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I wouldn’t start a website today without a blog. Some people don’t even bother with a website and just use a blog. I don’t think I’d go route that either, but a website without a blog in today’s marketing economy just doesn’t make senses. Here are the top 3 reasons you need a blog today:

1. A blog increases your search engine saturation - A static website with 10 pages means you have 10 chances at getting ranked in the search engines for your keywords. Every blog post is a separate web page, however, and every time you write a blog post you create one more chance to achieve a high ranking for your keywords. After one year of daily blogging you’ll have 365 potential high rankings. With a 10-page website you’ll still just have 10 chances.
2. A blog is crawled more often - Search engines like fresh content. If you build a static site and only update it once a year then you will likely only see the search engine spiders once a year. But if you write to a blog every day then you’ll get crawled every day.
3. A blog is natural link bait - Inbound links count. You can build a static website and never get linked to, but if you write to a blog every day and you write useful, valuable content, you will almost always get linked to from other blogs, especially if you are involved in a community within a niche.

Why not start a blog and start taking advantage of these benefits today?

Here’s an excellent article for real estate professionals on the different types of blog that you can start for your local real estate market to help you market your business:

Real Blogging - 3 Creative Ways to Use a Real Estate Blog

By Brandon Cornett

Blogs are a simple and efficient way to publish information onto the Web. Blogging programs are flexible, versatile, easy to set up and even easier to use. Because of these benefits, people from many different industries are using blogs in creative ways to support their business.

Real estate agents have also found many effective uses for the blog. This is the industry I am most familiar with, so I would like to contribute a few ideas of my own. Here are five ways real estate agents can use blogging to support their business.

The author actually only introduces three types of real estate blog, but I’ll provide the other two. We have had many clients succeed with their real estate blogs and I know we can help you too.

1. Relocation Advice and Support

A savvy agent could create a blog catering to people who plan to relocate to the agent’s city. This would be a great way to keep these folks informed on local real estate issues. It’s also a good way for the agent to connect with future clients who are moving to the area. Blogging programs are easy to set up, so an agent could create one specifically for this purpose.

This strategy is perfect for areas with a high rate of buyer influx and population growth. For example, here in the Austin area where I live, there are a lot of folks relocating from California. If I were a local real estate professional, I would launch a blog that catered to these people. It would be a great way to generate new business, so it would be a worthwhile venture.

Relocation advice is one of the most popular types of real estate blog. Not only can you share information about relocating to your particular area, but you can also provide general relocation tips like this moving company does. In fact, why not partner with a moving company in your area to write a combined blog dealing with relocation advice? You can market both of your companies and share the expense.

2. Local Real Estate News Source

An enterprising and web-savvy agent could also manage a blog like a real estate news website. It could be hosted under its own domain with its own web address, separate from the agent’s main website. That way the blog could be named something appropriate, like the “Raleigh Realty Weekly” (or whatever is applicable to the agent’s locality and specialty).

This publishing strategy would benefit the publisher in several ways. First of all, the agent gains another source of Internet traffic, which can be valuable in terms of business growth. Theoretically, two websites could mean twice the traffic … and twice the leads.

This is also a great way to network with professionals in related industries, such as home inspectors, mortgage brokers, home stagers and more. These folks could even be invited to contribute information to the site.

A news blog would also help the agent establish a level of authority. For example, few agents would be able to say something like: “Jane is also the publisher of the Dallas Real Estate Review…”

Excellent advice. One well-written mortgage and real estate news blog is the Mortgage and Real Estate Blog. This is a blog that covers the mortgage, banking, and real estate industries. It also sometimes promotes real estate and mortgage blogs that use the Blog Content Provider services or that choose to sponsor the blog (contact BCP).

When it comes to blogging, the real estate industry probably has the most natural creative outlets for meeting the needs of its customer base. Why not use them?

3. Timely Market Updates

Blogging is easy, even for people with little or no web-publishing experience. As a result, blogs are ideally suited for updating an audience about timely topics. This is why a lot of realty professionals use blogging programs in the first place. They realize that their audience (home buyers and sellers) wants current information about the local housing market. So these Internet-savvy agents use their blogs to share information about local sales trends, housing prices, new homes for sale, new neighborhoods being developed, etc.

Blogging seems easy, but it really isn’t. You have to understand how to get attention for your blog and many self bloggers stumble through it without ever achieving any level of success with it. But blogging about your local real estate market is probably the easiest way for real estate self bloggers to get in on the action. Doing it this way will demonstrate your level of knowledge on your market, but it will also mean you are just like everyone else. You have to do something to set yourself apart from other real estate bloggers like Adrienne Francis has done.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the ways you can use a real estate professional can use a blog to grow his or her business. There are plenty of other creative strategies as well. The point of this article is merely to open your eyes to the possibilities of blogging. Not all of these ideas will be right for you, but one of them could be. So do some experimentation and see what you can come up with. Use the ideas I’ve listed above to get your creative juices flowing. Good luck.

Brandon Cornett publishes a number of websites related to real estate marketing, mortgage web site strategies and more. For more marketing tips, visit the author online at http://www.smartmortgagemarketing.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brandon_Cornett

This is a great article by Brandon Corbett, but as he said at the end, there are other ways you can make a real estate blog work for you. One other type of real estate blog that you can write is a community blog. Instead of focusing entirely on real estate, you can make your blog’s focus the entire community that you serve. You can lead people to the parks and rec department of your city, discuss neighborhood improvement, community service projects, or anything of service to your community. This type of blog will make you a pillar of the community and not just a real estate agent.

Another type of blog that you can write is a local listing blog. Why not make each blog post highlight a listing in your portfolio? This is relatively simple and can be done through RSS feeds or simply by copying and pasting the descriptions of homes in your portfolio listings to your blog. There will be a high degree of duplicate content with this type of blog, which may cause it to not do so well in the search engines, but because it is a blog and not a static website, you can reach your market through ping lists that are off limits to static web pages where real estate listings usually appear. You can essentially use this type of blog to target a market demographic that you can’t reach through normal organic search marketing.

There are other types of real estate blogs that you can put to good use as well:

• Hybrid - Combine one or more of these types of blogs into one.
• Specialty - Write a green real estate blog or target another specialized market segment.
• Use your imagination - There is no limit to what you can achieve through a real estate blog. Have an idea? Let us know. Blog Content Provider is ready when you are to do what they say can’t be done.

Many people still do not know what a blog is. As long as this form of communication has been around you would think that business owners would begin to understand. But they haven’t. Especially small to medium size business owners.

It’s makes sense really. You’re busy running your business. You don’t have time for blogging and you’re not sure why you should. Well, that’s understandable.

While you may not know what a blog is today, you will in a few years. I predict that in five years everyone who is online will be running a blog, or they won’t be getting much traffic to their website. A blog is the best way to attract search engine spiders and humans interested in your topic. But what is a blog?

I will attempt to define a blog in terms that you can understand: A blog is a new way of presenting a website using custom or off-the-shelf software that places the latest information on your website at the top and that also allows you to categorize your information according to keywords that are important to you and your target audience.

Does that confuse you? Let me break it down:

1. A blog uses special software - You have to have blogging software of some kind. There are various software packages on the market, but the one I recommend is WordPress. It’s free and relatively simple to learn.
2. Organizes latest information at the top of the page - Which means the oldest information is at the bottom and if it’s real old then it’s archived on separate pages.
3. Allows you to organize information by keywords - Blogs have categories and tags that allow you to organize your information. Categories are usually niche-related words that you can use to organize your blog posts that are related to each other, but which may contain different information. Tags are better for addressing each separate blog post such that you could have blog posts with information about different topics and placed in different categories that share the same tag simply because you mention a certain item in those blog posts even though the focus of the information is different.
4. You become a publisher - As a blogger, you have editorial control. You decide what’s important and what the focus of your information should be. You can write, edit, and publish the information on your blog or hire someone to do it for you.

This is a simple snapshot of what a blog is. It doesn’t contain everything you should know or can know about a blog. Consider it an introduction. If you want to see an example of a blog, you’re looking at one now. Blog Content Provider is a ghostwriting services that manages company blogs for a list of clientele in various industries. Our knowledge of SEO and Internet marketing can benefit you as every blog post has the potential to rank in the search engines for your key phrases. For more information about blogging, check out our website.

Blog marketing is really nothing new. It’s been hitting the mainstream pretty hard for the last two to three years, however. But we’ve still got years to go before we saturate the Web with too many blogs. Every minute a new blog is started and probably three times as many are abandoned. What can you do to make sure yours isn’t one of those left high and dry?

For starters, you need a plan. You need to define your blog’s purpose and hit it strong. Who is your target market? What do they want? And how will you move them to being customers?

While a blog is not the answer to every problem, it can become an integral part of your online marketing strategy. But you shouldn’t miracles. A blog is a pre-sales tool. It isn’t your primary closer and you shouldn’t expect it to be. A blog can, however, be used as an SEO tool as long as you don’t overdo and use it to spam the search engines with useless content. First and foremost, you’ve got to provide your human readers with valuable and helpful content. When you do that you increase your visitor count and you can drive traffic to your most important landing pages. But first you have to capture the traffic.

That’s where a professional writer comes in. To make sure your blog attracts traffic and drives traffic to your most important landing pages, you need an experienced blogger who understands SEO and sales strategies to get your blog to perform its mission. Do you have one your team?

By Angela Booth

If you enjoy writing, blogging is great fun. You can even turn your love of blogging into a great career. Blogging is a great “work from home” opportunity - you work the hours you please, you work from home, and you’re your own boss.

Blog jobs are springing up everywhere like mushrooms after rain. In this article, you’ll discover five easy tips which will help you to land all the blog jobs you want.

Here are the tips.

1. Focus on your own blog first - build your name and reputation

Your own blog is not only your “portfolio” showing your blogging skills and expertise, it’s also a way to get known. Please don’t just aim to be a generic blogger or writer. In blogging, you need to build your name and reputation. Once people know who you are, you can charge the rates you want.

Don’t forget to let people know you’re available for blog jobs on your blog. Create a “Hire me” page.

2. Use the blog job boards with caution - the best jobs aren’t advertised

Once your blog’s established, check out the blog job boards. However, use them with caution. Check out job posters on Google. If you can’t find anything on them - be very wary.

3. Write guest posts - for free - on other blogs to get known

Writing for free - to get known - is the key to being paid well to blog. Remember, you need to get away from the generic “blogger” tag as soon as possible. Spread your name and writing skills around. You’re laying the foundations of a great career.

4. ASK! Propose a blog to sites which don’t have one

Here’s a big tip. When you see a site which doesn’t have a blog, but which would benefit from one, propose a blog. Your proposal can be just a short note to the site’s contact email address, or it can be a full-blown business proposal.

I suggest a message of a couple of hundred words for your proposals - you’ll be amazed at the results you can get. One blogger is now happily blogging for a large corporation, both publicly, and privately, for the company’s internal blogs. He’s making three times his previous salary.

5. Use the free classifieds sites to spread your name

The benefit of the free classifieds site is that they’re free, and that they spread your name far and wide - remember, the more you get known, the more blog jobs you’ll get, and the more you’ll be paid.

Enjoy blogging: you can turn it into a fantastic career when you know how to get blog jobs.

Discover how to make money online by blogging with Angela Booth’s Sell Your Writing Online NOW at http://sellwritingnow.com/Home/training.html Not only will you discover how to blog, you’ll get complete training in how the Web works, so you can take advantage of the unlimited opportunities.

For free weekly writing information sent to your Inbox, subscribe to Angela’s Fab Freelance Writing Ezine at http://fabfreelancewriting.com/ezine/fab-freelance-writing-ezine.html and receive “Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report” immediately.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Angela_Booth

If you’re looking for a way to earn some extra cash and you like to write, put in your application for a blog writing job to Blog Content Provider.

It’s important to keep traffic flowing to your blog. Traffic is what makes you money. Without traffic you are simply writing into a vacuum.

But a blog doesn’t necessarily have to be the place where you close the sale. You want to talk to people, if possible. Or at least get them to visit your web site. A blog post is really about getting them interested in you. Then, you and your sales team can close the sale.
We had a real estate agent who let us write her blog for a while then she left because we didn’t make her any sales. But she did tell us that we sent her more traffic to her web site than anything else she’d ever done. Still, she was disappointed that we didn’t close any sales. Sorry. That’s not our job. Our job is to drive traffic to your web site so that you can close the sale.

That’s not to say that we won’t ever close sales with blogs. Sometimes we do. But we don’t make that our primary effort because most people prefer to speak to someone and visit a website before they buy something. Especially in real estate. People aren’t going to buy a house from a blog.

So keep your expectations realistic. And keep in mind these 5 ways that you can drive traffic to your blog so that you can get their attention and close the sale:

1. Search Engine Optimization - There is no substitute for SEO. Have a list of keywords that are important to your business and use those keywords in your blog posts. Link to your website pages in your sidebar using those keywords.
2. Social Bookmarking - Pick some popular social bookmarking sites and make friends. Bookmark your blog posts and bookmark your friends’ blog posts. Be a social butterfly. It works.
3. RSS Feed - Set up an RSS feed for your blog and invite your readers to subscribe.
4. Use A Blog Promotion Newsletter - Not everyone understands RSS. But they will read your blog from an e-mail or newsletter. Offer them one. For free.
5. Write Articles - Articles are a great way to drive traffic to any website, even a blog. Write articles and include your blog’s URL in your author resource box.

I titled this ‘generate and write’ as there is a difference between the two. Generating is the art of finding a topic and developing the content. Writing is the final act of putting onto paper what you have generated. So how do you ‘generate and write’ good content? Here are a few keys:

1. Enjoy what you are doing.
   There is nothing worse than sitting down to try and come up with a post when your heart is not in it. You are better off walking away for awhile and coming back when you are ready to start. If your heart isn’t in it - it will show when you do finally come to write the content.
2. Prior knowledge is gold.
   Select topics or subject areas that you have a reasonably working knowledge of. Research is much easier and your knowledge of the subject matter will shine through when you do write your post. Using prior knowledge often means you can sit down and plan an article in minutes rather than hours.
3. Experience.
   If prior knowledge is gold then experience is the diamond in the crown. You can generate so much content just from your experiences in a particular field. Putting together a ‘how to’ article is so much easier when you have actually gone through the process yourself.
4. Research.
   The final key. If you are generating content from experience or prior knowledge then the research part becomes so much easier. You know what you are looking for and more importantly, you will know when you have found it - your not floundering around in the dark trying to find answers that ‘might sound good’.

It all comes back to point number one. If you generate and then write content based on what you already know, the research comes easily, and you enjoyment level rises and the results flow through to your writing. If you are trying to generate content in an area that you are not familiar with, you find frustration creeping in and with it a dislike of the process. It all becomes a chore and, believe it not, that mindset makes the job harder and eventually flows through to the writing.

Generating and writing good content should flow easily from the mind through to the keyboard and onto the page. If it doesn’t flow naturally or if every word has to be dragged out then perhaps you need to go back to square one and find a more suitable topic.

Sometimes it helps to have someone else say it. I recently found a great article on blogging and use your blog to generate leads. This coincides with an earlier blog post I wrote on the same subject.

This is an article by David Hugh that confirms our own philosophy regarding blogging and sales:

How to Use Blogs - Blogging to Generate Leads For Your Home Business - Network Marketing?

By David Hugh

Blogs can be a terrific source for leads for your home business &/or mlm business. Here is how you could do that. First of all, you can add a sign up form on the side bar of your blog to collect the name and email address of your blog visitor. You could offer a free report or ebook or something of value in exchange for their contact information. Maybe your upline or the company you are an mlm distributor for has something for you to give away also.

The key point is you are trying to collect names for further follow-up and you can use your blog as a way to accomplish that. You would need an autoresponder too. This gives you a chance to deliver the free information you promised.

It also gives you the opportunity to follow up and present more useful information. This is called relationship building and is an essential part of building a successful mlm business and converting some of your subscribers into distributors. It has been said a person has to hear about something up to 11 times before they act on it.

So now you have the basics down about how you do it. Let’s go back and talk some more about blogging. You can successfully use your blog to talk about your home business &/or mlm business as well as other topics related to MLM as an industry, internet marketing, and other things related to home business and work at home.

Incorporating a strategy of offering free training and information is a great way to generate leads from your blog and the traffic you get to it. This is a very soft sell approach to giving first and receiving later.

Getting traffic to a blog is for another training article, but suffice it to say that you will need traffic. That means promoting your blog with every free, nearly free, and paid advertising method you can come up with and afford.

Generally setting up a Blogger.com is the fastest and easiest way to get a blog up and running. It is owned by Google and is very user friendly. For a little more comprehensive blogging platform look at setting up a hosting account and using WordPress. It offers many plugins that are very search engine friendly and make adding social bookmarking to your articles easy as well.

Because of the many benefits of blogging you should get one started and use it to generate leads and to build a mailing list for future new distributors as well. In addition, you may want to obtain an Autoresponder to automate your business via email marketing to bring your business to greater heights.

David Hugh is an expert internet marketer and writes on various topics of work from home business & home-based business. To get your secrets & tips for work from home business, visit: http://www.workfromhomessecret.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Hugh

Blogging is a good form of lead generation because it’s about building relationships. You don’t have to make every single blog post a knock-down world-changing event. The idea is to use it to build relationships with your target market and customers. Effective bloggers are consistent with their message and provide a place for people to go to build community and learn about a particular subject they are interested in. If you don’t have the time to write your blog yourself, you can always hire a ghostwriter. But it’s essential that you have a tool that helps you generate leads.

There is good content and there is great content. The difference being?? Good content will often satisfy a reader - great content will not only satisfy them, it will have them talking about it and wanting to be a part of it, either by commenting or by referring and linking. How do you write great content?

1. Unique - unique does not necessarily mean finding a new topic that no one else has written on - it is however about putting a unique spin on a topic. Fifty people can report the same story, but one will always stand out. It stands out because they have put their own unique stamp on the story.
2. User Focused - people search the internet looking for something. Provide that something for them to find. Focus on what people are looking for and you will find your readers.
3. Honesty - don’t try to write about topics you have limited knowledge about unless you are prepared to do the research. Write crap and you will get a crappy reputation. People will always find you our when you try to write in areas that you have no knowledge off.
4. Well Written - you don’t need to be an English master to write good English. Simple spell checkers will solve many problems. Having a proof reader also helps. Writing in a natural style using plain English will win you more readers than by trying to bamboozle them with highly technical terms.
5. Easily Read - make your content easily read, easily scanned and easy on the eye. This is a combination of font style, size and content design. Bullet or numbered points are easy to scan. Using bold or italics where appropriate enables easy scanning.

These five steps will ensure your content is good - very good. What about great? Great comes from the heart and sole. Not every article can be great. However, if they are not on the road to being good, they will never be great.

We live to think we provide good content with that occasional touch of inspirational ‘great’ content. If you struggle to write regular content for your sites, talk to us at Blog Content Provider. We have a range of solutions that may help you achieve a regular reader base.

If you’re like me, you sometimes have a hard time explaining to people what a blog is. They don’t quite get it. Especially if they don’t spend a lot of time online. But it really isn’t hard and your customers can benefit if you tell them just what to expect from a blog.

First, you have to get them to understand that it isn’t illegal or unethical. It’s simply a daily tip sheet or communication tool to bring you closer to them without having to speak directly face to face or by phone every single day. You can communicate with all of your customers at one time, and even potential customers, through your blog. Once they understand that concept then they will be interested in reading your blog.

But how do you get them to subscribe? Well, that’s a different question altogether and if they didn’t understand what a blog is then they definitely won’t understand RSS. You’ll get frustrated trying to explain that one. But everyone understands e-mail. And if you want your customers to be able to read your blog posts in their e-mail inbox and they’re interested in the convenience of doing so, rather than try to remember your blog’s e-mail address every day, then a blog promotion newsletter just might be for you.

Find out more about blog management and blog promotion newsletters from Blog Content Provider.