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Who owns your Content…

What is the investment portion of the “return on investment” on your blog? It is not JUST dollars and cents..  If you are a blogger, who has decided that your blog is going to be a significant part of your marketing strategy, than the money you invested in it… 1, 3, 5 or 10K is insignificant compared to the TIME you have invested creating the content for it.  The money? Oh, it will come back.  A well-written blog site with proper Call to Actions will convert traffic like the wind…

But the TIME you have invested to write all that content is not ONLY an investment, but an asset.

Cover your ASSets…

How are you protecting THAT asset…  That’s right, more than ANY OTHER portion of your Internet marketing; your content is an asset, and this asset  will keep giving and giving and giving…  because Google LOVES aged content and aged LINKS to that content…  Often, our older content still gets more traffic over a long (90 day) period than our new content…

But who owns YOUR content…

Well, this depends on where you choose to host it?  If you are on blogging sites, such as WordPress.com, Blogger, Typepad , Squarespace, or Active Rain?  Well, THEY do..  These platforms actually get credit for the content and the traffic for YOUR hard work…  (the inbound links will be credited to the domain, and can be carried with you, IF you have a custom domain pointed at your blog.)  But if you don’t? For example on Active Rain?  You get no content credit for all that hard work…

So what do you do?

Export your content to a blog you OWN…

Each of these platforms have ways to export the content into your own WordPress Blog!  Make the investment or take the time to create a blog that you OWN…  ensure you can make changes, change hosts,  servers, etc.  but OWN the data…  you wrote it… you invested the time and it is YOUR asset…

Don’t have the time, money or ability to do that quite yet?

Then, at least take the time to get YOUR blog posts backed up and added to a WordPress.org blog.  This can be done cheaply and easy.  Most Web Hosts have the ability to set up a simple WP.org blog with the touch of a button…

Then just export OUT of your current platform, and into your new blog…  Here are some basic instuction that explain how to do each… (plenty more on the Internet)

The first is a BRAND NEW EXCITING plugin from the mind of Jeff Turner and Zeek, to export and inport from ACTIVE RAIN to WORDPRESS..  This YOUTUBE video will take you step by step through exporting your content from Active Rain and importing it into your blog.  I followed Jeffs Instructions and was done in 5 minutes…  Brilliant.

You can visit this site for more information on writing and how to check plagiarism in your content.

The Zeek Interactive Active Rain Import Plugin

Here is a video on how to export from BLOGGER to WORDPRESS

You Tube Video- Blogger to WordPress

Now SQUARESPACE is a bit tougher, here are the steps..

1. Export your blog from squarespace in Movable Type format?

2. Create a free typepad.com blog?

3. Import your squarespace blog into Typepad?

4. Export your blog from typepad?

5. Import your blog into WordPress.com using the import tool

If you have any problems exporting or importing, a simple search of Google will result in many pages explaining the process…

But just get it done.  Your work, Your Asset, Your return.

I was at a Large Brokerage office meeting last week when the conversation of Social Media came up…  (okay, probably because I was at the office…)  There were quite a few agents excited about the prospect of adding social media to their marketing campaign.  They had significantly decreased any type of print marketing and wanted to ensure that were had some effort going forward toward attracting new prospects and increasing their sphere of influence.  They were considering Social Media.

Just about the time we started talking about ways for them to ease into Social Media Marketing, the “tech guru” of the office chimed in with…

John:  “Wait, Wait, Wait…  Let me ask THIS question…     Who here has EVER (I like the annunciated “ever,” as if SM had been around for decades..) written a deal using social media…”

One Hand.

John:  “See Jim?  We just don’t think Social Media works?”  It’s just not viable. OUR clients and prospects are NOT on Social Media”

I was amazed.  You see this was a smart guy, he knows tech and he was trashing my beloved social media, right before my eyes…. How dare he?

Me:” John, I understand that, and this IS the type of question we should ALL be asking…  But,  let me ask ALMOST the same question about Internet Marketing in general?

“Who here has sold a house from ANY Internet effort.  Your website, Your Blog,, Pay-per-click, Social Media?…  ANYTHING?”

One Hand.

Me:  “Well there you have it…  Ladies and Gentleman we have solved the great mystery here today, and CLEARLY the answer is?”

The Internet is Broken.

Of course,  we know that consumers are searching their hearts out on the Internet..  Yes we know that 80% of all Real Estate Consumers do some part of their search on-line. And Internet consumers SAY they want to find their home on-line and then call an agent… We certainly know that every man, women and child WE know uses the Internet…

But if YOU are not getting leads?  It MUST be that Internet isn’t working right.

John?, It certainly couldn’t be that you purchased a website with ZERO foresight or reflection of what the web consumer was actually looking for.

It couldn’t be that you have not looked at your web analytics in years and have no idea WHO is coming to your site and WHY they are not becoming contacts.

It couldn’t be that you never even CONSIDERED what effort might be needed to drive traffic to your website.

It certainly couldn’t be that you created a website that was about YOU and not the product you represent and it certainly couldn’t be that your DOG or your SLOGAN takes up more room on your site than your well thought out opinion of the condition of the market…   Couldn’t be.

And It couldn’t be that you built a web site?  Instead of a web STRATEGY…

And now?  You are going to make EXACTLY the same the mistake with Social Media.

You are going to Tweet, post, blog and follow your way out of business, or at least out of valuable time that you COULD have invested doing something that actually works.  Something you have tried, received feedback and response on, adapted, tweaked, and developed into a strategy, a powerful phone call to an expired or a heavy pitch to a bank exec. Something you have practiced and honed to a proven strategy.

The Internet is NOT broken.  Social Media works.  But you can’t just DO it.  You need to understand it. You need to create a STRATEGY for it, and you need to work that strategy just as you did your geographic farm, with measured input and measured results. You need to figure out what your return on investment expectation is and how to measure it, and you need to be thoughtful, nimble and consistent in your actions. You need to understand that doing Social Media and engaging in a Social Media Strategy with a purpose are two VERY different endeavors, and will provide very different results.

Social Media is NOT a panacea. It is not a golden button and it is CERTAINLY not the answer to your ailing Real Estate practice.  But with a bit of knowledge, some significant planning, a well developed strategy, a measure of discipline and careful MEASUREMENT?

It IS effective marketing.