Stop Acting Like Blogging Is Rocket Science
(Bear with me.)
The avant-garde trend of Blogging Evangelism in real estate blogs has ironically turned quite blase in their ubiquity. What?
Let me try that again.
It seems that the giving of advice, and the posture of expert, has become so fashionable that its impact is lost. What?
Let me try that again.
Everyone thinks they need to share their expertise, no one is being heard. Oh.
Teresa Boardman, our resident real estate blogging goddess asks us 21 questions, less as an effort to gain answers, than to point out how irrelevant the concern is. It seems lately everyone wants to learn from Teresa’s success by assuming they already know where it is coming from. Fancy talking interviewers are clouding the true point and focus of Teresa’s efforts in their own need to explain it all away. It’s not about being an expert; blogging is not rocket science, it’s about being yourself, and putting what you have into it.
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Oh Mr. Tomato, Round and Red, clear up my confusion
so I can turn off my computer and go to bed.
Maybe you or your readers can help me with this blog stuff. Recently I have been interviewed by newspapers, a couple of magazines, some pod casters, and some “big” blogs. They ask me questions about my blog. Some of the interviewers have never read my blog and don’t really understand what a blog is. I answer their questions and send them to the Tomato for information and advice. Why do they want to know what a blog is anyway?
The questions they ask don’t make sense. One publication told me that my blog has a good page rank, and asked me about it. I had to fake my way through the question and change the subject. After the interview I looked up my page rank for the very first time, then looked up the page rank for my web site and it was even higher, wonderful. If page rank is so important how come I get most of my leads through my blog but my web site has a higher page rank? How come I don’t understand page rank, what does it do and why do I need it?
Another blog writer noticed that St. Paul Re is number four in Google. I have no idea what that means. I should have asked but did not want to show the world that I know nothing about SEO. My understanding is that being on top means that people will find my blog first when they search. This is very confusing to me because I track search terms and there are so many that I don’t understand what being on the top means. My blog comes up first in Google when I type in Teresa Boardman. I can’t imagine why anyone would use those search terms when looking for a home. If I type in “real estate blogging goddess” your blog comes up first with a link to mine. How can that be? You are the Tomato. If I type in real estate tomato your blog comes up first. Congratulations you made it to that coveted number one spot! Go Jim!
It gets even more confusing. Last week my blog was called a little blog and was compared to some big blogs. After the interview I went and looked at the big blogs. My little blog gets as much and in some cases more traffic than big blogs do, it is older than most big blogs and has more posts. Is my blog little because it is about St. Paul instead of about New York? Maybe it is little because I am a small business owner and not a large corporation. If you could shed some light I would be grateful. What is a big blog? What is a small blog? Does size matter?
If size does matter will you help with a redesign so that I can make it look bigger? Most of the big bloggers are men. Can women have big blogs too? Most are a decade younger than I am. Is life experience slowing me down, or clouding my judgment? Is it relevant in the new 2.0 world, or does my age make me obsolete?
It usually takes a several months of writing blog posts for a blog writer to become and expert and start giving advice to others. Being surrounded by so many advisors and teachers all giving advice is confusing. How do I know whose advice to take? There are rarely any credentials posted so that I can determine the credibility and experience level of the advisor. Does experience even matter? I hear the authority in their voices as I read the words they write. They all sound so knowledgeable and I know that if I see it on the internet it must be true, yet some of the advice is not the same as my own experiences. Whose advice should I take? Should I take the advice of the best writer?
When I started my blog it was hard to find advice. Recently I am learning from other blog writers that I may not be doing this whole blog thing right. Early on I was told that blogs don’t have pictures, I really screwed up, and mine has hundreds of them. I try not to obsess over it because my primary job is selling real estate. Yet I can’t ignore the remarks because my blog does take some of my time and I really hate to waste time. My blog doesn’t even look like other blogs. Where can I go to find the rules? Who makes them? What is the penalty for breaking them?
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The moral of Teresa’s post?
Step 1. Find your focus.
Step 2. Write your articles.
Step 3. Go to bed.
Teresa Boardman is an exceptionally professional Realtor in the St. Paul, Minnesota area.
