Mortgage Blogging 101
A Business Tip from LTB Member Mark Madsen
 LTB member Mark Madsen is a loan officer and mortgage blogger from Raintree Mortgage Services in Las Vegas, NV. Since 2005, Mark has specialized in real estate Internet marketing, and has developed many high-traffic real estate and mortgage platforms.
Passionate about teaching and enabling the success of others, Mark believes that "friends keep friends in business," and he proves it by regularly sharing his ideas with the LTB community. Over the coming weeks, LTB has asked Mark to help remove some of the mystery of social media for LTB members who have been thinking about blogging but don't know where to begin. "There aren't any magic bullets," Mark says, "but there are a few tricks."
Mortgage Blogging 101
If you are overwhelmed with the blogging and social media noise, you are not alone. The Internet has given a voice to the masses, and we all know how much people love to hear themselves talk.
Rest assured, you have not missed the boat if you are just now thinking about integrating a more active web presence into your weekly business routines. However, there are a few principles and terms that you should be aware of.
Let's start with the basics:
The original version of the Internet was created in 1964 as a tool, or system, to help people communicate across an open network of computers. Recent advances in online functionality have influenced our methods of sharing information. The process of interaction, viewer participation, and community building online was informally defined as Web 2.0 in 2004.
Social media, with an emphasis placed on "Social," is a term that describes the methods people use to deliver and share information in a collaborative manner.
Trust, authenticity, and accuracy of that information are measured by other people's open acknowledgement and reinforcement.
Forums, blogs, wikis, niche communities, video and photo sharing sites are all examples of Web 2.0 platforms.
Open communication influences education and builds value in a community, brand, or individual. Innovation is rewarded with exposure. That exposure can be leveraged for a marketing agenda.
Online Marketing:
From a marketing perspective, search engine exposure is an important way of reaching a target audience at the moment they are ready to make a buying decision. Business is earned online by providing relevant and valuable content that is tailored to the specific needs of potential clients.
Google's™ mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Blogs have become effective forms of online media used by marketing professionals because they follow the same principles Google™ uses to provide the most accurate search results.
Blogs are also very simple to use: You basically just write a descriptive title, lay out some content, assign a few relevant tags and categories, and press publish.
What is a Blog?
"Blog" is short for Web Log and is basically an online Journal. Blogs are user-friendly web sites that allow you to easily add content in the form of a post or a page.
Posts are simply articles that are organized by categories and tags. The published articles are arranged in order of most recent post and archived by month or year.
Each post has a "header" or title, a content section, and an optional comment section which allows readers to participate.
Blog pages are organized separately from the posts by specific tabs placed within the site. For example: About, Contact, Services, Resources.
What can you expect?
While technology "geeks" are certainly passionate about the communication and marketing opportunities, blogging should not be viewed as a quick fix to a stale business. Simply publishing some content on the web will not cause the phones to ring or produce tons of new applications in your email.
Before considering a blog or any enhanced web presence, you need to define your purpose.
Some of the benefits that blogs provide are:
- Communication
- Continued Education for yourself, clients, and referral partners
- Online Equity: Your content continues to build value and exposure
- Positioning yourself as a thought-leader and expert in a niche
- Internet Exposure - great content gets shared by others
- Targeted Search Engine Exposure
- Community and Networking
- Time Saver - referring people back to published articles reduces the need to have repeated conversations
- Vulnerability: human interaction and accessibility builds trust
- Networking: commenting on other blogs is an easy way to establish relationships
Stay tuned for more Blogging 101 Tips from Mark Madsen coming soon. In the meantime, check out Mark's blogs mortgagesalesblog.com and myfhablog.com |
