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

1. Blogging
Shannon Register
Register Real Estate Advisors
Spring, TX
@ShannonRegister

3. 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”

4. • 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 (Makes it a priority)
• Effective blogging  Readers  Contact
info  Leads  Closings

5. Blogging Platforms
Real Estate
Free Self Hosted
Specific
(multi-user) (inexpensive)
(multi-user)
Wordpress.com Active Rain Wordpress
Blogger Trulia Movable Type
BlogSpot Realtor.com Joomla
Tumblr Drupal

6. Most Successful* Real Estate
Bloggers…
• Have an integrated website
• Self Host (Wordpress or similar platform)
• Learned to adjust the site themselves /
minimal code
* Generates a significant portion of their business from
their blog

7. 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

8. How to Get Started
• To get started
– Domain name
– Hosting package w/ database
– FREE software
• To reach the goal ($)
– Learn some technology
– Willing to spend the time
– Build a platform that works

9. Tech Tips
• Get out of your comfort zone
• Learn some code
• Tutorials / videos / books / trial and
error
• Learn to add posts and pages yourself
– Self publishing = freedom
• Learn to make videos
• If it were easy, everyone would do it

10. 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

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

12. 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

13. • Google owns YouTube
• Content is King / Post daily
• Vary your content
• Blogs feed search engines which drive
traffic

14. Variety
• Variety of Style • Variety of Subject
– Videos – What to blog about?
– Photos
– Text
– Links
– Quotes

15. 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
• White Board Monday

16. Longevity of a Blog
• Shelf life of a tweet = seconds
• Shelf life of Facebook post = minutes
• Shelf life of a blog post = YEARS!

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

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

19. 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!

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

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

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

23. Now You Have Traffic, Now What?
• CONVERSION!!!
• Draw them deeper into your site.
• Ask them to connect. Calls to action
– Social Media
– Opt-in email lists
– Comments
– Contact forms
– Capture contact information
– IDX Search for listings
– eBook offer

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

25. 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.

26. No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
“I tried blogging for
almost a month and I
didn’t get anything out of
it”
-Frustrated Agent

27. Half Effort less than Half Results
Results
Search Engines
started driving
major traffic
Most quit at 6 at 8 months
weeks
Time

28. 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
• Connect
– Turn visitors into clients
– Convert to sales

29. Free Tools
• Wordpress.org
– Tutorials
– Themes
– Plugins
• Filezilla – FTP client – allows you to
transfer files from computer to web
server
• Gimp or Paint.net– FREE photoshop

30. Secret to Blogging
• Supplemental marketing
• Focus on consumers with quality content
– They will find you eventually
• Consistency
– Takes time
– Cheap
– Easy
• It only works if you do it
• Don’t outsource

31. Results
• Thought Leadership
• Credibility
• Personal SEO
• Create a following
• Build your database
• Shortens sales cycle
• Lead Generating Machine

32. 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