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You can’t get there without a map.  And even a poor map is often better than no map at all.  The map DOES need to be accurate enough to show you where things are in relation to one another… but the scale can be off.

Maybe you can think of your blogging/social media map as a kind of treasure map.  At the end, you will get the desired outcome from your efforts.

There are a few steps that you have to go through to get there.

• Figure out what you want.  And “money” is not the right answer.  That is a byproduct.  Some examples might be finding new business or expanding market share.
• What is the best path to take to get there… work the path backwards.
• If we are looking for new clients, maybe we would get them from marketing to an expanded email newsletter list.
• In order to expand the email list, we need people to opt in…
• To get the opt-ins, we need to have compelling content with a clear call to action.
• Since we have compelling content, we need to make sure that we are getting it in front of people that have an interest.  That would likely be through SEO and Social Media.

That is a pretty broad, unfocused view…  And several of those steps might actually involve a map of their own… or several steps.  The important part is to take a little time to think about it, and maybe even draw a map.  Mind-Mapping software is a pretty cool option.  I often use FreeMind, which is an Open Source option.  But a sheet of graph paper and a pencil might be just the set of tools to capture what you need (you can concentrate on WHAT you are doing rather than on HOW to do it).

The important thing is to actually do it…

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It was a LOT of fun.  As a first time organizer for this type of event, I had a few concerns.  My biggest one was that the attendees wouldn’t feel comfortable asking questions… which was not a problem.  Their questions allowed us to better tweak the information to their needs.

So, here are some random notes from Monday’s Lunch & Learn…

GoDaddy is great for hosting domain names.  Several of us are using them for that purpose… but for hosting actual websites, they aren’t so great.  A couple of the hosting companies that were mentioned were HostMonster (affiliate link), BlueHost (affiliate link), and GreenGeeks.  One of the advantages of these host (as well as many other… there are a LOT of hosting companies) is that they offer “one-click script installations”.  Through services like Simple Scripts, you can install WordPress VERY easily, without having to understand things like FTP and creating databases.

Blogging does NOT have to be time consuming.  Randy mentioned shooting short videos or pictures at local venues (parks, restaurants, city hall, etc) and posting those right from your phone.  I mentioned video blogging… if you can knock it out in one take, you can post a 3 minute video (try to keep videos short) in 5 minutes.  However, when you launch, you really need to have 10-12 good posts on the site.  After that, it does NOT need to be updated every day.  Updating a few times a week should be enough.  I would say that you should update as many times as you can while keeping your post quality high.

Image via CrunchBase

Use Landing Pages.  These are pages that are designed for readers from a particular ad or search to land on.  Give them what they want… don’t make them search around your site to find it.  People won’t search, they will hit the back button.

Have a CLEAR ‘Call to Action’.  What is the purpose of the site/post/ad?  Have you told the reader EXACTLY what you want?  Do you want them to sign up for the email list?  Do you want them to call you?  Do you want them to honk at Green Ford trucks?  Tell them exactly what you want, and make it as easy as possible for them to do it.

If you can’t measure it, it isn’t happening.  You have to know what posts are working to bring in traffic, what posts are working to convert traffic to leads, what ads or outposts bring in traffic, which search terms are most effective and who is looking at your blog.  There are several ways to accomplish this, including Google Analytics and Clicky.  Google Analytics is free and VERY powerful.  I use Clicky (which also has a free level) because I like the interface more.  The more advanced version of Clicky (affiliate link) allows real time tracking of traffic.

Search yourself.  And aim at the right target.  There are two points here.. the first one is that you need to pick a target and then seek to dominate it in the search engines.  And in order to really do that, you need to see the Google RAW search data.  You can search through Goosh.org and see the basic search… not the one that is influenced by your habits.  Secondly, you need to pick a target that you CAN dominate.  Face it, you aren’t going to be able to dominate “Atlanta Real Estate”… but you might be able to control the search for “Midtown Atlanta Lofts” (and no, I don’t know anyone offhand at the brokerages on that search).

Once you get WordPress, there are a few plugins you HAVE to have.  WordPress Editorial Calendar, Back WP up, All-in-one SEO and ShareThis are on the list.  There are several more, but these are a great start.

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WordPress (self-hosted) might be the best option, but it isn’t the only option.  Posterous, Active Rain (not really an affiliate link, but I will get points if you sign up through here…) and WordPress.com are all valid choices.

• Posterous is really cool.  You can email almost anything there and it will be a blog post.  Videos, pictures, text, pdfs.. whatever.  And it will push it out the Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, FaceBook and other places.  It is very easy and quite powerful.
• Active Rain has a great community.  Just reading blogs there is better than a lot of CE classes.  There are some sharp folks there, and between the knowledge and connections (both local and national) that you can make, it is well worth the time.  It is also a great option to dip a toe into blogging.  The basic platform is VERY powerful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the posts will do quite well if they are public-facing.
• WordPress.com is good because it is a valid way to learn how to wander around in the admin panel and learn the rest of the back-end functions of WordPress.  It is very similar to the self-hosted version of WordPress.

There was a LOT more.  It is hard to believe that we were only there for 90 minutes.

And you can learn all of this and a LOT more at rebarcampAtlanta2011.  It is coming up on October 28th, 2011 at the Mansour Center in Marietta, GA.  Tickets are only $10 until September 30th, and just $17.50 after that ($25 for registration the day of the event).  If you are a real estate professional, it’s the best $10 you can spend… and even at $25, it is a bargain.

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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.

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So, what do you think?

by Column Five Media via

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WordPress is a great Content Management System (CMS).  It can be a blog, but it can also be so much more.  It can be a VERY easily updated website as well.  But in order to really get the most out of WordPress, you need to deploy a few plugins that aren’t included with the basic package.  Luckily, they are all free.  I have 40 active plugins on LaneBailey.com and 20 here.  And all of the plugins listed below are on both sites.

These aren’t limited to just real estate sites… they can be used by anyone, especially those utilizing WordPress as a business website.

Here they are in no particular order…

1. All in One SEO Pack*.  If you are blogging for business or to get noticed, you will need to be optimized for search engines.  This plugin, after it is set up, handles a lot of the drudgery of SEO.  You still need to provide the killer content, though…
2. FaceBook Share.  There are a variety of ways to do this, but the basic point is that FaceBook is second only to Google in importance for growing your site.  You NEED to have a way for readers to easily share your killer content with their friends.
3. 

   Image via Wikipedia

   MobilePress.  This is a plugin that builds a mobile version of your site.  You can tweak the mobile version so that it is faster and easier for mobile users.  And the growth in mobile web surfing is astounding.

4. TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker).  If you like to use free themes, this is a great plugin that will look through the theme for potentially malicious or junky scripts.  If it does catch something, it isn’t always completely bad code… but it is a good prompt to look into it further.
5. SoJ Tag Feed.  Turn any post tag into a RSS feed.  This is great for sending some of your content to your other sites.  It is also a great way to have a feed that is targeted for a specific audience (like maybe a different feed for buyer and sellers).
6. WordPress Editorial Calendar*.  I’m writing this post a few days before it is going live.  I usually try to have anywhere from 3 to 10 posts in queue at any given time.  This allows my blog to be more consistent.  With the WP Editorial Calendar, I can look and see at a glance when I have posts scheduled to run.  If I had other bloggers, I could also see who is posting what… and when.
7. 

   Image via Wikipedia

   WP-DBManager*.  This allows you to inspect, repair and optimize your databases from right within the WordPress admin panel.  But, it also allows you to get scheduled back-ups.  You HAVE to have back-ups coming in regularly in case there is a problem.

8. Zemanta*.  This is one of the plugins that I leverage more than any other.  It allows me to easily find and use images and related articles.  I can use just my own or I can use items from around the web.  One word of caution, though… KNOW if it is content you are allowed to use.  The articles are generally not a problem (they are just linked), but you CAN get into trouble with images.
9. Page Link To.  This allows you to build a “holder page” so that you can link in the menu to items outside of the WordPress installation.  If you have a squeeze page, sales page or other site that you want included in your menu, this is the way to do it.
10. Blog Copyright (by BTE).  If you don’t protect your content, nobody else will.  This doesn’t keep it from being stolen, but it keeps the reasonably honest people honest… and can make it easier to find the scrapers that steal it.

The plugins with a “*” after them are the ones that I think EVERYONE needs to have on their blog.  These are the ones to grab first.  I would have a hard time blogging without these…

Image via CrunchBase

What do you think?  What plugins do you find essential?

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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

REtechSouth

After every conference and seminar, there comes the real challenge… implementing all of the VERY cool things I’ve learned, while living in the real world. Setting up client searches, responding to inquiries, dealing with the family, making sure everything that should be on track is on track… they all get in the way of rolling out 3782 changes to my websites and social networks.

I have found that I need to take a little time… and then I need to dive in. Diving in comes next. I have pages of notes, some vendor material and a list of websites and ideas. I have mind-mapping software on my computer… and it needs to get used.

For the last few weeks, I have been unhappy with much of my web presence. I have a great IDX, but I am not getting the most out of it. I have good Page Rank, but I don’t have the level of conversion I feel I should have. My traffic is decent.

And I focused on the sessions at REtechSouth that I thought would help me fix that…

Plenty of sessions to focus on, too…

If you weren’t at REtechSouth, you should have been.

In addition to the incredible information that was presented, the connections that were made and the fun on the exhibit hall floor… there was also the opportunity to hang out with my friends. There are a lot of folks I have been lucky enough to meet from all over the country. And there were some that I was able to meet (in person) for the first time.

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• Where do we go from here? (lanebailey.info)

But us little guys or those that couldn’t design their own pages were locked out.

However, lurking in the capability… largely unnoticed… of WordPress has been that of making customized landing pages.  Dozens.  More than dozens.

Lane Bailey writing for Buyers

Stuff in Lilburn on LaneBailey.com

Now, I will throw out a caveat that it doesn’t work the same for all themes.  But, most themes DO have the capability to make these pages without altering the basic delivery of the content.  The themes that are going to be the most difficult to use this way are ‘magazine’ themes.  Because of the way they arrange their front page content, the posts may just appear as a boring list.  That can also happen with some other themes.

What is the trick, you ask?

Tags & Categories.  Yep.  The first step is to maintain tags or categories for the content you want to present.  If you want to have a series of posts presented together, tag or categorize them the same way.  First Time Home Buyers, Sellers, Reviews, Listings…  All of these can be easily created…  In fact, most of us already have similar tags for our WordPress blogs.  So, when writing about a particular subject, instead of leaving a generic link, you can set up a link like this.  http://lanebailey.com/tag/gwinnett/ This presents all of the posts i have published about Gwinnett County.

This IS available on other sites.  For example, it could be applied to your Active|Rain blog.  However, it gives kind of an ugly page to land on.

Lane’s A|R WordPress Tips

There are lots of ways to use this.  We also know from SEO experts that DeepLinking delivers a little more juice than just linking to the front page.  Google DOES index tag and category pages.  This is a great way to use those abilities to deliver a little more juice or more readers to slightly broader areas than just linking to a single post.

Enjoy…

from Lane’s A|R Blog

During the #rebcclt video session, one of the things we talked about was using property videos, and syndicating them to a wide range of networks.  The primary reason discussed was that it would be seen by the maximum number of potential buyers for the property… but we DID talk about the other reason… the cooler reason.

SEO…

That’s right.  Search Engine Optimized agents utilize video (along with something else I’ll mention in a moment…) in order to boost their site rankings.  The videos are very good at delivering ‘spiders’ to a destination of the agent’s choosing…

And they aren’t all.  So are social media profiles.  Because in the videos and on the profiles, you are allowed to link back to your website (or the site of your choosing).  Many agents waste some of these opportunities by linking the videos to things like the property listing on Realtor.com.

In many cases, these are ‘do-follow links’ that pass along a little SEO power.  And they can pass that power to your website… or property websites… or your blog. And most of them are convenient ‘one-way’ links.

Now, there could be some argument about strategies, but I would say that in the case of videos the thing to do would be to set up a property website and then point the video to that property site… and point the property site back to your website or blog.  If you aren’t setting up a property site, then at least deep-link the videos to the page or post specifically about the property in the video.

With the profile links, I think that sending most of them to the site would be the best strategy, but sending them to specific places is still possible.  For example, with a blog you could send them to all posts tagged with a spcific term.  This would be a way to create a dynamic landing page based on the content already on your blog.

You can get pretty creative here…

I know that I am rolling over some ideas…  I’ll be writing about them soon!

BTW, here is a good way to knock out fifty-two birds with one stone.  And while you are at it, hit ten more.  The first link will give you a list of social networks and you can check the availability of a specific name.  The second is TubeMogul.  This site can load your video up to ten different sites more efficiently.

from Lane’s A|R Blog