The three most important considerations whenbuying real estate are location, location and location. Similarly,many experts, myself included, often have paraphrased that old realestate adage by referencing the three most important elements in aneffective social media strategy as content, content and content.But I'm not so sure anymore.

Recently, I attended an event hosted by my community's Chamberof Commerce. The Chamber brought in two speakers from a networkmarketing company that is highly respected and, by way ofdisclosure, one to which I am a weekly newsletter reader.

The speakers talked about the role of a website and how tostrengthen its search engine optimization (SEO) to garner favorableresults from the major search engines. They talked about linkbacks, which means to have other sites link to your website as amethod of demonstrating the value and importance placed on it byothers; and which also measures SEO.

They focused how a blog adds to a business' overall ability topull people in as a way to build leads. And it was in this areathat the notion of “Content is King” was evangelized.

It certainly makes sense that quality information on yourwebsite provides greater value than just a list of your productsand services. You need to provide other reasons, and ways, forpeople to discover you and do business with you.

There are lots of statistics about the value of blogs and theirreturn on investment. Here are just a few:

• Blogs are the single most important inbound marketing tool.When asked to rank the importance of the services they use, 25percent of users rated his or her company blog as­critical to their businesses, while a further 56 percentconsidered them either important (34 percent) or useful(22 percent) for a total of 81 percent (Source: Marketing Charts)
• B2B companies with blogs generate 67 percent more leads permonth on average than non-blogging firms (Source: Social Media B2B)
• There are 152 million blogs on the Internet (Source: AllTwitter)
• Companies that blog have 55 percent more website visitors thancompanies that do not blog
• B2C companies that blog generate 88 percent more leads permonth than those who do not (Source: Hubspot)
• Social networks and blogs account for 23 percent of all timespent online, twice as much as gaming (Source: Mindjumpers)
• Two-thirds of marketers say their blogs are critical orimportant to their businesses (Source: Marketing Charts)
• Blog articles influence purchase decisions (Source: Marketing Charts)
• The most popular frequency for blog posting is weekly (60percent of bloggers); just 10 percent post daily (Source: Marketing Charts)
• For those looking to outsource, a professional consultant willcharge $1,000 to $3,000 for setting up a blog, $1,000 to $3,000 permonth for ongoing content development/editing, and ballpark of $200for a single guest post (Source: Mack Collier).

All of the stats are powerful reasons to justify having a blog.If you ask 10 people to describe the elements that make upa blog, you will receive 10 different answers.

There are numerous means of generating content for your websiteor to establish an online presence, and blogging is only one ofthem. Tweeting, pinning, Facebooking, even “checking in” throughthe many apps that incorporate that functionality all offer variousmethods of defining who you are and what your brand is. Some arejust pushing opinion or tips; others are used to highlight valuecontent from others; and still others are ways to define yourbeliefs by the reflection left when held up to someone else'simage. We are what we consume.

Related: Read “ROI-alWaste“

A blog spurs dialogue and it should be crafted in a way togarner comment. It shouldn't be a one-way disgorging of opinion butrather a statement, support and a call for comment. That kind ofdialogue already happens in Facebook or LinkedIn groups, or otherpublic social media platforms. Getting it to happen on yourbusiness website or blog is another thing entirely.

That's the sweet spot of content development; it engages peopleand when done well, can build them into followers that becomepassionate about you and your information, which is the vitallyimportant first step in gaining very warm leads.

But that's not easy to do and, as was echoed at the Chamberpresentation, social media content shouldn't be about selling orabout your company's products and services; it should be aboutproviding valuable information.

As independent agents, you should ask yourselves, “What do myclients and prospects want to know?” It's easy to figure out. Haveyour CSRs write down all questions they receive. By the end of theweek you will have at least dozens of  differentquestions, and each one could be the focus of a blog post, tweet oreven a Facebook discussion.

Keep doing it every day and you will see a pattern, which mightlead you to make some improvements in your own workflow and maybeanother blog post about “the top six questions most people askabout insurance” or “the most common mistakes people make after anaccidents.”

Related: Read “BeyondBYOD“

Remember, it shouldn't be about your agency or specificquestions about one of your companies. Instead, make it about thelarger or more general issue being addressed. That's the kind ofinformation people find very valuable and worth reading on aregular basis. “Regular” is the operative word, too.

The level of frequency of your posting is less important thanthe consistency of those postings. Whatever you do, whether it'severy day or twice a month, keep it going. Obviously, more frequentposts will garner more information for people to want to read;posting with longer intervals between posts will take you longer tobuild a readership.

Building content can take many forms; content is not just thewritten word. In fact, from an SEO perspective, photos, videos,podcasts and other images can be even more valuable to searchengines.

When you consider just these few facts you can see we alreadycrave the visual content:

• It's estimated there are 8 billion pages on the web (Source:AllTwitter)
• There are 4 billion views per day on YouTube
• People upload via Instagram 300 million pictures to Facebook everyday
• YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world.

As human beings, we have communicated in pictures long before wecould ever write. Now we spend our time finding ways to take whatwe say and put it into images. Speaking of which, web search aninfographic from All Twitter called “Vine is the Next Big Thing for Brands;” thenread my March column at propertycasualty360.com, “Makea Scene with Vine.”