Mary McKnight wrote an article last Friday called Real Estate Blogs are Stores, Not Websites – So Blog Like You are Selling Houses, Not Writing For Your Local Paper and it made the short list for the Odysseus Medal Sunday. It is well written and provocative. Mary McKnight is recognized as one of the premier web site designers and SEO experts in Real Estate. I have a great deal of respect for her knowledge as it pertains to web sites and SEO. If you have not read it, please do; and then answer this question for me: How is it possible that someone so good at creating real estate web sites, can be so wrong when it comes to real estate marketing?
The Sugar Coating
Let me preface this by saying that I have a great deal of respect for Mary McKnight. Add to which a lot of people for whom I also hold a great deal of respect use her services and listen to her advice. But when she says Your real estate blog is a store, not a newspaper, I find myself asking the obvious question: If it is a store, what do you sell? If you answer “homes” I am going to assume you work at a mobile home dealership. Otherwise you clearly do not understand your product. Here’s a hint: you see your product every day in the mirror. You no more sell homes than you stock them… which is why you are not a store. You are a service and your product is your expertise.
The Creamy Middle
The point of her article is …to get you to understand that if your business is about real estate and you want to attract customers that have a real estate need you MUST write about real estate, not skateboards and restaurants. This is true on a very grand scale: most of your articles and certainly your “look and feel” must tell the reader that you can and will be the best agent they have ever had. But does that mean you should only write about real estate? When Mary says it
is inconceivable to (her) that Read more