Jan O'Brien - Real Estate Coach

REBlogworld 2008 - Highlights & Best Tips Part 1

REBlogworld was a well-organized and successful event.  I enjoyed participating, networking and the learning and sharing of ideas.  Kudos to Todd Carpenter and Jason Berman for all their hard work and to all the speakers and attendees for being on the leading edge of the RE.net.

Here's a recap of some of the sessions I attended/participated in at REBlogworld on Friday, September 19, 2008.

Mariana Wagner - From Click to Close.  Mariana covered 10 major points of conversion using and expanding on a traditional sales cycle adjusted for

1. Find - Potential clients will find you online due to your SEO; Pay Per Clicks/Adwords; adding your blog to directories; joining various online communities and offline marketing strategies
2. Click - Increase your click through rate with compelling content; enticing headlines/titles; relevant keywords that the consumer is searching for; long tail posts
3. Stick - Powerful calls to action, compelling content, ease of navigation and interior links can help your stickability - having a visitor stay on your site longer
4. Inquire -To get visitors to contact you or register for your home search, place properly worded calls to action in key areas on your blog.  Use graphical buttons on a prominent area above the fold (front page area visible on the screen).  Top 3 ideas: Search Homes for Sale in ____ ; Find Out How Much your Home is Worth in Today's Market; Get our Exclusive Weekly "Best Buy" Homes/Foreclosure List.  Put your call to action links in the body of the post when it makes sense or at the end of the blog post.
5. Contact - Find and build rapport as soon as possible.  Add and offer value through your blog content.
6. Appointment - stay in their mind; get permission; use your targeted blog post informative content in your drip email campaigns; create a sense of urgency to take action; remain helpful
7. Agreement - Use your blog to subtly promote yourself and address their concerns.  Be the expert.
8. Contract - Continue to educate through the process.
9. Close - Reinforce the process with blog posts.  Keep yourself educated.
10. Referral - Involve your clients in your blog - record and post testimonials; interview your clients - promote their business or favorite charity for example.

Dan Green of The Mortgage Reports shared some excellent advice on the design and aesthetics of your blog, among them:

• Put your most important info above the fold (the area visible on your screen when you go to a website or blog
• Your contact information must be clearly visible
• Dan uses a triangle format on his blog and in his posts that follows the normal eye pattern of someone visiting the site (the header; a graphic adjacent to a call to action (his "Work with Dan" area)
• Include an email subscription widget - many people still don't understand or use RSS feeds

Dave Smith and Rich Jacobson debated the benefits of Active Rain vs. Wordpress:

• Rich outlined the benefits of Active Rain and some of the newer features like Outside Blogs, changes in Localism.com which will be opening to the public soon to be part of the community
• Loved Dave's comment about every post is a "line in the water" - another opportunity to attract a potential reader, client
• Write about local events and happenings in our community - make sure to use keywords in the title and post.  You'll be amazed at how you will come up in the search engines sometimes more prominently then the actual event organizer or site.  (Especially when you use the SEO power of Active Rain)

Blogworld 2008 - Dave Taylor on Search Engines and Findability

 Dave Taylor -  Ten Things Your Need to Know about Search Engines and Findability

It all starts with good content - interesting, compelling and relevant.

Search Engines use semantic (what are you saying) and contextual analysis (who links to you and how they link) to figure themes and topics.

Here are Dave's 10 Things (plus a Bonus Tip) to Know About Search Engine Optimization:

1. Importance of titles- is title good enough to draw attention? Does is contain a keyword or concept about the post?
2. Keyword Density - think keywords when writing - use the keyword several times in the post and not "it" or other pronouns.  Don't use click here - make the keyword text a link.
3. Smart image filenames - Rename your images with relevant keywords for the particular post
4. The alt and title attributes -Take the time to fill out the alt and title tags for your uploaded images and files - again with relevant keywords/concept.
5. "More..." is definitely less" - Reconsider the use of the Read More  in the post.  Change the link from more to the keyword heavy title for example.  Consider not using "Home" but the name of your Website in Navigation.
6. Use savvy permalinks -  Each blog post has it's own unique URL - choose the most powerful words to describe the content of your post.  Wordpress has plugins to customize your URL.
7. Use HTML too, not just CSS - Search engines like HTML - All blog platforms have easy HTML editors. (header tags <h1> <h2> for example)
8. Minimize exit links - scrutinize who and how many links are in your blogroll.  The more outgoing links you have increases possibility of visitors leaving your site
9. Use internal links to cross-promote content - Use Related/Similar Posts at the end of your post (Use Wordpress plugin); Title of the blog post is the link.
10. Encourage easy commenting - Don't require login or registering in order to post comments.
11. Bonus Tip:  Use Keyword Research Tools to see what combination of words and word phrases people use and how often people search for certain keywords.

RE Blogworld Sept 19-21 - Save $100 until August 22nd

Do you want to learn all the latest about blogs, podcasts, video blogs and social media?  Then sign up today for the 3 day conference coming to Las Vegas September 19-21, 2008.  Friday is a full day of workshops and panels geared for the real estate professional.  Your conference registration ($350 until August 22nd then it goes up to $450) also includes both days of the Blogworld & New Media Expo. 

Visit the REBlogworld Blog for more details and check out this post from Todd Carpenter What does my registration get me?

Real Estate Blogworld in Las Vegas - September 19-21, 2008

I am excited and honored to be a part of the RE Blogworld Conference on Friday, September 19, 2008 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.  I will be joining Pat Kitano of TransparentRE and Kevin Boer of 3Oceans Real Estate as moderators for this full-day conference kicking off the Blogworld & New Media Conference set for September 20 and 21 in Las Vegas.

Todd Carpenter and Jason Berman are the organizers of this full day event for real estate agents, mortgage brokers  and other real estate professionals.  Learn from the leaders in the RE.net about how to leverage the power of blogging and other social media to enhance marketing efforts and your overall business.

The BlogWorld & New Media Expo is the world's largest blogging and new media trade show.  I attended the Blogworld Expo last year and totally enjoyed the experience.  There was something for everyone - a variety of tracks to choose from blogging for beginners, advanced blogging, to video and podcasting.  Here's a link to my blog posts and reviews of the Blogworld 2007 sessions I attended.

Registration is now open for the 2008 event! Save $200 and sign up before June 20th and receive full access to RE BlogWorld and BlogWorld & New Media Expo for the combined price of $250!

BlogWorldExpo 2008

Blogword and New Media Expo Las Vegas - Highlight Videos

WebProNews.com posted these videos and others recorded at the recent Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas:

Richard Jalichandra, the new CEO of Technorati speaks on trends, what's happening at Technorati, blog search

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of Wordpress.com

Blogworld Expo - Using Analytics to Measure Your Blog's Performance

Avinash Kaushik whose web analytics blog - Occam's Razor presented a great session on Understanding Your Numbers and Using Analytics.

Key points:

•    Use Google Analytics or similar tool

•    Six Tips for Measurement

1. Raw Author Contribution - Check out Website Grader for your blog/website marketing effectiveness. Use plugins to assist you in analyzing your content and post stats.
2. Audience growth - both onsite  (measure visitors and unique visitors) and offsite (feedreaders; use feedburner.com for stats).  Avinash defined a key stat he tracks as "unique blog readers" - unique visitors + average daily feed subscriptions (which you can get from Feedburner).  Look for trends.
3. Conversation rate  - track stats on comments.  Find and use plugins to assist with this task. Conversation Rate = # number of visitor comments / number of posts
4. Citations.  Your authority rank on Technorati.com measures the number of unique links to your blog in the last 6 months.  Unique blogs that cite you.
5. Cost.  Track your expenditures in technology (hosting, other services); your time spent; and opportunity costs (if you weren't spending time blogging what would you do and does that equate to dollars earned/lost?)
6. Benefits.  Know your comparative value.  Are your creating an asset?  What is the direct value - products, services sold?  Is there any non-traditional value to consider as a benefit?

I loved this comment.......SET SOME GOALS – THEY MOTIVATE!

Measure:
•    Feed Subscribers
•    Conversation Rate
•    Unique Blog Visitors

Blogworld Expo Las Vegas (part 2) - Search Engine Optimization for Blogging

Update from Blogworld Expo, November 7th - SEO for Blogging session.  Panelists: Vanessa Fox, Stephan Spencer, Andy Beal and  Aaron Wall.

The four panelists presented a wealth of information and useful tips on the key topic of Blog SEO .  Vanessa posted each speaker's powerpoint presentations on her blog - Blogworld Expo:  SEO for Blogging Slides.  Check out this video of highlights from the session from WebProNews:

Some highlights and takeaways for me...

• Research what your audience is searching for - use keyword tools like Google Adwords, Overture Keyword Tracker Tool or Wordtracker - and write your posts using those relevant keywords
• Check out Google Trends to gain insights into search patterns and trends
• Blog Post Titles and Title Tags are key for SEO.  Write short, attractive, enticing, descriptive and use keywords for your niche, buisness, market.
• Google Webmaster Central is an excellent resource center for all things Google as it relates to your website or blog functionality, traffic, analytics, questions and more
• If you have a Wordpress blog, consider using the SEO Title Tags plugin to optimize your blog posts
• Contributed content - guest posts, writing contests, blog carnivals, other writers
• Monitor your statistics/analytics; watch trends, traffic spikes; make adjustments in posting schedule and topics based on what you learn
• Stay on your topic(s)
• Use Google Alerts to have information come to you on the subjects you are interested in - get new post ideas
• Save your post as a draft and refine it before publishing
• Actively solicit feedback; reply to comments
• Write for others - syndicate your content
• Don't be afraid of controversy
• Don't monetize your blog too early

Blogworld Expo Las Vegas - Nov 7 - Best Tips and Strategies

I'm attending the Blogworld & New Media Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center.  I attended 3 informative sessions on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 and came away with these tips, strategies and insights:

Business Blogging 101 - Andy Wibbels and Jennifer McClure

• Initial considerations when starting a blog:
  • Is it internal (for your company) or external (open to the public)?
  • What is the purpose or your outcome?
  • Who will be responsible for the blog?  Is it collaborative?
  • Establish your blog policy
    
    • Good sources - IBM Blogging Policy and Society for New Communication Research 
  • Decide on blog platform.  Hosted or your own server?
• Current trend in social media is integrated campaigns, multiple channels, more innovation
  • It's moving from text-based blogging to podcasting; vlogging (videos); online communities - forums; virtual worlds (Second Life); Micro-blogging (Twitter)
• Facebook is emerging as a powerful business networking online community.  I would also add LinkedIn to that category.

Grabbing the Market by The Long Tail - Jory des Jardins of BlogHer

• I recently read the book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson.  According to Anderson, "Our culture and economy are shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail." 
  
• Blogher is an example of the longtail in action.  A network of women bloggers generating a lot of traffic not only because of the most popular blogs at the front of the longtail - but for the many niche blogs that make up "the magic middle" to the long-end of the tail.
• A new twist on the 80/20 rule...perhaps the bottom 80% of products, markets, niches, etc is > or = the top 20%.

Coming tomorrow - Part 2  - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Blogs