Aaron Hoos

The Question:

Should I use a blog or a website in my financial or real estate business?

Aaron’s Answer:

Here’s the really basic difference between a website and a blog:

• A website is like a brochure. You create it once and it stays like that for a while. Sure, you might make some changes over time but in general it has the same content.
• A blog is like a diary or journal. You add new content regularly to it and people who click to your site will see your most recent post.

If you’re wondering whether you should have a blog or a website for your financial or real estate business, you need to know this: Both are good and it’s okay to have both – a blog AND a website. Don’t think of it as one or the other.

SOME PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE TO HAVE ONE OR THE OTHER

Some professionals choose to have just a website because they want to create the content once and then not worry about it, and then focus on other things in their business. And, since it’s slightly more acceptable to “sell” your services on a website, some professionals prefer that clearer call to action. (Note: They can appear on blogs, too, but generally do so to a lesser degree).

Some professionals choose to have just a blog because their potential or existing clients like reading new content, and because search engines like fresh, authoritative content. Unlike a website, a blog has some relationship-building tools built-in (such as a commenting feature) so you can build a connect with your blog visitors.

SOME PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE TO HAVE BOTH

Some professionals choose to have both – a website at one domain and a blog at another. This gives them the advantages of both.

SOME PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE A HYBRID APPROACH

Some professionals have a website with a blog on it, or they have a blog with elements of a website on it (which is what I have on my site – it’s primarily a blog but there are website-specific elements like a Portfolio page, a Services page, and more).

WHICH SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

It depends on your sales funnel.

If you have a well-established career with tons of referrals or you’re a face-to-face networking rockstar, then a website might be all you need because you’ll drive people to your site pretty infrequently. If you plan to sell downloadable products, you’ll also want to consider a website because you’ll need sales pages and hidden download pages.
If you want to grow your financial or real estate practice and you want to drive traffic to a site and build relationships with those who visit your site, a blog might be better.
But my favorite is both. You get the clear “sales-focused” calls-to-action that are more acceptable on a website plus the search-engine-loving opportunity to create fresh content and build relationships with your website visitors… and at the same time, you can also dial in other things like product sales.

It doesn’t make much sense for someone to type in the word “real estate professional” or “REALTOR” and find your website or blog in the search results. If they’re in Dustytown, Australia and you’re in Wausau, Wisconsin, there’s not much you can do to help them.

So you need a plan to focus your search engine optimization on only your most likely prospects. So where do you start?

STEP 1: FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR TARGET MARKET IS LOOKING FOR

Well, you first need to start by figuring out who your most likely prospects are. Are they people moving into town from out of town? Are they people buying or selling within town? Do you have an even more focused niche than that? (Hopefully you do).

Each of these groups is looking for something different.

If your target market is military families who are moving to Wausau, Wisconsin from elsewhere to work on the ultra-secret military base then they are searching the web for very different terms than if your target market is soccer moms and dads who are looking to sell their first home and upgrade because they have baby #3 on the way.

Figure out what your target market is looking for and the types of words they are using to search online.

STEP 2: GET THE SEARCH TERMS

Head over to Google’s Keyword Tool and type in some of those words into Google’s keyword search. In the example below, you see I’ve done that with the fairly generic term “Homes for sale Wausau Wisconsin”…

By the way: The key here is to combine an action verb — “buy home”, “sell home”, “list home”, “find home” — with a location — in this case “Wausau Wisconsin”. Don’t forget to try mixing words like “buy house” instead of “buy home” and also try the short form of your state instead of the full name (or, drop the state altogether and see what the results are).

When you click the Search button you get the result of your search…

And just below that, you get a big list of ideas that are similar to the terms you’ve written…

This list is useful because it shows you related keywords that people are searching for that you might be able to use.

Find a few that you want to focus on — somewhere between 3 and 6 keywords. If you help people buy AND list homes then consider focusing on 3 buying-specific keywords and 3 listing-specific keywords.

STEP 3: USE THOSE SEARCH TERMS EVERYWHERE

You’ve found the terms that your clients are looking for. Now it’s time to use those search terms everywhere. Use them in the following places:

• In your website domain name
• In your website title and subtitle
• In the title of your blog posts and web pages
• In your article marketing (in the title of the article and in the text)
• In your press releases
• In the title of your ebooks
• In the title of your print book
• As the name of your ezine
• In the title of your Storify locally-focused stories
• In your Twitter description
• … and anywhere else that you put online and offline

Mix and match them. Pepper them throughout your work. “Own” the words by making your brand synonymous with those words.

If you are a financial advisor or real estate professional, a condition very similar to “the CSI effect” could be hindering your success.

WHAT IS THE CSI EFFECT?

The CSI effect is a problem faced by the justice system when juries place too much faith in fingerprints and DNA evidence. It’s called “the CSI effect” to suggest that forensic shows like CSI (and others) are tainting real-life juries by making them believe that forensic evidence is easy to obtain, can be processed by a lab in hours, and decisive beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt.

Although the CSI effect is just a hypothesis, it does raise the issue that today’s media might be making everyone an expert.

WHAT DOES THE CSI EFFECT HAVE TO DO WITH YOU?

You might not be prosecuting criminals but you might be impacted by the CSI effect anyway… or, at least something similar. Our prospective clients have access to all kinds of information — from us and from others; on TV and the web. There is no shortage to the information that they can access.

Unfortunately, it has made “amateur experts” out of many clients, turning naive homebuyers into superstar DIY real estate agents and untrained investors into the next Jim Cramer.

Let me be clear about something before you read any further: Savvy clients are good. I’m not proposing that financial and real estate professionals would be better off with clients who couldn’t tell their left hand from their right hand. The root of the problem is NOT that they have access to lots of information to make better decisions. Rather, the root of the problem is that they have no filter to help them navigate the complicated world of real estate or investing.

They’ve been empowered and informed but not equipped.

The result is: Real estate professionals are finding lots of people going the list-it-themselves route or are assuming that they are expert househunters. And financial advisors are finding lots of people who leave voicemails on the advisors’ office overnight because of some great stocks they found while browsing online.

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

This is tricky. You don’t want to belittle them by telling them that what they know is wrong, nor do you really want to validate that their unsorted knowledge is a replacement for your expertise.

What clients really need is structure. They need decision-making systems. They need rules. They need ways to synthesize their information. They need frames. They need order. They need taxonomies. They need context. They need the bigger picture.

Right now, your clients are looking at splotches of paint on canvas; you need to help them step back and see the entire painting.

Here are some ways to work with your clients to counter the CSI effect:

• When writing your blog, make sure you use categories (or some other sorting system) that make sense in the bigger picture.
• In all of your marketing, make sure to highlight that the one piece of information you’re expressing is a single cog in a giant piece of machinery.
• Prepare information, verbal and written responses, and proactive marketing to address the reality that some of your clients will tell you about something they saw on TV or the web that doesn’t mesh with what you do. (For example, a normally conservative investor tells a financial advisor about a speculative stock they just heard about from a friend on Facebook).
• If you’re looking for a great idea for your next downloadable document, consider a “big picture” ebook that your users can use to sort out the huge, unsorted mass of information available to them on the web.

I believe the CSI effect is real… and it’s affecting more than just the justice system. I think many of my financial and real estate clients are facing a similar situation.

But I also think that this is an opportunity for you! Rather than joining the ranks of real estate and financial advisors who ONLY give out unsorted, unfiltered information, why not become the professional who helps prospective clients MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL.