Blog Posts

You already know that producing top-notch content is a cornerstone of marketing a real estate company. Of course, high-quality content is also essential for you to maximize the ROI of your real estate blog or website.

But there is a big difference between knowing that quality content is essential, and knowing how to create it.

It can be very challenging to create engaging, entertaining, and insightful posts for your real estate blog that keep your readers (a.k.a. prospects) consistently coming back for more.

Truth be told, real estate blogging is it’s own quirky brand of both art and science.

You need to be able to keep your message fresh so that your readers have a reason to keep coming back for more, but you also need to have a certain standard of consistency to remain familiar.

The question is…how the hell do you do that?

With so many mediums out there publishing real estate content, how do you stand out enough to capture and cultivate a relevant audience, long enough to turn them into believers in your brand so that they want to hire you?

Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple one.

Maximizing your real estate blog’s reader retention is going to require you to deploy exceptional tact, strategy, planning, manipulation, arbitrage, and foresight.

In order to help you master the art of reader retention, I have prepared some important do’s and don’ts to keep your audience hungry for more.

What You Need To Do:

Implementing just one of the following tactics will help you increase retention some.

Implementing them all, will make you into a bitchin real estate blogger with a real fan-base.

Spice Things Up

You know how they say that variety is the spice of life? Well, it is also a key component of a successful real estate blog.

Make sure that you are utilizing as much variety as possible in the types and styles of the content on your blog.

For example, if you primarily post educational or informative articles to your real estate blog, try switching things up by incorporating more stories. People love stories and often feel a deeper sense of connection and trust with a business that shares their story with customers.

Keep It Consistent

There is no excuse for failing to publish fresh content to your real estate blog on a regular basis. At the bare minimum, you should be adding new content to your blog once a week.

Honestly, posting any less than once a week is hardly ever going to give you any results and will actually render your blog a waste of time and resources. After all, the ultimate goal of your real estate blog is to attract new and loyal clients to work with you and frankly, the more fresh and evergreen content you produce, the more likely you are to do that.

Even if you can only keep up with the bare minimum of posting to your blog once a week, try to make sure that you are doing so at the same day and time every week so that your readers have something to look forward to.

Be sure to research and measure the best day(s) and time(s) to release your posts, in order to maximize your reader retention and ROI.

Utilize Your Mailing Lists

Remember, you are a media company, before you are a real estate professional.

Just like with any successful media company, you need to be building a mailing(contact) list of your audience so that you can actively promote your real estate content.

Make sure that your readers have ample opportunity and incentive to subscribe to your blog’s mailing list so that they can be the first to know each and every time you release a new article.

Having article teasers emailed directly to your followers will significantly increase your reader retention rates and make it much easier for you to stay in the forefront of their minds.

For those of you that are producing significant amounts of content or are posting new articles to your real estate blog a few times a week, you may also want to send out a weekly summary email that showcases all of the articles from that week in case they missed anything.

Make sure that your emails utilize a strategic call to action to get your readers to share your article on their social media channels in order to help increase your reach and attract new subscribers.

Start A Series

Television and radio shows, books, and movies have been breaking up their content into installments forever, as a way to create a feeling of suspense and loyalty with their audience.

Just think about how revved up and antsy you get every time you sit through a season finale of your favorite show and are inevitably left with a cliff-hanger that leaves you desperate for more.

You can create that same sense of urgency and loyalty with your real estate blog by implementing installment blog posts.
This is actually very simple to do. All you need to do is take a strong piece of content (stories are particularly useful here) and split it up into strategic pieces.

You could also use a how-to post to do the same thing. For example, I could have made this how-to into a three-part series by breaking it up into three pieces: the do’s, the don’ts and the value of reader retention.

Give your blog series a jump start by setting up a high-conversion funnel to attract your ideal clients.

What You Need To Avoid:

There are more than just a few mistakes commonly made on real estate blogs that tend to alienate or scare away readers.
However, today I just want to highlight the two biggest reasons that you may be struggling to keep your audience engaged with your blog on a loyal basis.

Incessant Self-Promotion

For the love of God, please, please, PLEASE do not use your blog as a way to talk about how amazing you are at real estate!

Your blog is never the place for you to try and directly market yourself. When you do this, it is not only transparent, it is offensive, annoying, and unbecoming.

Self-promotion on your real estate blog is one of the biggest reasons your audience doesn’t trust you or anything you have to say.

Allow me to clarify this a bit further. I’m not saying that you can’t have strategic calls to action or internal linking that leads to conversions. In fact, I recommend that you do.

What I am saying is that your audience is interested in what brings them value, whether that be education or entertainment. The best way to retain them is to provide both of those things, without constantly plugging your products and services.

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Remember, if they are already on your real estate website’s blog, they are probably pretty aware that you are a real estate agent. You don’t need to constantly shove that down their throats. It’s already obvious.

The only thing you will accomplish by talking about what a real estate Mac Daddy you are is fewer followers.

Limited Length

I understand that it can be difficult sometimes to produce content for your real estate blog that is lengthy, as well as, chock full o’ value.

That is why it is so important that you select topics of substance.

While the occasional short-form length post will still bring you some value, it is the long-form content that truly drives engagement and fosters credibility. Not to mention, the fact that the internet gods at Google, favor long-form content over short-form every day of the week.

For more information about optimizing the length and quality of your real estate blog posts for reach, engagement, and conversion rates, read this article on the ideal length of blogs.

How Reader Retention Makes An Impact On You Personally

This might just be me, but knowing that you have a loyal fan-base of readers on your blog is truly an amazing feeling!

Getting to hear from your readers about how much they enjoy reading your blog, how connected they feel to you, and how much they look forward to reading your posts is humbling to say the least.

I want that feeling for all of you.

I know that blogging for your real estate business is essential and profitable because I experience those results with my clients constantly. However, one result than many real estate professionals often don’t anticipate when they start their blog is the potential to make a real impact on others.

The fact of the matter, is that content is really powerful shit you guys.

As real estate professionals, you are apart of one of the biggest and most important dreams of a person’s life.

Sometimes, I’m not sure if you all remember just how big of a role you actually play in the lives of your clients. By consistently creating valuable content that reflects your understanding of just how big that role is, you will establish sky-high reader retention and your business will reap the benefits.

How To Make Millions With Your Real Estate Blog | Sarah Layton | Real Estate Content Marketing