The Hidden Catch You Want to Know About When Starting a Real Estate Blog
As social media marketing rolls into full force, the real estate industry while usually one step behind is catching on and more and more real estate agents are starting blogs and implementing web marketing strategies. This has posed a great opportunity for technology companies, entrepreneurs and individuals to position themselves to “help” real estate agents break into the social media and blogging arenas. Thousands of vendors have cropped up with “all in one” services promoting blog templates, hosting and search engine optimization.
Looking for a “quick fix” and a one stop marketing solution, many agents see some of these services as a great way to break into online communities without having to know much about the technology or the structure behind it. While, it’s not necessary to become a blogging expert to start your own blog or get a page on Facebook, it is necessary to know what you are signing up for when you make the commitment to start using these as marketing tools for your business.
Real estate agents who sign up for blogging software platforms and online marketing service providers need to consider the importance of protecting their businesses and their data. The best way to do this is to make sure that you own your data and that you have the ability to pull the data out of the software or service being provided whenever you need to. Let’s face it, the data is the heart and soul of your business and of the online community that you are building. If you spend hours, days, months building and cultivating an online community and content, you want to be able to take your data with you if you switch service providers. There may be loopholes or processes in place as to how you have to go about getting your data out, but there should be an out and it should be readily made available to you and all of your data.
Many companies offering blogging services or social media marketing services have detailed contracts that may or may not specify who owns the data or how it can be exported. This means customer lists, blog entries, links, posts, articles, analytics, all of this should be addressed to protect yourself and your business. You should be able to pull all of your data at any time for as long as you have had content on the platform without questions asked or you should be able to receive periodical backups and exports. You want to make sure that you are able to get your content whenever you want it. If there is a clause in the contract that specifies that you don’t own your data, don’t commit to it, or at least have an attorney look it over to see what the implications are.
Better yet, spend the time to learn about how you can use social media communities, blogging and content managers yourself rather then relying on a service provider to manage it all for you.
