Outerbanks Vacation Homes: Small Business Blog of the Day

Today's blog comes from the outer banks of North Carolina. It's been a while since I've been there to fly kites near Kittyhawk, but what I remember was beautiful, calm, and revitalizing. I remember complaining when an actual cloud appeared in the sky one afternoon.

What it is
The Outerbanks Vacation Homes blog is a real estate blog for Carolina Designs Realty located in Duck, North Carolina.

Features
Testimonials from happy renters and owners of homes on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, press releases from the realty company, local news that might interest a vacationer to the Outer Banks, and advice on renting homes in the area.

Favorite Post
Here is a testimonial called 'Thanks' that highlights a good experience one of their clients had at a vacation home:

"Carolina Designs turned ordinary into extraordinary in just 1 week, and we just wanted to say how appreciative we are." --The Minority Police Officer’s Association of Portsmouth, Virginia

What I like about this post is that is shows a very good use of taking positive feedback and letting everyone know about it. Some companies solicit feedback from their clients, some don't, but most companies fail to take advantage of promoting themselves through testimonials that clients have given them. This is an extremely powerful device in marketing and a company's blog is an ideal avenue to display this type of feedback.

Further Comments
This is a new blog (April 17) so it's reasonable to believe there will be numerous changes to the format, the types of things being written about, and to the goals of what CDR wish to achieve with their blog. What we're looking at now is a relatively immature blog that needs a push here and there.

First, the frequency of posts is pretty good, at least a couple of posts every week. Clearly, someone is spending some time on the blog to give us a reason to keep coming back to check it out. Unfortunately, we have no idea who this person is. We should see a person's name at the end of every post saying, "posted by Joe Schmoe" so that we get to know the human behind it. The anonymity of the blog gives it a somewhat sterile and generic feel.

This impression is further reinforced with several posts that border on standard press release material such as this one called What does customer service mean to Carolina Designs Realty? Who really wants to read a post like that? What we really want is something like Outer Banks Aerial Kite Surfing Shot. Something cool, not contrived. (For the record, I didn't even read this post because the title of it turned me off.)

Next, lets look at the format. Two things would dramatically increase the aesthetics of this blog: 1) adding pictures, and 2) breaking up the large paragraphs. Writing for a blog is a little different than writing a standard article. Short paragraphs rule. If you have more than three sentences, see if there's an opportunity to split it up. It will be much more readable.

Photos make almost every blog more interesting, but particularly so for a real estate blog. It would be great to see some of the properties for sale or rent, to see the views of the ocean from the Outer Banks, to see people enjoying activities on the Outer Banks, etc..

While there may be photos of these properties on the main website, it doesn't hurt to repeat the photos and use the blog to highlight properties that the realty would like to push. While this may seem self-serving, it isn't because this information about properties is actually useful to readers and what they would expect to see, while a generic article about "customer service" is not of interest.

Tags: outer banks real estate, north carolina real estate, carolina designs realty, carolina designs, duck north carolina, outer banks rental