Late last fall I wrote about the drought situation in Atlanta. It was viewed over 800 times in less than 36 hours. I received emails from several people showing concern and establishing a dialog about Atlanta’s water problems. No one has purchased property from this post but we never know where a client may come from. Just using this as an example of writing about a larger area and how an interesting local topic can generate traffic to your blog.

Good luck with your “Houston Real Estate Blog”.

Is it akin to more traditional farming? Yes and no. Local farming was expensive – paper – ink – postage – flier services – advertising costs – all to reach a small area of 3000-5000 residents on a steady and regular basis. Yet we were only able to provide small amounts of information, exactly how much can you fit on a postcard or a flier? So we spent the money on promotional advertising – just listed – just sold postcards, hey I can sell yours too! We spent large dollars to produce new business so we could earn large amounts of money to pay for the next round of advertising expenses. It was a vicious circle.

Blogging opened an opportunity to move large amounts of information from our desks and our heads to the community. It gives us the opportunity to stand up in front of the community and to actually communicate with them – all of them. To be the local resource for local real estate and community related information. That is what homeowners in your community want. When they want county or national information they turn on the news, pick up a paper or go to a local news site.

While we will occasionally report on local news and events we are not reporters, we are Realtors, spreading the word about real estate and our communities.

You ponder, should I blog to the entire city or take it down to hyper local within your city. Why wouldn’t you blog to you entire city AND to an assortment of targeted, hyper local neighborhoods within it? Why would you limit yourself like that? When you blog to an entire city you build a solid reputation with the residents as well as with the search engines. If you decide to start writing about a neighborhood you hadn’t really addressed before your blog has the power to make you visible in that neighborhood very quickly. If you have something of value to offer they will read you, it will likely turn into more business, if you are any good at it.

Before I discovered blogging, I approached the title companies in my area about appropriating an email list for the entire city. I figured that a title company or perhaps insurance companies would likely have a high percentage of local email addresses for a targeted community and would be able to pull that information out of their computer relatively easily. While dissecting how that would work, one of the title reps and myself realized that it was a potential disaster. If one agent got their hands on a list like that in a very short time many more would also.

Try to imagine an entire city having to change their email addresses because hundreds of emails would be spamming them daily. It just didn’t work, no matter how we broke it down. Unless a small handful of Realtors had exclusive use the potential for abuse was too great.

I am rambling on here, I could go on about this for hours. But the bottom line is that my blog is hyper local, I get between 2000 and 3000 hits a day. This last month the roof blew off it, I am getting 5 or more leads a day. I have hired a buyers agent, am referring to 3 agents in my office and am looking for 2 more buyers agents.

Do hyper local blogs work? Yes, they work very well with the right lead generator on them. Unfortunately most blogs don’t have the right stuff.

Norm – Good method… I found that there are plenty of stories all around that are never discussed. It’s like you have to develop an eye for news. I tried to adjust my thinking and ask questions about the area around me that have yet to be answered such as ” why does that store go through 4 owners and rebrand every year”. What is the deal with the huge broken X that has been sitting on the side of the road for 3 months? Should there be a light at that intersection? What is the story behind the bum standing at my turn every day? What is the best sushi restaurant in our town? I could go on and on, and although those seem petty, to me and my neighbors they are interesting. They are literally “close to home”

Viki – I like the site. I have)n’t gotten into discussing what type of content to feature but I have been exploring all kinds of topics… non real estate related also. I’m not aiming to gain leads, just local traffic. What I choose to do with that traffic becomes the fun part. A realtor may use this approach to build a base and level of trust/exposure in the community.. The leads will follow. It’s like an indirect sale.

Katie – One part of the equasion to consider would be the amount of active “internet users” in your chosen area… I would not limit myself to a certain number of households. You know your area best and I would use your instincts to determine the scope of the site. You don’t want it to be boring either, so a simple neighborhood might not suffice unless you can dig up enough dirt to make it useful for a resident. You can even make the “online” version of your homeowners association newsletter and discuss hot topics such as where the trash should be picked up.. front or back, but keep in mind your own liveliness. I couldn’t stand being confined to writing about an area too small unless I was truly passionate about it (or lived there).

Drew – I downloaded that file and finally found a way to open the database. Your houston section looks pretty accurate. I would make “Katy” a section (rather than just west houston). I would ex out the “greater” in greater memorial, heights, etc… You covered all the areas but the locals refer to the “cities” like Conroe, The Woodlands, Friendswood, Cypress, Katy, Spring, Baytown, Clear Lake, etc. But I guess it is a matter of preference. (check spelling on Pasadena, AKA Stinkadena AKA Pasa-”Get Down”-Dena.)