With the decimated housing market fueling the Great Recession, savvy realtors have realized they needed to “up their game” with their online marketing in order to keep food on the table for their families. Where did they turn? Why, blogging of course, among other things.

I had an opportunity recently to sit down with one such forward-thinking realtor-blogger, Jamie Miller. She’s actually a former employee of my former company Netconcepts, and she’s the agent for this beautiful property in Madison Wisconsin (yes, it’s my home). I asked her to share some pointers for realtors who want to get into blogging. Here are Jamie’s tips:

• Use your blog’s name to target geographic locations. I named my blog Madison Wisconsin Living.
• Also consider optimizing your blog around condo communities, like Miami Condo Lifestyle does, to target Google searchers. Individual posts can be condos for sale within their respective communities.
• Post all your property listings to your blog, and have a separate property listings category. This provides an excellent source of regular content for readers and the search engines.
• Don’t remove properties once they’ve sold. Simply update the listings with the word “Sold” — it’s a great way to communicate to prospective clients how many properties you’ve sold.
• Develop an authoritative voice in your local market for all things home sales. For instance, The Boston Real Estate Blog publishes local real estate news and stats.
• Leverage your blogging content into Social Media sites, such as your Facebook pages or Twitter profiles. It takes time to source and author content for blogging, this content should be shared across additional marketing channels in order to get the most bang for the buck and maintain message consistency.
• Don’t forget to also incorporate typical Real Estate Website features and functionality into your blog, such as Featured properties to highlight the agents own properties for sale, a Property Search that pulls from a MLS (multiple listing service), and informational pages on buying and selling homes. For example, My Westside LA has great posting categories that feature content targeted to buyers and sellers.
• If you’re a blogging newbie, it’s really easy to get started. Simply purchase a domain or use an existing domain you own (don’t just use a subdomain of wordpress.com or blogspot.com), purchase a hosting package (Ed. note: Bluehost is the one I use), and perform the famous “5 minute WordPress install” (actually it’s more like 5 seconds!)
• There are some great, cost-effective real estate-specific themes for WordPress you can choose from, including RealEstateThemes.com, Agent Press, and Villa Grande. Or, just Google for “wordpress real estate themes“.
• Install the following WordPress plugins: SEO Title Tag, Breadcrumb navigation, Google Analytics, and WPtouch iPhone Theme.
• Before you start writing, first outline your content plan for the blog. The plan can include things like new listings, local real estate news, tips on home selling, etc.

So first let me dispense with the obligatory acknowledgment that I’m sorry I haven’t blogged here in ages. I have wanted to often, but one thing and another…

On thing I’ve wanted to write about is Twitter. I’m hooked.  So far, I’ve seen precious few Tweets (as I gather its adherents call themselves) use it especially well for business communication. Mostly people complaining about being stuck in airports. Like the rest of us might find that interesting. One who does a good job keeping the posts interesting and on topic is Steve Rubel, not surprisingly.

Another shout out I’ve meant to give is the IAB’s new blog, the IABlog, under the stewardship of the IAB’s new, compelling leader, Randall Rothenberg, who also has his own blog. I’ve gotten to know Randall a bit in the past several months, and he’s a fun guy, a great intellect (excellent panel moderator), a strong leader for the IAB and really interested demonstrating the new directions of online media with initiatives like the IABlog.

When you click through to the blog, you’ll notice a photo of yours truly serenading the original IAB chairman Rich LeFurgy.  The uke is my new hobby for the past year-plus. Soon I’ll have to do a round-up of the many photos like this that already exist of me playing the uke at industry cocktail parties on blogs around the web.

The real point of this post, though, is that I’m currently at the IAB’s Annual Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0, in Phoenix, AZ. So far, it’s one of the most exciting conferences I’ve ever attended, really. Attendee list is who’s who of the industry. As I type this (blazing fast free wifi in the conference hall; see, they get it!), Randall is interviewing Susan Decker, president of Yahoo! and Jerry Yang, CEO/founder of Yahoo! You can see the other speakers yourself here, but they are consistent with these two.

Steve Rubel is here and we’re both giving running commentary on Twitter, plus the IABlog is providing updates, too. Keep your fingers crossed that they’ll post videos of the content. Wenda Millard’s speech last night, accepting the mantel as new chairperson of the IAB, was really great. I’ll post the link of the transcript or video if it’s made available.

You can do search marketing for the good of mankind, so why not blogging for the good of mankind? There are issues-focused blogs like the environmental blog TreeHugger. Now there’s a network of blogs for good, founded by Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing Group. Way to go, Paul! It’s a brilliant idea; I hope it really turns into something big. Doug Kaye (founder of IT Conversations) is another blogger/podcaster with a social conscience… he’s started the podcast channel Social Innovation Conversations.

I too am inspired to blog for the benefit of mankind and the planet. The way I have decided to make a difference is by starting a blog to give visibility to ideas that I and other bloggers have that will make the world a better place in some way. It could be an idea to improve the environment, to help out a charity, to advance human rights, etc. I’ve just launched this blog, which I am calling Changes for Good. I would love to get some of you bloggers as contributors. Please contact me if you are interested. And of course, any and all links would be greatly appreciated.

The disaster of Hurricane Katrina is mind-boggling. My heart goes out
to all those affected. Like so many folks, I have a special feeling for
the city of New Orleans. Inconceivable to think of 80 percent of the
city being underwater.

I’m writing a
chapter in my book that considers the crossover of blogging from the
realm of the personal to that of small business and corporate
America.

One reason is human behaviour. In a crisis, people increasingly are turning to blogs to get an account of what’s really happening. They
expect a blog to tell them in an in-the-moment, ragged, authentic voice, typos and all. They
expect to see photos and video, however raw and unedited. It seems more real than the packaged report of a reporter in a wind-whipped anorak.

That’s what mainstream adoption of a new technology or phenomenon
means. It’s based on reflexive behaviour, not on a carefully planned
marketing strategy.

The connection to business is obvious, don’t you think? Just as we turn
to Google and an online search to answer almost any question these days
( …when was the last time you trekked down to the public library?), so
blogs and blogging are becoming a habit.

Useful Links for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief & information

KatrinaHelp wiki

Blog for Relief (see Paul Chaney’s post)

NoLa.com blog (dozens of stories submitted by survivors)

List of disaster relief agencies

Good buddy Nick Aster, a great web designer and Movable Type jockey, who designed this site, as well as some Gawker Media properties and others, has just launched a blog with a conscience: TriplePundit, which he describes to me in an email as "geared towards MBA students and other interested people, and is a digest of daily information, oriented toward a triple-bottom-line (people, planet, profit) aproach to business."

I love that mission statement, both for its concision and its purpose. I just wish he’d post it to the site, as the current upper-left blurb doesn’t say it so well: "Bringing out the green in green: Triple Pundit is a daily serving of relevant, business focused news that will help you integrate the well-being of society & environment with success in business." (For one thing, I’d never heard the term "triple bottom line" before, though he writes about it like it’s something familiar; I do, however, LOVE the idea.)

In any event, way to have at it, Nick. Best of luck!

Link

Interesting example of the network effect of blogs. The About statement explains:

Using the power of weblogs for open-source charity. Don’t just fight evil: Strengthen the good.
STG is the nexus of a network of bloggers committed to raising awareness for small charities around the world. Every three weeks this space highlights a new “micro-charity”—a small, inspiring charity, one with a real face and where $1 makes a difference—and the bloggers in the network link to that post, sending traffic, and awareness, the charity’s way.

Link

Another good example of a non-profit blog, Earth Share of Washington is an information hub for 65 member environmental education and charitable organizations in Washington State.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a profile of the organization’s blog and how it has helped it drive a lot more traffic and attention to the web site’s other resources.

Link

Interesting piece about a British school that has introduced roughly half of the students in the school to blogging, including those as young as seven, and the students’ academic performance, particularly in the area of IT, has improved markedly.

BBC: The Seven-Year-Old Bloggers

Infrequently updated blog for an education association:

Working towards the revitalization of American education in the 21st century by reorganizing educators in a professional and entrepreneurial association.

Link

Frequently updated blog that’s been around for more than a year as of this post. Here’s from the organization’s about Us page:

The mission of the International Association for Learning Alternatives is to lead, promote and support learning alternatives and choice options.

This mission signals our interest in seeing that parents and students have choices of educational programs to meet their needs, interests, learning styles and intelligences. We believe that one-size education program does not fit everyone and that education is best served by having choices for all.

Link

Blog by the president of Citizens League, which a public policy advocacy and lobbying group in Minnesota:

The Citizens League promotes the public interest in Minnesota by involving citizens in identifying and framing critical public policy choices, forging recommendations and advocating their adoption.

Link

Chris Lydon

National Public Radio personality Chris Lydon is one of the only NPR folks blogging, as far as I can tell. His is a political blog, born of a two-hour NPR show on the subject of how blogging would affect the 2004 presidential race.

Link