Image via Wikipedia

On Monday, September 26th, I am hosting a “Lunch & Learn” at the NAMAR (Northeast Atlanta Metro Association of REALTORS®) offices in Duluth.  We will be talking about blogging for real estate professionals.

As part of the discussion, we will be covering a variety of topics, time permitting.  Among them…

• Blog Platforms
• Active Rain
• WordPress.com (remote-hosted)
• WordPress.org (self-hosted)
• Posterous
• Other platforms
• Content Creation
• Coming up with Topics
• Video
• Focus
• Details
• Conversion
• Plug-ins
• Hosting Companies
• DiY?
• Social Media Outposts
• Analytics

With only about 60-75 minutes to get it all done, there are a LOT of things to talk about.  We also want the specifics of the session to be determined by the people that show up to ask questions.  There is a good chance that we aren’t going to hit all of the individual bullet points.  In effect, we are going to take enough information to fill a three hour CE class and condense it down to around an hour.  Not only that, but we are going to allow time for discussion.

In order to make sure that the information gets out, I will be posting up follow-up posts AND hopefully kick out a mini-eBook… for free.  If you aren’t able to attend the NAMAR Lunch & Learn, it should still be a good resource… but if you ARE able to attend, it will be a great extension of what we talked about.

One last thing…  We are calling this prebarcamp.  If you aren’t familiar with rebarcamp Atlanta, check it out here.

Related articles

• Cha cha cha Changes… (lanebailey.com)
• WordPress.com or WordPress.org? (wpdrivenbusiness.wordpress.com)
• 52 Types of Blog Posts that are Proven to Work (problogger.net)

But I’m not happy with the site conversion.  Or maybe it is that I’m not happy with the conversion tracking.  I’m not happy with the engagement.  Or maybe it is that I’m not happy with the engagement I can see.  I know that I’m not happy with the visuals… and some of the widgets/plug-ins/features…

Mostly, what it comes down to is that I’m not happy with my overall strategy. There isn’t one.  At no point did I sit down and make a plan.  It has been patchwork… and it doesn’t seem to match.  That needs to change…

Over the last few months I have managed to build a lot of great pieces.  WordPress, Joomla, Posterous, Tumblr, Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter and other services/sites and networks are all great… individually.  I’m not saying that I like all of the pieces I’ve made… just that the pieces have a lot of performance capability.  In a couple of cases, I may tap some experts on particular platforms.

I’m interested to see where everything will go…  I haven’t made the plan yet.

And that is where the next step comes in…

MindMapping.

En Vogue | Free Your Mind

I’ll be using an open source program called FreeMind to lay out my ideas for website strategy.  I have used it to put together some presentations about various subjects.  It let’s me brainstorm ideas, and then organize them into something more cohesive.  In effect, it is a ‘radial outline’.  We all remember outlining things in school.  Outlining was a great tool for organizing content, but it was very linear.

The MindMap allows that outline to become a hub and spoke.  And then the ideas on the spokes can become new hubs.  This means that it becomes very easy to see which ideas have the most connection to others…  Unlike a linear outline, the MindMap allows ideas to connect to other ideas, rather than just be a subset of one thought.

But there is another step…

Implementation.

3run – Free Your Mind

And it always involves faith.  The faith that it can be done… that I can do it (or find the right source to do it).  The faith that it will work (or that it can be tweaked to work).  Of course, the faith will be subject to measurement (analytics) and modification…  But I will be ready to step into it… into the void of the unknown.

I am in the process of MindMapping my website strategy.  I am also analyzing tools and techniques.  As the strategy emerges, I know that there will be some pain and a learning curve… sometimes it may get pretty steep.

But this is where my business comes from.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

As mentioned last time in WordPress and Joomla and Active Rain… oh my!, dynamic websites are the direction the web is going.  In order to live in the dynamic website world, you need to produce content.

That is the first problem.  Good, engaging content doesn’t create itself.  Readers want to see pictures and video.  They want interaction.

Image via CrunchBase

I’m AT LEAST as guilty as anyone else of not serving it up sometimes.  One one of my blogs I don’t have any access to a plug-in called Zemanta, and I have to jump through hoops to use Apture.

On my WordPress sites I have both Zemanta and apture installed, so it is easy to amp up the graphics and add video.  Now, on my Joomla sites I also have Zemanta installed.  I still have to jump through a few hoops to run Apture, but I have bookmarked a direct link to the page to build embeds.

Zemanta

Zemanta is a plug-in and site that surfs for images and links that are related to the article (post) you are writing.  Basically, it scans your content and finds related articles and images.  You also have the ability to refine the results (spelled S-E-A-R-C-H) for specific terms if the automatically returned results are getting it for you. Also, through Zemanta, users can allow content to be reblogged, similar to Active Rain’s reblog feature.  A reblog is a reprint of the post (with permission) on another blog.  It basically syndicates the content.

Apture

Apture is slightly different, but geared similarly.  It isn’t automatic, and I find it best geared towards video.  It also has a linking component.  Apture builds mini-galleries.  You can put as many as 6 videos in one embed on the site.  Here is an example in Joomla.  Here is one in WordPress.  (BTW, the first link was created using Apture and the second using WordPress’s editor)  With Apture, you have the capability of combining multiple content types into one embed.  The only thing you can’t combine are links.  Other embeds, like pictures, slide shows, videos, maps, etc CAN be combined.

Combined, there are great options to make a more engaging site, in both WordPress and Joomla, as well as some other platforms.