As a CRE brokerage owner you are an expert in your field. You also know that blogging is an important and powerful medium by which you can express and communicate your CRE management expertise. But you aren’t an online marketing consultant, nor do you want to be one, and blogging is something for which you have more questions than answers.
Blogging is an important and powerful medium. Click To TweetBlogging, however, is not that difficult. It just takes a little practice and know-how.
Below are 5 tips that will get you started down the road towards producing effective and compelling commercial real estate blogs that can serve to set your firm apart.
Many CRE brokerage owners have the same concerns when it comes to blogging:
- How do I generate interesting blog topics?
- How long should the blog be?
- How often should I blog?
- How can I tell if my blogging is working?
- And, how do I find the time to blog?
These questions, and others like them, present a formidable obstacle to any CRE brokerage owner getting started with blogging. While we aren’t going to answer all of these questions today (we will in subsequent posts), we will address one of the more important blocks to blogging: How do I generate interesting blogs that people will actually want to read?
1. Write about your industry, not yourself
Many CRE brokerage owners make the mistake of writing about their own firm and the service they provide. But people aren’t searching for things specific to your business – they are searching for things specific to themselves, such as how to solve or address a specific challenge. Including your own services in your blog will erode trust and will also come across as a sales pitch, and no one wants to read a sales pitch.
2. Write about common problems
People are searching for solutions to their problems. Blogs need to address these problems and provide answers to them. Put yourself in the shoes of your clients and prospects and think about what information would be relevant, compelling, and useful to them.
3. Identify the questions your customers are asking
One great way to write about the problems that your customers are looking for answers to is think about the questions your prospects have. Write down *all* of the questions your customers would have about your product or service. Your answers to these questions become your blog posts!
4. Focus on one topic per blog post
Simplify blogging by keeping things simple. While writing your commercial real estate blogs you may generate a bunch of related ideas and topics. Write about one topic per blog and one topic only. Staying focused will make your blogs more powerful and memorable. And, you can pull out the additional ideas and use them for future posts!
5. Don’t try to cover too much ground
Look at your topic and ask yourself if there are sub-topics that fall underneath it. For example, you could write about sales, but sales is made up of prospecting, lead generation, the sales pitch, the proposal, the close, etc. Each one of these subtopics are separate blogs. Writing shorter, more concise blogs make for a more compelling read.
