Building credibility online
To build credibility with your sphere of influence, it is critical that you stay in front of them, let them get to know you, then hopefully, they will buy or sell a home with you or send their friends your way. The key to this is creating your own content, and showcasing your personality. Unique content is the key to marketing for any business if you want to stand apart from the crowd.
In fact, unique content is why you are here right now – because you are hoping to find some useful information that you can use. If you look to the right and left of this article, you will find ads for other companies who know the power of content and they are paying big money because they know this is where their consumer will be. Creating content is not very easy, mostly because you always need new ideas and it takes time. Below, you will find a list that will get you enough content and will be useable year after year with very little time needed. You can plug this into your touch email campaign and blog to deliver your own voice and stand out. This list is not comprehensive and not for advanced bloggers, rather is a place to start when you have a new blog or have writer’s block. Each method has different success rates in every market.
Ten topics to jump start your blog content:
- Monthly market report: This is a really good one and its really easy. A lot of MLS companies provide a trends report or some kind of stats you can look at. Simply download it every month and post the graph, then give your own five sentence take on it – something like “inventory is dropping to a 2.9 month supply which indicates that prices will be firming up.”
- Local events: With a million things to do in this country, we still manage to find time to post how bored we are on Facebook. This is a great letter to send out because people will read it. Simply go to Google.com and type “[your city] events.” You will find a ton of local events that you can choose from. Just copy the info for a few that would fit in with your crowd base. This can be done weekly or monthly and will give you the opportunity to meet these people. Ideally, if you can, go to the events you cover, take pictures, and write about it after the fact as well.
- Get your taxes adjusted: This is a one off but its useful. This lets people know how to get their property taxes adjusted and in this market they are usually going down. The forms and instructions are online and you can even attach the application to the email, and even offer to help them do it. The crowd will be very thankful.
- Time change: No matter how many of these emails I get, I wake up on time change day and completely forget until I show up way too early. When you send these out, send them the morning of the time change so it’s the first thing they see when they go through morning emails. Maybe put me on list for this one too.
- Holiday cards: This is a no brainer and easy. With so many holidays in the USA, this alone could power your whole campaign. Just write in a unique holiday message like it’s going to your best friend, maybe say what you will be doing and send it out.
- Home improvement sales: This one is useful and works well. With the rise of Groupon and other similar sites, you can pick a category for your client base. Home improvement is a practical one because it fits in to the whole real estate thing. You can find a ton of sale info online with sites like cheapsally.com, or some of the blasts you get from furniture companies for their fourth “going out of business sale” of the year.
- Something about you, and something unique: This is a harder one to do, but can help you connect to some of these consumers. You can write about some activity that you like, or how-to’s in your area of expertise like fishing, or bowling. If people notice you share common interests, they are probably more likely to call you when they need help with real estate.
- Do NOT blast every new listing: nobody opens these. It’s annoying and people will unsubscribe before you get them the info they really want to read.
- Do NOT talk about interest rates: The average consumer doesn’t really care or really understand how it works. Rates are really low and the consumer has already been getting that slammed into their heads from every direction.
- Do NOT push how great of a time it is to buy: Agents have been saying this since the beginning of real estate agents. Ultimately, the consumer will make their own decision and for their own reasons. Just give them the facts via item one and just answer their questions until THEY feel comfortable making the decision to buy or sell.
This set of topics should be able to fuel you yearly touches and deliver some useful information if written by you. People can tell if content is unique and quality, hence the reason you have probably never actually read the pre-made drip campaign letters you have received or even sent out to people. I would suggest placing all of these on your blog, then just send a summary with a link to your sphere. The reasoning is the same as you see here on this site. People will be reading about saving money on furniture, and off to the right or left is an IDX feed, or short-sale info, or hot REO properties. If they keep coming back or send the article to their friends, somebody may just get curious and buy a house!
