If you’re a Real Estate Agent, you need a real estate blog. And not just a new-listings blog, but an informative-resource-for-your-clients-and-prospects blog. Oh, and it needs to be updated consistently.

Before you dismiss a real estate blog as too much work, too time-consuming, or too technically difficult, hear me out. I have five compelling reasons for every agent to build a strong blog. And I can show you how to add a blog to your existing WordPress site in just 5 minutes, or create an entire website from scratch in just an hour!

By the end of this post, you’ll be clambering to start (or improve!) your own real estate blog.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick note: this post was originally published in 2018; this is the new and improved version.

A Real Estate Blog Improves Your SEO For Better Visibility

What does that mean? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It basically means Google is more likely to find your site and present it as a higher-ranking search result when people Google “real estate”.

Think for just a moment about how you Google. You scan the first few returned search results. Maybe even the entire first page. How often do you go to the next pages? Have you ever gone past page four of the search results?

That’s why SEO is so important. When people look for real estate agents in your area, high SEO will make you one of the first results they see.

Simple enough, but think of the implications:

• The next generation of buyers and sellers (the generation that doesn’t go to lunch without Googling or Yelping first) finds you instead of your competitors.
• Out-of-area agents looking to refer clients to an agent in your market also see you when they search for reputable agents to trust their leads to.
• You have automatic credibility with anyone searching for real estate in your market. People trust Google to return the best results, so if Google lists you on the front page of the search results, people (buyers, sellers, or out-of-market agents) will trust that you are the best.

The great thing about strong SEO is that people come to you. We’ve all spent countless hours chasing new business. SEO brings the business to you, even while you sleep!

How Does a Real Estate Blog Help with SEO?

We have other things to discuss today, so we won’t get bogged down in the details, but here’s a broad, simple explanation of how a real estate blog helps with SEO.

Google has a sophisticated algorithm that searches web content for relevant keywords. It then analyses the web pages with those keywords for credibility. It’s considering factors like:

• How much content is on this site?
• How often is this site updated?
• Are people sharing or commenting on this content?
• Does this site link to other sites, and do other sites link to it?

How can you make your site check all four of those boxes? By adding a real estate blog and consistently posting to it!

A Real Estate Blog Demonstrates Your Expertise

With every blog post you write, you have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise to potential clients, and to other agents who may be looking to refer some work to you.

You can show that you know your market in particular by posting about local market conditions. A monthly market update with a recap of the sales statistics for the month, followed by a quick analysis of the data to make it meaningful to your audience, will give you immediate credibility.

And you can showcase your general real estate knowledge by posting how-to’s for buyers and sellers. These posts will help your clients navigate the transaction, for which they will be grateful. And the posts can also be used to set client expectations so, for example, they don’t panic when an inspection returns fifty “issues”.  

Additionally, consistent posting over time shows reliability and a commitment to your work. Posting every Friday like clockwork, for example, indicates that you’re organized and dependable. It gives the impression that you’re on-top-of-it (whether or not that’s always the case!), and people can trust that you won’t flake on them. And as you continue to post week-in and week-out, people will see that you’re in this for the long-haul. No one will mistake you for a fly-by-night agent.

This all works to make you the authority on local real estate. Buyers and sellers will want to work with you because they know you know what you’re doing. And out-of-area agents will be able to refer leads to you with confidence, knowing that your work will reflect well on them.

A Real Estate Blog Increases Engagement with Your Prospects and Clients

Not only does a real estate blog help people find you, and make them want to work with you by demonstrating your knowledge and authority, it also increases engagement with your prospects and clients. In multiple ways actually.

Blogs increase engagement by:

• Helping you stay in front of your audience with new weekly blog posts; you get multiple monthly “touches” and none of them involve mailing fridge magnets
• Potentially opening a dialogue through the post comments
• Making it easy for people to share your content with potential leads via social media
• Providing a comfortable way for the next generation to reach out to you; they aren’t going to pick up the phone and call, so you want to be available for their questions through social media, email, and blog comments

More engagement means more opportunities to cement yourself as the agent in the minds of your clients and prospects. When it comes time to list or shop, guess who they’re going to go to. To the agent, they’ve already been informally communicating with of course!

A Real Estate Blog Builds Your Email List

This might not sound like a big deal, but building your email list can be a phenomenal opportunity. And it’s one that most agents never take full advantage of.

Here’s why you need to build an email list:

• You can send notices to your email list when you publish a new blog post for increased touches and opportunities for engagement
• You can email your list when you get a new listing, increasing visibility
• You’ll already have a list of warm leads if (when!) you decide to expand into additional income streams

That last bullet point is particularly important. Even if you don’t currently have plans to offer products (like books or courses) or services (like property tax appeals, home repairs, or rental property management), you might decide to in the future. And when that day comes, you’ll be glad to have a list of email addresses of people who like you and are open to hearing about your new offerings.

Having an email list will make your future ventures much easier, and most likely, much more successful than they would be otherwise.

How Does a Real Estate Blog Build Your Email List?

A real estate blog can build your email list by giving readers an option to provide their email addresses to “subscribe” to your blog. Their email address is then stored with the email management provider of your choosing. You’ll have the email management provider set to automatically email your list every time a new post is published as a prompt for them to check it out.

But blog subscription sign-ups alone aren’t terribly effective. You want to give your readers more of an incentive to share their email address with you. That’s why sophisticated bloggers offer lead magnets (commonly just called “freebies”).

It can be as simple as a pdf checklist. Something like:

Just enter your email address to have my free home-buyer’s checklist delivered to your inbox!

Your reader will enter their email address, it will get stored with your email management provider, and your email management provider will automatically email them the freebie. And you now have their email address for any email campaigning you decide to do in the future.

You’ll see a real-life example of a lead magnet toward the end of this post. And if you want to learn more about adding lead magnets to your site, check out How to Build Your Real Estate Mailing List.

A Real Estate Blog Provides Increasing Returns

One of the best features of a real estate blog is that it provides increasing returns. You create a post in two hours, and that post exists as a lead-generation source for years to come.

Just think:

The more time goes by → the more content you create,

the more content you create → the more easily Google can find you,

and the more easily Google can find you → the more easily prospects can find you.

But it keeps getting better…

the more easily prospects can find you → the more easily you get new leads,

the more easily you get new leads → the more deals you close,

and the more deals you close → the more your business grows and your income increases.

But this only happens if you take the initiative to create your real estate blog now and commit to posting consistently.

Bonus Benefit: A Real Estate Blog Can Bring You a Totally Separate Income Stream

Most agents never take their blogs to this level.

But you’re not most agents. You’re one of the few who are reading this Real Estate Side Hustles blog post, actively looking for ways to grow your business and your income. So I’m pretty sure you’re going to be one of the few interested in this opportunity!

Of course, monetizing a blog is a topic all its own. So I have a separate post dedicated to showing you how to make money with a real estate blog. It’s a must-read if you want to make your lead-generating blog generate its own income.

The Goal of Your Blog

Ultimately, all of this works together to serve your audience, generate more leads, build your business, and grow your income.

For now, a real estate blog is a competitive advantage. According to the NAR, only 11% of agents have a blog. And many of those existing blogs are trash.

One of my income streams is to write posts for agents to publish on their blogs as their own work. So I’ve examined hundreds of real estate agent blogs. I usually find one of two things:

• Inconsistent posting. This undermines your ability to convey dependability and commitment to your work in service of your clients, old and new.
• Content mill posts. These are 500-word throw away blog posts written by the lowest bidder and sold to as many agents as will buy the post. They provide no value whatsoever.

My professional estimate is that only 2% of agents have a blog with consistent and unique content. You can edge out 98% of your competition simply by writing one post per week! Now imagine how you can stand out if your posts are actually good! If you have good grammar and provide valuable information to your audience…You can make a name for yourself as the local real estate expert in no time! 

I’ll provide some resources to help you get your blog off the ground at the end of this post. But first, we should address the elephant in the room: what if you don’t have time to write blog posts? Or you just hate writing?

If you don’t have the time or desire to write the posts yourself, you can always hire someone to do it for you! As I mentioned, one of my income streams is blog content writing, and I regularly accept new clients. You can learn more about my writing services at www.michelleclardie.com if you’re interested (shameless plug? Or a useful example of using one’s blog to promote one’s other income streams?!).

As previously stated, for now, blogs are a competitive advantage. But one day soon, they will be a necessity for any serious real estate professional. Make sure that when that day comes, you already have a well-established blog with months of archives to show that you had the foresight to start before your competition and get a head-start in the Google rankings race.  

Get a Small Win

Great victories are made possible by small wins. Before you move on with the rest of your day, get a small win!

Today’s small win challenge is to commit to building a blog that will improve your business.

If you have a blog page, but haven’t been consistently posting, make a commitment to invest in consistent posts. At least one post per week. Agents often ask what they could possibly have to post about every week. If you need some ideas to get started, just enter your email address below to get my list of 100+ Blog Post Topics for Realtors® delivered to your inbox!

Need more of a head start than just a list of blog topics? You can purchase complete real estate blog content calendars on Etsy! Topics have already been scheduled, keywords have already been researched, and titles have already been crafted for you! You’re several steps closer to having a successful real estate blog.

Now…what if you already have your own website, but no blog page? A blog page can easily be added in no time! I have step-by-step instructions for adding a blog page to your WordPress website in just 5 minutes. If you’re not using WordPress, you may want to re-think your web strategy. WordPress (which is free, by the way), has become the industry standard for content management. You can read more about it on the Resources page.

And if you don’t have a website of your own yet, now is the time to get one! Check out How to Build Your Own Real Estate Website.