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How to Get More Content for Your Blog | Cross River Realtor

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One of the biggest challenges that bloggers face – whether they are blogging for themselves or their business – is creating enough content. Most people can’t just write a blog post in 15 minutes. Creating quality content takes a major investment of time and resources. If you’re struggling to create enough content, then here are some great ways to get additional content for your blog.

Supplement with Content Curation

If your challenge when it comes to content creation is coming up with original blog topics, then one way to fill up your editorial calendar is by adding curated content.  Curated content is simply compiling and organizing content from other sources into one post. The Ultimate Resource Guide to Guest Blogging and Blogger Outreach is an example – it is simply a list of networks and posts from other sites on how to have successful guest blogging and blog outreach campaigns.

Note that these kinds of posts are not time savers – you still have to find the best pieces of content to curate, organize everything logically, give each piece a description, and compile it all together. But it can be a lifesaver when you’re having trouble coming up with new ideas while giving your audience some awesome content to chew on.

Tips for Great Curation Pieces

  • Don’t only use curation pieces. It might give the impression that you have nothing original to say. For example, if you have five new posts a week, you could consider one curation post per week. If you have one new post a week, you could consider one curation post per month.
  • Think about curation topics that could include one or more of your own posts. In the above-mentioned example, I included a post from the KISSmetrics blog on how to do guest blogging. This can help you highlight your own content as well as others.
  • Use Google Reader to subscribe to your favorite sources. Google Reader has a great search function, so if you wanted to curate resources on a particular subject, you can use the search to find posts from every blog you are subscribed to via RSS.

I’ve found that content curation comes in handy in a couple of ways. For my blog, it gives me a weekly roundup post to rely upon with no inspiration needed. Even blogs like HubSpot and Social Media Examiner have their own version of weekly curated content. And for the blogs I regularly contribute to, it was easy to find content related to their niche to group together in a large lists like 45 Posts on A/B, Multivariate, and Usability Testing and smaller lists like 8 Useful Recruitment Infographics.

Repurpose Content

Another way to create content for your blog that doesn’t include coming up with all new post ideas is by repurposing your pre-existing content. This simply means that you refresh, reorganize, and recreate content that has worked for you in the past. You can also take content in one format (such as video) and repurpose it into another format (such as a slideshow).

Tips for Repurposing Old Content

  • Find your most popular blog posts that are over a year old. You can do this by sorting your WordPress posts by going to All Posts and sorting them by the number of comments. You can also use your Google Analytics and look under Content > Site Content > All Pages. This will show you your top content based on number of views.
  • Break overview posts into several detailed posts. For example, I could take this post and create five individual posts that include in-depth details about content curation, repurposing content, attracting guest bloggers, hiring freelance writers, and connecting with businesses for content.
  • Turn a series of detailed posts into an overview post. As opposed to the above tactic, if you have a series of detailed posts on one theme, you could create an overview posts that summarizes each and links back to the detailed posts. This way, you have a new piece of content and you get a chance to highlight your previous work.

Tips for Repurposing Other Formats of Content

  • Transcribe your videos. If you are creating video content (vlogging, video interviews, video testimonials, video tutorials, etc.), then you can easily turn your videos into blog content by embedding the video into a blog post followed by a transcription of what is said throughout the video.
  • Transcribe your podcasts. Similar to video content, if you are a podcaster, you can transcribe your podcasts in a blog post.
  • Add commentary to infographics. This one you can with your own infographics or infographics made by others. Infographics usually include a lot of information that you may – or may not – agree with. Embed the infographic into a blog post (giving credit where credit is due) and then add your commentary above or below the infographic. Talk about the points you agree with, the points you don’t, and add some additional information that may not have been included. You can see an example of this in my post on Top 25 Hosting Companies that includes an infographic plus additional details.
  • Summarize presentations. If you speak at conferences or simply create presentations for Slideshare, you can embed those presentations into a blog post and further explain the bullet points and slides.

One of my goals for 2013 is to produce more eBooks, but I find it hard to commit to any piece of writing longer than a blog post, especially now that I’m a new mom. So I’m looking at repurposing as the answer by staring my next eBook as a series of blog posts. So far I have 40+ post drafts ready to be written. Once they are done, they will be repackaged nicely into an eBook.

Attract Guest Bloggers

If you don’t have time at all to create yourself, you can look towards outside resources to create content for you. The first (and free) resource for blog content is guest bloggers. Guest bloggers will provide content in exchange for exposure with your audience – they usually just want an author bio that includes a backlink to their website.

Tips for Attracting Guest Bloggers

  • Create a page on your blog with guest blogging guidelines. Title the page “Write for Us: Guest Blogging Guidelines” or similar – this includes keyword phrases that guest bloggers typically search when looking for guest blogging opportunities. Be specific about exactly what you want when it comes to content submissions so you can get the content you want and have a quick response when you receive low quality submissions.
  • Link to your guest blogging guidelines often. Link to it in your blog’s navigation bar or sidebar. Also include a quick link at the end of posts that your blog is open to guest post submissions. If you’re publishing guest posts, include a link at the top where you say, “This is a guest post by…”
  • Share your guest blogging guidelines on social media. If you have a good-sized audience that happens to include bloggers, sharing your guest blogging guidelines page on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ can help you get more guest bloggers.

Tips for Working with Guest Bloggers

  • Be sure to quality check incoming guest posts. Some guest bloggers are marketers in disguise, and there are bad marketers out there that will submit poor quality content or content that has been published elsewhere. Read the post thoroughly and do a quick Google search for a sentence or two to make sure it is unique content.
  • Make sure you stand by the information presented in the guest post. If you are adamantly against something, you don’t want to publish content by someone else that is for it. If facts are presented without reference, make sure they are true. The last thing you want is to have to defend guest content yourself. This also includes checking the website that the guest author is linking to – make sure it is something you wouldn’t mind your audience visiting.
  • Encourage the guest author to participate in the community. Specifically, encourage them to revisit the post and answer comments. This way you are getting content and community management all in one.

Last year, when I was fully focused on client work, I depended on guest bloggers to keep my blog afloat. And that they did – I had regularly scheduled guest posts two to three times a week. Although I am changing up my blog strategy this year (similar to the ProBlogger evolution), I was grateful to have such great content on my site from many talented authors.

Get Completed Articles

If you want to bypass interacting with writers for content, your next best bet is to look for networks that offer ready to go content. Networks like MyBlogGuest and GuestBlogIt allow you to connect with guest bloggers as well as browse through completed articles that you can publish on your blog.

If you don’t have time to browse through lots of articles, networks like PostJoint let you choose topics and then sends you a daily email when new content is available for you to browse. The email includes the content titles and the first sentence so you can preview them right in your inbox.

Tips for Getting Great Content

  • Quality check. Just like you would do with guest blog posts, you need to quality check articles you are getting from any network for value, accuracy, and whether the content has been published elsewhere. Just because most networks require writers to submit unique content does not mean that they all follow the rules.
  • Visit the websites listed in the author bios. While some article submissions are by bloggers looking for more exposure, others are from businesses looking to market their website. Be sure to check out their links to make sure they are websites you would be OK with your audience visiting.
  • Be prepared to answer comments. Since you are getting whole articles, you won’t be getting the author who wrote them to participate in your community. Hence you will need to be prepared to answer your comments and discuss any points in the articles you post.

If your blog isn’t quite at the stage of attracting guest bloggers, then this might be a good route to go. I also found it useful to grab pre-written, unique content for my blog on the days where my scheduled guest blogger missed their submission deadline. This ensured that my blog didn’t go silent on a day people expected a new post.

Hire Freelance Writers

If you have some money to invest in your blog and are not having luck with guest bloggers, then you can always hire one or more freelance writers. The advantage to freelance writers is that you have more control over what they write and can insist upon edits when necessary.

Tips for Finding Freelancer Writers

  • Invest in quality writers. Depending on your niche, you probably won’t be able to hire $5 article writers. When it comes to quality content, you really do get what you pay for.
  • Look for freelance writers who write for similar blogs. Run a Google search for site:domain.com “freelance writer” where domain.com is a blog that contains content similar to what you need for your blog. This will help you find experienced freelance writers in your niche and give you a chance to see how well their work is received. This will ensure you have writers who understand blogging etiquette and community participation, something you may not get out of the average article writer.
  • Contact prolific guest bloggers. Use a similar searches such as site:domain.com “guest blogger” or site:domain.com “guest post by” to find guest bloggers in your niche who may be looking to earn extra income through freelance blogging.

Tips for Working with Freelancer Writers

  • Be specific about your needs. Unlike guest bloggers, you can be really specific with what you need from your freelance writer since you are paying for their services. Suggest topics, give editorial guidelines, and let them know what you expect from start to finish.
  • Set a schedule. If you want a steady supply of content, you need to set a regular schedule for content delivery. Otherwise, you may contact your writer for a post you need ASAP to find they are already committed to other projects.
  • Pay on time. Just like happy employees produce quality work, happy freelancers are going to do the same. The best way to keep your freelancer writers happy is to pay them on time, otherwise they will spend the time they could be using to create content for your blog to play bill collector.

Though I’ve never hired a freelance writer for my blog, many blog owners and businesses have hired me to create content for them. It works out great because then they can focus on monetization and revenue generating tasks while ensuring their blog is kept up-to-date with quality content.

On to you…

Have you used any of these strategies to get content for your blog? Please share your experiences plus additional tactics for increasing your blog content in the comments!

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and professional blogger who writes about blog marketing strategy at Kikolani. She has also contributed to well-known online marketing blogs including Social Media Examiner, KISSmetrics, Unbounce, and Search Engine Journal. Follow her on Twitter or Google+.

via problogger.net

Housing Recovery Rescuing 8 Million Underwater in U.S: Mortgages | Cross River Real Estate

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Maggie Medved was stuck with her Phoenix house for two years after the market crash wiped out the equity in the property. Last year, as prices in the area rose by the most in the U.S., she and her partner were finally able to sell the 3-bedroom 1950’s style home and move to a larger place.

“We were counting the days for when we could move,” said Medved, 40, who trains employees for weight loss company Jenny Craig Inc. “We definitely knew it was a waiting game because it would’ve been financial suicide if we had sold earlier.”

Medved was among the 12 million borrowers in the U.S. who at the peak of the real-estate downturn owed more on their mortgages than their houses were worth, blocking them from moving or saving money by taking advantage of the lowest borrowing costs on record to refinance. As prices recovered, the number of underwater borrowers fell by almost 4 million last year to 7 million, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., and could drop to 4 million within 2 years.

The housing market is rebounding faster than anyone thought possible, according to Blackstone Group LP’s global head of real estate Jonathan Gray, as the Federal Reserve buys mortgage bonds to keep rates near record lows and investors sop up a diminishing supply of properties for sale. Housing construction could boost U.S. gross domestic product by 0.4 percentage point and home price appreciation may add another 0.2 percentage point, Bank of America Corp.’s senior economist Michelle Meyer forecasts.

‘Appreciating Asset’

“It supports household wealth, consumer confidence and can generate greater credit creation,” Meyer said. “If prices are rising, homeowners believe that they will once again have an appreciating asset. It’s a very big change in how they think about their wealth and their balance sheets.”

Medved’s Phoenix home was on the market for two days before it sold for $85,000, just shy of the price paid in 1998. She and her partner Wendy Thomas bought a larger property with a pool for $210,000 in Glendale, about 10 minutes away.

“We’d outgrown the house and the neighborhood took a turn we didn’t like,” Medved said. “Almost 12 years later we were in the hole $30,000. We couldn’t take that much of a loss and needed to stay regardless of what the neighborhood had become.”

Arizona’s capital city is leading the U.S. in price appreciation, surging 22 percent in the 12 months through October, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller index, which had the biggest year-over-year advance since May 2010. Eighteen of the 20 cities in the index showed increases from a year earlier.

Even with the gains, Phoenix prices were down about 45 percent through November from their 2006 peak, according to Zillow Inc. Nationally, prices peaked in May 2007, according to the real-estate website, and are down 19 percent.

Supply Dropping

Prices of properties in Phoenix climbed as the inventory of houses for sale dropped to about 14,700 in December, about half of the normal level, according to Tina Waggoner, a real estate broker in Phoenix, and the one who sold Medved’s property last year.

“The supply has dropped substantially,” said Waggoner, who specializes in distressed sales. “Cash investors are beating out buyers all the time.”

JPMorgan analysts led by John Sim estimate the price growth last year was responsible for a drop of almost 4 million in underwater borrowers. The number of homeowners that owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth may fall to 4 million by the end of 2015, according to Sim, whose team is the top-ranked for residential mortgage securities in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual survey.

Constrained Inventory

While a 5 percent increase in home prices could lower the number of underwater borrowers to just above 5 million, a move of that magnitude in the other direction would push it back over 10 million, he wrote in the Jan. 4 report.

Supply across the country is being been constrained as institutional investors including Blackstone and Colony Capital LLC have pushed out traditional buyers competing for a dwindling number of properties.

Blackstone, the largest U.S. private real estate owner, has accelerated purchases of single-family homes as prices jumped faster than it expected, spending more than $2.5 billion on 16,000 homes to manage as rentals, Gray said during an interview last week. That’s up from $1 billion of homes owned in October, when Blackstone Chairman Stephen Schwarzman said the company was spending $100 million a week on houses.

Underwater borrowers, who can’t sell without taking a loss, contributed to rising levels of foreclosures, which blighted neighborhood prices by increasing the number of abandoned homes. It also increased the phenomenon of borrowers who saw little chance of their homes ever being worth what they owed on it sending the keys back to the bank and moving out, known as strategic default.

Foreclosures Slowing

Foreclosure starts dropped 28 percent in November from a year earlier, data provider Lender Processing Services Inc. wrote in a report this week.

As real estate prices rise further, more homeowners will emerge from negative equity and may decide to sell, adding to supply.

Still, increasing prices will have a more gradual effect on the housing market, said Karen Weaver, head of market strategy and research at investment firm Seer Capital Management LP in New York. “Home prices are not rocketing up,” said Weaver. “But all the trends are in place. You have an improvement in the negative equity situation and you have a reduction in the amount of people in the default bucket.”

Housing Estimates

Home values climbed by more than $1.3 trillion to $23.7 trillion since the end of 2011, according to Zillow, and prices will rise by 3.3 percent after an estimated 4.5 percent jump last year, based on estimates of 15 economists and housing analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales of existing homes will increase about 7.2 percent in 2013 to 4.98 million, the highest since 2007.

Increasing prices compounded with Fed efforts to keep mortgage rates low could widen the population of borrowers eligible to refinance and have implications for bond investors.

Higher levels of refinancing would be a boon for securities without government backing such as subprime bonds and option adjustable-rate mortgages issued during the housing boom that trade at discounts to par. Faster prepayments could hurt holders of government-backed mortgage bonds, whose prices average almost 108 cents on the dollar, according to Bank of America data.

The improving housing market has already helped the broader economy heal after the crash triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate has dropped to 7.8 percent, the lowest level since January 2009 and Fed officials in December projected economic growth in a range of 2 percent to 3.2 percent in 2013.

“For most middle class households, homes are by far their biggest asset,” Weaver said. “So once the housing market starts to recover it helps consumer spending, it helps the whole economy.”

via businessinsider.com

4 key questions to ask before hiring a contractor | Cross River Real Estate

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Q: I have a number of small projects that need doing around the house. What is a good way to find a qualified handyman? I have looked in the Yellow Pages of the phone book and made a couple of calls, but they have not responded to come to my home and give me an estimate. I know I should ask them if they are insured and bonded. Are there other questions I should ask before hiring a handyman for a project? –Gretchen S.

A: There are actually a couple of steps that I recommend to anyone looking to hire a contractor of any type, including a handyman:

1. Know specifically what you want to have done. The more information you have available for the contractor, the better.

2. Try to get personal referrals, rather than relying on the phone book. If you have a friend or a relative who had some work done on their home that they were pleased with, that’s a great starting point. You can get some honest feedback about the contractor’s skill level, price, scheduling, level of cooperation, and much more. There are a lot of contractors out there to choose from, and, like most businesses, they succeed or fail mostly by their reputation, so a good referral is very helpful.

There are other sources of referrals as well. If you see some work going on down the street, stop and talk to the homeowner. Most people are more than willing to share their experiences — both good and bad — about the contractor they’ve hired, and here again you can get some great firsthand information.

Material suppliers are also great sources. Ask the people where you buy your lumber or your plumbing supplies if they know of anyone who’s particularly good at the type of project you have in mind. Retailers have a reputation to protect as well — they want to keep you happy and coming back as a customer — so they will typically refer only those contractors who they know are honest and will do a quality job.

Other good sources of referrals include real estate agents, insurance agents, property managers, your utility company, and your local building department.

3. When you have a referral or two, call the contractors to set up an appointment. Ask the following four questions:

  • Do they do the specific type of work you’re looking for? It could be they no longer do kitchens or room additions, or they now do remodeling and have stopped building new homes. Clarify that upfront.
  • What is their schedule like? If you have a project that has to be done within the next month and the contractor can’t even start until then, there’s no point in wasting your time or theirs.
  • Can they provide you with referrals? Most companies are more than willing to provide you with names and phone numbers of past clients. If they can’t or won’t provide you with referrals, don’t hire them. Between the time you call the contractor and the time the contractor comes out, be sure to follow up on a couple of the referrals and get some feedback from the homeowners. If possible, see if the referral would mind if you came out to their home to view the contractor’s work in person.
  • What is the contractor’s name and license number? Get the contractor’s full legal business name, address and business phone number, as well as their contractor’s license number. Immediately follow up on this information, and call the contractor’s board to verify the status of the license and that all of the proper bonds and insurance policies are in place.

For much more about hiring and working with contractors, you might also want to download my book, “Hire the Right Contractor for your Home,” for $2.99 at amazon.com.

Q: We are remodeling our 27-year-old house. Is it common practice for the electrician and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) contractors to “line up” the vents and any lighting fixtures on the ceiling in each room?

Also, when wrapping the ductwork of the HVAC system in the attic, how important is it for the wrap to be tightly secured around the ductwork relative to the money saved in monthly bills? When I look up in the attic, I can see the yellow insulation (underside of the wrap) and there are gaps in the insulation where the duct meets the main air handler. I am concerned this is going to make my energy bills higher because air might escape. Are my concerns justified? –Eugenia H.

A: There’s no common practice for lining up vents and light fixtures. Ceiling vents are typically installed at the outer perimeter of the room, and most commonly over windows. That’s done so that the heat or air conditioning coming in from the vents will help offset the cold or hot air coming in from the windows and the exterior walls. Light fixtures, on the other hand, are typically centered to the room, or spaced to give the best quantity and quality of light for the layout of a given room space and usage.

All insulation around ductwork should be well secured, with a minimum of gaps. Every gap in the insulation will allow heated or cooled air to escape from the ductwork into the unconditioned air of the attic. That will definitely affect the efficiency of the heating/cooling system, and in turn that will have an impact on your utility bills, as well as your comfort levels.

via inman.com