Neil Schwartz has been in the real estate industry for over 30 years. He is the broker of Century 21 Masters, the #2 Century 21 office in the Nation. He blogs on neilschwartz.net, providing valuable information to agents regarding sales training, real estate marketing, social media, and technology.

We  create and maintain real estate blogs to attract and retain clients, however I’ve  noticed that many people’s blogs aren’t as effective as they could be. That is because many blogs aren’t motivating people to stick or remain on your website.

When considering if people are sticking to your website, you want to focus on the length of time someone visits your website and the number of pages they circulate through. In order to figure out your level of stickiness right now, take a look at your Google Analytics account or sign up for one (it’s free).

You want to focus on two things here, pages visited and Avg. time on site. If the pages visited are 1 or less, you need to make some changes because this means that people are only viewing one page and then leaving without clicking any other links.  The same thing goes if the average time on the site is less than 1 minute.

4 Ways to Increase the “Stickiness” of Your Blog

1. Fresh Blog Design

Using a fresh blog design goes a long way.. The more visually appealing your blog is, the more convincing it will be for someone to stay on your site and click around.

2.  Create A Lot of Inner Links

If you’re an experienced blogger, you’ve probably posted a ton of content throughout your site.  Unfortunately, most people can’t see it because it’s buried away. A great way to increase pages visited and average time on the site is to add links in your new article that are applicable to topics you discussed in the past. For instance, if you’re writing about interest rates being at an all time low, you can link a word or phrase in the article to an article you previously wrote about now being a great time to buy.

3. Encourage Comments

Sometimes the comments of a blog are more interesting and engaging than the articles themselves. End each blog post with an open-ended question that gets your visitors to think and comment. You should also reply to every single comment you get. When visitors see this, they know writing a comment isn’t a waste of time because you’ll actually respond. This creates a discussion, which again encourages even more comments.

4. Law of Reciprocity

Give some valuable and useful content away for free in exchange for their name and email address. “How to stage your home to sell within 30 days.” “How to chose the best Realtor for you and family” “A guide to moving” “Check list – things you need do before and after you sell your home”. If you provide your readers with something valuable, they’ll view you differently from other realtors. You’ll also capture their email address/phone numbers for lead follow up.

Implementing these techniques will increase the stickiness of your blog, which should produce more leads. What are some things you have done or are going to do to make your website “sticky”? Let me know if any of my suggestions work for you!

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Guest blogger Jay Thompson is the designated broker and co-owner of Thompson’s Realty in Phoenix, AZ. You can find his award-winning blog at PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com. His latest blogging adventure is RealEstateBlogPro.com.

On September 14, Twitter announced its most ambitious site redesign to date. The rapidly growing “information network” is introducing, “a new, re-engineered Twitter.com that provides an easier, faster, and richer experience.”

The update will roll out to users gradually over the next several weeks and include such features as:

New design: A rich details page that promises a cleaner timeline. “Infinite scroll” means you no longer will need to click “more” to view additional Tweets.

Media: Twitter is partnering with numerous large players in Internet media such as Flickr, YouTube, Vimoe, Ustream, and TwitPic (to name just a few) to embed and integrate photos and video directly on Twitter.

Related content: Click a Tweet, and a related content panel will show additional information on the author or subject.

Mini profiles: Click on a user name and you’ll be presented with on-page access to the user’s bio and related Tweets.

Here is a video that Twitter released highlighting some of the changes. Less than 24 hours after the video was published, it had been viewed almost 400,000 times…

What does this mean for third-party Twitter clients?

My first thought when I heard about the new Twitter.com was, “I rarely go to Twitter.com now, I doubt I’ll go there in the future.”

Like many Twitter users, I use a third-party Twitter client to monitor and interact on Twitter. TweetDeck is my client of choice, and Seesmic Desktop and HootSuite (a web based application) are other popular clients. Many of these clients already incorporate the functionality of the new Twitter.com. However, according to Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams, 78% of unique Twitter users are using Twitter.com (seems high to me, but I’m not the CEO of Twitter…).

Why don’t I use Twitter.com? Because – in its current incarnation – it doesn’t offer the same experience as the third-party applications. I find it painful to navigate, and I’m constantly having to go off the site or open other windows to get the information I need. The third-party clients provide a much easier, faster and enriching experience – exactly what the new Twitter is offering.

What Twitter’s redesign may do is cause these third-party applications to review and enrich their products. Competition tends to lead to innovation, and with Twitter stepping up its game the third-party providers are going to have to do the same.

However, one of the things about Twitter that appeals to many is its simplicity. Will the new Twitter, and the push to include more and more information ruin this? I hope Twitter doesn’t lose that simplicity. Many are calling the new features “Facebookish” – and Facebook is already known for having what can be a confusing and cluttered user interface.

I suppose only time will tell. With 90 million Tweets being sent daily, and 370,000 new users getting Twitter accounts every day, Twitter is a force to be reckoned with. Generally speaking though, people are resistant to change. How this change manifests itself will be interesting to watch.

And clearly people are talking about the change. At the time of this writing, there are 31,800 news articles indexed on Google News – less than 24 hours after the announcement.

What do you think about the new Twitter.com

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A quick follow up to my post 5 Great Ways to Improve Your Designs – Adobe just launched a great Flash site for designers called kuler (pronounced cooler?) that allow you to create and share color schemes. You can also download any of the existing schemes on the site for use with Creative Suite 2 applications (Photoshop, Illustrator etc.).

Very nice.

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Going in to the holiday weekend, I know I’m going to be spending at least some of my vacation trying to catch up on some of the many side projects I’ve got going on. So, I thought that I would leave you with some of the design-related links that I use everyday to help me to do my work more efficiently and professionally.

1. Get some great stock photos

Stock imagery used to cost hundreds of dollars. Now thanks to these sites you can pick up a great looking stock photo for less than ten bucks. Both sites have a fully searchable database that lets you pull up pictures from any keyword search.

iStockphoto.com

stock.xchng

Read my take on iStockphoto in “Finding the perfect picture”.

2. Find inspiration for your logo

Regular readers of the blog will remember I’m not that big a fan of most real estate logos (Why Do All Real Estate Logos Suck So Bad?) but these sites can help.

Brandsoftheworld.com – Downloadable vector art of all major brands. Great inspiration from some famous logos.

Bonus! Opinions on Corporate and Brand Identity

3. Develop a great color scheme

Poor use of color can sink even the most creative design. Learn how to avoid eye-searingly bad color combinations.

Daily Color Scheme – a new color scheme every day. Download and load the scheme into Photoshop or Illustrator.

Color Palette Generator – upload a photo and this site generates a whole color scheme based on that photo. Very helpful for designing eye catching flyers.

A crash course in color theory

4. Find some great fonts

Typography is one of the most challenging elements of design to get right, but the resources can put you on the right track.

Thinking With Type – Great site to get the basics down.

Typetester – This great site allows you to compare fonts for the screen

Looking for new fonts? Try these sites:

SearchFreeFonts.com

Better fonts

Bonus! Need some dummy text for your design? check out the Lorem Ipsum Generator

5. Get some great design tips

Before & After magazine – great advice on some of the basics of good design. Lots of examples – check out some of their free samples and consider a subscription.

This should give more than enough resources to explore over the long weekend… Have a great Thanksgiving!

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Tough critique of Zillow by brand identity consultant and author Alycia de Mesa in BusinessWeek’s article Zillow: Good Real Estate Idea is a Fixer

Graphically, however, the few images used on the site very much resemble something from a clipart collection. There is even a headline on the splash page exclaiming “Cool Maps and Images!” leaving the feeling that someone’s 12-year-old wrote the copy.

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