Your Blog – How Valuable Is Your Online Real Estate?

I would assume those of you that are reading this post already have your own blog established. For those of you who don’t have a blog it is so vital, that regardless what field or niche you are working in online, you start yourself a blog….. Today!!  Marketing yourself/business online has never been as important as what it is NOW, and one of the best ways to do that is through using a blog to leverage your Brand through Social Media. The internet is becoming more and more social with a new social marketing platform popping up somewhere on the internet every week, it is becoming a lot more difficult to hide behind the internet and do business.  So the importance of getting yourself “social” online is going to make a huge difference in how successful you are.

So getting down to the point of this article…  Your Blogging Real Estate. For me I like to think of my blog as my own little piece of Real Estate on the Internet. And much like Real Estate in the real world, what you put on it is definitely going to help to determine the worth or value of it. And just like in the real world where the suburb your piece of Real Estate resides in also helps to determine your worth or value, so to does it influence your credibility in your Real Estate online. Think about that like this, if someone with some serious credibility or serious following mentions your site or directs people to your site from their site, with a recommendation, your worth or value has just skyrocketed!!

So you might now be asking, what can I do to increase my own Online Real Estate value? Your Online Real Estate is precious, so you need to make the most out of what you’ve got!

Here are a few things for you to consider:

1. Now we all know we only have so much time to make an impression on people when they land on our site, to catch their eye, keep them interested so they will spend more time looking around to see what sort of value you are offering them. I know myself when I am visiting other blogs the first thing I look at is down the right side of the page. For those of you that have done some courses through Stompernet, and the like, will know that it has been proven that the “eyeballs rest to the right of the screen”.  So what that means is that people will immediately look to that side of their screen to see what’s going on. Which is why you will notice that the majority of blog themes are designed that way, with that in mind. So what do you have down the right side of your site? Is it overloaded with widgets? Are your images too big and blown out? Are you trying to put every Social Media widget known to man in there? Try to keep this under control, we know that Google Friend Connect and your Facebook Fan Page are great for “Social Proof“, but we don’t need to have 10 different widgets all for the same thing down the side. It starts to look desperate when you are jamming things in just for the sake of it.
2. As we all know, and this makes sense, content is KING. What you want to do is ensure that your content is doing the talking for your site, not all the pretty bells and whistles that you are adding to your sidebars. I know that we all want to make it as easy as possible for people to connect with us, but what you don’t want to do is let all the bells and whistles you are adding to try to get followers over shadow their real reason for being there, which of course is to share your incredible free content with them. If people love what you are doing they will find a way to connect with you!
3. Syndication is another big ticket item to keep in mind. The Law of Reciprocation is basically stating that the more you give by syndicating those blogs that are of interest to you and your followers, the more you are going to receive back for your own site. It is a great idea to leave regular comments on those blogs that have major following, in your particular niche, and maybe even leave those controversial comments or try to leave comments that are striking up a discussion to get yourself known and remembered. Maybe even give some great points or ideas in your comments, that will catch the attention of the person who owns the blog. Come from a point of authority yourself, don’t feel intimidated. What you are looking for is to drive more traffic back to your own site from this authority site. It can take a while but will be well worth it, stick with it.
4. Get Creative and Stand out!!! Now while you might visit a few fabulous, high profile blogs, and think well I have to do exactly what they are doing if I want to be successful doing this…. right?? Well to an extent, yes, there will probably be things to take away from that persons blog and implement into your own. But here is the clincher… There is no need to absolutely copy everything that they are doing. For example… We all know it’s great to have cool images in your sidebar that will connect your followers to your Social Media pages, but you do not have to do the EXACT same images or the EXACT same widget to achieve this. The idea is to follow in concept and build on what you have learned from these great blogs.  The amount of sidebar images that I have seen looking exactly like KF’s is incredible, and while the concept is fabulous seeing the same thing everywhere is not! Take what you are seeing, learning and what you love and put your own twist on it, make it you! That is a sure way to start to create your own brand and authority, DO NOT FLAT OUT COPY!  I have been guilty of this so I changed my theme and ideas and got creative to break away from a growing trend of copying. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… copying is not!
5. Offer some different forms of communicating your information for your followers. Don’t just post written blogs, use some audio in there, especially with your long posts. Get yourself a free Audio program like Audacity, and record yourself reading your written posts and offer it as an alternative to having people just reading your posts. The great thing with offering audio is that you can also do interviews with high profile people and post that information on your site, as just another way to offer some great info to your followers, and set yourself apart. And if you are comfortable in front of the camera now use lots of video to explain things or give instructions.  If you aren’t comfortable yet, get comfortable! The only way to do this is to practice, so once a day make a video for no one in particular, just talk into it to get yourself feeling more comfortable.
   

I’m sure there are a thousand other ways to increase the value of your Online Real Estate by getting really creative and creating some authority in your chosen niche. Leave me a comment below and let me know what you have done to set yourself apart from others in your chosen niche. You never know what ideas we are going to get from you to help ourselves. And make sure to share this to your Twitter and FB friends if you think its valuable, it’s always appreciated!

Cheers