I saw this great blog post and wanted to pass it along!
~ Dara

Food For Fodder – 101 Real Estate Blog Topics

Teresa Boardman, in response to comments in her most recent article, has whipped up a tasty treat for all real estate bloggers.  Grab a fork, and enjoy.

Food For Fodder – 101 Real Estate Blog Topics
By Teresa Boardman

In my last post on the Tomato I wrote about writing being the biggest obstacle for real estate professionals who want to have a blog.

Some of  our readers commented that figuring out what to write about poses the greatest challenge.

It is hard for many to come up with topics so I wrote a list of 101 topic ideas for real estate professionals who want to have a blog to expand their internet presence and to meet the home buyers and sellers who live inside their computer.

Potential clients are in your computer right now and are looking for great agents and lenders to work with.  The idea is to build enough rapport so they will stop hiding and give us a call or send an email.  Lets face it, consumers believe we all have horns and a tail and we need to put them at ease and establish a little credibility before we can earn their trust and their business.

The best posts come from the every day life of a real estate professional.  There is also what I call “the real estate bloggers conundrum”:  If we spend too much time writing, we don’t have time to sell real estate, if we don’t sell real estate, we don’t have those experiences to write about.  Our day-to-day lives and experiences in the real estate industry are filled with blog food, look for it, find it and start typing.

Here are 101 ideas:

1. A story about your neighborhood
2. Local business, and send them a copy.
3. Your pet
4. Go through your email, is there a question or comment from one of your clients that can be made into a post?
5. Listen  to your buyers, they give you blog food.
6. Listen to your sellers, they give you blog food
7. Conversations with other agents can be a source of great content
8. Architecture or housing styles in your area
9. Historic buildings
10. Market statistics for your area, including average prices and absorption rates
11. Read the blogs and look for ideas to build on or spin a new idea from..
12. Take a picture write a post.
13. Home maintenance
14. Take a walk
15. Senior housing
16. Pet  friendly housing
17. Staging ideas
18. local events
19. Your hobby
20. A closing
21. A lender who did a great job
22. Things that go wrong with real estate sales
23. Home owners insurance
24. Gardening and landscaping
25. Your city council
26. A new development
27. Lofts
28. Decorating ideas
29. Real estate industry news – with your own unique commentary
30. Mortgages news
31. Interest Rates
32. Credit scores
33. Consumer hoaxes and scams
34. First time home buyer programs
35. Working with seniors
36. Working with Baby Boomers
37. Second homes
38. Investment properties
39. Foreclosure
40. Property flipping
41. “Rehabbing” a home
42. Home energy conservation
43. Final walk through
44. Equity stripping scams
45. Agency
46. Real estate companies
47. Transportation & Parking
48. Schools
49. Churches
50. Day Care
51. Paint and painting
52. Pest control
53. Good neighbors
54. Bad neighbors
55. Over priced homes
56. The home buying process
57. The home selling process
58. Book review of a real estate related book.
59. Real Estate Laws
60. Real estate terms
61. Moving with children
62. Moving
63. Moving with pets
64. Places to eat
65. Places to shop
66. Commentary on local news stories
67. Commentary on local public policy
68. Tell a story about a client who was fun to work with
69. Write about what it is like to be  a Realtor
70. When taking classes find something you learned that could be used as a post.
71. Write off topic humor
72. Environmental issues
73. Land lord or tenant issues
74. How to sell a house
75. How not to sell a house
76. Building trends
77. Parks
78. Art
79. Home safety
80. Review web sites on local or real estate related topics
81. Property taxes
82. Crime
83. Open houses
84. Trends in kitchen design
85. Area events for children
86. The local zoo
87. Where to play golf
88. Coffee shops
89. Women home buyers
90. Advice for FSBO’s
91. Interview some one
92. Local  real estate market trends and observations
93. Furniture
94. Investment scams
95. Mortgage fraud
96. Types of mortgages
97. Home owners associations
98. Attend a public meeting and write about it.
99. Week end getaways
100. Credit repair
101. Fair housing issues

I once wrote an entire post about socks, and not only got by with it but got a great response from it.   Those posts help show our human side and make the horns and tail less obvious.
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Klahanie Port Moody website home page screenshot

Have you considered launching a niche website for your target market? We’d be happy to talk to you about your options!

This is the page where you will be able to view the event, and there are three specials at the bottom of the page, only live today and tonight:

http://www.reachd.com/live?utm_source=realtysupport&utm_medium=Vendors&utm_campaign=Meetup_Live

If you’re coming down to the Meetup, see you there… guest speaker is Vic Jang, Broker Owner of Sutton West Coast.

Want to know how the meetup went and what I learned? Pop me an email.

1) Search Engine Optimization enhancement.
Retail price $495.

This tool unlocks your ability to change page title, keywords, description and is used to help you bring your website to the attention of Google and other search engines.

Having this tool alone won’t do anything, but filling all the fields will, and there are other things you can do to start being found for your online target marketing.

This tool is now free for any of our clients on the $57/month or $77/month Ubertor plan. This tool has to be ordered through us.

If you are on the $37/month or $10/month plans and are interested in this tool,  your options are: a) buy it at $300 wholesale from us, or b) bump up to the $57/month plan (calculate which would work best for you).

You are also encouraged to consult with us on how to have the most effective online advertising plan, though of course just ordering this tool through us does not oblige you to anything or cost you anything!

2) Reciprocity Pages (AFCs).
Retail price $10/page or $43.75/five pages.

This tool puts a list of reciprocity listings on your website, like http://www.kitsilanohouses.com/KitsilanoHomes.php

If you already have AFCs, contact me and I will have your billing for this cancelled!

If you want to have AFCs, let’s talk about what would work best for your website/situation and I’ll order them for you.

Ubertor won’t bill you for new orders and will stop billing on existing ones, but hopefully you won’t mind paying for my time to process these cancellations or orders.

Contact Dara for details:

free-seo-afc@realtysupport.ca

604.215.3301

We use realtycontact.ca for our email drip marketing.

About a year ago, I finally got to the part of my to-do list where I got all my clients into a database and started emailing them regularly.

Each time I’d send out an email, we’d get 10-20 replies – sometimes on the topic we’d emailed about and sometimes about something different. The point is, it reminded our clients that we were thinking of them, and wanting to stay in touch.

Why has it worked for us? I think the key is that these were all people who we’d done business with or been in touch for one reason or another. There’s an option to unsubscribe. We don’t email them often.

Want to talk more about this as an option for your business? Drop me a line!

- Dara Sklar

Here’s a quick video about my thoughts on the process. 

Check out our website and let me know what you think! www.realtysupport.ca

In my opinion, the biggest bang you can get for your buck in real estate marketing, is professional photos and video.

Why, you ask?

1) Professional photos make EVERYTHING look better – your MLS listing, your mlxchange printout, your feature sheets, your property.

2) Real Estate Video tours are IN DEMAND. People want to see how nice a property is. What’s the best way to get lots of people to your open house? Post a video tour of something they’ll be dying to see in person.

It’s simple. And, for $225-250 you can have both professional photos and a lovely video tour. What more could you want?

Ok ok, there’s lots more to want, like offers on your listing… but if your marketing budget is limited, this is where you should start.

Other things to consider:

3) Custom feature sheets. I’ve had clients who actually get listings because visitors to their open houses were impressed with their marketing material.

4) Mailwalk postcards. This is especially good if you specialize in a particular area. How better to let everyone know about you, than to show off the sort of marketing you do!

5) Internet marketing. Post that video tour and those photos on craigslist and other classified sites for the world to see! Great for traffic to your site, great for traffic to your great listing.

6) Video internet marketing. Try it. Post a video that includes your name in the title. As long as your name isn’t John Smith, you’ll probably show up on page one or two of google in a matter of days!

7) Email Blast marketing. Email your listing to your fellow real estate agents.

Does this sound good but you don’t know where to start? Try us… we’re a one-stop real esate marketing power machine, just waiting to take on your next listing.

Meet RealtySupport.ca – we’re like hiring the best assistant you’ve ever had. We are web and computer savvy, we know graphic design, SEO, and we take wicked photos and video. Really, could you ask for more?

Listing Marketing packages start at just $40 per listing. Offload a little bit of work or a lot of work… but hire “an assistant” for as little as $40 per listing. Get some marketing started… good marketing of one property always contibutes to our clients getting more listings.

Full Photo & Video Tours are just $225 for condos/townhouses and $250 for houses/duplexes… and we offer Next Business Day turnaround! Really, the best deal around.

Be a good marketer, or hire us to get you on track!

When I listed my condo, I chose a Realtor who:

- hired a staging consultant for us (we then chose to stage fully)
- had professional photos and video done
- sent postcards out through the neighbourhood with my listing and open house information
- had professional feature sheets on hand for visitors
- did a floorplan
- held an agents’ open

Our condo sold for $32k above asking (and it wasn’t underpriced)!

Why settle for less marketing than that.

If you’re selling your home, hire smart.

If you’re a Realtor, market smart!