Keep blog content fresh and valuable

Writing interesting content, marketing to the right people and tracking results are key to ensuring a successful blog, according to Jake Dobkin, founder and publisher of Gothamist.com.

Dobkin, who recently spoke at the Inman Real Estate Connect seminar in New York City, said, “The biggest reason blogs don’t succeed is they aren’t updated often enough. Don’t bother to have a blog if you’re only going to update it every six months.”

He said another key to success is original content and knowing the target audience. “Real estate blogs often aren’t written considering the naiveté of their readers,” he said.

Dobkin said blogs should be kept to one to four paragraphs and extraneous material should be cut. “Make your point quickly and give value to your reader,” he said. “If the paragraph is just some flowery prose, forget about it.”

Dobkin advised telling people throughout the community about the blog. If an interesting article is published, notify mainstream media. He suggested targeting the blog to the most popular people in the region who are on Twitter and Facebook.

“Some blogs have great content but they don’t lead to anything,” he added. “That’s because they haven’t properly measured their results. What are readers clicking on? Does the blog lead to the action you want? We track everything to learn what worked and what we should do differently.”

For those who don’t want to commit to creating long blog content, Tumblr.com founder David Karp recommended people consider his web site.

Karp said his company’s site offers an easy format for people to blog and repost materials. “There are many social media tools available with a huge range of custom ability but sometimes the problem is that it’s difficult to fill the big box on these sites. Tumblr makes it easy to create content, merging two types of social media – blogs and Facebook,” he said.

Last month, Tumblr had two million users with 35 million posts. “People are using Tumblr to share information, create identities and brands. It’s easy to get started,” Karp added.