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garynsmith · 6 years

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Digging deeper into Parker Principle 7: The complexities of open data

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Reposted with permission from Rob Hahn.

At the very start of Inman Disconnect, Brad Inman told the gathered leaders that the goal was to come up with a set of principles that would guide the real estate industry forward. This was a different kind of event than ever before — one aimed at getting something done, rather than hearing about what others have done.

His model is the Ahwahnee Principles, which was formulated in 1991 and brought forth the New Urbanism movement. So we heard from speakers like Patty McCord of Netflix, Bob Myers of the Golden State Warriors, and others, then broke into small groups to discuss specific ideas and principles.

The result of all of that has now been published and the 12 principles have been named The Parker Principles, after the hotel resort where we all met.

Before anything else, let me say just how much I admire Brad Inman for doing this. He didn’t need to do an event like this or challenge us to come up with actual principles. He’s got nothing to prove to anybody. He could have just done a glamping event with some cool speakers and made a ton of money putting that event on.

But he didn’t take the easy way. He told me that Disconnect and his focus on leadership are not business plays, but personal passion projects. He really put his heart into this event in a way I had never seen before at any Inman event, and it showed.

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So, thank you Brad Inman for your leadership in putting this together.

Now then, I have many thoughts on the Parker Principles, which surprises precisely nobody. The issue may be that I have too many thoughts, which are somewhat chaotic and fragmented. So I need to organize them for myself. And the best way to figure out what I think is to read what I wrote.

Therefore, this is an attempt to figure out what I really think about the Parker Principles. I figured I would start with the most contentious of the principles and go from there. If you’re so inclined, come with me on this intellectual journey.

General observations: on principles

The first theme I’ve been struggling with even as I was sitting there at The Parker having discussions is this one:

Effective principles are inwardly focused, governing one’s own behavior, rather than externally focused, governing the behavior of others.

When you type in “principles” into Google, the definition that pops up includes this one: a rule or belief governing one’s personal behavior. That’s not the only definition, obviously, and nothing says that principles can’t govern others.

I just think effective principles tell each of us what we ought to do, not what other people ought to do.

This makes principles a dangerous thing to have, in a way, because they constrain our own behavior in the world, while others who do not have them are not constrained. For example, the principle of nonviolence works fine in the United States; not so much in Afghanistan.

The second theme I’ve been playing with in my mind is the difference between rebels and incumbents. The way Inman tells the story, the Ahwahnee Principles were formulated by people who were out of power, not yet in power, resisting against what they saw as the status quo of urban development in the post-war years — the “conventional suburban development,” which relied heavily on the automobile.

There were certainly rebels in attendance at The Parker, but the majority of the people there were and are the incumbent powers that be in real estate: heads of major franchises, the president of NAR, owners of major brokerages, successful technology CEOs and so on.

Given the audience makeup, I wonder if the Parker Principles are, how do I put this, a bit too conservative.

The example of that is the principle of open data, which is where I want to start the exploration of my own thinking because it was the most contentious of the principles.

Parker Principle 7: Open data

Parker Principle 7 is what the attendees spent the weekend calling the “open data” principle. The published draft reads as follows:

Free up property data feeds and remove barriers for innovators:

We should create a world where property data can be used, reused and broadly distributed. Remove artificial and overly protective barriers to property data access and utilization via a universal licensing agreement. Remove artificial barriers to new ideas, inventions and business models that improve the real estate experience.

I wasn’t personally part of the small group that discussed this because I was leading my own group. But we did discuss it as a large group on Friday morning, and obviously there were private discussions at the meals and receptions and walks around the grounds.

Let’s just say that there was not and is not widespread agreement on what this principle actually means. There were real challenges on who this “we” is. Most of the attendees, I think, felt that the “we” is the MLS (and therefore, the Realtor associations that own/govern them), while the MLS people were pushing back, suggesting that the “we” means brokers who “own” the data.

There were also real questions about “artificial and protective barriers” with some suggesting that there are no such barriers at all. Brokers are completely free to send their data to anybody at any time and for any reason. What they’re not free to do is to send somebody else’s data to anybody at any time and for any reason.

I also think that many of the attendees would dispute that any “artificial barriers” exist today to new ideas, inventions and business models that improve the real estate experience. And they would point to companies like OpenDoor, Knock and Redfin as examples of no such barriers being in place.

Other people, especially those in the tech vendor space, would say there are hundreds of such barriers and that they impose millions of dollars on costs that inhibit developing technology for real estate.

Furthermore, still others felt that this emphasis on “open data” ignores real issues and questions about privacy. I think Greg Robertson might be the leading voice on this front of data privacy because he’s the one who got on stage and uttered the immortal phrase, “F**k big data!” while pointing at recent problems of Facebook all over the news.

Suffice to say that I don’t think there was widespread consensus forged on this issue.

We all voice-approved the principle because, well, that’s kind of what we do when there are flights to catch and such, but I personally feel there is no consensus whatsoever on “open data” whatever that means.

Artificial vs. natural barriers

Just looking at the text of the principle, where my mind goes first is the word “artificial.” The principle is to remove “artificial” barriers. OK, fine. Even if we assume that a consensus exists, what is the difference between an artificial barrier and a natural barrier when we’re talking about property data?

To use but one example, some states are non-disclosure states. Let Zillow explain what that means:

The big, big picture is that in a non-disclosure state, transaction sale prices are not available to the public. There are two main causes for states being considered non-disclosure:

The first cause is that in most non-disclosure states or counties, when a real estate transaction occurs, the sale price is not required to be submitted to the county office (this is the case in Texas and North Dakota among others).

Since we rely on public county records as our primary data source driving our Zestimate algorithms (which take comparable sales prices into account), it poses a challenge to calculate accurate Zestimates when sale prices are not available.

Is this an artificial barrier or a natural one?

It’s not a natural barrier in the way that a river or a mountain range is a natural geographic barrier because the nondisclosure rule is a creature of law. So in theory, if NAR and Texas Realtors follow Principle 7, they would start lobbying state legislatures to change the law.

But the nondisclosure law is the result of the citizens of Texas (as an example) deciding through the democratic process that they don’t want the government and tax collectors and nosy neighbors to know what someone has paid for a property.

Does Principle 7 now require that the real estate industry stand against the will of the people? It’s going to take some real convincing to get Texas Realtors to take this stance and make it a legislative priority. So maybe this is a “natural” barrier not of the industry’s own making.

Are MLS rules that prohibit display of off-market listings (sold, pending, withdrawn, etc.) artificial or natural barriers?

On the one hand, you could argue that they are artificial because they are clearly products of an MLS policy committee of some sort (NAR’s committee or the local MLS Board), and should be removed.

On the other hand, you could argue they are natural barriers because the MLS is about marketing listings for sale, not about properties that are no longer for sale for one reason or another.

It’s complicated.

Overly protective?

The phrase “overly protective” raises a dozen questions as well. It is a political dodge, of course, because there was no way that the 200 or so gathered attendees would have come to agreement on what the phrase is trying to get at. But everyone can be in favor of doing away with “overly” protective barriers.

But we missed the opportunity to engage in some important debate on this one, so let me try to lay out the issue here. Forget the “overly,” and focus on “protective.”

Protective of whom?

If the answer is “consumer,” then it really challenges what barriers might be “overly” protective. Protecting the client’s best interests is baked into the DNA of the Realtor and is required by fiduciary duty laws.

Furthermore, consumer representatives were not present at Disconnect, which makes this problematic in a different way.

If the answer is “the agent or “the broker,” then we’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box. More on this below.

If the answer is “the MLS or Association,” it seems to me that most people would reject just about every barrier as being overly protective, including many of the MLS and association CEOs out there.

MLS CEOs like Art Carter, David Charron and others all have long said that their job is to protect the broker participant first, then the agent subscriber and then the public.

Self-protection is not a major concern of theirs already today. “If I have to get a different job, so be it!” is a very common attitude among MLS executives.

If the answer is “the real estate industry,” then it is no answer at all because that’s so general as to be useless in serving as a principle of any kind.

Are there any others we should be considering? I don’t see any, but again, leave your thoughts in the comments.

The Pandora’s Box

What we’re left with, then, if we think through things and get right down to it is that artificial barriers overly protective of agents and brokers be removed. What exactly are we talking about here?

It is not at all clear to me who the “we” is then and what the courses of action are.

Think back to the top, where I suggested that principles are truly effective only when they govern one’s own behavior, not when they try to tell others how they ought to behave.

So does Principle 7 suggest that brokers and agents should voluntarily put their property data into the public domain (think open source and Creative Commons)? I don’t know that anyone would agree to that. So maybe it means minimal limits on usage rights — which goes to the “overly protective” vs. “right amount of protective” issue.

What makes this question particularly relevant right now is the fact that the policy and legislative worlds have turned their eyes on real estate.

Inman reported that the FTC and the DOJ will hold hearings on real estate competition with a particular focus on real estate data sometime this spring. This Thursday, the Washington D.C. think-tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will hold a panel discussion called “Using Technology to Make Real Estate More Competitive.” The description of the ITIF panel says:

Technological innovation has made it cheaper, easier, and faster to buy and sell most products. However, the real estate industry has firmly resisted disruption, successfully lobbying for state laws banning commission rebates, preventing the public disclosure of residential sales prices, and requiring consumers to purchase real estate services that they may not want, as well as blocking third parties from accessing listing data. These practices have allowed the industry to preserve the long-standing fixed commissions for brokers even as home prices have climbed much faster than inflation.

Does Principle 7 now dictate that powerful influencers in real estate — like NAR, a major power in lobbying — change how they might approach those hearings?

Maybe that NAR would not lobby for “anti-competitive” laws and regulations (if it ever did)? Or to flip the script on its head, maybe that NAR would lobby for federal regulation/legislation that forces the doors wide open as it comes to property data? It’s hard to imagine that, but that’s kind of what Principle 7 implies, doesn’t it?

If the focus of policymakers is on creating more competition in real estate, does Principle 7 now dictate that those incumbents like brokers, agents, MLS, associations and even technology incumbents step back from arguing for the status quo? After all, the question I asked above is, “Protective of whom?”

Can you see just how thorny these questions are, and just how unsettled Principle 7 might actually be in practice?

Thought experiment: The data utility

Let me try a thought experiment to force the issue of how Principle 7 interacts with real decisions/questions. Back in January, I wrote this post called One Future of the MLS, expanding on my presentation at Inman New York.

Let me streamline the thought experiment I proposed in that post and lay out the following scenario:

Following the FTC/DOJ as well as Congressional hearings over the course of 2018, the Federal Government proposes the creation of a National Property Data Registry. The purpose of the NPDR would be to eliminate artificial and overly protective barriers to property data, to encourage competition and innovation in real estate and to protect consumers.

The NPDR would be operated under HUD, in partnership with state regulators and NAR. There would be the national NPDR database of course, as well as individual state databases — tx.npdr.gov, ca.npdr.gov, etc.

NAR would contribute its Realtors Property Resource asset to NPDR, and operate NPDR for HUD and the 50 states plus D.C. and U.S. Territories.

NPDR would operate as a public data utility, with access and rates regulated by HUD and by each of the 50 states. RPR would be paid a portion of the access fees collected by NPDR, with the remainder going to HUD and the 50 states.

As a public utility, NPDR would be granted a monopoly on real estate data. Data standards would be set by the NPDR Data Standards Commission, which will absorb RESO, expand it to include policymakers, regulators, academic experts and technology leaders from companies like Google and Amazon and make it a part of the regulatory framework within HUD.

With a single national Primary NPDR Data Standard, as well as 50 States Secondary Data Standard, any developer or technology company wanting clean, fast, easy access to data will be able to get what they want from NPDR and its state-level sub-databases.

Real estate brokers and agents will contribute all listing activity data to NPDR and keep the data up to date as a condition of their respective real estate licenses by the state licensing authorities.

Failure to comply will result in penalties up to and including revocation of the real estate license. NPDR will promulgate regulations governing data contribution and accuracy requirements, which will be adopted by the 50 state regulators.

Congress has introduced legislation to make all of the above possible, called Modernize Organized Realty Data Ownership and Responsibility Act of 2020.

Now then, what does Principle 7 tell you what your response to this legislation should be? Not what somebody else should do in response, but what you and your organization would do in response.

Your thoughts and comments are particularly welcome on this one.

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Robert Hahn is the Managing Partner of 7DS Associates, a marketing, technology and strategy consultancy focusing on the real estate industry. Check out his personal blog, The Notorious R.O.B. or find him on Twitter: @robhahn.

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minnievirizarry · 7 years

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10 Insights Twitter Analytics Tools Should Reveal to Your Brand

By now, most brands use Twitter analytics tools of some sort. Whether it’s for analyzing Tweet performance, monitoring hashtags or other data, measuring your Twitter marketing efforts is a necessity.

There are a ton of articles out there listing the “best Twitter analytics tools,” but here’s the thin–it doesn’t matter which tool you use if you don’t understand how to analyze the data. If you can’t turn your data it into actionable steps that will help you achieve your goals, what’s the point?

So in this article, we’re not going to list 100 different Twitter tools. Hopefully, you’ve already chosen one. And if you haven’t, go ahead and sign up for a completely free trial of Sprout Social ASAP. Instead, we’re going to look at the insights you can get from your Twitter analytics tool, and show you how to use your data to grow your business.

Here are 10 insights Twitter analytics tools should reveal to your brand:

1. Is Your Audience Growing or Shrinking?

Has your follower count been pretty much the same for the past few months? Are you losing as many followers as you’re gaining? Did you see a sudden spike in your follower count one day last week?

These are the types of questions you can answer by monitoring your Twitter analytics.

Many brands make the mistake of solely looking at their follower count number and just wait for it to go up. But in order to get actionable insight from your follower count, you need to go beyond treating it as a vanity metric. Instead of just looking at the number, dig into your analytics to understand why your Twitter follower count is growing or shrinking.

With Sprout’s Twitter Audience Growth report, you not only see the number of new people that followed you, but also a breakdown of your “net followers.” When your follower count is barely increasing, check this report to understand if there are fewer people following you, or if you’re just trading old followers for new.

If you’re losing around the same number of followers as you’re gaining on a monthly basis, it’s a sign you’re having an issue with follower retention. In other words, people are following you but aren’t captivated enough to stick around.

The moral of the story is don’t just fixate on your follower count. Look for trends in your audience’s growth and use your findings to adjust your strategy for audience growth or retention.

2. Who is Your Audience?

Twitter gives you a great deal of demographic data about your audience. Beyond just age and gender, Twitter breaks down your followers by geo and even some psychographic data as well.

The more you understand about your audience, the easier it’ll be to share relevant content with them. You might have an idea in your head of who your audience consists of, but your Twitter analytics tool will give you actual data.

A quick and easy way to put this information to use is through your visuals. People like to see themselves in the content they consume. Use photos in your Tweets that reflect the demographics of your audience. So if your main demographic is females interested in Startups, you could use photos in your Tweets that contain women working in a startup-type office.

3. What’s Driving Traffic?

Let’s be honest. All your Tweets aren’t going to bring massive waves of traffic to your website. Luckily Twitter analytics tools can help you identify which Tweets result in people actually visiting your site.

With tools like Sprout Social, you can see data such as link clicks and even add UTM tags to your Tweets for more details.

Don’t just stop at identifying which Tweets generate the most traffic. Take a look at those Tweets, and specifically look at:

The topic: What link did you share? Was it a an article related to a trending topic, how-to guide or something funny?

The time: The reason your Tweets might not be getting clicked might be because nobody’s seeing them. Make sure know the best times to post to Twitter so most of your followers will likely see it. You can also use our ViralPost feature to automatically send Tweets at the optimal time.

The copy: Don’t underestimate the power of the text you use in your Tweets. The right copy can mean the difference between getting clicked and being overlooked.

The image: If you have Twitter cards setup on your site, you should have an image included in your Tweets like the example below. For your Tweets driving the most traffic, take a look at the images that accompany them. Are there any common themes among them?

NEW: The Complete Guide to Video Content Marketing on Social https://t.co/GbDtUILm3X by @brentwrites pic.twitter.com/47KGKVjyxb

— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) August 30, 2017

Study all four of these elements and look for common themes among your most clicked Tweets. Hopefully you’ll spot some trends that you can replicate onto your other Tweets.

4. Is Your Twitter Strategy Working?

You’re Tweeting, trying to connect with new people and investing plenty of time into Twitter. But is any of it actually working?

After you’ve defined your goals, use your Twitter analytics tool to track your progress. For instance, if your goal is to build awareness for your brand, you can monitor metrics like impressions or share of voice for certain keywords. If you wanted to drive more traffic from Twitter, you’d track referral traffic. Read guide below to learn which Twitter metric to monitor for your goals.

All of the Social Media Metrics That Matter

Did you know that when it comes to social media metrics, there are hundreds you could be analyzing? But the Read More …

5. Which Influencers Should You Engage With?

Influencer marketing is one of the most popular tactics for growing a social following and getting in front of your target audience. While a lot of brands tend to associate influencers with YouTube or Instagram, Twitter also has plenty of potential for influencer marketing.

With Twitter’s algorithm and thousands of Tweets being sent every second, organic reach has become a commodity. While influencers certainly aren’t immune to this, they still tend to get more reach and engagement than the average brand. Borrow some of their influence by partnering up or doing a promoted campaign with them.

The first step will be to identify influencers to work with. With our Twitter analytics tools, you can see your most engaged influencers. These are people with large followings that have recently engaged with your Tweets.

Use this information to jumpstart your Twitter influencer marketing campaign. Since they’ve engaged with your brand at some point, there’s some level of familiarity which makes your initial outreach less cold. You can lead with the fact that they’ve Retweeted or replied to one of your Tweets. Then open up the conversation to working together.

Keep in mind that just because they’ve engaged with you in the past, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll automatically be open to working with you. But with this approach, at least you’re not starting from scratch.

6. What’s Working for the Competition?

Competitive research is one of the best ways to get ideas for your own Twitter strategy. Analyzing what successful competitors are doing can give you amazing insights your brand can use to achieve similar results.

However, don’t use this as an invitation to straight copy and paste what other brands are doing. You’re looking for inspiration, not someone to replicate.

To start, use your Twitter analytics tool to run a competitive analysis report. Make sure you’re using competitors that have an active Twitter presence.

Beyond that report, you’ll also want to do a deep dive into their activity. Take note of things like:

How often do they Tweet?

What days of the week do they Tweet?

What type of content do they share?

Which Tweets get the most engagement?

7. Who Are Your Top Advocates?

We talked about using Twitter analytics tools to identify influencers, but you can also use it to find your brand advocates. Advocates are people that willingly promote your brand. Unlike influencers, they’re already familiar with your products and promote your company without compensation.

Since advocates don’t always work directly with your brand, it’s easy to take them for granted or not even know who they are. Use your analytics to find out who your advocates are. Sprout has a report that lists the people most frequently mentioned with your account, which makes a great starting point.

Beyond that, start to take note of people who constantly mention your brand. Sprout’s contact view and engagement history will help you keep track of conversations you’ve had in the past with other users, which makes it easier to spot people that have been consistently advocating for your brand.

Once you’ve identified your advocates, start building a relationship with them. You could even consider building an advocate program, similar to our All Stars community.

8. Are Your Twitter Ads Worth the Money?

If you run Twitter Ads, you need to keep a close eye on how your ads are performing. The last thing you want to do is waste money on ads that don’t perform. Twitter provides analytics for your ads that allow you to track clicks, impressions, conversions and other metrics important to your campaign.

Analyze your data to not only see which ads are failing, but also to spot opportunities to improve campaigns. For instance, if one of your ad sets is performing exceptionally well, consider doubling down or applying your learnings from that ad set to your underperforming ones.

In some instances, you might find that Twitter Ads simply aren’t delivering the ROI you hoped for. If that’s the case, you’ll have to decide whether you want to try to better optimize your ads or allocate that money elsewhere. Taking time to look through your Twitter analytics tool can save your brand money and even increase your ad performance.

9. How Do People Feel About Your Brand?

Twitter is well known for being the platform people use when they want to voice their opinion. Whether it’s politics, food or in this case, your brand, people aren’t shy about letting you know how they feel on Twitter.

While that level of unfiltered honesty might not seem very appealing, the reality is it gives you real insights into how people feel about your brand. Better yet, it gives you an opportunity to resolve issues with upset customers and reward your top advocates.

The next question is how do you extract this information?

Depending on which Twitter analytics tool you use, some may have sentiment analysis of some sort, while others (like Sprout) allow you to tag incoming Tweets. For tagging, you can categorize Tweets about your brand based on sentiment such as positive, negative or complaints.

Then, look through your data to get a pulse on the general feelings towards your brand. If you notice an overwhelming amount of negative Tweets or complaints, look for ways to address the issue. If a majority of the Tweets are on the positive side, use it as an opportunity to foster and grow your community. For instance, you could highlight a “customer of the week” or reward your top advocates with exclusive deals and prizes.

10. Are You Engaging or Broadcasting?

Without a doubt, one of the biggest mistakes brands make with Twitter is using it purely to promote their own content. Every Tweet is to an article on their site, and they rarely ever engage with their audience.

However, that’s not what Twitter is for. In fact, that’s the complete opposite of its original purpose. Twitter was initially built as an internal messaging system. Then the team realized it had use outside of their inner circle and it eventually became one of the top social networks in the world.

The point is, Twitter is a platform for conversation, not constantly spamming followers with your latest articles. Luckily, you can use Twitter analytics tools to track how well you’re balancing conversation with broadcast-type messages. Here’s a look at what our Twitter Publishing Behavior report looks like, which breaks down your Tweets by type.

For clarification, “Conversation” refers to Tweets where you’re mentioning another user, and “Updates” are Tweets sent to your entire audience. Ideally, your Tweeting behavior will sway more towards conversation than updates. That means you’re using Twitter to engage with your audience and build relationships.

Put Your Twitter Analytics Tools to Use

Twitter analytics tools aren’t just for collecting data. At the end of the day, you need to analyze the data you collect and use it to improve your strategy and get closer to your goals.

If you’ve made it this far and realized that your current tool doesn’t give you half of the insights we’ve outlined, request a demo of Sprout Social to see what you’re missing out on.

This post 10 Insights Twitter Analytics Tools Should Reveal to Your Brand originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from SM Tips By Minnie https://sproutsocial.com/insights/twitter-analytics-tools/

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kristinejrosario · 7 years

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5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog

It’s time! You’ve had it in the back of your mind for a while now, but you’ve realised the hour is right to take the plunge, and you want to start a blog. Welcome! You’ve come to the right place.

If creating a blog is something you’ve been thinking about but you haven’t known where to start, then these are some basics you could keep in mind to ensure you create a blog not only you love, but your readers will too. A blog you won’t get sick of in six months’ time and abandon (which happens more than you think!), but something you can build and be proud of.

5 Things to Think About Before You Start Your New Blog

1. Is this the topic I want to write about forever, or have I given myself some wiggle room?

If you changed your mind a year into blogging and wanted to go in a different direction, you wouldn’t be the first.

We can often start a blog for one reason and continue it for another. Where this gets difficult (without losing all your hard-earned readers and starting again) is where you’ve boxed yourself in so tight that you can’t branch out.

Now I’m not saying a slender niche is a particularly bad idea, if you’re passionate about it – Nerd Fitness has nailed the brief, as has Lotsa Fresh Air, just to name two. If you can see yourself still motivated and excited to write about your chosen topic five years from now, then you’re laughing. But if you’ve chosen a niche just because it’s a current trending topic and you think it will get you tons of traffic, you may find you can’t stand it 12 months in and you’ve got nowhere to go. And worse, the trend for that topic has passed!

There’s no reason why you can’t start out as a personal blog and write about all sorts of things until you hit up on your niche. There’s also no reason why you can’t transition from a particular topic to something different that you’ve touched on before. The thing is to keep your options open if you’re not sure, or really be sure before you start.

Has your idea got longevity? Or do you have a Plan B?

2. The technical bits

No need to be frightened by this list, as simple as I’ve tried to keep it! You’ll often find that plenty of these things come with time and you can do them gradually. You might start out on the Blogger platform with no newsletter and eventually move onto a different platform with a simple email-capturing plugin. Baby steps!

It also goes hand in hand with just starting your blog rather than waiting until you’ve got all your ducks lined up. I’m a huge proponent of jumping in with both feet and figuring it out later. There’s a huge chance you won’t even start (or you’ll waste valuable time) waiting around until you’re 100% sure with every single aspect of your blog.

But it doesn’t hurt to have a think about these options, even if you end up putting them in the too-hard basket to deal with at a later date.

If you’d like step-by-step instructions for the technicalities of setting up a blog, Darren has written a fantastically comprehensive tutorial here: How to Start a Blog. You can also check out our Start a Blog portal for further newbie info.

Hosting: Which company will you go with? How much money do you have to spend? Will they take into account certain circumstances for your blog? Things like load time and dedicated servers are important, make sure you can find out all the information you think is relevant to you.

Platform: It’s no longer a fight to the death between WordPress and Blogger, there are plenty of other options in the mix these days too. Squarespace has a lovely, clean look, and Tumblr is easy to use, for example. Will you be selling your own product in the future, and therefore have to look at a platform that also has ecommerce ability? Or do you need to choose between WordPress.com or WordPress.org? The options are many, but it depends on what you want to get out of it. A simple online journal could work well on Blogger, or for more functionality and control, you could go self-hosted WordPress.

Domain: First, read 4 Things to Consider When Choosing your Domain name, as it has several very important components for you to think about. Will you get your own domain name? (I recommend it!), does anyone else have that domain or similar? Which company will you buy it through?

Design: Do you know how to design webpages, or are you going to buy a theme? Will you install it yourself or get someone else to? Will you leave it as standard, or make tweaks to it? Do you have enough white space, easy navigation, and a clear layout?

Email address: If you’re not getting an email address through your blog hosting, which platform will you use? Will it be your blog name? What if it is taken (like mine was)? Think thoroughly about what the alternatives could be rather than rushing into it, or you’ll be stuck with a not-so-great email address (like I was!) which is meant to be a professional representation of you.

Structure: How will your blog layout look? What kinds of posts will you be writing? Will you be doing mainly video? Are visuals your priority?

Plugins: What kind of functionality do you want your site to have? A recipe index? An Instagram widget? An email signup form? A spam filter? What comment system? Printable recipe cards? Easy SEO? The options are pretty unlimited, but a bad plugin can flood your site with errors, or worse – malware. Do your research and only use the plugins you really need and keep them updated.

Social Media Accounts: This almost goes without saying in this day and age, but think about which ones will be most useful for you, and secure your blog name on them (or whatever you want to be known as). You don’t have to use all of them regularly, but it’s best to have a presence on each, even if you just direct folks to the platforms you do use regularly. How will you display these on your site so your readers know where to find you?

Visuals: How wide will your pictures be? Will you need a slider? What about your blog profile picture? Are they optimised for the web so they don’t drag down your load speed?

Safety: How will you stop your site being accessed by hackers? What protection does your host offer?

Backups: What happens if your blog suddenly disappears? Gets hacked? Gets taken down by a rogue plugin? If you had to repopulate your entire site, where will you get the info to do that? Do your research on backups and backup plugins.

Spam filters: How will you cut down on the amount of bots trying to get backlinks to their sites? Will you use the general WordPress Jetpack or something else?

Email collection: If you’re going to build an email list, how will you capture readers’ emails? Will you be creating a newsletter? Where will you keep all your collected email addresses?

3. Branding

If you haven’t already decided 100% about a blog name, now is the time! Some of us know exactly who and what we want to be, and others go through some more brainstorming to come up with the perfect title that sums up the blog’s ethos.

Take into account basic marketing tips:

Is the name easy to remember?

Does it roll off the tongue?

Is there something sufficiently different about it so that it stands out?

Does it make a good URL?

Are there keywords in it?

Can you see yourself being happy with this name in a year’s time? In five years’ time?

Do you have a particular logo or colour scheme in mind? Your blog’s header is the first thing people see, usually – are you settled on a graphic? Or will it be just text? Will you use this branding across your social media, or a profile picture of yourself?

Your branding is how you are represented visually, and while you can definitely change it in the future, you should have some idea of how you want to come across right now and what name/image will describe that for you.

4. Where’s your community?

A blog isn’t really a blog without readers – you need people to visit your site and interact with it for your blog to be successful.

It’s very tempting to just start writing and hope people find your blog, but it’s always best to sit down and have a brainstorm about where those people might actually be so you can be there too!

Are you appealing more to a Pinterest or a LinkedIn crowd? Would your readers be in Facebook groups or in online forums? What is their demographic? What other blogs are in your niche where they might be reading (and you could read too, if you don’t already!)? Where would they go to find people like them?

It’s a really good idea to try and narrow down who you’re talking to and who would be interested in what you have to say. Darren often recommends creating a reader profile (or several!) to give you some structure when it comes to tone and topic content. Then find where your ideal reader hangs out and create a presence there.

Half the job of finding readers for your blog will be done if you know who you’re looking for and where they are. You can get all our handy tips and every article in the Finding Readers portal.

5. What am I doing this for?

Knowing your why, or understanding what is motivating you to write your blog, is invaluable. The earlier you can figure this out, the better! Why have you started a blog? What is the purpose? Where do you want it to take you?

Dig down deep and see if you can come up with the overarching reason you’re cracked open a laptop and started to write for the world to see. Knowing your why can then impact the how (how you intend to create content and engage with readers) and the what (what that content is and how you intend to share it).

It also helps when you are trying to find the time to work on your blog. If you’re passionate about your blog and its topic, it’s easier to find the time in and around your work and family commitments. If you’re passionate about your blog, it’s easier to keep going when you feel as though nobody’s reading it yet. If you’re passionate about why you’re blogging, then it can help keep you on track when you’re working umpteen hours a week and earning zero dollars.

Knowing why you want to blog will help you create a blog not only you will love, but that others will immediately understand and be drawn to as well. There’s nothing so obvious as a soulless blog just there for the traffic! Understanding what you’re in this for will lead to a better end result.

Bonus Round one: spending money

There comes a time when if you want to make money from your blog, you have to spend money.

If you’re doing it as a hobby, that’s great! Don’t spend a cent if you don’t want to. But if you would spend money on a hobby anyway (my two weaknesses are books and beautiful pure-wool yarn), then go for it. If your blog doesn’t make a cent but it looks how you want it to and it makes you happy every day then that’s money well spent.

If you want to make money from your blog, you may find you’re forking out cash before your blog is bringing it in. It is worth having a beautiful theme, altered to suit your blog and its specifications. It’s worth it to pay for plugins that you think will make your blogging life easier. Then there’s paid social scheduling options, blogging courses, graphic designers, web gurus, hosting, SEO help – your blog will take as much money as you have to spend on it! And probably more.

It’s best now to work out a budget of how much you’re willing to spend, or you’ll find that you’ve got money coming out your ears and you’re still not where you want to be.

Bonus Round two: making money

It’s no longer a dirty word! There are millions of bloggers all over the world making an income from their blogs, whether large or small. If this is something you’re hoping to achieve with your blog (one of your “why”s perhaps?!), then take a look at our Make Money Blogging resource page and see what resonates with you, and check out our plentiful articles on the topic!

Starting a blog can be one of the most exciting endeavours, and often far more rewarding than we realise. I hope I haven’t overwhelmed anyone with my “before you start a blog” topics to think about, because as I said before, I’m of the school of thought that encourages people to just get started before they over-think themselves out of it! Start a blog and iron out the kinks later – but if you can start it with just a couple of these locked down, then you’re on the front foot.

If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them in the comments below. Happy blogging!

The post 5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/z_BvhlXdoJ0/

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richardrobertsimsuccessblog · 7 years

Text

5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog

5 Things to Think About Before You Start Your New Blog

1. Is this the topic I want to write about forever, or have I given myself some wiggle room?

If you changed your mind a year into blogging and wanted to go in a different direction, you wouldn’t be the first.

Has your idea got longevity? Or do you have a Plan B?

2. The technical bits

But it doesn’t hurt to have a think about these options, even if you end up putting them in the too-hard basket to deal with at a later date.

Structure: How will your blog layout look? What kinds of posts will you be writing? Will you be doing mainly video? Are visuals your priority?

Visuals: How wide will your pictures be? Will you need a slider? What about your blog profile picture? Are they optimised for the web so they don’t drag down your load speed?

Safety: How will you stop your site being accessed by hackers? What protection does your host offer?

Spam filters: How will you cut down on the amount of bots trying to get backlinks to their sites? Will you use the general WordPress Jetpack or something else?

Email collection: If you’re going to build an email list, how will you capture readers’ emails? Will you be creating a newsletter? Where will you keep all your collected email addresses?

3. Branding

Take into account basic marketing tips:

Is the name easy to remember?

Does it roll off the tongue?

Is there something sufficiently different about it so that it stands out?

Does it make a good URL?

Are there keywords in it?

Can you see yourself being happy with this name in a year’s time? In five years’ time?

4. Where’s your community?

A blog isn’t really a blog without readers – you need people to visit your site and interact with it for your blog to be successful.

It’s very tempting to just start writing and hope people find your blog, but it’s always best to sit down and have a brainstorm about where those people might actually be so you can be there too!

Half the job of finding readers for your blog will be done if you know who you’re looking for and where they are. You can get all our handy tips and every article in the Finding Readers portal.

5. What am I doing this for?

Bonus Round one: spending money

There comes a time when if you want to make money from your blog, you have to spend money.

It’s best now to work out a budget of how much you’re willing to spend, or you’ll find that you’ve got money coming out your ears and you’re still not where you want to be.

Bonus Round two: making money

If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them in the comments below. Happy blogging!

The post 5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog

#Richard Roberts IM Success Mix #5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog

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silvino32mills · 7 years

Text

5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog

5 Things to Think About Before You Start Your New Blog

1. Is this the topic I want to write about forever, or have I given myself some wiggle room?

If you changed your mind a year into blogging and wanted to go in a different direction, you wouldn’t be the first.

Has your idea got longevity? Or do you have a Plan B?

2. The technical bits

But it doesn’t hurt to have a think about these options, even if you end up putting them in the too-hard basket to deal with at a later date.

Structure: How will your blog layout look? What kinds of posts will you be writing? Will you be doing mainly video? Are visuals your priority?

Visuals: How wide will your pictures be? Will you need a slider? What about your blog profile picture? Are they optimised for the web so they don’t drag down your load speed?

Safety: How will you stop your site being accessed by hackers? What protection does your host offer?

Spam filters: How will you cut down on the amount of bots trying to get backlinks to their sites? Will you use the general WordPress Jetpack or something else?

Email collection: If you’re going to build an email list, how will you capture readers’ emails? Will you be creating a newsletter? Where will you keep all your collected email addresses?

3. Branding

Take into account basic marketing tips:

Is the name easy to remember?

Does it roll off the tongue?

Is there something sufficiently different about it so that it stands out?

Does it make a good URL?

Are there keywords in it?

Can you see yourself being happy with this name in a year’s time? In five years’ time?

4. Where’s your community?

A blog isn’t really a blog without readers – you need people to visit your site and interact with it for your blog to be successful.

It’s very tempting to just start writing and hope people find your blog, but it’s always best to sit down and have a brainstorm about where those people might actually be so you can be there too!

Half the job of finding readers for your blog will be done if you know who you’re looking for and where they are. You can get all our handy tips and every article in the Finding Readers portal.

5. What am I doing this for?

Bonus Round one: spending money

There comes a time when if you want to make money from your blog, you have to spend money.

It’s best now to work out a budget of how much you’re willing to spend, or you’ll find that you’ve got money coming out your ears and you’re still not where you want to be.

Bonus Round two: making money

If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them in the comments below. Happy blogging!

The post 5 Things to Think About Before You Start a Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

from ProBlogger http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/z_BvhlXdoJ0/

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