Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Any real estate professional who has a blog wants his or hers articles to be shared, to spread the word and get traffic. We all see articles with hundreds of shares, retweets or +1s, and we could wonder “why did that article get so many shares?” Here are some tips to help you get more shares for your realtor blog content.
Write on topics you master, write well documented, smart, useful articles. Take in consideration any tip you find on this topic: choose a catchy title, write an appealing intro and a well argued article. Use bold titles inside the article, bullets if the case – write the article so that it is easily read. You can highlight the important points, transform them in quotes, and include relevant photos now and then. Those highlighted sentences will often be quoted when sharing the article! Think of all those articles you like and share, analyze what you love about them, what made you read them and share them, and follow a similar pattern, using your own voice and style, but complying with the rules/elements that help you create great content.
As simple as this recommendation might seem, I invite you to look at many blogs, both famous and not so notorious, and see how easy it is to share that content. You guessed: people don’t have to struggle to find those sharing buttons, they have to be visible – either a sidebar, or places at (the beginning and) the end of the article.
Yes, you are the first person that will promote that article. So you should try to create an optimal audience in your social media profiles – aka create connections that could be interested in your articles and generate shares/retweets etc for your real estate articles. Remember that you cannot ask your friends to share your articles all the time. Maybe you’ll do that when you launch the blog, maybe even two-three more times, for exceptionally articles, but you cannot do it constantly.
And then you have to go beyond your personal profile or business page. This means that you have to find the proper groups/chats/communities and participate in the discussions – leaving comments, answering questions, recommending articles (written by other people) – so that you could use these groups/chats/communities to share your articles. If you are on Facebook, find relevant Facebook groups (real estate focused in your area/focus) and ask to join them. Also, find groups that allow bloggers to share their content (some people might be interested.) Similar for Google+ (that has Communities) and LinkedIn (groups.) On Twitter there are many Twitter Chats – discussions that take place regularly on Twitter. Join (by using that chat’s hashtag) and get involved, interact with others.
Attention: don’t share the article in all of the groups/communities in a matter of minutes. Create a social media sharing plan (aka share the article at different hours and days (if it is not some news that “expires” but an article that has the same value for a longer period of time) in different social media networks or platforms. Also, use different titles/descriptions for your article – don’t share it everywhere with the same intro. Maybe add a dedicated message that takes in consideration the focus of that group/community, or use a different bullet/argument in your article (a different “quote”), or just make small changes, but don’t share an article in 10 Facebook groups and 10 Google+ Communities with the same description.
Violeta is a Realty Biz News contributing writer, specializing in social media and online marketing techniques. Contact her for special needs projects or contributing news articles at [email protected].
