Here is your nine step real estate blog checklist that has helped successful real estate agents maximize their blogging efforts. Print and use at least three times a week.

1. Title - Use keywords and attention grabber text.
2. First Sentence - Mirror the keywords in the title and jump right into the subject.
3. Length - Not iron clad, but 200 - 400 words. Let the entry’s subject matter dictate length. Some longer entries can be more effective is divided into several entries.
4. Keywords - each paragraph should have one of your specific target keywords or key phrases.
5. Visual relief. Keep paragraphs to two to four lines. Long paragraphs tend to create a mental block to reading. Think “visual bites”.
6. Re-read and edit. Check that verb tenses match and any run-on sentences get condensed.
7. Spell and Grammar Check. Use Word’s spell check. The grammar checker - not so much, since writing how you talk is more acceptable in blogs.
8. File name - try to use the keywords in the title in the file name as much as possible. Separate words with and underscore: like_this.
9. Graphics - Add a real estate image, if at all possible, that ties into the entry.

Two quick IMC tips for maximizing your real estate blogging and neighborhood news efforts. Follow these tips and you will please both your real estate website visitors and the search engines.

1. Provide 2 to 3 internal links in your blog entries and real estate news articles. An internal link is one that connects back to a page on your real estate website. Typical pages to link to are the Contact Us, guestbook, bio page and homepage. These links tell the search engines that the pages you link to are popular and the website visitor has a better ability to contact and get to know you.

Remember to hyperlink phrases that relate to the page you are linking to, not just a “Click here” place in a sentence. For instance, to link to the home page or a guestbook page, use the “your city real estate” words in a sentence as the anchor point. This tells the search engine what you are linking to. This is versus a link to “homepage” which is too generic to convey any information to the search engine as to why your website visitor is following the link.

2. Use pictures in your entries. Yes, you can upload graphic images, usually JPEGs, with your blog entries and real estate articles. Check with your real estate website developer as to the best size. You will probably need to edit the graphic in Photoshop or a freeware like GIMP to size the graphic, but once you know how it is a fairly simple process. Having a dozen or so graphics that you can readily upload to your real estate website adds both “eye candy” for your website visitor. Added benefit: the image is given a title, which is another area to prominently place keywords or phrases.

While the home buying market gets hammered with “national” real estate news, mortgage brokers and real estate agents are struck with the thought “It is not that bad here!” Then they notice the national news’ self-fulfilling prophecy affecting the local real estate markets. Solution: Become your own real estate news source.

Real estate blogs are the fastest way to reach your markets. Just as the national news feels compelled to beat their statistically misleading drums, real estate agents need to beat their own drum for the opportunities and real estate news in their local markets. Simple compare and contrast stories between the strength of local housing versus the deep price hits in markets like San Diego become wake-up calls to local investors and buyers.

Put on your “customer viewpoint” marketing hat and write blog entries that address the fears that new home buyers face. National news stories of new home owners suddenly getting faced with mortgages that are higher than their home’s current value puts a damper on buying. A blog entry that such a home buying scenario is highly unlikely in your market is necessary to counter the misleading national stories. Using your real estate blog as the “bully pulpit” can be just the beginning.

Once you have a series of articles on your website, contact your local newspaper and get them to work on an article and encourage them to quote your blog entries.

Real estate agents can also leverage their blogs by sending email newsletters with a short summary of the local real estate market and providing a link to the blog for more information. This step can achieve two items: educate your market and spur traffic to your real estate website. Of course, if they forward your email, so much the better.

As with marketing real estate on the Internet, providing news through your real estate blog rides the current wave of the public’s behavior. Just as more people are searching online for property, more people seek their news online. Interestingly more people believe a news blog more than the main stream media. Use the Force of the Blog!

As part of your grand real estate marketing campaign, you write an informative entry on your real estate blog detailing the changes in your local market of homes for sale…but no readers contact you. One small step can make your time blogging time well spent. In fact, there may be several areas in your marketing where one small step will increase your leads and your Internet exposure.

After you have written your blog entry (and checked the grammar and spelling) you upload it to your site. In your blog editor, look for an icon that looks like chain links. This is for adding hyperlinks - a coded link to another page on the Internet. By highlighting words in your article, such as your city’s name, your real estate agency’s name or the words “please contact me”, and clicking on the hyperlink icon you can link these words to your real estate website’s Contact Us page. In marketing, this is anticipating needs and shortening the steps. If your article triggers a website visitor’s interest, make the path to turning them into a lead easy - provide a link to your contact information. Use this technique when you add articles to your neighborhood news tool also.

Similarly, never send out an email without including your real estate website’s address in the signature. There are several reasons:

1. Reinforce your brand (as reflected in your domain name), and
2. Use every avenue to drive traffic to your website (how many of your emails get forwarded? OK, so sending really good jokes is now marketing!).

One of the ways Google measures your real estate website is by the traffic it generates. So while search engines lead traffic to your site, conversely, when the search engines detect your website getting a lot of traffic (directed from business cards, print ads, etc.) it benefits your real estate website’s search engine ranking.

Another underused area is answering machine messages. Include an invitation on your business answering machine to visit your website to search your listings, blog entries, and buyer and seller guides.

These are just a few ideas to examine the real estate marketing steps you are already taking and tweaking them to make the most of the opportunities.

“Permission Marketing” author Seth Godin gave several great tips for your real estate blog in a recent interview with Wordtracker.com’s Academy, a leading keyword analysis company. Tips from a successful writer who understands marketing and creating loyal customers as well as writing are always helpful.

• Story telling is most effective when told right. “The story has to begin with something compelling enough that you want to learn more about the story. The mistake marketers make is that they tell all the story at once, take it or leave it. People need to realize they have to ensure an unfolding dialogue.” Your stories can be like the jokes in a Crosby-Hope Road Show, a theme that keeps popping up and changing to add liveliness to the scene. Your client’ testimonials can be a great source of anecdotes that add to your unfolding story.
• Create your own feedback loops to spur improvement or cover popular themes. When Seth was asked if he felt under pressure to always be coming up with new ideas, he responded “I do it because I want to do it. Every time I am interacting with the outside world I‚m thinking about why that interaction happened, whether it was a good one or a bad one.” If your entry is a “good one”, the result may be your client receives information helping them with the selling or buying process or impels them to respond to your call to action. Listen to your clients when they give feedback on your real estate website.
• Sit down and write, don’t let the perfect kill the good. “I am not a perfectionist. I think that I am very focused on doing the best I can quickly and fixing it to make it better. A perfectionist doesn‚t do things quickly, it takes them too long to shift.” A short entry with good information that carries your personal enthusiasm is much better than sporadic short pieces that have been crafted with the word crafting ability of Edgar Allen Poe. Plus, by the time you get that blog entry perfect, the real estate market may have shifted!
• Content is king. Asked about search engine optimization (SEO), Seth pointed out there are no short cuts. “The best SEO is great content. Don’t do that and you don’t get much.” The reason real a estate blog helps with your search engine ranking is that it is a great opportunity for adding useful keyword-rich information to your website.

Wordtracker offers a free keyword search trial at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. You can type in the keywords you are planning to use in your real estate blog entry and see what variation is the most used one on the search engines. Then you can modify your blog entry to use that keyword variation.

You can get great ideas and content for your real estate blog entries from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) website’s research section. As a Realtor, you are familiar with the extensive realtor.org website. The NAR continually adds articles and real estate market reports and survey results to its real estate research website. This is a great resource for real estate blog entries - find a home buying or selling subject and digest it for your particular real estate market.

The NAR’s real estate website also serves as a comprehensive clearinghouse for real estate associated articles in their Field Guides section. Each Field Guide is a list of articles on a particular subject from various real estate periodicals and government websites (such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

As a NAR member, Realtors® also have access to “members only” articles that are very informative and usually accessible by paid subscription to another website or organization. Use your benefits!

Be sure to check out the “Top Ten” Field Guides. From these ten lists you will find plenty of content and keyword-rich information for your clients and website visitors. An additional benefit of the electronic library, is that you can cut and paste quotes for your articles. This both saves you typing and adds a trust building third party quote to your blog entry.

An additional benefit to checking the NAR research is that you can get more ideas of what untapped markets are in your back yard and how you can tweak your internet marketing.

Note of caution: follow the “fair use” guidelines of the copyright laws - besides legal ramifications, Google is watching and doesn’t reward content reappearing.

Do a little real estate research with your helpful NAR and then let your muses loose!

Your real estate blog entry is your fastest, most cost-effective way to get your real estate message out to as many of your clients as quickly as possible. If your blog has RSS feed subscribers, they receive notice of your blog entry very quickly. With this tremendous communication tool at your fingertips, remember these blog basics for making the most of your real estate blog entries.

Put your expertise into your writings. As an experienced real estate professional, you are in the best position to educate the home buying and selling public. By using your blog as an educational device, you position yourself both as an expert and as a thought leader. Real estate expert status is quickly translated into boosting your trustworthiness with people who are virtually introduced to you through your real estate website.

Your real estate blog creates a history of all your teaching lessons. With the ability to sort and archive your entries by topic, build your “knowledge Base” library to educate your current and future clients. Many companies, such as Microsoft, have found their websites’ searchable “knowledge base” to be the best way to provide their customers answers around the clock. Your real estate website’s visitors will benefit from your blog’s knowledge base.

For cost effectiveness, a blog utilizes space already included with your current website and your real estate web design consultant has templates available. Your main investment is your time. Fifteen minutes a day or a few days a week helps you consistently keep your brand active on the Internet. Your thoughts and insight uploaded on your site will instantaneously be available to the people searching to buy their next home in your market.

Best of all, you are your own boss! You can set the amount of time and when you want to unleash your real estate writing muse. You can address topics that arise that day in the real estate market news or typical home buying or selling concerns of clients. The conversational format makes it natural to bounce around between different real estate or mortgage topics.

If you have not added a blog to your real estate website, now is no better time to increase the benefit your clients’ receive from using your website. Once your website company sets you up, it is no harder than sending an email. Only you are sending it to the world.

When providing material for your real estate website, beware of two copywriting traps that diminish the effectiveness of your website content.

Trap #1: Writing for other real estate agents.
Every profession develops shorthand words, initials or acronyms for part of their daily process or products. Keep in mind that your new home buyers, which may be 40% of the traffic your real estate website receives, are novices. They do not necessarily understand real estate acronyms that are second nature to real estate agents. Writing over someone’s head leaves them feeling like they need to use another agent who is used to talking on an introductory level. Especially do not write as if your material is going in a classified ad where everything has been broken down into a type of classified ad shorthand.

On the other hand, if you are real estate website targeting practiced commercial and investment buyers, you can use a certain level of market specific language to prequalify your potential clients.

Trap #2: Writing page content as if it is a blog entry.
Blog entries can be written in a more conversational style. When writing content for a webpage, make sure you are using a descriptive adjectives and keyword nouns instead of pronouns. Actually, keeping this in the back of your mind will help you write better blog entries.

When reviewing client testimonials, tweak their quotes to add punch (keeping it in their style of talking/writing, of course) and get them to approve of the changes. A positive testimonial such as “He was a great guy to work with and we are very happy with our new house,” can be tweaked for the search engines with minor edits. A better testimonial would read “Seymour Lystings was a great real estate agent to work with and we are very happy with our lovely new Denver home in the Cherry Creek neighborhood.” This adds your name and three keywords: “real estate agent”, “Denver home” and “Cherry Creek neighborhood”. Hopefully your testimonials are a little longer also!

With these copywriting traps out of the way, the real estate information on your website should appeal to first time buyers as well as seasoned home buyers. Don’t worry about getting your explanations too simple, your seasoned buyers will skim over that text to find what they need.

Writing a successful call to action in your real estate blog entry largely depends upon the angle from which you approach your subject. Advertising studies have shown that people react more strongly to the idea of losing something, than to the idea of gaining something. Especially if that something is money. Their money.

In the blog title, set the pace and capture your real estate website visitor’s attention by stating what people may be losing or missing by not answering your call to action. People respond far more to a title telling them what they are losing. People respond about 60% less to titles posing the same idea phrased as what can gain from taking those same steps.

For example, if alerting homeowners to falling mortgage rates, the least effective title would be “Ways to Save on Your Mortgage Payments”. More effective is “Are you losing 2 days of income with your high mortgage?”.

Even more effective is to quote an authority figure telling them they are losing money. Just like testimonials, a third party expert creates even more interest.

An example of a title that would get the greatest response might be “Dean of Stanford Business School Reports Most Americans Lose A Month’s Salary to High Mortgage Rates”.

With a good title, your real estate blog entry then becomes an exercise in fleshing out the details of what your website visitor may be losing. The call to action becomes how you, with your real estate or mortgage brokering expertise, are able to help them not lose money (or an real estate opportunity) in today’s market.

An easy way to add the uniqueness to your blog entry is to tell a story from your real estate experience. Adding a quote as a punch line to the story helps to make it memorable, just like in a good joke.

Of course, not every real estate blog entry should be written from the “what are you losing” perspective, but it is the most effective perspective to use when issuing a call to action.