The Two Best Tools for Blogging

Yeah, I know. At the end of my last post, What to write about on your real estate blog, I promised an article on blogging time management.

That article is 90% complete. But as I was writing it, I got to thinking (uh oh).

There are tons of tools out there that help make blogging more efficient. Do a Google search and you’ll find them.

But that’s not the point in this article. The point here is to present you with the two best tools you can use for your real estate blogging adventure.

Ready?

The two best tools, ever, for successful real estate blogging are:

1) Your brain; and

2) Your keyboard.

No, I’m not trying to be a smart ass.

Seriously folks, if you want to have a successful (and I don’t care how you chose to define “successful”) real estate blog you have to use your brain, and you have to write.

(Or use a camera – video or still. Although I think, for now, it’s much harder to get ranked in search engines if all you do is video or still photography).

There are few absolute truths in this world, but here are two for you:

1. Real estate blogging is hard work.
2. There is no shortcut, no magic pill.

If you want success in this space, you are going to need to work your ass off, be consistent, not be afraid to experiment – and fail, have thick skin, write – a lot, and think.

If you want to pay someone hundreds to thousands of dollars for a custom Facebook page, or a visually appealing blog or website, or some automated system to Tweet, accumulate “friends” or “followers”, then knock yourself out. But while you are writing checks, keep in mind that none of that stuff is going to do damn thing if you don’t write, engage, and work.

This real estate blogging thing is a marathon folks, not a sprint. If you think you can start a blog today and have the phone ring tomorrow, don’t bother wasting your time.

To be successful in real estate, you don’t have to blog. You don’t have to be on Twitter, LikedIn, Facebook or any other site.

But you do have to generate prospects, you have to know what you’re doing, you have to understand your market – and your clients. And you know what? You have to work your ass off.

You can’t just throw money at this, or any other method of prospecting, and expect it to work. The Internet isn’t magic. You don’t just hang a website out there and expect the phone to ring or the inbox to light up. What you do is read, study, grow, try, evaluate, adjust and try again. Rinse and repeat.

Need some help from tools, systems, processes and training along the way? Fine. Nothing wrong with that.

But nothing is going to substitute for your brain, and your keyboard.

PS: I’ll still post the time management article. I just had to get this out of my head.

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