Encouraging Submissions

[hicrc]

We have about 125 agents, in 7 offices. We're just starting a company blog for our site. I'm getting a lot of people in the company asking who's going to do the writing and how are we going to encourage agents and staff to submit articles to the blog?

I want people to submit just about anything/everything... I don't care if it's a good recipe using local ingredients, or an upcoming event on the island, promoting a new listing, info about a community... I think it can all be categorized and it can all contribute to the blog.

I'm going to put this out there at our annual meeting, and would really appreciate suggestions or hearing from others that are doing more of a corporate blog with multiple contributors. How is it working out for you?

[Halfdeck]

I don't care if it's a good recipe using local ingredients, or an upcoming event on the island, promoting a new listing, info about a community.

When people subscribe to a blog (and that should be your primary metric of success: number of RSS subscribers), they often subscribe for specific reasons. To keep readers' interest, you need to decide what your blog's topical focus will be. Don't publish posts about anything and everything until you get enough of a community going for people to care about your personal life.

My recommendation is to subscribe to a few real estate blogs and read them every single day. You'll find yourself starting to ignore certain type of posts as waste of your time while you'll find yourself gravitating toward others. Besides developing an inner compass, blogging is about participating in a conversation; if you don't read other blogs, you don't know what people are talking about.

What you do need to do if you're going to invest time/money into a blog:

- Decide on a posting frequency and stick to it. You can post more frequently and build a bigger user base faster if you have several people writing posts at the same time instead of having just one person blog.

- Lay out a content strategy. Half of your posts will probably revolve around the current buzz, but the other half should be timeless posts that people will link to 10 years from now.

What you don't want your bloggers to do is to blog when they feel like it.

[hicrc]

To keep readers' interest, you need to decide what your blog's topical focus will be. Don't publish posts about anything and everything until you get enough of a community going for people to care about your personal life.

I agree - since this blog would have many contributors, I would definitely not allow anything of a personal nature anyway. However, I thought it could be useful to allow them to post things like - a recipe using local ingredients, a community event, various kinds of community info, etc.

Perhaps there should be a separate blog for this kind of stuff? But... I'll be lucky, frankly, to get any submissions at all. For some reason it's not taken very seriously.

My recommendation is to subscribe to a few real estate blogs and read them every single day. You'll find yourself starting to ignore certain type of posts as waste of your time while you'll find yourself gravitating toward others. Besides developing an inner compass, blogging is about participating in a conversation; if you don't read other blogs, you don't know what people are talking about.

I'm reading several RE blogs daily. I think having a couple of people in upper management start doing this could help tremendously.

- Decide on a posting frequency and stick to it. You can post more frequently and build a bigger user base faster if you have several people writing posts at the same time instead of having just one person blog.

- Lay out a content strategy. Half of your posts will probably revolve around the current buzz, but the other half should be timeless posts that people will link to 10 years from now.

Excellent suggestions!! Thank you very much.

What you don't want your bloggers to do is to blog when they feel like it.[/QUOTE]

[Halfdeck]

However, I thought it could be useful to allow them to post things like - a recipe using local ingredients, a community event, various kinds of community info, etc.

If you're targetting a local audience, I don't see a problem with that. Recipes may turn off some male readers, but then again it also depends on how often you publish recipes. If the bulk of your blog posts are recipes, obviously I'd expect a 80% female readership (just a guess). If you create a balanced calendar of topics, you may be able to attract national interest and still stand out from the rest of the national real estate bloggers that only talk about the current buzz (interest rates dropping, activerain business deals, trulia outperforming zillow, etc).

I think your feedburner stats will be your best friend. You can gauge the success of a post or a set of posts by looking at changes in the number of RSS subscribers. MyBlogLog also will help you see if any heavy hitter bloggers are visiting your blog. Sometimes who reads your blog is more important than how many.

If your main goal is to increase backlinks and improve search rankings, then you would probably have to walk the tight rope of creating an original blog (talking about local events, recipes will help) while staying relevant enough to build up a sizable following and a national readership. If your goal is to build trust with potential clients and drive sales, then that I think would require a different approach.

[CarlaM]

Community Blogs are great, useful info for those who live in area and those who want to move to the area. Agents who farm that community should have lots to blog! Community events, community features, community schools... you get the idea.

Blog to your audience - 1st time home buyers, 2nd home (vacation) owners, absentee home owners, renters....

[Philman]

I would have to recommend with the comments on here. If you just use a 'shotgun' approach (writing about anything and everything) on your blog, it is going to be very difficult to obtain and maintain a loyal reader audience. While it is encouraged to branch off on different subtopics, you should really focus on one broad topic so that readers can get a clear idea on what you blog is all about.