Content marketing guides significant amounts of leads to brokers’ real estate websites and positions them as industry thought leaders.
What some real estate brokers don’t know, however, is there isn’t one right way to implement an effective content marketing strategy. In fact, there are several ways you can create unique, search-optimized content that brings visitors and leads right to your real estate website — some of which don’t require you to write a single word. Here are 10 real estate content marketing hacks that can save you time, energy, and money.
Interview renowned (and popular) influencers and experts.
Leverage big names’ big audiences by interviewing them for blog posts. Your interviewees can be anyone your audience will want to hear from, like local housing developers, mortgage experts, home designers — anyone buyers and sellers can learn from. Aside from finding those with industry experience or interesting thoughts, take the size of their following into account.
For instance, if a notable housing market analyst has several thousand Facebook or Twitter followers, they can be a boon for your content marketing. After publishing the interview on your blog, you can ask the interviewee to share the article with their audience to broaden your reach. This saves you from having to spend too much effort promoting your post and potentially gives your real estate website new visitors.
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Get those same people to write for your real estate blog.
If the respected industry members you interview have more to say, ask them if they want to blog for your real estate website. Offering a regularly scheduled post to fellow peers and experts can add a new layer to your blog that brings in new visitors and leads.
Let contributors know you will have final edit on any posts submitted. Ensure they produce content you’d actually write yourself by setting post guidelines for guest bloggers. Let them know specific content lengths, topics, and angles you prefer to have covered. Similarly, ask them to include popular keywords related to their subjects to ensure posts are search-optimized. That way, you don’t have to spend too much time after submittal performing keyword research.
Write for fellow brokers’ and agents’ real estate websites.
Contact agent and broker friends in your network to gauge interest in guest posts. Though this may put more work on your plate, it’s a great way to potentially reach a new audience that may not know about your business. The key is selecting a peer who works in your market or a nearby one, as you may be able to identify new leads in your area.
“Storytelling and a comprehensive content strategy are vital.”
— KATIE LANCE
Guest blogging to websites outside of your market is also ideal, particularly if you do so for a popular publication or blog. Identify which ones cover topics similar to your real estate blog so you can produce something they would find appealing. Email any sources you want to write for, including a sample blog post for reference. Should a publication or blog accept, develop a post that’s topical, offers a unique angle, and includes links back to your website.
Once your article is published, you’ll have a post elsewhere online that links right back to your website. The more posts you publish on respected blogs and publications, the more your brand awareness grows and your site traffic will grow.
Let real estate publications know you’re willing to be interviewed.
Find local, regional, and even national real estate publications that regularly feature insights from industry professionals and offer yourself up for interviews. Reporters, journalists, and bloggers love having go-to sources. By providing them with informative insights, you can find your way into their articles and blog posts, which you can then link to on your real estate website.
Save yourself time by creating a stockpile of quotes on various subjects that you can provide outside sources. Should a reporter ask for your input, you can have something at the ready to provide them. Within hours, you can have your voice heard by a wider audience. Plus, the more your name and thoughts are discovered by other publications online, the greater the chance they’ll reach out to you for quotes for their content.
Repurpose your real estate agents’ best posts each week.
If you have agents at your brokerage who blog regularly, you have a wealth of content at your disposal that can be redistributed on your real estate website. Identify the best post from each agent every week. Then, include your thoughts on the subject they wrote about, along with a synopsis of their articles, in a single post. A great way to determine which posts to select for your weekly roundup is to figure out which ones received the most traffic, shares, and comments. If people are buzzing about a post, it’s an ideal one to reshare in a curated format on your blog.
Again, this is another blog post idea that saves you from having to spend time generating new ideas. Your agents have done the work for you, so promote their resourceful articles on your site. Just be sure to link back to their websites so they can get the referral traffic.
Hire freelancers for certain (but not all) types of content.
This isn’t the most unheard of thing for professionals to do to pad their content marketing efforts, but it’s a great avenue if you don’t have the time to write blog posts and other content. There are countless freelance writing services out there that offer affordable content creation. Some of the most reputable include Scripted, Content Runner, and WriterAccess. Even LinkedIn Groups offer knowledgeable writers.
Use writers from sites like these to develop evergreen content for your real estate website. For local news and trends posts, though, you’ll want to do the writing. Asking someone who is unfamiliar with your market to write as if they’re an insider won’t do your business any favors.
Repurpose your existing content across multiple channels.
Just because you’ve written a blog post doesn’t mean it should just sit on your real estate website. Use your other real estate marketing channels, including social media and email, to share your articles. Schedule social media posts across the next several weeks (and perhaps months) after the content is originally published on your blog. Also, share them in your email drip campaigns and personalized emails with clients or leads you think would enjoy particular articles.
“Content isn’t king. It’s the kingdom.”
— LEE ODDEN
If some of your content is old but can be refurbished with more recent info and data, keep templates of your graphics and simply plug in new statistics and a new title and you’ve got a brand-new piece of content you can promote. For reports, white papers, and the like, find the same sources initially used and search online for more up-to-date data you can use.
Use old blog posts to create new eBooks.
In the same vein of dusting off old blog posts to make them look shiny and new again, take a group of similar blog posts and put them together to create an eBook. For instance, if you have produced a great deal of content on how to conduct open houses, gather the most useful info and organize it into different chapters for an eBook. Seven out of ten consumers prefer to get to know companies through content marketing more than any other method, so taking the time to organize past content to develop a new long-form piece could help you pad your lead database.
Remember content marketing isn’t limited to just writing.
There are innumerable multimedia platforms out there you can use to market your real estate business. Though some brokers think Pinterest and YouTube are just great tools for Millennials, they also provide results for broader real estate content marketing. We’ve highlighted several real estate agents and brokers who use these websites to market their real estate with great success.
For Pinterest, find stock images you can use with blog posts. Then, pin those photos on Pinterest with links to your blog content. Also, pin listing photos to the site along with links to the listings on your website (and consider hiring a photographer to get attractive shots of them). Pinterest accounts for 90% of social media shares online, so if you thought the site was solely for finding recipes and enjoying cat and dog pictures, it’s time to realize the site’s true value.
Regarding YouTube, sum up your thoughts about a recent blog post or comment on the latest breaking industry news. There are plenty of useful video tools you can use to make your videos look as professional as possible. You can learn some expert tips and tricks from Placester’s own Seth Price in the video below:
Immediately comment on breaking industry news.
Hop on your blog the second you hear about a major merger or big industry event so you can capitalize on the search value. While this may not bring in buyers and sellers to your front door, it will bring plenty of other real estate pros, who can turn into evangelists for your content and business. There were countless articles about the recent Zillow-Trulia merger and the National Association of Realtors’ announcement of the new dot-Realtor domain that brokers everywhere were able to capitalize on. If lots of people search for info on big events like these, then be the one to inform them with your distinct viewpoint.
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