The key to a successful real estate blog is generating and maintaining your blog's position as an authority on real estate in your farm area. A great way to do this is to connect with other real estate professionals and potential clients through various social networks on the web. So what is a social network? For those that don't know, a social network is an online community centered around a common interest. A very well-known example of a social network is MySpace, www.myspace.com. While social networks may not sound very business-like, they are valuable tools you should use to generate traffic to your site. There are many professional social networks these days, many not worth joining. Here is a list of the five social networks all real estate professionals should join:

• ActiveRain (www.activerain.com)-This is a community of real estate professionals that share real estate and mortgage information via their ActiveRain blogs. Membership is free to this site and the maintenance of a blog on ActiveRain can generate new business contacts and partnerships as well as increased traffic to your blog site.

• Squidoo (www.squidoo.com)-This site is a network of member sites called "lenses". Each member creates a "lens" on a particular subject. As a real estate professional, you would create a lens based on real estate in your farm area. Membership is free to this site. A well-maintained lens can obtain its own traffic and generate ad revenue for you as well as drive additional traffic to your blog site.

• HubPages (www.hubpages.com)-This site is very similar to Squidoo. It is a network of member sites called "hubs". You will create a "hub" for real estate in your farm area. Membership is free to this site. A well-maintained hub will generate traffic and ad revenue for you and your blog site.

• Facebook (www.facebook.com)-This is a well-known social network that was originally centered on connecting college students across the country. Now it has been expanded for use to people of all ages and businesses use it for promotion of their brand. Create a free profile for your real estate business and include a link to your blog site.

• Twitter (www.twitter.com)-This is a micro-blogging service that is based around one question:"What Are You Doing?" By answering this question and updating your Twitter account each time you make a new post to your blog site, you will attract "followers" that can later turn into leads.

Maintaining these sites and profiles may seem like a lot of extra work but there are ways to simplify that process. Here are a couple of tips to make updating your social network profiles and pages easy:

• Sign up for Ping.fm (www.ping.fm). You can update your Twitter and Facebook accounts right in one place. You can post new status messages here-include links to recent blog posts and any videos you may have on the web for additional exposure.

• Recycle blog posts for use on your ActiveRain blog, Squidoo lens, and HubPages Hub. Do this by rewriting an old blog post, making sure that it is different from the original by at least 30%. Post your rewritten posts to the other sites. This process makes sure that all of your sites are being updated regularly with fresh content.

To further maximize the buzz on your blog, consider the use of FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com). FriendFeed gathers all of your updates to your various social network accounts and creates an automatically updating feed that you can use on your blog site. By creating a FriendFeed and implementing it on the home page of your blog site, you can significantly increase your sites importance in the search engines and get enhanced results.

For more information and additional tips on using social networking to promote your real estate blog, check out these great articles:

Problogger - How to Promote Your Blog through Networking

Kikolani - 9 Ways to Use Social Networking for Blog Promotion

Chris Brogan - Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

As a professional bio writer, I often get asked "how do I write a bio when I don't have direct experience in the business?"

Don't sweat it! I can tell you that your realtor bio is not necessarily JUST about your industry experience. More than anything, readers want to know that you:

1) know the local market; 2) understand the client's needs; 3) are going to work hard for them.

And you can satisfy each of these criteria even if you are brand new to the real estate business.

Let's take each of these client concerns and see what you can write in your professional bio that will wow them.

1. You know the local market.

OK, so maybe you don't have 20 years experience as a realtor in the community. But you live in the community, right?

So talk about what your connection to the community: the hidden gems you treasure, the groups you're involved with, or the networks you belong to.

Whereas an experienced realtor might write about their twenty years experience as a real estate agent, a brand new realtor can write:

Jane has lived in Townville for X years and just loves it. She knows all the neighbourhoods inside-out, and can help you select the best one for your family's needs.

OR

As a lifelong resident of Mayberry, Andy can put his insider knowledge to work to find a special property in your neighbourhood of choice.

You're showing that you know the local market, and the client won't care how many years of experience you have.

2. You understand the client's needs.

What do people really want when they are buying or selling real estate? They want an agent who will help them meet their needs. These needs might include understanding exactly what they mean by "cozy home", having a particular type of business style, or using the latest marketing tools.

So how do you express this in your realtor bio? You might say something like:

Andy also uses the latest Internet marketing tools to expose your property to the widest possible range of qualified buyers.

3. You are going to work hard for them.

When thinking about how to write a bio, remember that the bottom line for clients is "are you the right real estate agent for me?" Often this translates into "Do I like you?"

So don't forget about the personal qualities that qualify you for the job. People reading your real estate bio will feel confident knowing that you are pleasant, professional, hard-working, enthusiastic and organized.

Here's one way to write this in your professional bio:

Why choose Jane as your real estate agent? For one thing, she really listens to you and will work tirelessly on your behalf.

Trust me, it makes all the difference when trying to sell yourself to show who you are and why you are enthusiastic about the topic.

You don't need decades of experience and a wall of awards to write a winning real estate bio. Just show that you know the local market, understand the client's needs, and are going to work hard for them. Then you'll have a great professional bio that will be a strong part of your marketing materials.

About the author: Barbra Sundquist is an experienced technical writer and business coach who provides fill-in-the-blank templates for how to write a bio. Visit HowToWriteBio.com to get your free copy of "84 Sentence Starters for Writing A Bio".

Blogging is no longer just the pastime of teenage girls looking to broadcast their daily drama for public consumption. Nowadays, blogs are created by people of all ages for a number of reasons. For some, blogging is a platform from which they can express their opinions and interests to the world. Others start a blog with the hopes of it becoming a source of income through advertisements and the like. For businesses, blogs are a new way to connect with people in order to market products and services.

Consider the following statistics:

• 57 million Americans read blogs
• 12 million American adults maintain their own blog
• Over 120,000 new blogs are created daily
• 89% of companies feel blogs will be more important than ever within the next 5 years
• 22 of the 100 most popular sites in the world are blogs

Regardless of the motivation to create a blog, it is clear that blogs are on the verge of taking over the web as we know it. Unlike static websites, good blogs constantly updated provide valuable information to their audiences on a regular basis. Blogs have the ability to elicit conversations between post author and reader, creating lasting relationships along the way. For this reason, many well-known corporations like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and GM now have blogs. They understand the value of relating to their audience on a more personal level-your visitors will become your readers, your readers will become your leads, and those leads will turn into sales for your company. This holds especially true for real estate professionals. Through a blog, you can become a trusted and respected source of information on real estate in your farm area. By providing valuable insight into the business of real estate, your readers will come to see you as knowledgeable and experienced which will then cause them to choose you over your competition when it comes time for them to buy or sell their home. You will also gain notoriety with your colleagues which can turn into a source of income through referrals. This makes blogging a powerful tool in building your personal brand and real estate business.

You don't just want to appeal to people-you want to appeal to the search engines as well. Here are some interesting facts concerning the usage of search engines like Yahoo!, Google, and MSN in the U.S.:

• 75% of Americans use search engines on a regular basis
• 56% of Americans use search engines daily
• 40% of searches are for local businesses and services
• 54% of Americans use the internet instead of the phone book to find local services

Do you want to be found when people in your area are looking for real estate? Any sane business person would want to get a piece of the internet action. Good placement in the search engines is how you are going to obtain traffic to your site. Blogs are very attractive to the search engines because of the constant addition of content that occurs on a blog. Every time you add new information to your blog, the search engines are alerted that you have added something new and they come and visit your site. The more content you add, the more your site gets visited and if you are creating quality content, you will see your blog move to the top of the search engines faster than a website ever possibly could. Adding new content to your blog consistently takes dedication and time but attaining high placement in the search engines will unlock earning potential beyond your imagination.

If you want to create an online presence that will create visibility and leads for your business, a blog is the way to go. Websites are becoming a thing of the past so don't wait another day to start a blog for your real estate business. Check out our Real Estate Blog Builder for an easy, quick, and affordable solution for your real estate blog needs.

Because I love TMZ and The Superficial and because I just thought it would be fun to have an occasional real estate technology gossip piece - so, here are a couple of SEO related real estate rumors making their ways across the blogosphere.

Is Trulia cloaking pages?

Trulia Caught Cloaking Red Handed

Eric Bramlett catches Trulia in what appears by all accounts to be a serious case of cloaking.  Cloaking is an age old shady technique that based on user agent (i.e. GoogleBot, YahooSlurp, (robots) IE, Firefox (people)) serves one set of content to the search engine and another set of content to people visiting the site through regular browsers.  In this case, Eric shows how Trulia is using a redirect and cloaking to direct Google to Trulia's own Seattle Real Estate landing pages when it crawls Seattle Weekly's real estate section. This could be one of the possible cataysts to Trulia's recent jump on the engines in many major markets.  Basically, Trulia is boosting pageviews through partner sites and the techniques they are using while not necessarily evil it may be against Google's TOS.

Conspiracy Theories on Trulia's SEO

Is trulia cloaking? Interesting Sphin story

YouTube Video of Trulia Cloaking

Trulia.com Uses Hidden Text

Trulia's Web-ranking strategies catch heat | Inman News

Read also: White Hat, Gray Hat and Black Hat SEO Explained

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Hey, real estate agents should be too busy to blog. It's a fact. So, sometimes you need quick, easy and effective posts that take minimal time and brain power. So, here are examples of simple posts that will quickly become cornerstone pieces on your blog.

Please note, most of these revolve around you knowing your way around the MLS and listings. Why? Because every successful real estate blogger knows, the bread and butter of their blog are posts about listings.

Read also: The First 30 Days of Blogging

1. A monthly top 10 listings post.

This is a very simple post. Each month, you probably walk through upwards of 20 homes and view even more on the MLS with clients. So, make a list of your favorite picks for various types of buyers.

Examples:

• Top 10 Denver CO Homes for first time home buyers
• Top 10 Salt Lake City real estate investments
• Top 5 Fort Lauderdale Foreclosures

How to implement this post:

• Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) etc.
• Make your own brief analysis of what makes each home a best buy or good investment (be specific - people like specifics)

Read also:Top 5 Easy and Effective Listing Posts You Can Write for Your Real Estate Blog

2. Use a listing that has sat on the MLS for months to show what prevents a home from selling

Hey, you've been in the house or you have seen it on the MLS. You know the house. The one where the front yard hasn't been tended to or the home is never in showing condition or the MLS info plain old stinks. Or worse yet, the home is just grossly overpriced. Take an explicit example from the MLS of a home that has sat on the market for months and explain all the problems with it and why it isn't selling.

Examples:

• Why this 3 bedroom DC Condo won't sell and how you can make sure yours does
• Why great San Diego Homes like these go unsold
• Why good Portland homes can't sell and bad ones do

How to implement this post:

• Find one home that has sat on the market for a while that you can clearly identify why it has not sold. It is preferable to pick a home that you have been inside.
• Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) or take your own photos etc.
• What is preventing the home from selling and list things that the Realtor or Seller could do to help this home get sold.

Read also: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

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