The How and Why of Real Estate Round-Ups

Editor’s Note: This was originally published on RISMedia’s blog, Housecall. See what else is cookin’ now on blog.rismedia.com:

When trying to drive traffic to your website or blog, it makes sense to work hard on the things that will benefit your site and your business the most. You write interesting, informative blogs, provide reliable information and do your best to give insight into real estate in a way that serves your readers. With all the effort you put in, it may seem like a weird idea to showcase the work of other real estate bloggers—people who could arguably be considered competitors—on your site. But as unlikely as it may seem, sharing the work of other writers in a real estate round-up can bring big benefits your way, including improving your exposure, your SEO and your subscriber base.

What Is a Real Estate Round-Up?
A real estate round-up refers to showcasing different articles from other real estate writers either on your site or another real estate platform. You can showcase as few or as many as you like. Typically, round-ups will include at least three or four articles from other writers. Oftentimes they include many more. It is worth it to take the time to find articles that you can be happy sharing, as opposed to just grabbing them randomly. You can give an introduction about the article, maybe even talk about what you liked about it, and provide a link.

Why Go to the Trouble?
Real estate round-ups require some work on your part, but the work can be well worth it when you consider the benefits.

SEO
Although SEO strategies can change from time to time, some are more worthwhile than others. One of the things search engines continue to value is links from other great sites, particularly within your own niche. Even when you are writing on your own site, every new article should link back to at least one article on your site. When you create a real estate round-up, you get another opportunity to link back to your “money site” and strengthen your SEO.

There are some excellent real estate sites out there that are perfect for real estate agents to be utilizing to link back to original content you’ve written. For example, a few that readily come to mind are:

ActiveRain
RealTown

These sites are excellent because they have solid domain authority and a large viewership. When you post in these places there are a lot of people who will see your content and the links coming from the site are only going to help your content rank better online. Having more online visibility should be a goal of every real estate blogger. There is no point in publishing content if nobody sees it!

Let me show you exactly what I mean. Recently I wrote an article on my blog, Maximum Real Estate Exposure, on selling a luxury home. I wanted to give this article additional exposure, so I created a round-up on ActiveRain that featured this article:

Best Real Estate Round-Ups January and February 2017 via ActiveRain

Notice how each of these round-ups links back to my article providing tips on how to sell a luxury home. Not only have I taken the opportunity to share my own content about luxury home sales, but the rest of the included articles are dedicated to featuring other people. This is a real win-win! While SEO can be a major benefit with real estate round-ups, so can a number of other things.

Social Media Exposure
The more times your work is shared on social media, the better. One of the keys to getting other writers to share your work is to make sure that there is something in it for them. In your real estate round-up, you will be featuring the work of writers who will most likely be eager to talk about what you are doing. They share your article, getting exposure for them and for you, as well.

Another way to do real estate round-ups is on your own blog. Every month over at Massachusetts Real Estate News you can find the Best Google Plus Real Estate articles. There are a number of real estate communities on Google Plus where fantastic articles are shared every week. We feature a handful of these articles each month in a round-up.

Here is an example: The Best of Google Plus Real Estate for February. Other real estate bloggers love to see their name in the spotlight. It makes them feel special! When those folks in your article are mentioned, the chances of them sharing on top social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, Google Plus and others go up exponentially.

Promoting Others
There are two main benefits to promoting other real estate writers. First, you get to share work that you believe is useful and worth reading. You may spend your own time reading the work of others to learn, get inspiration and see what is happening in other markets besides your own. Do enough exploring and you are sure to find some other writers that you believe are worth reading. In a real estate round-up, you get to share what you find.

The second big benefit of promoting others is that you will expand your reader base. You are going to reach the readers of other writers—readers who may have never discovered you otherwise.

Building a Subscriber Base
With each real estate round-up, you will probably gather information on a variety of topics—some of which you don’t cover in your regular writing. Diversification is great for building a bigger subscriber base, because you will be more likely to hit the sweet spot for other types of readers. Your round-up may include articles that help buyers, sellers and real estate agents—topics you would be hard-pressed to accomplish with just another real estate article.

Finding Inspiration
Every writer needs sources of inspiration, and real estate writers are no exception. When you have been writing long enough, you may find yourself running low on ideas and on motivation to produce more articles. Another benefit of a real estate round-up is that it forces you to get out there, do some research and discover some other writers and topics that you are unfamiliar with.

It is quite common for real estate writers who do round-ups to come up with at least a few article ideas of their own from all the reading they do for the round-up. Even if the articles you gather are on things you have already covered, they may still provide a new angle or new insights that can help you push forward and produce more quality work.

Take a Break and Serve Readers at the Same Time
It is important as a real estate writer to produce content regularly so your readers know you are still active—but there are times when you do not feel up to writing another article. A real estate round-up presents an opportunity to take a break from in-depth article writing to enjoy and appreciate the work of others, while still allowing you to produce new content for your readers.

Bill Gassett is a nationally recognized real estate leader who has been helping people buy and sell Metrowest Massachusetts real estate for the past 30-plus years. Connect with him on Google+.

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