream of high quality
content + a search engine
credible website = TRAFFIC!
Traffic = LEADS!
Leads = $$ CLOSINGS! $$

14. Syndication
Active Rain
HAR Trulia
LinkedIn Realtor.com
Other News
Facebook
Sites
Blog
Over 55 Social
Twitter Bookmarking
Sites

15. Syndication
• Automate where you can
– HAR.com
– Social Media
– Social Bookmarking
• Generate backlinks
• Drive traffic back to your
site

16. Now You Have Traffic, Now What?
• CONVERSION!!!
• Draw them deeper into your site.
• What are you asking your readers/visitors
to do. CONNECT!
– Social Media
– Opt-in email lists
– Comments
– Contact forms
– Capture contact information
– IDX Search

17. Measure Everything!
• Google Analytics
• Other analytic software
• Google alerts
Where is your traffic coming from?
What are your clients searching for?

18. But I can get a blog for free…
• Ticket to NAR Tech Edge - $49.00
• .com domain name for 1 year - $12.99
• Hosting package - $4.25 / month
For the price of your ticket to this
event, you can have a domain
name and 8.5 months of
hosting.

19. TINSTAAFL
“I tried blogging for
almost a month and I
didn’t get anything out of
it”
-Frustrated Agent

20. TINSTAAFL
Results
For me this was
Most quit at 6
at 8 months
weeks
Time

21. TINSTAAFL
• Half effort yields less than half results
• It can take months for search engines to find your
blog credible
• Post daily!
• Vary your content
– Embed video!
– Pictures
– Links
• Once you hit credibility, things will happen quickly

22. TINSTAAFL
• Get out of your comfort zone!
• Learn how to do this.
• The ability to self publish = not being
held hostage by your website guy
• The easy road is the one everyone else
is taking

23. What To Blog About?
• Listings • Vendors
• News stories • Other thought
• Events leaders
• Neighborhoods • Radio shows
• Economic issues • TV segments
• Educational posts • Viral videos
• Areas of town • Local politics
• Local neighborhood • Market trends
events • Allow guest posts

24. Key Tasks
• Steady stream of high quality content
– Articles
– News Stories
– Blog Posts
– Segments (audio and video)
• Syndication
– Biggest Impact / Least Effort
– Automated / Semi-automated
• Conversion
– Turn visitors into clients

25. Free Tools
• Wordpress.org
– Tutorials
– Themes
– Plugins
• Filezilla – FTP client – transfer files from
computer to web server
• Gimp – FREE photoshop
• Paint.net – FREE photoshop
• Text Editor
• Firefox (web developer plugin)

26. Results
• Thought Leadership
• Credibility
• Personal SEO
• Create a following
• Build your database
• Lead Generating Machine

27. THANK YOU!
Shannon Register
Broker/Owner
Register Real Estate Advisors
RREA.com
s@rrea.com
@ShannonRegister or @RREAdotcom
on Twitter
281.288.3500
For a copy of these slides, visit
RREA.us/NAR