If you are going to have an effective business blog, the thing you hear over and over is that…

You HAVE to blog consistently.

That seems to come up every time someone talks about business blogging.  But that is the first problem that many beginning bloggers face… kicking out regular posts.  Occasionally, someone defines blogging regularly as posting up a couple of times a week or more.  Face it, if you post up once a month or once a year, even if you do it like clockwork, you won’t build a reader base.  But if you put up a good post three times a week, and the audience knows when to expect new posts, you CAN build a reader base.

Enter the Calendar…

Actually, a VERY specific type of calendar… an Editorial Calendar.  Basically, this is an outline of WHEN you are going to write, and possibly even WHAT you are going to write about.

Whether you are utilizing a theme, writing a series or just want to have posts appear at a consistent interval for your readers, a calendar can do the trick.  It can keep those deadlines in front of you.  I’m using Outlook 2010.  It allows me to have recurring tasks, which make my writing MUCH simpler.  In effect, I can see what types of posts I have coming up, and schedule material to appear.

I tend to write in bursts.  I might knock out three or four posts at one time, and then not write for a couple of days.  With my calendar, I can write a few posts and then fit them into my patterns.  As I write this on Sunday night, my LaneBailey.com post for Monday is already scheduled.  In fact, it has been ready to go since Thursday.

So…

Find a good task/calendar program.  Keep it open.  Use it to schedule posts and keep an eye on when posts are going to be needed.

And don’t forget to be flexible.  If breaking news happens, don’t wait two weeks to write about it because it will mess up your schedule…

from LaneBailey.info

Back in “the day”, a website was little more than a flyer or brochure that was available on the internet, rather than mailed out.  It might have had as few as one page and as many as five or six pages.  There usually wasn’t a search capability built in, and it was only updated infrequently… if at all.

Today’s websites have all sorts of cool things to draw the consumer’s attention, and to hold it.  Search is a BIG part of that.  Blogs, updated weekly, daily or even more, are another part.  Twitter feeds for breaking news can be included, as can Flickr feeds for new pictures and YouTube feeds for videos.  There might even be links or widgets displaying other blogs or sites…  The possibilities are almost endless.

In short, they provide a new experience each time a consumer visits. Why go back to the website if it is only displaying something that you’ve previously seen or read?

Which leads us to some options…

Active Rain

This is Active Rain. And so it THIS.  Obviously the blog you are looking at is part of Active Rain.  It says so right at the top of the page.  But the link to GwinnettGarageGuy.com is also linking to an Active Rain blog.  It is referred to as an “Outside Blog” or RainMaker Blog.  It has a custom URL and only a very discreet logo in the upper left corner.

There are some tremendous advantages to Active Rain RainMaker Blogs.  To begin with, they offer built in traffic and “Google Juice” (search engine strength).  The traffic comes from the 170,000 members here in the Rain.  They provide a sense of community, as well as feedback and support.  In short, there is a LOT to learn at Active Rain, and being part of the community enriches the experience.

Another great advantage of Active Rain’s RainMaker blogs is ease…  It is SO easy to get rolling. Build a profile, type up a post and publish… you are GOING.  Of course there are plenty of things to learn after that to tweak the performance of your marketing, but you can learn that here in the Rain as well… and a lot of it is free… and of course there are RainCamps to take it to another level.

The drawbacks of the RainMaker Blogs are few…  It costs $29/month. They aren’t as customizable as the other platforms.

In the world of the web, $29 isn’t that much.  There are a lot of agents paying WAY more money for platforms that don’t deliver these results…  But, $29 is $29.

WordPress

Almost everyone has heard of WordPress. Here is a WordPress site… and another one.  Notice that they look NOTHING alike?  That is part of the beauty of WordPress.  Sites can be themed VERY differently and not look at all like “the next site”… or the agent up the street.  Full-on branding.  Every part of the site is customizable and extensible.  There are thousands of widgets and plug-ins to alter the site experience.  Almost anything you can imagine can be accomplished in WordPress.

However, while the platform is free, hosting it isn’t (expect to spend about $100/year).  Also, there are many free themes, but the best ones cost a little money (expect to spend between $30 and $100).  Just a note, don’t bother with WordPress.org… you’ll spend at least as much to get it up to speed as you would with Active Rain, and not have the flexibility of a self-hosted WordPress blog (sometimes called WordPress.org).

Another drawback of WordPress is all of the flexibility… there are too many choices for some people. There are thousands of themes and thousands of plug-ins and you can do almost anything with it…

Joomla

And then there is Joomla.  Only the fairly hardcore know about Joomla!. Here is a Joomla site… and another one.  There are competitors, like Drupal… but Joomla! is the one with the most support.  And much of what I just said about WordPress applies to Joomla.  It is free, but hosting isn’t.  there are free themes, but the cool ones cost money.  There are loads of extensions… and some of them cost a little bit.

But Joomla is WAY more involved and WAY WAY more powerful that WordPress. Using most good hosts, setting up either is easy.  One click in Simple Scripts and the site is live… but after theming and content creation, Joomla requires a structure be thought out in the way content is arranged.  WordPress organizes content more “on the fly”.  Joomla takes a little time to set up BEFORE content starts to flow… it can be done later, but it is much easier to start out with the structure.

Since Joomla was designed as a Content Management System, that is what it does best.  It can be a news magazine.  It can be a search portal.  It can be a blog. Honestly, being a blog for Joomla is like driving a Corvette ZR1 as a golf cart… you can do it, but that isn’t really using the power.  But incorporating a blog into Joomla is pretty easy…

In fact, using my theme provider, theming a WordPress blog and a Joomla site to look like family is pretty easy.  So, for the consumer, the experience of moving back and forth between the joomla CMS and the WordPress blog is almost seamless… even if they have different domians.  LaneBailey.com and GarageHomesUSA.com are completely different sites and different platforms.  They could even be with different hosts…

FaceBook and Posterous

There are other options as well, and the leader among those are FaceBook Fan Pages and Posterous.  Both are free options and I thik they have a place in a comprehensive web strategy.

FaceBook is becoming THE destination for millions of web surfers.  Maintaining a storefront there will become as necessary as having a website.  Your personal profile isn’t the place to do business… get a Fan Page, they are free and you can even get a vanity URL.  Mike Mueller on Active Rain is “THE Dude” when it comes to FB Fan Pages.

Posterous is a different kind of beast.  I have written about it a few times, and it is certainly worth investigating.  There are more ways to leverage Posterous than anyone could possibly imagine on thier own.  Brad and Bobby Carroll (Dakno) are “THE Dudes” when it comes to tweaking out Posterous pages.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

You have decided that you want to have a WordPress blog AND know how to use it…

You think blogging is fun and cool… and a great way to connect with your market…

I just ran across this little gem, and wish I was closer to Denver.  I would definately be up for it.  I love my WordPress blogs.  It is a cool platform, and has a tremendous amount of flexibility.  I still love Active|Rain, but have been on WordPress for two years.

There are so many options… one of the big issues for newbies to WP… and I see so many ways a camp like this could stretch the capabilities of my sites.

Real Estate WordCamp

It is coming up April 12th, 2010, in Denver, CO.  There will be tracks for Bloggers, Developers and Technology Vendors.  If I made it out there, the hardest decision would be figuring out which track to hang out for…

And if you were wondering, Todd Carpenter is the organizer.  You might know him as a driving force behind rebarcamp…  If you have been to an rebarcamp, thank Todd.  He is the dude…

BTW, to meet the new FTC requirements, I should note that I have not been offered, nor accepted any inducement to write this post…  I just think it is REALLY cool.

from Lane’s Active Rain Blog

Part of the power of WordPress is in the extensibility of the platform through plug-ins. The large community of WordPress users have created these little snippets to solve problems or overcome shortfalls of the basic program.

These are some of my favorites…

And I’m going to start off with two that aren’t for WordPress, but that I use ALL of the time…

• Zemanta – This is one of my “blogging assistants”.  Zemanta searches for relavent photos for posts, while I am writing them.  It is a FireFox plugin, and functions on all of the WordPress blogs without installing a WP plugin.  I also have it installed on my Joomla sites…  I did have to install a Joomla plugin…
• ScribeFire – Another of my “blogging assistants” … and a commenting assitant, too.  ScribeFire lets me format posts or comments, even adding video to comments on Active Rain.  I can add headlines, colored text and other features using it.  It is also a FireFox plugin.

I promised WordPress Plugins…  So here are a few…

• Add Post Footer – Just like the Post Footer settings here on AR, I can add whatever I want to each post on my blog with this plug-in.  Automatically…
• All-In-One SEO Pack – Tunes SEO for the blog and posts easily…
• Apture – A different way to present media.  I just started using this on my WP blogs after reading about it here from Brad Andersohn.
• Google XML Sitemap – It is very important to have a sitemap.  This automatically creates, updates and sends to search engines…
• Great Real Estate – I can showcase listings easily on my blog…  I also can run sidebar widgets with the listing pics and other info if I choose.
• Local Market Explorer – This is a tool from Zillow that put market stats, reports, pictures, info and other juicy stuff on pages in my blogs… easily.
• MobilePress – Automatically see when a mobile devide is looking at the blog and tweak it to better display on that device.
• NextGEN Gallery – This is a better gallery system that the stock one in WordPress.  It is also required for Great Real Estate.
• Property Watch – Automatically builds a form so that buyers can send me requests for the type of property they are looking for…
• SoJ Tag Feed – I can create a landing page for ANY tag or catagory on my blog… with this I can create an RSS feed for any tag as well.
• Wibiya – Check out the Toolbar at the bottom of LaneBailey.com.  Although I might have to pull it down to experiment with something else (something BETA this way comes?)
• WP-DB Manager – I can do database management from my blog… and have it automatically email back-ups to me.

There are actually a lot more plugins that I run, but this gives you a good idea of what is available.  it is a VERY extensible platform.

What do you think of the new theme?  Like how it matches GarageHomesUSA, even though they are on different platforms?

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

WordPress is an amazingly cool and powerful tool for building a website.  It is one of my two favorite CMSs (Content Management Systems)… the other being Joomla.

What makes WordPress cool is that it doesn’t take a team of geeks to fire it up and make it run every day.  In fact, most people can launch and maintain a WordPress blog with just a little training…  In fact, on some webhosts, a WordPress blog can be launched in under five minutes.

I use BlueHost (affiliate link) for my webhosting, and they have a feature called Simple Scripts.  Using Simple Scripts, I can set up a new WordPress blog (as well as some other applications) with just a couple of clicks.  (BlueHost offers hosting from $6.95/mo.  I pay under $100/year for hosting of 20 sites).

To begin with, secure the domain name you want to use for the website.  I personally use GoDaddy for Domain Name hosting.  I own a few dozen domains and have paid between 99¢ and $9.99 per name.

After getting the name, go to your host’s control panel (CP) in another window or tab.  (It is helpful to have FireFox while building websites…).

Select Domain Manager from the CP.  You want to “Assign Domain to your CPanel Account”.  Go through the steps there.  The only tricky part is verifying the ownership of the domain name.  The option I use is to point the Domain Name Servers to the new host.  This is done through GoDaddy (or your Domain Host).  Through the Domain Manager where the names are hosted, select Advanced Details.  Then edit the name servers.  After a few minutes, the name will verify through the site host Domain Manager.

From the site host CP, select Simple Scripts.  Scroll down and you will see the “Blogs” section.  Select WordPress and follow the instructions.  I would recommend making the sub-directory fairly short.  It can reduce typing later.

After following the steps on Simple Scripts, you will have a functional WordPress site.  you will be emailed the username and password to access the backend of the site and it will be on the screen, too.

Later we will talk about adding new themes and plugins.

Most of us know what it is… but few are really leveraging it to help create business or simplify our lives…

For those that don’t know, RSS is a news feed.  Basically, by subscribing to a website’s RSS feed, each time the site is updated, we will get the new material either emailed to us or in a “Feed Reader”.

I guess the easiest place to start would be the “making our lives easier” aspect.

I don’t know how many different blogs and sites I read…  I admit that I don’t read all of them every day, but I generally read about 30-40 posts on about 100 sites almost every day.  Real estate, technology, politics, local events, cars and travel are all on my reading list. 

In order to scan each of these sites each day to see if there was a post or article that I was interested in would take at least an hour… probably closer to two.  Add in the time to actually READ the material…  I wouldn’t have time to do much else.

Frankly, I enjoy the reading.  I want to be informed and up to date on what is happening in the world… and around the corner.  In a way, it isn’t much different than those that liked to scan several newspapers each morning. Except it is WAY faster (only having to look at headlines or short intros) and WAY cheaper (since the sites are free to read, unlike having several newspaper subscriptions).

So, it is making my life easier… cheaper… greener… and more time efficient.  At the same time, I can be more up to date on world and local events, as well as other information that is interesting to me. (Personally, I use FeedDemon as my reader, but you can use Google’s reader, Mozilla or even Outlook)

But what if the goal is creating business?

OK, there is the obvious that if we are keeping up with industry news and trends, we should be better able to respond to the market…  But there is something deeper…

Local expertise!

Some of the sites that you might be able to get daily feeds from might include local newspapers, local chambers of commerce, local businesses, local groups that promote events… and if you are one of the first to know about all of these happenings that are around the corner, you can be the local expert. Starting the discussion about property tax increases, changes in garbage collection, zoning hearings, roadway improvements, new developments and business relocation means that you can rank for those terms… the terms that people in the area might use to search.  Being on top of the search engines for local terms means that locals will read your blog… and that YOUR RSS feed will be one that THEY should subscribe to.

So, you also need to make your RSS feed easy to find for site visitors.  You want to be part of THEIR regular routine. Of course there is real estate sprinkled in to your site, so your readers will see you as the expert… the “go to person” for local information.

And when someone asks them about real estate… you are already the expert.

But why worry about the RSS?

According to the stats on my site, I have approximately 8 times as many people reading me on a given day via RSS rather than directly on my site.  That is valuable traffic. The best traffic is local traffic…

Ok, so if you have been following along, you have seen that you really need both a self-hosted WordPress blog and an Active|Rain RainMaker blog.

You say, “OK there Skippy, now what?”

Well bunky, you need content… GREAT, compelling, addictive content.  And you need to present it in a great, compelling and addictive way.  Venture out from the wall of words and throw so fun at the wall and see if it sticks.

This post is actually what I call a second level post…  it is broken up into bite size chunks that are easier to chew than a straight up solid word wall, but it still lacks something.  Spice…

Where most people start is the first level post, a solid wall… not even a window.  No room for bites here, just a solid pile of words.  Now, if you happen to be Stephen King or Ayn Rand, that might be OK, but most of us aren’t.  And most of us aren’t packing 2000 pages of text into a package for our readers, either.  In fact, many readers will see the paragraph without end and they will click away so fast that they will barely make a dent on your Analytics Program (look for that tool coming up…).  They will see GIANT paragraphs of homogeneous type.  There won’t be any bold, and caps or anything else to break it up or draw interest.  And so there won’t be interest drawn.  Actually, after you write for a little while, this style starts to go away.  In fact, you might notice that it is hard for me to even write that way on purpose…  I write like I talk, and I get expressive… I take breaks (I have moments that are “aside” from the main theme of the conversation).  Writing like this is hard work.  And reading it is harder work.

Readers want…

• Bullet points…
• Lists
• Bold
• CAPS
• Variety

And there is something else they want…  They want RICH MEDIA CONTENT.  They want to see something more.  And sometimes the “something more” is graphics… or video… or photos… or even a presentation.  Embeddables.

The rest of the story is below…

Here is the After…

So, just a moment ago I posted the other half of this blog. I worked VERY hard to make it visually unappealing and kind of boring. I did that on purpose. For a purpose.

You see, there are SO many ways to add rich media to your WordPress and Active|Rain posts.

• YouTube (and dozens of other video sharing sites)
• SlideShare (and some other presentation sharing sites)
• Flickr (and the other photo sharing sites)
• MagToo (I don’t know of any other panorama sharing sites)
• Pictures
• Graphics

And most of them are free or nearly free. And they are easy to use.

you still need to have something compelling to say, but it is much more interesting (and WAY less pressure) if it is also presented in an interesting manner. Through the use of these cool tools, you will be able to better connect with your readers, and your readers will better connect with you.

Don’t let the little code snippets freak you out, they aren’t THAT hard to edit into a post. It needs to be done on the HTML side of both your WordPress and Active|Rain blogs. I would bet that there is already a tutorial on how to do this for A|R, and I know that there are scores of them for WordPress… But, one of the great things about blogging is playing and learning. And what better way to learn about code than to play in it a little…

Here is the WAY quick version (for A|R).

1. Write your blog without the embeddable media
2. Save it to draft
3. Open it back up and click on HTML
4. In another tab, open up the Embed code for the item you want to install
5. Copy the code
6. Paste it into your Active|Rain post where you want it to show up
7. Save it to Member’s Only or Public view
8. Make sure it works…

WordPress is pretty similar, except that you don’t have to save it in order to switch from WYSIWYG to HTML and back. Also, both tend to mess with the code if they are changed back and forth a few times… so, try to get the regular content right and then install the embeddable applications.

Enjoy…

So, because I know that I am really bad at avoiding the compulsion, I know that I have to start looking around at WordPress themes for LaneBailey.com.  There are tons of cool themes that are free…

Of course, the other problem is that I also want to make some structural changes to GarageHomesUSA.com.  That one is Joomla.

Why does this keep happening to me?

I guess it is the same drive that won’t allow me to leave well enough alone with cars…  I have to mess with them as well.  Even when they are “done”, they aren’t ever really done.  They are just awaiting the next round of modifications.

So…

Any suggestions of WordPress themes for me to look at?  I know a few places to find a couple hundred, but I am wondering if anyone has any groovy suggestions.

• There is always a Traditional Blog…

We see them by the hundreds here on ActiveRain… these are what everyone thinks of when they think of a blog.  Take some text… maybe add a few pictures or a video.  Poof… you have a blog.

But some people are more tuned to doing something a little different…

• An Online Edited Newsletter…

Just think of all of the great blogs we see every day.  Not only on Active Rain, but on dozens of other portals.  There are GREAT posts that would be useful to our clients… and instead of working to re-create them, why not collect the best of the best and share them with your audience.

• How about a Vlog… Video Blog…

Video is one of the fastest growning things on the web.  people are serviing up millions of content items every single day… and writing isn’t for everyone.  Maybe a great way to contribute would be through a video blog.  Imagine posting up a 1-3 minute clip once or twice a week…  Easy, fast, cool.

• There are always Photo Blogs…

This might be tough to pull off for a general real estate blog… but I actually am running one for one of my listings.  I can type room descriptions, but what people want are the pictures…  So, I am serving those up instead of a bunch of text.

Wrap…

I’m sure there are more… in fact, I think there are almost as many ways to blog as there are bloggers.  Don’t worry if you don’t think you fit some sort of mold… rather, feel free to MAKE the mold.

Let’s get this out of the way at the top of the show…  There are two “brands” of WordPress to pick from.  The one I will be almost completely ignoring is WordPress.com.  That is the version that is NOT self-hosted.  Basically, unless you pay to upgrade your account, the URL will be WhatYouPick.WordPress.com.  That isn’t the only thing, though…

• Related posts from other people’s blogs can show up on your post… and you don’t have control over whose posts those may be.
• There is little control over the theming and plug-ins of the site.

So, the main event…

Some people refer to this as WordPress.org… that is where you can go to get it… But most of us just call it WordPress.  It is an Open Source Content Management System tuned especially for blogging.  And what that means to the non-UberGeeky is that we can install content, separately from the style of the site…  This allows the theme to be (fairly) easily changed, and the site to be optimized by the individual user.

I should mention that I could write a LOT about WordPress.  It is VERY cool and VERY flexible.  In fact, I already have written a lot about WordPress on LaneBailey.info.  And that brings me to one of the coolest things…  The link I just gave you is a Landing Page.  Basically, instead of sending you to the front page of the website, or to an individual post, I gave a link to every post on that site that is tagged “WordPress”. Instead of having to wade through posts about other subjects, you get a site that is tuned to your expectations… Imagine sending buyers to a site that has just information for buyers, or a site just for sellers, or just local business reviews or even just posts about holiday decorations.  If you make a tag for it, the site can sift through all of your posts and present only the posts that have that tag.

Why Blog on WordPress?

Control…  Complete and total control.  For some, that is the scariest thing in the world… for others it is terribly exciting.  Plug-ins, design, function… everything.  You can get under the hood and tune it until it is optimal for you and your usage. And that usage can be wide and varied…

Some of the uses that can be applied are:

• Regular blog
• News magazine
• Property website
• Neighborhood news site
• Group blog
• Dynamic website

Unlike WordPress.com, Blogger, Active|Rain or most other hosted solutions, having a self-hosted WordPress blog allows almost an unlimited amount of creativity and flexibility.  And, after getting a hosting account set up, building blogs with WordPress is effectively free. Many hosts allow you to have scores of sites hosted for under $100/year…  I have more than a dozen websites on my host, BlueHost.  They also have a service called Simple Scripts.  This allows one-click installs of WordPress, Joomla and other web applications.

Whether you want to build out a website for each of your listings, a news site for neighborhood associations in your farm area or just a dynamic website for your business, WordPress allows that goal to be accomplished in a straight forward manner.

Why Not Blog on WordPress?

Now, this is specifically about blogging for business, not about maintaining a business website, personal blog, property website or neighborhood site…  JUST about blogging for business, for the real estate business.

Time.  Not the time it takes to blog, because I feel that is a worthwhile expenditure, but the time it takes to make the blog rank with search engines.  Also, sites like Active|Rain allow more community interaction.

When building a property blog, the primary means of promotion will be direct linking and advertising the link.  Using an Active|Rain blog to promote property blogs (by blogging about them), or promoting a dynamic website (by deep-linking) to pages inside or building a neighborhood news site by giving out the link in neighborhood newsletters are all ways to use WordPress that avoid the shortcomings of a normal self-hosted blog.

Also, allowing a business blog to take time building rank, while using a parallel platform like Active|Rain, is a solid strategy.

When I started my primary self-hosted blog, LaneBailey.com, Active|Rain didn’t yet offer “outside blogs” or RainMakers.  Had that choice been available, I might not have embarked on the WordPress journey.  I am glad that I did it, but there have been some tough times…  I have crashed my site more times than I can count.  I have made things disappear, re-appear, get changed around…  I have sat up all night trying to figure out why my site was inaccessible.  But I have also learned how to get past those challenges.  And I know that I can do almost anything I want with WordPress.

Obviously…

I can’t say everything about WordPress in one post.  Just like Active|Rain, it is a versatile and multi-faceted tool.  But, it is a tool that is worth learning about.  Hopefully the links above will help deliver a little more insight into ways to use WordPressto build a better real estate business.

from Lane’s Active|Rain Blog