Are you using your blog as means to reach homeowners at risk of foreclosure? Here is a step-by-step plan to create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) to reach your market and help those homeowners:

1. Get a list of non-profit agencies who can help. The key word here is nonprofit. Nonprofit government agencies and private agencies have trained, HUD-certified counselors who can help homeowners facing foreclosure. Example: Arizona has a very active Foreclosure Coalition with members who support distressed homeowners. Don't Borrow Trouble is a Web site and group founded by Freddie Mac to support distressed homeowners.
2. Create a video and keep it simple! Use your webcam or Flip camera to create a very simple, one-minute long message. Don't worry if you don't know how to use fancy editing software. Use simple sheets of paper and print Web sites and telephone numbers and hold them up to the camera to illustrate your point as shown below.
3. Insert the PSA on your web site(s) and blog(s). Let help some people save their homes!
   

INSPIRATION: Bernice Ross

In her excellent book, Real Estate Dough, Bernice Ross, Ph.D. reprints an article I wrote last year in Realtown, Let's Learn How to Help Americans KEEP Their Homes. She titles that section: "Recipes for Success, A Crisis of Conscience." She says:

"Frances Flynn Thorsen, in an articled entitled, "Short Sales are Not the Route to Financial Redemption for Homeowners," (Realtown, March 3, 2008) raised an issue that almost no one in the real estate industry has addressed. In our rush to become foreclosure experts and to close more short sales, we have neglected the most important role that we could play in resolving the heartbreaking tragedy of this situation -- assisting homeowners in restoring their hope and providing them with a path to staying in their homes ... she makes an impassioned plea to put our energy first in helping people stay in their homes rather than helping to boot them out. "

INSPIRATION: Brad Inman

Brad Inman, industry visionary and founder of Inman News, HomeGain, and TurnHere video, posed the following challenge to the real estate industry last year at an Inman Connect Conference in New York City: " How can you use Web 2.0 to help our neighbors who need us more than ever?"

Mary Pope Handy was a brand new blogger last spring. She launched her first blog, LiveInLosGatos.com as my Blog Apprentice under the watchful eyes of thousands of real estate agents and bloggers during the Project Blogger Contest sponsored by Inman News and ActiveRain. I had the privilege of working with Mary as her Blog Coach. She won the contest handily and she reflects upon the last year at her ActiveRain Blog.

Mary has numerous blogs now. One of my favorites is her Haunted House Blog. She launched another gorgeous new blog last week. ALMOST everything about that blog is perfect: design, illustrations, writing!

I confess that the title of this blog has my Blog Coach hormones raging out of control, however, and I have to give Mary a shout about her URL:

 www.SanJoseRealEstateLosGatosHomes.com

Mary, What are you thinking, girl! You have the keenest, most wonderful style in the Blogosphere ... your other blogs are wearing finery from their domain names to the smallest detail of their construct. Haunted House Blog is wonderful ... Live in Lost Gatos is easy to remember ... but San Jose Real Estate Los Gatos Homes????  This is a name that speaks to SPIDERS, not PEOPLE. It has no heart, no soul.

I beseech you to shed that awful, boring URL for something that befits a Mary Pope Handy blog. Your blog needs a more elegant name, something that reflects YOU.

Invite interactivity on your blog in more than just the COMMENTS section. Invite guest authors to write stories that you can share. Mary Pope-Handy, a REALTOR in Los Gatos, CA, publishes Live In Los Gatos for her local market. She was the winning Blog Apprentice in last year's Inman News/ActiveRain Project Blogger competition (photo at right l. to r: Mary Pope-Handy, Frances Flynn Thorsen, and Joeann Fossland hold check for CARE, the grand prize in the contest). Mary also publishes a niche blog, The Haunted Real Estate Blog. I wrote a piece for her yesterday about a an experience that I had when I was showing a house in eastern Pennsylvania.

Teresa Boardman publishes a highly successful  blog, St. Paul Real Estate. She has a regular contributor, Erik Hare, who writes a post for her every Sunday. It is one of the many ingredients in Teresa's formula for a highly successful real estate blog.  

In 2006, Joeann Fossland popularized Blog Guest Posting with her Coachadelic Blog Tour for CARE. She visited numerous blogs over several months with guest posts to raise money for humanitarian programs around the globe. Her Web Women Giving Circle raised about $25,000 for CARE.

RealTown Blogs has a multi-author, time-saving function that lets you grant author privileges to others.