I Don’t Have Time To Blog, and other things agents say

Starting a blog is one of the easiest ways to single-handedly increase your website’s SEO without forking over big bucks to professional SEO companies.

How does it work? Put simply, the more new content you add to your website via your blog, the more Google (and other search engines) “see” your website. What does this mean to you? Well, if the content you are creating is relevant to the purpose of your website (for example, if you’re a real estate agent in Louisville, Kentucky, and you consistently blog about Louisville, Louisville real estate, Louisville shopping and dining, etc.), then you will gain traction with the search engines and steady rise in the (page) ranks.

The number one objection I hear from real estate agents against blogging is, “I don’t have time.” (The second is, “I don’t know what to write about.”)

What if you change the way you think about blogging? What if, instead of thinking of blogging as one more thing you “don’t have time” for or one more thing on your to-do list, you think of blogging as a form of prospecting?

Blogging satisfies prospecting requirements in a few ways:

• It focuses on information and data, two things consumers crave. If you are providing information the consumers want — about how to buy or sell a home, about your market area, about the communities you serve — you are fostering a feeling of trust and credibility and encouraging those consumers through authentic means to begin to think of you as a trusted source and, ultimately, as their real estate agent.
• It reaches new audiences, who will most likely find your content one of two ways — by referral from another reader (through direct referral to your site or through a social media share) or by a truly organic process (i.e., googling the topic and finding your site).
• It creates a community of readers who will keep returning if you consistently provide relevant and varied content.

Consumers crave data and information. They will get it somewhere if they don’t get it from you. Be the source.

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