In Episode 28 of the Wandering But Not Lost Podcast, co-hosts Matt Emerson and Jan O’Brien throw in a blog series bonus: Content Ideas. In the Reach Your Peak segment, Broker-Owner and Author Becky Babcock shares her success story from solo agent to opening her Team Brokerage serving the North Atlanta area. Then in Wandering Zen, Matt hits the road with 5 things that you may or may not know about the Interstate Highway System.

Key Points/Takeaways

WBNL 52 Tip – Blog Bonus: Content Ideas

Types of Blog Posts

• Informative, how-to, or instructional content on a subject
• Your opinion, thoughts, rants, raves on a particular subject
• Evergreen posts – common questions
• Reviews
• Lists
• Interviews
• Video
  • Customer testimonial
  • Q&A with client
  • Interview lender, escrow officer, inspector

Keep a Blog Notebook

Blog Post Editorial Template (Hubspot) https://offers.hubspot.com/editorial-calendar-templates

• Topic/title
• Content/details
• Keywords
• Target audience
• Offer/CTA

Real Estate Blog Content Ideas

• Chris Brogan – If I Were a Realtor
  Read this right-to-the-point post as well as the comments, still. It’s about connecting with the community, being a local source about your area.  It’s not about you and selling.
• NikNik (My Tech Opinion) – 30 Blog Post Ideas To Keep Your Content On A Roll
• Inman Article – 101 Amazing Blog Post Ideas for Real Estate
• Agent Fire – 72 Real Estate Blog Ideas
• Agent Image – 100 Topics and Ideas for Your Real Estate Blog
• Homespotter Blog – 40 Winning Real Estate Blog Post Ideas

Reach Your Peak – Interview with Becky Babcock ~ Broker, Author, & Inspiration

Becky Babcock is CEO & owner of Path & Post Real Estate, a nationally ranked team brokerage in north metro Atlanta. Becky’s book How to Sell Houses without Selling Your Soul shares her story from part time agent to indie broker selling 250 homes a year.  During her 20-plus year career, Becky has mentored agents on team building, branding, culture, marketing, technology, and lead conversion. Becky focuses on creating memorable experiences for clients and meaningful work for team members.

Wandering Zen – The Interstate Highway System

Getting to the road less traveled will probably lead you to an onramp of one of the 46,000+ miles of the United States Interstate Highway System roads. We take them for granted today, however, their creation forever changed the landscape of the country.  You probably drive on one of them every day, yet what you do you know about the road that you are traveling on?  This is true wandering geekdom, but I present to you, the 5 things that you may not know about the Interstates!

1 ~  Do we still like Ike?

Even though Eisenhower gets the credit for signing the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 the concept and planning started much earlier.  The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 called for a 26,700-mile interregional highway network.  In 1941, FDR appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee to evaluate the need for a national expressway system. The committee’s January 1944 report, Interregional Highways, supported a system of 33,900 miles, plus an additional 5,000 miles of auxiliary urban routes.  Post-WWII, according to Eisenhower, the Act, eliminated unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” At the same time, highway advocates argued, “in case of an atomic attack on our key cities, the roads would permit quick evacuation of target areas.” For all of these reasons, the 1956 law declared that the construction of an elaborate expressway system was “essential to the national interest.”

 2 ~ No Need for GPS

Remember this simple rule:

• Odd numbered Interstates run North/South
• Even numbered Interstates run East/West

Of course, you need to know if you are going north or south, there are easy reminders of this too:

• Mile marker numbers (you know, those green vertical signs on the side of the road) always get larger as you travel north or east on one or two-digit interstates. If an interstate originates within a state, the numbering begins from the location where the road begins in the south or west

3 ~ The Longest Routes

1. At 3,020 miles, I-90 is the longest interstate highway. It connects Seattle, Washington, with Boston, Massachusett
2. I-80 clocks in at 2,899 miles from San Francisco to Teaneck, New Jersey
3. I-40 from Barstow in California to Wilmington, North Carolina at 2,555 miles
4. I-10 with 2,460 miles from Santa Monica to Jacksonville
5. I-70 at 2,153 miles from Cove Fort, Utah to Baltimore, Maryland
6. I-95, which serve DC and 15 states is 1,925 miles long from Miami to Houlton, Maine

4 ~ Roads to Nowhere

When the Interstate Highway Act was first passed, most Americans supported it. Soon, however, the unpleasant consequences of all that roadbuilding began to show. Most unpleasant of all was the damage the roads were inflicting on the city neighborhoods in their path. They displaced people from their homes, sliced communities in half and led to abandonment and decay in city after city.

People began to fight back. The first victory for the anti-road forces took place in San Francisco, where in 1959 the Board of Supervisors stopped the construction of the double-decker Embarcadero Freeway along the waterfront. During the 1960s, activists in New York City, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New Orleans and other cities managed to prevent roadbuilders from eviscerating their neighborhoods. (As a result, numerous urban interstates end abruptly; activists called these the “roads to nowhere.”)  Source: History.com

5 ~ More Stats

The highest in altitude is 11,158 feet at the Eisenhower Tunnel in Colorado. The lowest on land is -52 feet in California and underwater -103 feet in Maryland. The heaviest traveled is I-405 in Los Angeles with an estimated 400,000+ vehicles per day. Think about that next time you are stuck in heavy traffic!

My recommendation is to always take the road less traveled, but you have to get there, and this public works project has provided us with the means to do just that.  I long for the days of Route 66, however, it’s really not realistic with the population being what it is today.  When we’re traveling along and whizzing by towns that you would once travel through, you can’t help but think how that affected their lives and livelihood.  Progress isn’t always positive to all.  Remembering that, take the off-ramp in remote places, and have lunch at a local diner, you probably will put a smile on someone’s face.  No better telling of that story than in the Disney/Pixar classic road trip film, Cars.

Be Forever Wandering But Not Lost

 Mentioned in the Episode (Resources & Links)

• Becky Babcock – Path & Post
• Get Becky’s Book on Amazon: How to Sell Houses without Selling Your Soul
• Previous Episodes with Blogging for Business content:
  • Episode 24    Is Blogging for You? | Six Reasons to Blog
  • Episode 25   Find Your Blog Voice | 5 Steps to Launch Your Blog
  • Episode 26   SEO for Blogs | 16 Tips to Better Blogging
• Learn more about our Real Estate Team Builder Program( Agent Team Building in a Box)
• Join the Wanderers Club for real estate business systems, social media training and more (only $197/year)
• Get travel tips & insights at Wandering But Not Lost

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