Ever felt like you have a writer inside of you just waiting to come out? Do you happen to run a mobile home park? If you answered yes to both questions, it sounds like this article is perfect for you. If you haven’t created your own website or blog before, it can be pretty intimidating. However, there are more than a few excellent reasons why you should consider creating a blog for your mobile home park. Thanks to modern technology, it’s also easier than ever to run your own website.
Benefits of writing a blog for your park
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of actually creating and running a blog, let’s look at the reasons why you’d actually want to start your own park blog:
1. Create a voice for your park business
This is a small benefit, but if you’re a manager that loves your mobile home park and you want to create a unique community with a particular feel, it can be a poignant one. Having a clear “voice” or style for your mobile home park is an important consideration in running a successful blog. That same voice will affect how people see your park and can help shape your mobile home park’s “feel”. For example, you can write in a certain style or about certain topics to appeal to retirees, young couples, families, etc.
2. Make a tidy little side income
Even if you run a very successful mobile home park, there is no reason why you shouldn’t let your park and experience work for you in other ways. Even though it might seem like a long shot, there are plenty of ways to monetize your blog.
Along with attracting potential residents, you can make money by running ads on your website, getting paid to feature other parks or manufacturers, or by signing up to affiliate programs. Unless you invest a lot of time and effort, you shouldn’t expect more than a few hundred dollars a month. However, if you set it up properly, it can be a relatively passive income.
3. Get your park found online
One of the biggest reasons that everyone – from individuals to large companies – has blogs is to promote their business online. Running a blog with content geared for search engines (more on this later) is one of the most effective ways to increase your search engine rankings – when done correctly.
You’ll need to attract people to your blog anyway if you plan on monetizing your site. However, you’ll have the extra benefit of getting the word out about your mobile home park, distinguishing your park from others that don’t have a blog.
4. Express yourself and share your knowledge
If starting a blog about your mobile home park or your experiences/knowledge of the mobile home industry seems like a chore, then this may not be the best venture for you. The benefits of running a blog will not be as apparent. And down the road, it may be frustrating if you feel the blog keeps you from your primary business – your park.
Running a blog and regularly creating new articles or content for it can be tiresome if it’s not actually something that you want to do. First and foremost, you must have the desire to share your thoughts with the world. Many people find it rewarding enough to help others by detailing their own personal experiences online. Who knows? You might be one of them.
5. Improve your writing skills
Many people think that writing is a skill you either have or you don’t. Although some certainly seem to be born with a head start, it’s a skill that can be trained and honed. As with most things, the keys are practice, patience, and a desire to learn.
If writing articles or content seems challenging at first, don’t give up! It definitely gets better. The more and the longer you write, the quicker you’ll become and the more naturally words will come to you. In this regard, we can certainly talk from experience.
6. Make like-minded connections
You won’t only find potential park residents online. If you keep at it and take your blog seriously, there are always other opportunities awaiting you. By broadening your audience and becoming a real industry authority figure, you’ll inevitably attract other industry professionals who might have business opportunities or partnerships to offer. These might be other mobile home park owners, investors, mobile home manufacturers, other bloggers, etc. You never try, you never know.
7. Learn more about mobile home parks
If you’re an experienced mobile home park owner or manager, chances are you’ve seen your fair share of things and already have a firm grip on how mobile homes (and parks) work. However, you may be surprised at what else you could learn. Sometimes, you don’t even know what you don’t know – if you know what we mean.
There are so many areas in which you can gain knowledge considering mobile homes and parks – from maintenance to permits to financing to investment opportunities. Not only will you be providing others who aren’t as knowledgeable about crucial information, but you’ll also broaden your own horizons and learn more as you go along. Vitally, you’ll also be forced to stay up to date with the latest developments in the mobile home industry, which might give you a leg up.
8. Help others and contribute to the mobile home industry
As we’ve already eluded to earlier, providing your insights, experiences, and knowledge from within the mobile home park industry, can be invaluable to others. This is especially important in the mobile home industry where there isn’t as much information freely available and where there are plenty of negative misconceptions.
Too many people think that all mobile home parks are dreary communities filled with the downtrodden and vagabonds. However, the industry has come a long way. Mobile homes and their communities can provide amazing living experiences at only a fraction of the cost. You can be part of changing people’s perceptions and showing what a joy mobile home park living can be.
Photo credit: Dwell
How to start a blog for your park
Now, let’s look at the steps you need to take to create a blog. There is a lot to cover, so we’ll stick to the generalities and provide sources where necessary:
Decide what your goals are
We can’t emphasize the importance of setting a clear goal for your mobile home park blog. Do you want to attract new residents? Are you looking to monetize it via any of the methods mentioned above? Do you want to create a kind of community forum or notice board for your residents? Do you want to become a go-to industry authority within a specific niche? These are extremely important questions to answer.
They’ll help you when creating your website and blog and when coming up with topics to write about. Plus, blogs perform better in search engines when they have a clear focus. To have a clear focus, you should choose a niche for your blog. For example, you can write about park maintenance, investment, mobile home living, etc. and find a way to tie it back to your park.
Learn a little about content writing and SEO
You can’t just jump blindly into running your own blog and expect decent results. Some people have spent years (and thousands of dollars) in the pursuit of learning more about running successful blogs. You need to know what helps you rank higher in search engines, how to create good content, how to do keyword research and use them, and much more.
Luckily, it’s become such a big and vital industry that there is no shortage of free information online. One of the best places to learn about blogging and SEO techniques is on the blog of the self-taught and very successful online marketer, Neil Patel.
Decide on your budget
Next, you’ll need to decide how much money you are willing to pour into your blog. Two things you’ll definitely need to pay for is your hosting (how you actually keep your website online) and a domain name (a unique URL address for your website). There are plenty of other add-ons to consider too, such as SSL certificates and domain privacy. If you don’t know how to build a website, you may also have to hire a professional designer or purchase a service like Wix or WordPress.com that come with no-code website building tools and take care of many of the other aspects for you.
Get some marketing material
If you jump into creating your website or blog without taking care of this step first, you’ll soon find that you simply don’t have anything to fill your pages. You’ll need at least a logo with a few different variations as well as some photos of your park. Other banners or marketing images can also be helpful to fill in your pages and make your website appear professional. You’ll need some slogans or catchphrases that you can use consistently throughout your site.
Creating and hosting a website and blog
Nowadays, you don’t need to be a professionally trained or experienced designer/developer to create a website. Online tools like WordPress.com, Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace can be great places to build a website and host it (with all the other bells and whistles included).
These platforms make it easy to build a website without any code, using a visual interface. They also provide templates to start your website off with a professional-looking design. Most of them also offer basic and limited free plans, although you’ll need to pay a subscription for premium features.
Even if you don’t have the time to manage the day-to-day running of your website on these easy to use and intuitive platforms, you can easily find a freelancer to do it for you.
Find contributors
Unless you have plenty of time on your hands, you’ll soon find it difficult to keep up with the pace at which you need (or want) to write new articles or content for your blog. You might want to try to find some help in the form of other content writers. There are plenty of sites where potential employers and employees can connect, such as Freelancer.com, Upwork, and Guru. Content writing is a popular category on these sites, and you shouldn’t have any trouble finding willing and able writers.
You might also want to approach other people who actually live in mobile homes (or in your park) who you think are interested. Having writers from your own mobile home park will give your blog a unique and authentic feel.
Create a content plan and stick to a schedule
It’s surprisingly difficult to keep yourself disciplined when it comes to regularly update your blog. While not easy to keep creating new content consistently, a lifeless blog with outdated articles won’t attract many visitors and won’t be promoted on search engines, making it harder to find.
The best way to combat this is to come up with a schedule of when new articles should be published on the blog. Distribute these deadlines to writers and make sure they stick to it. Keep to the deadlines, and you’ll have a growing and lively blog that attracts visitors and search engines.
Just start!
Finally, it’s very easy to set the trap for yourself (and step into it) of always delaying the start date to create your blog and start writing. Even if you don’t have a website yet, start writing some of your planned articles. Or, sign up with one of the free website builders we mentioned and play around with building a website. If you’re not so internet-savvy, it’s best to figure things out as you go but you have to get your foot in the door.
Don’t let the fear of the unknown hold you back!
It’s easier (and more important) than ever to create a blog for your business, even if it is a mobile home park. While it might not seem like mobile home park and online marketing or a blog belongs in the same sentence, it can lead to both personal and professional growth. As part of providing information on your park, you should also consider a mobile home park newsletter which can be distributed physically and digitally.
About Dan Leighton
