{"id":2750,"date":"2008-03-11T09:30:10","date_gmt":"2008-03-11T16:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2750"},"modified":"2008-03-11T09:30:12","modified_gmt":"2008-03-11T16:30:12","slug":"how-do-you-get-visitors-to-come-to-your-homes-custom-weblog-shoe-leather-works-well-search-engines-not-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2750\/how-do-you-get-visitors-to-come-to-your-homes-custom-weblog-shoe-leather-works-well-search-engines-not-so-much\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you get visitors to come to your home’s custom weblog? Shoe leather works well. Search engines? Not so much…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic<\/i> (permanent link<\/a>):<\/p>\n

 
How do you get visitors to come to your home’s custom weblog? Shoe leather works well. Search engines? Not so much…<\/b><\/p>\n

Okay, so you’ve built a custom weblog to help sell your home, and you’ve dressed it up with photos, a map, a floorplan — every bit of content you could think of. Now what?<\/p>\n

Your home now has a twenty-four-hour salesperson on the internet. How do you go about getting potential buyers to visit your blog?<\/p>\n

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is not search engines. For one thing, your site is brand new. The search engines don’t even know it exists. Even if you manage to get indexed, you won’t have the kind of popularity to bring you to the top of search results for your keywords.<\/p>\n

But there is an even more compelling reason why search engines won’t be much help to you: Visitors brought in by search engines are very loosely motivated. Many will have been looking for something else entirely, so they will bounce right back off your site in seconds flat.<\/p>\n

Your objective in promoting your weblog is to target people who are motivated to buy your home — or who know someone who is motivated to buy your home. Your job is not to broadcast your appeal to everyone but to narrowcast to just those people who can do you the most good.<\/p>\n

You’ll put notices about your weblog anywhere online that you can — Zillow.com, Trulia.com, CraigsList.com, local weblogs supporting nearby schools, little league teams, etc. But your primary promotional strategy is going to be offline — person to person.<\/p>\n

We print business card-sized promotional pieces to advertise our open houses. These are distributed to every house in the neighborhood, since the neighbors may know someone who wants to live nearby.<\/p>\n

During the school day, there will be more than 100 cars in the school parking lot, most of them driven there from out of the neighborhood. Some of those folks are sick of commuting.<\/p>\n

Most local retailers will have some kind of bulletin board. Your cards belong there.<\/p>\n

Your buyers probably won’t Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):  How do you get visitors to come to your home’s custom weblog? Shoe leather works well. Search engines? Not so much… Okay, so you’ve built a custom weblog to help sell your home, and you’ve dressed it up with photos, a map, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-technology","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2658,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2658\/a-custom-weblog-can-be-your-homes-24-hour-real-estate-salesperson-on-the-world-wide-web\/","url_meta":{"origin":2750,"position":0},"title":"A custom weblog can be your home’s 24-hour real estate salesperson on the world-wide web","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link): \u00a0A custom weblog can be your home's 24-hour real estate salesperson on the world-wide web I have an unshakable faith in the three P's of home marketing -- Price, Preparation and Presentation. If the home is priced\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2696,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2696\/dress-up-that-custom-weblog-youve-built-to-help-sell-your-home\/","url_meta":{"origin":2750,"position":1},"title":"Dress up that custom weblog you’ve built to help sell your home","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link): \u00a0Dress up that custom weblog you've built to help sell your home Last week we built a custom weblog to help you sell your home. This week, let's dress it up a little. Some of the things\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":527,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/527\/real-estate-weblogs-and-the-google-sandbox-of-doom\/","url_meta":{"origin":2750,"position":2},"title":"Real estate weblogs and the Google Sandbox of Doom . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a new domain going live tonight, the first custom web site we have done for a real estate listing built as a weblog instead of a static web site. When we talked about this before, Free the Drones wondered if custom web sites might get lost for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1674,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1674\/have-another-cookie-targeting-content-to-two-different-kinds-of-first-time-visitors-to-a-wordpressorg-weblog\/","url_meta":{"origin":2750,"position":3},"title":"Have another cookie? Targeting content to two different kinds of first-time visitors to a WordPress.org weblog","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Dustin had a post last night that made me rethink the ideas I posted the other day on using a cookie to modify a WordPress.org weblog's default behavior for first-time visitors. Clear as mud? Starting with version 2.0, WordPress introduced the idea of an optional intro.php file that would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2669,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2669\/wanna-see-how-to-win-the-bloodhoundblog-black-pearl-divers-contest-youre-not-selling-us-youre-selling-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":2750,"position":4},"title":"Wanna see how to win the BloodhoundBlog Black Pearl Diver’s contest? You’re not selling us, you’re selling you . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Mike Farmer wrote a sweet note this morning about using single-property weblogs in his marketing, but his post was not an entry in the BloodhoundBlog Black Pearl Diver\u2019s contest. What's the trick to writing a winning entry? Think your benefit, not ours. How can you write a post about an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3279,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3279\/project-bloodhound-how-to-write-headlines-for-your-real-estate-weblog-posts-that-deliver-the-goods-and-deliver-google-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":2750,"position":5},"title":"Project Bloodhound: How to write headlines for your real estate weblog posts that deliver the goods — and deliver Google results","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A headline on a weblog post is a differentiator -- this entry is different from all the others -- but that's not a very useful lens for understanding headlines. A serial number -- A37592x -- is a differentiator, too. A headline can serve the same purpose as a headline in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}