To blog or not to blog?

Reposted from the Hallmark Abstract Service blog here.

It’s an age-old question: How many articles is the correct number of articles to write in a real estate blog each week?

On the one hand I suppose it depends on how much you have to say on a given topic or how often you find subjects that you feel will be of interest to your readers.

On the other hand the process of blogging takes a certain amount of time that needs to be accounted for on any given day.

So while the answer to the question of the sheer number of articles you should be writing will depend on many different factors, one thing is clear: In our humble opinion, whether you are a real estate agent, title insurance company, plumber, painter or anything else, a company blog should in some way be part of your weekly routine.

A blog serves many purposes including the extremely valuable one of getting your company’s name out into the marketplace as an industry expert in a field that may be crowded with competitors, some of whom that may be larger and more established than your firm.

At the same time, a blog can provide your clients and prospects with company news, market information or other tidbits that you feel may be of interest to them.

As an example Hallmark Abstract posted articles yesterday that were not specifically related to the title insurance industry but that concerned topics we felt our readers might find interesting and/or enjoy reading about (Where are the most expensive rental apartments in the United States? (Interactive Map) and Time lapse video of the world record setting concrete pour in Los Angeles!).

And did our readers enjoy them? Well you can’t really reach out and ask but, in the world of the blog, traffic to a specific article is the ultimate arbiter of success and in this case I would say that the answer is yes!

From Inman News the following article will hopefully provide some guidance on the ‘art’ of business blogging (Note: If anyone needs any advice on starting a blog contact Hallmark Abstract at orders@hallmarkabstractllc.com):

‘How many blog posts should real estate agents be writing? We crack the code‘ by Christina Ethridge

A recent question from a client of ours: “What would you say is a good goal for monthly number of blog posts? I’ve heard weekly.”

And the ideal number of blog posts each month for a real estate website is: not a black-and-white answer. The thing you have to think about is this …

Is your blog site brand-new?

If your blog site is brand-new, you’ve really got to work and feed it. You need to make sure you’ve got enough of the right content that answers the questions and solves the problems of the visitors who come to your site.

Stop worrying about being fancy. Stop worrying about showing your tech edge. Just answer questions and solve problems.

Sit down, write out a list of the process a person goes through when buying or selling a house (or buying and flipping investment property, or buying and leasing out commercial property, or buying and renting multifamily property).

Focus on whom you want to work with. Don’t try to be all things to all people, because when you do, you’ll be nothing to everyone (or everything to no one).

Start explaining the process in short, 300- to 500-word blog posts. Make as many as possible. Some posts will be centered around a short, simple concept, while others will be longer, as some processes have more steps.

The idea here is to focus on answering the questions and solving the problem, while at the same time creating the content.

How much content do you already have?

Well? How much do you have?

Let’s just look at blog posts. How many have you written? Ten? One hundred? One thousand? The wondrous thing is, once you have a solid foundation of 50-100 blog posts, you are pretty much set.

No, you can’t just ignore your blog and rest on your laurels. However, you can stop focusing on creating blog posts and start working on promoting your blog posts, especially the most popular ones.

It’s easy to write a 300- to 500-word blog post that answers several questions about a specific process or topic, and pointing to the answers you’ve already given in your older posts (it’s called linking).

What kind of content are you publishing?

What do I mean? I’m not talking about the type of content (i.e., video, text, audio), I’m talking about the kind: blog post, e-book, white paper, training series, etc.

So what kind of content are you publishing? Blog posts help with SEO; e-books, white papers and training series help with lead capture.

Take your blog posts and create a longer e-book, or a white paper, or even better, a training series, and offer it up free to visitors. Have them sign up with their email address (lead capture!) to access these items.

How are you promoting that content?

Aside from letting your blog posts sit on your website and hoping and waiting for the search engines to find them, how are you promoting them?

Please don’t tell me you are automatically feeding them to one of the social media outlets in a form something like this: “Blog Post: LINK,” or “I wrote a new blog post, come read it: LINK.”

Who cares? Really. You haven’t intrigued anyone — you haven’t pulled at their attention.

Instead, switch it up. What is your post about? Pull something intriguing from it or reword a short catchphrase from it and do it that way.

Example: Stop writing blog posts and start doing this —–> LINK (as an example I would use to promote this post).

However, you must cater your promotion and verbiage to each individual social media network. What works on Facebook doesn’t usually work on Twitter — same with Google Plus and LinkedIn.

People are on different networks for different reasons. Apply to them in that format.

How often are you promoting your content?

Once? You don’t want to bug anyone? Stop thinking like that.

Promote your stuff multiple times in multiple places. Promote it days, weeks, even months later. Not daily, of course, but an excellent post written about a popular topic should be promoted until it’s no longer relevant. When it’s no longer relevant, make it relevant again.

So, back to the original question …

How many blog posts should I be writing each month? The answer is: As many as you need to answer the questions and solve the problems of your visitors who are interested in your services.