I met my friend Sam about six years ago when he hired me to write an article about property taxes in Texas. Over the years I’ve learned real estate investing from him, and he’s learned copywriting from me. It didn’t take much begging to get him to do a blog post for MyTeamConnects. This guy who — until recently — swore up and down that he “couldn’t write.”
Well, I’ll let you decide…a lightbulb may even turn on for you when he tells you how he did it.
“Thank you for asking me to do a guest blog on your site, MyTeamConnects.com. Over the last year or so I have learned a great deal from you on how to write blog posts, emails and pages for my sites.
I find that on my website, Training Landlords I have really two kinds different needs for copy. The first is copy I can write on my own, and I have learned it from what you teach regarding doing my own writing. I really have not thought of myself as a copywriter or even a blogger, but I have learned.
The second are the important pages, i.e. the home page and any special sales pages or press release needs that I have. I find that for those it’s better to outsource the actual writing to you rather than me.
For the home page and special pages it seems to be better to actually outsource the work to someone who is an expert. For the blog posts and for the general WordPress pages I can do it myself. If you would have asked me two years ago if I’d be writing the content on my own sites, I would have said, “Impossible.” But today I really do spend some time each week writing – and it has paid off in more traffic, more customers, and more sales.
The way I have learned to do my own writing (from your teaching) is to actually write a little differently than I would have without your help. I work on 5 or 10 blog posts at one time at first. You see, I actually do an outline of what all I want to do and talk about. Then I add on this sheet of paper an outline of the topics and the keywords that I want to hit for each blog post. This appeals to the analytic side of me and I’ve learned it’s an important part of marketing my business – getting the search engines to notice my content.
Then I talk into a digital mic pretending that I am talking to one person. I treat my speech as if I am answering the imaginary person’s questions or addressing their topics or concerns. I am very used to speaking and find speaking a great way to be creative, so this works for me.
From this recording, I turn it over to a transcriber who I have found on elance.com to put the posts/speeches into pages of text. There are of course a number of very good sites to get these transcribing jobs done, but I use eLance.com for myself.
I can find transcribers on elance.com rather easily. They charge me anywhere from $10 to $45 per hour of talking. I can easily do 7-9 “blog posts” in about one hour of talking. And to pay $45 for 9 transcribed blog posts is a good price for me. I get the posts I want and can turn around the work in days without a lot of pain on my side.
Finally I simply upload the text into a Word or some other text editing software and clean it up a little before posting it on blog post or information page on the website.
I always find it easier to just talk rather than write my copy out. When I used to force myself to write blog posts out, either longhand or typing, I would spend hours working on it and sometimes I could not get started. The blank screen waited and waited for me to add copy.
Since I started using a microphone to record my “chats,” it’s easy and fast. What once struck terror in me, now I “write” blog posts, no problem.
From the transcribers Word doc, I clean it up and then post it on my site. The document/post has most of what I want in the form of keywords but I get the blog post out on time with ease. I then find that I release one blog post per week and it seems as if I am being ever so smart from Google point of view.
When I tell folks to just talk and then record, versus starting to type from scratch, the talking always seems to come easier to folks. This method has worked well for me for lots of situations that require copy.
I recommend trying this method if you’re a speaker and not a writer.”
Sam Maropis is a real estate broker, investor and speaker who enjoys helping people find close commercial real estate transactions. His website ProfitRealty.com provides resources for landlords and those that want to own rental or commercial property. He is a real estate opportunity “wizard” who accepts that he just might be a good copywriter and blogger, too.
Image: Flickr CC, Alyssa L. Miller
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