Content Strategy Tips for Real Estate Agents You Need To Know
You’ve read our previous post about the importance of content strategy for real estate agents, and you’ve decided it’s time to get started in growing your business through content marketing. But, this beckons another important question: What types of content should you provide? In tackling this question, it is important to look to matters of time and budget. A real estate agent’s time can be limited, and realtors often find themselves trying to squeeze out a few minutes between back-to-back client meetings and an afternoon open house. Luckily, for time-crunched real estate professionals, there are a variety of services to help increase efficiency. For instance, agents can virtual assistant via Task Rabbit can help manage social media accounts, while a freelancer via eLance can assist with generating content for your blog. Agents looking to develop a top-tier content strategy can contact our Florida advertising agency to learn more about the best methods to grow their business by optimizing return on investment. Content strategy should be budgeted as part of overall marketing costs. If hundreds of postcards and expensive stationery aren’t generating results, consider investing those costs instead into digital strategy. Certain blogging networks like WordPress allow users to build for free, and allow them to host blogs on their own domains, which individuals can acquire for just a few dollars a month. Here are some content opportunities to consider while developing content strategy. Blog Networks: Blogging networks are great starting points for real estate agents interested in building their practices. Realtors can offer expertise about the state of the local market and other topics of interest to potential buyers and sellers. Facebook: For some real estate agents, it may help to have both a personal page and a business page. On the business page, realtors can showcase new listings, offer caption contests with small prizes as rewards, and post trivia about local neighborhoods. Agents can also use Facebook to link to blogs posts, exposing these posts to a broader audience. Twitter: Twitter is a quick and easy way to send a message, and the 140-character limit ensure short, concise updates. Try using Twitter to link to your blog and to link to new listings. Quora: Quora is a great tool for industry experts. The allows individuals to anonymously ask questions about topics of interest to them, and allows others to answer. Each time an individual answers a question, the site lists the answerer’s credentials, plus links to any website or other information that professional provides. This is a great resource for real estate agents, as some of the questions are specific to localities (check out this listing of nice neighborhoods around Orlando, and think about how a real estate agent might be able to provide expert advice). LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the number one site for business networking. Again, it’s a place where real estate agents can share links to their blogs and other content. However, LinkedIn also makes the referral process much easier. If a second-degree connection is looking for a home, and a first-degree connection sees it, then that person can easily refer the potential client to you through a LinkedIn introduction. YouTube: More commonly known for dancing hamster videos, YouTube is actually a great resource for DIY instructional films and informative videos. A real estate agent can create web videos cheaply and quickly to answer questions common to their field. If done correctly, content marketing can help real estate agents build stronger, more fulfilling practices. For more information about how our Orlando marketing agency can help you develop and implement your content strategy for optimal results, contact us for a consultation.
Why Real Estate Agents Should Focus on Content Strategy
A good real estate agent is a master of self-promotion. Unfortunately, navigating the difficult terrain between effective promotion and pompousness can be challenging. The best realtors act as salespeople without coming across too strong. In a digital era where people rely on Google, Facebook and Twitter to transmit information, one of the most effective ways to do this is to develop a content strategy to increase exposure, which helps an agent to create and maintain a pipeline of clients. Real estate agents who implement content strategies can expect to gain leads in the following ways: Expertise: Potential clients expect real estate agents to know a lot about a breadth of subjects pertaining to the industry. Therefore, agents who can show that they know a great deal about such subjects are able to establish expertise, which results in increased influence. And, once a real estate agent has built up a reputation an expert, more people will be inclined to seek out that agent when searching for a home. With enough expertise, an agent may even be invited to speak on radio shows and at seminars, which again can help build the agent’s number of referrals. SEO: A solid content strategy is great for SEO purposes. On an average Google search, eighteen percent of clicks go to the number one ranked article, while only 1% go to the number ten ranked article. This shows the power of having a high-ranking webpage on Google. In order to increase visibility in search, realtors can write articles that emphasize popular keyword searches. Content marketers can find out what keywords are popular using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, and can tailor their content to such searches. For example, if the search term “Orlando real estate” is extremely popular, it may be hard to achieve a top ranking. But, a term such as “Orlando real estate marketing” may be less popular, and may be a better keyword topic if you’re trying to improve your rankings. A full overview of SEO rankings is available here. Repeated Exposure: Maintaining an active content strategy provides repeated exposure for the real estate agent. It allows the real estate agent to promote his or her services without seeming pompous. Maintaining a flow of interesting content leaves lasting associations in potential clients’ minds. Continuous updates are a great way to stay visible, allowing the agent to remain on a potential client’s radar long after the initial interaction. Email Lists, Twitter and Facebook: An effective content strategy can help build the agent build her fan base. This can lead to more opportunities to reach out to potential customers through email marketing, Twitter and Facebook. Most real estate business comes from the agent’s ability to get into, and remain in, potential customers’ minds. The more ways the agent can do this, the more potential for home buying and selling opportunities. This, paired with perceived expertise, results not only in more clients, but also in quality clients. The team at our Florida advertising agency believes an effective content strategy can make real estate a real win, so contact us to see how we can help!