One of the dumbest pieces of real estate blogging “advice” I’ve ever heard is “Don’t use your listings as blog posts.”

Tagged onto that advice was “keep your blog posts content rich.”

Oh really.

Because apparently, blogging about the homes in your target area is not keeping a real estate blog site content rich.

Funny. Or not.

Ok. Maybe there is an infinitesimal kernel of truth here . . .

If you are blogging about your listings, are you actually blogging about your listings? Or, are you just plopping up a link to the IDX feed?

One of the best ways to produce rich content is to truly blog about your listings. If you have a home for sale, tell people about it. What’s the home like? What’s the neighborhood like? Think of the ideal buyer of that property, what kind of lifestyle do they live? What do they like to do?

Blog the story. Blog the history. Share the neighborhood. Promote the lifestyle.

Share photos in your blog post that you don’t have in the MLS. Seriously. Go take photos of neighboring houses. Go take photos of the street from all directions. Take photos of the neighborhood. Take photos of the surrounding businesses. Take photos of the schools and religious institutions.

Show people what it would be like to own and live in that house. Allow them to imagine themselves there, before they’ve even visited the home. Get them emotionally attached. This is always the key, emotionally attach buyers to the homes you have for sale. Once emotions are attached, 90% of the “sold” process is done.

Don’t forget to include some important features such as the address of the home, a link to (even better, embed the link to) the IDX feed of the home, a map of the home’s location, etc.

If you have IDX, you should also include a link to other homes available for sale in that same neighborhood. Include capture links for home owners in the area to get their home’s value or to get a recent homes sold report. For your IDX links or embeds, make sure you have them set to capture leads (require registration to see the details.)

All this to say, don’t listen to the “do not” advice that just doesn’t make sense. Instead, take that “do not” advice and turn it into dollar signs for your business. Give a whole heck of a lot and you’ll be rewarded ten-fold.

But, what you shouldn’t being doing is spewing out your listings on your Facebook business page and calling it good. Oh no. Facebook is a whole different animal.