Opendoor has a pretty cool way to help home sellers.
It appears that Opendoor uses big data and software to help people sell their homes fast. I think Opendoor is the company that does the purchasing, but they might just be the agent or broker. I would have to explore further to find out, but it’s a pretty cool idea.
You put in your request for an offer. They do their little magic thing behind closed doors and come back with an offer. The hook is that the offer is what a seller would likely get if they were to list their home through traditional methods.
Only with Opendoor the seller can find out what the offer is and if it’s what they want they can take the offer and set the closing date.
Very convenient and could very much help with a stressful situation: trying to sell a home.
With that in mind of what they do and who they market to I thought we could check out their blog.
1. Starting A Blog From Scratch
So it appears that the Opendoor blog is brand new. They’re starting from scratch with their blogging efforts.
And that’s not uncommon especially for a startup company like Opendoor. They’re just getting off the ground with their business so there are probably a million things to handle all at once.
It’s easy for blogging to get pushed aside.
But they do have a few posts, but more on those later.
When you’re starting a blog from scratch I have a few recommendations.
First, examine who your target customer is. That’s most important thing for a business and its blog. If you’re a startup you might be still figuring out your exact customer, but even when you’re brand new you can get a feel for it even with a handful of customers.
Second, once you have an idea of your customer then look at your industry and start looking for questions that your customer has in relation to your industry. That’s the best place to start a blog. In this case, we have home sellers and the home ownership industry. That’s a pretty big pool of topics.
Third, brainstorm about 10-12 ideas. Pick a day of the week to publish. Pick a writer. Start writing the posts each week. Try to write the post a week before the publish date. When you get to the end of the idea list then have another brainstorm session. Separating the ideas from the writing is a good way to eliminate writers block that can hinder the consistency of a business blog.
2. Ideal Word Count
The word count of the three posts that Opendoor currently has on their blog are about 600 words. It’s always a bit weird to me that many blog posts and articles that you read online are at about the 600-800 word count. Many are below that level and many are above, but there is definitely a sweet spot around 600-800 words. It’s a good word count, it seems, for readers. They can gather a lot of good information without needing to invest more than 10 minutes or so into reading and comprehending the post.
If you’re looking for a word count for your business blog the 600-800 word level is a good place to start. When I think about SEO I like to think more about helping the target reader. Usually that is by answering a question. I find that you can do a really good job of that for most topics with about 600-800 words.
That word count is good for multiple types of posts too including how-to posts, list posts and many more.
It’s a general rule that longer can be better, but it’s not always the case. I like long form writing. I like long stories as long as they’re engaging. I like long blog posts as long as they answer the questions I have.
Some believe that you shouldn’t think about word count before writing a post, but I like doing that. It makes you have discipline on both sides of the count. And it can provide consistency for yourself and for readers.
3. Common Topics, New Tips
Opendoor has a post on How To Choose The Right Home For You. That’s obviously a title that’s probably been written about before. But what I like that Opendoor did with the topic is that they seem to provide some new and useful tips.
With any blog you don’t just want to rehash what’s already out there. In some instances you’ll want to list a tip if it’s a really good tip and really necessary. You can do that and link to the source. But it’s always a good idea to add something new to the conversation.
And I think Opendoor does that on this post. They share some information on budget that I don’t think I’ve seen before. They also talk about the importance of trusting your gut, which is interesting when purchasing a house. But they back it up with a link to a source that has some science behind trusting your gut. I really like that. They have this post laid out real well. It has three great tips and it’s based on a how-to topic that is likely most important to the target reader.
4. Branching Out Just A Bit
Opendoor could obviously write a million posts on selling a home. But they can expand into other areas relating to home sellers and the questions they would have and they do that with a post on packing a pod. Those are the things you can rent where you put your entire house into the container and the company then ships it to your new doorstep.
This is obviously something that matters to the target reader. The person searching for information on packing a pod is probably someone that is in the process of selling their home. They might have their home on the market while having no luck. They are the perfect customer for Opendoor, but maybe they don’t know that Opendoor exists.
They can search for info on packing a pod. They find this post and get some good info. Opendoor can provide value, earn trust and potentially earn a new customer.
5. Linking To Outside Websites
Back to that post on choosing the right home you’ll see that Opendoor has linked to outside websites three times. This is something that many businesses simply won’t do. They don’t want to send readers away from their website. And I understand that sentiment, but linking to outside websites adds value to blog posts.
In that particular post, Opendoor links to three reputable sources. The information in the links backs up the claims that are made in Opendoor’s post. The reader might leave the blog to check out the info, but they’ll likely come back.
People really just want to see that you’re not just making claims. That’s one way outside links are good. They’re also good for paying it forward.
Most blog owners, including businesses, love when other websites and blogs link to their posts. You get what you give in the online world so linking to outside websites is good practice.
Opendoor gets it.
Conclusion
Opendoor is obviously just starting out with their blog. It looks like they might not even be linking to or promoting the blog from their homepage. I simply typed in /blog after their homepage URL and stumbled on the blog. So it could really be in the early stages of deployment. And that’s okay. They’re a new company and starting the blog and many other efforts from scratch. I do think that with the posts they have that they’re off to a great start. Hopefully taking a quick peek at their business blog has given you some ideas for your own business blog even if you’re starting from scratch.