Because of this, it is becoming increasingly important to offer this same experience of your content to consumers visiting your website. Magazine style sites for the iPad are one of the more popular ways that readers enjoy consuming content on the device. The quick loading images that you can scroll through and click on to get more content is much more appealing than just reading a bunch of links and clicking on the one you want.

Recently I found a great way to create your own magazine style version of your Custom WordPress Site called Onswipe.  It allows you to bring in your content from not only your WordPress site, but also from other social media sources like Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and many more.

The setup can be a little tricky if you don’t know how to insert code into your site or set up a subdomain, but if you do, you can have everything running without much hassle.  If you are not comfortable with doing those types of things, I’d recommend either contact your webhost, or paying someone who understands this to do it for you.

Once you install the code and follow the steps to pull in your feeds, it takes all the content of your WordPress site and other sources and delivers it to consumers in a very unique magazine style layout. You instantly have a dynamic presentation of your content for consumers viewing on an iPad that gives them a memorable experience of your site. The plugin creates a visually appealing version of your site with large images, colorful titles & brief descriptions.

Here is a quick demo of Onswipe:

There are however some down sides to Onswipe. First, the customizations are somewhat limited right now. They allow you to pick from a few styles and change your title background color and font and that is about it for now.  I also ran into a small issue if you try to use the feedburner feed for your posts.  It doesn’t seem to like it, so you will need your WordPress feed which is normally something like http://mysite.com/feed.

Overall, I’d highly recommend checking out Onswipe and setting one up for your site. If you want help with setup, feel free to contact me for details.  Also, grab your iPad and check out my site at http://210consulting.com

Do you need help with your blog conversion rates?  Ken Granger from Arranging Pixels is the man to talk to as he has built over 500 websites and shares his knowledge with us in this exclusive video interview! Good stuff Ken!

Joe Manausa, of the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog, does a great job talking about market conditions and has a lot of success in doing so along with several other posts he writes regarding buying and selling a home. This is just one of many blogs I’ve studied to help craft the direction I would like my blog to go. My approach with anything is to study the experts, be a sponge and learn as much as you can about what each person is doing. Pull the things you like and combine them to make it your own and start tracking your results. In this case I studied Joe’s approach to writing market updates, I studied Jay Thompson’s approach of be yourself and just write something as well as the local blogs in my area and understanding their interpretations of market conditions.

Since starting my blog I’ve tried different content ideas and have narrowed it down to a list I like to write about. Although, there are times I wonder if some of the content I write might be a bit out of place.

• Market Stats – If you’re in a small market this is pretty easy to do, but if you’re in a big market you might want to talk about several communities and how they’re reacting to market conditions. I’m working on this experiment right now and not only is it a way to attract sellers, but it’s also a way to learn how different segments are reacting to the market. Right now I’m writing about a different area once a week. I’m not sure where this experiment will go yet, but it’s been interesting to watch.
• Popular Search Terms – If you’ve already been blogging for some time you probably already know this one. These terms tend to be for buyers. However, we can write for sellers too, it may not be as obvious to us what they’re searching for. But I am pretty sure they’re searching for market conditions and trying to decide if they should wait to sell their home.
• Life as a Realtor – Everyone has transactions that have gone bad and/or good as well as things they’ve learned along the way. Write about those! This is great information to share with people and brings a human side to your blog. “The best writing is based on life.”
• General Musings – This is a term I’m borrowing from Jay’s site. Write about something, it doesn’t matter. It could be a hobby, something interesting you saw the other day… This is a good way to break up your content a little and put a voice to your words and much like the item above you’re pulling the best material from life.
• Area Events – Before I write about an area event I first check to see if it’s getting searched and once I’ve determined that I write about it. I look at these types of posts as something that can bring traffic and awareness about my blog and what is I do and perhaps someone will bookmark the site and come back. So go ahead and write that post about 4^th of July Fireworks or Holiday Celebrations. If anything it makes your blog that much larger.

The biggest thing I think a blog does is build credibility. A Realtor website alone is just a resume and it doesn’t tell the reader you know and understand market conditions. The advice articles you write on your blog along with your Real Estate experiences dive home the fact you’re a Real Estate Expert and can provide unparalleled advice.

Guest post by…

Eric Hempler Real Estate Experts
Keller Williams Classic Realty Northwest

Blog www.erichempler.com

To understand which mediums are actually working for us or at least moving in the right direction, we need to set a baseline metric for each to start from.  I found a website that can help!  Check out the video to learn more.

Wow.  How does that feel?!  Pretty crappy, right?  Well, the fact of the matter is, 9 times out of 10 who you are (or to be more accurate, what your name is) means very little to the buyers and sellers you are trying to turn into clients.

What they do care about are the homes for sale in the areas that you are marketing.   And this holds very true when deciding what to use for your:

• main domain name
• landing page urls and
• client’s google searches

The following video shows very clearly how your name is irrelevant to the majority of buyers and sellers by showing a clear example of the type of traffic you will get to your site(s) by using your name versus a well researched real estate phrase.

Ok, so what do you do if you already have your website/blog in place and are using your name? Take the keyword phrases that you researched and find as many urls that you can, which include those words and point them to your website/blog. Another step you can take is to point specific urls to specific pages on your site. For example:

Your market is in Denver and there is a large community (Sunnyside) within Denver you found that has fairly low competition but a good number of searches each month being conducted on Google. The phrase is “sunnyside homes for sale”. Head on over to Godaddy and search for that phrase – ie., sunnysidehomesforsale.com – if it’s available, grab it! Then point that url to the page on your website/blog that is about Sunnyside. Now rinse and repeat!

Need more help? Contact Suzanne at VAWork for additional video tutorials and tips.