Writing for Real Estate Blogs – Simple Rules to Keep It Real

Writing your real estate blog can be as easy as talking about your real estate business or the concerns of a first time home buyer. Unfortunately, translating your verbal skills into writing skills is often blocked by how schools have taught us to write. Accept the following rules on writing fro your real estate blog and you will find that writer’s block is not a problem and unleashing your creativity is a lot easier and more fun.

Rule #1: Be brutally honest. Forget what you were taught about writing impersonally in the third person – anything you write is unavoidably autobiographical. Use this to your advantage. You become more real, believable and authoritative to your reader by writing about what you know. Interestingly, by writing and answering questions your real estate clients ask, you get to know yourself better.

Rule #2. Find the common ground. By speaking to your reader using the second person present tense, you bring them into your one-way conversation. We are not as isolated as we think. You have worked with enough clients to know the stress everyone feels when they are buying or selling their house. We may all handle this stress differently, but we all feel it. A real estate blog entry addressing handling this stress may not address real estate directly, but it will help your clients deal with their real estate concerns better. Plus you position yourself as someone who really does understand real estate transactions.

Rule #3. Keep it brief. Writing tends to create run-on sentences. These are OK to get your thoughts out, but go back and shorten them. A good key is watching for the “and” in the sentence. It is probably a good place to separate two thoughts with a period.

Rule #4. Use subtitles on long blog entries. Let your reader skim the article and get the gist of it. This also creates an outline that helps you tie the end of the entry to the beginning.

Rule #5. Sell yourself wisely. Offer the juicy tidbit of information first, then write about your skills or knowledge in that area. Be subtle in blowing your own horn.

As a double check when you start writing – run your real estate blog posts by a teenager. They tend to have no problem unmasking unauthentic writing. And after offering you their juicy tidbit, they’ll sell you on the idea that their unmasking skills are worth a financial reward.