Real Estate Blogging And The Art Of War
Guest Author Jonathan Green presents:
Real Estate Blogging And The Art Of War
Jim once wrote a post about how your blog is an Army, which got me thinking. If blogs are comparable to armies, and posts to soldiers, then the time-tested rules of employing an army may have some relevance. To this end, I recently undertook yet another study of “The Art of War,” the Taoist mantra of the genius Sun Tzu. I came up with a few good points of time-tested strategy made applicable to blogging. Enjoy.
Master Sun on Strategic Assessments:
“Structure your forces accordingly to supplement extraordinary tactics.
Forces are to be structured strategically, based upon what is advantageous.”
When Sun Tzu says “forces,” read it as “blog posts.”
Then it begins to make sense. Bloggers use “extraordinary tactics” every day of the week.
Think of how convention says that we should go about winning strategically important key words.
For example, if I wanted to win the keywords “Tampa Real Estate,” I would probably have to pay for them with adsense. Or, I could pay a web development team a zillion dollars and give them a year, and maybe I could be number 1 in Google. Those are examples of conventional methods of achieving the objective. Blogging is the extraordinary tactic that gives us the advantage over the giants of our industry.
“Forces are to be structured strategically,” as it applies in this context, spurs a discussion about how we write our blog posts. If you want to win the long tail results that will bring you business, you must write keyword rich context and relevant headlines. Further, the posts must be structured into concise, descriptive categories that can dominate the search engines. Finally, in order to generate links your content must come across as a discussion between you and your readers. It’s a long order to fill, which is why so very few bloggers are truly remarkable.
The lesson here is that extraordinary tactics alone are not enough.
In other words, having a blog alone will not win business. You must structure (write) your forces (blog posts) correctly to supplement your tactics. Get it?
Master Sun on Positioning:
“So it is good that warriors take their stand on ground where they cannot lose,
and do not overlook conditions that make their opponent prone to defeat.”
In this passage, we’re talking about taking the “high ground.” In ancient battles, it was imperative to capture the most easily defensible terrain around. By doing so, you gave yourself a much greater chance of winning, despite the inferiority of your force in terms of size. How does this equate to blogging?
Think of the high ground as a niche, and your blog posts as the soldiers that must defend it. By positioning yourself within a great piece of terrain, you make yourself nearly invincible.
Example: I’ve recently started writing a series of posts about military relocations to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. I’ve turned out about four keyword rich articles in the last week. As a result, I’m beginning to climb the ladder in Google. By the time the big Brokers figure out what I’m doing, it will be too late to catch me. (You won’t tell them, will you?)
And, concerning the “Conditions that make their opponents prone to defeat” I offer the following thought:
It is impossible for any Brokerage to be all things to all people. If they try to compete with us for our respective niches, they will surely spread themselves too thin on marketing dollars.
Master Sun on Being Pro active:
“Those who are first on the battlefield and await the opponents are at ease;
those who are last on the battlefield and head into battle get worn out.”
Here the great master talks about getting to the battle first.
I submit that blogging is catching on in the Real Estate industry, and that the secrets of its business generating potential are out of the bag. Therefore, it is imperative that you select your niche and begin the process of dominating it now. If you’ve managed to beat all of the other bloggers to the battlefield, they will have to work frantically to try and catch up. Meanwhile, you can sit at the pool and sip mojitos while you update your blog with your iphone.
Life is good.
Who knew that a dude from the 6th Century B.C. would know so much about blogging?
