There is a major shift happening in real estate.
As more and more people wake up and realize that real estate content is a necessity (not a luxury or tactic), the marketplace and internet are getting much noisier.
I have more and more clients coming to me every week telling me that they jumped on the content bandwagon years ago and had amazing results showing up in organic search. But now they are finding those results plateau or even decrease!
Why?
Well, as I just said, more and more people are starting to create content for their real estate businesses which makes it that much harder for you to stand out and snag the attention of your ideal clients.
If you want to reclaim the coveted top spot in Google and continue to keep up with the crazy algorithm changes of social media, you’re going to need to start scaling your hyper-local content BIG TIME!
I know what you’re thinking…
“But Sarah, between balancing clients, family, fitness, and a social life, I don’t have the time to operate as a full-time media company creating hyper-local content at scale to keep up with demands! It’s just not possible”.
That’s where you’re wrong my friend.
You can absolutely create overwhelming amounts of hyper-local and real estate related content to woo your ideal clients if you know what you’re doing.
It just so happens that I DO ; )
Would you like to know how creating hyperlocal real estate content at scale can save you from ever having to buy a lead again?
Would you like to have buyers and sellers begging you to list their house or help them buy?
Would you like to be seen as THE expert on your local marketplace?
Okay, I’ll show you how to do all of that in today’s article!
But first I want to ask you for a favor:
If you don’t already, please subscribe to my blog.
If you already subscribe and feel as though you’ve ever gotten anything out of it at all, please shoot me an email and introduce yourself! Your presence here means the absolute world to me, and I want to get to know more of you on a more personal level.
Okay, let’s dive in...
Why Is Hyper-Local Content So Crucial In Real Estate?
The most obvious reason that hyper-local content is so beneficial is that it allows you to organically rank at the top of Google when people are searching for real estate services.
As I’ve told you a million times, 98% of all homes sold in this country originate from an online search, which means this is not an option but a necessity at this point.
If you are like most people you only dream of having your website dominate the results for searches like “realtors in Seattle Washington” or “homes for sale in Tacoma Washington.” As you can imagine, search terms like this are exceedingly competitive to rank for, but those that do dominate online, dominate their local market; outranking companies like Zillow!
In order to compete, for local search rankings like this, you have to be willing to create more hyper-local content than everyone else in your market.
A LOT MORE!
Your goal should be to make your name, company, and brand synonymous with your market. If you are a real estate agent in Pine Plains, New York, people should think of you when they think of that area and vice versa.
You need to make it your number one mission to transform yourself into the digital mayor of your marketplace.
The Who, What, and When
When you first start out creating content or creating more hyper-local content, it can be easy to get overwhelmed trying to figure out where you should begin.
The first step is to address the who.
Who are you hoping to attract with all of this content that you’re creating?
Are they buyers or sellers?
Are they young or old?
Are they downsizing or upsizing?
The more specific you can be in identifying your ideal client, the more effective every piece of content you create will become!
If you don’t already have a clear picture of your ideal client, download my Ideal Client Worksheet here.
Once you know who you want to target, you can identify the what.
What do those people care about?
What do they want to learn about your market?
What are their problems and how can you solve them with hyper-local content?
Pay attention because I’m about to give you the golden keys to one of the most lucrative real estate niches ever...
Let’s say that you want to target seniors and people that are downsizing.
This happens to be one of my favorite niches because it involves a strong emotional bond that brings repeat business and many of them move into facilities that will pay you a fat bonus for bringing them residents.
Many of these people will be looking into things like retirement planning, assisted living communities, and ways to enjoy their golden years in your community. Therefore, you should partner with financial advisors, retirement communities, senior centers, and local associations like the Alzheimer’s Association to create valuable content that would interest them, entertain them, and help them!
All of the hyper-local real estate content that you create needs to be of genuine value to your ideal clients if it’s going to convert.
As for where you post the content, I would love to see you put it everywhere! Your website, Medium, Active Rain, LinkedIn, YouTube, Alexa, your podcast, Pinterest, and all of your social media outlets.
However, I know you!
Most of you won’t ask for help to get that done and will get burnt out after two weeks of trying to post your content then you’ll quit. ***sigh***
To make it easier, use platforms like Buffer to post to all of your social media outlets. If you need to narrow the other platforms down, you must post to your website first, and then choose the one or two others that have attention from your target audience.
A Dramatic Shift In Goals & Mindset
As I have been working with real estate agents, lenders, coaches, etc. on their content strategies over the last couple of years there is an unfortunate but very real trend that I have noticed.
If you work in real estate, you like instant gratification. You want clients, and you wanted them yesterday. You only like warm or hot leads and if they taper-off so does your follow-up.
In general, content marketing is a long-term game.
That doesn’t mean you can’t get insanely fast results and conversions.
But, if you want to reach the top of Google and convert clients in days or weeks as I’ve done for my clients, you’re going to need to put your game face on and get seriously aggressive about this.
The more HIGH QUALITY, fresh, hyperlocal content you create and add it to your website and social, the faster you will get the results you want! Period.
Here are your minimum content production goals/requirements:
3 blog posts per week (at least 500 words in length)
1-3 podcast episodes per week
3-5 videos for YouTube, Facebook Live, and social per week
Daily updates to all social media outlets
I’m not kidding you when I say that those are your minimum goals. Oh, and as time goes on and competition continues to increase, you’re going to need to continue to raise them!
This is the point where you’re really freaking the fuck out and thinking there ain’t no fuckin way you can do all of this AND run your business AND have any kind of life.
Relax…
You totally can do this and it’s a million times easier than you’re thinking it’s going to be!
In a moment I’m going to tell you how to simplify all of this in a major way but first I want you to start shifting your mindset.
If you can program yourself to make a habit out of whipping out your phone and creating content whenever you go somewhere cool or interesting, have an interesting story pop up with a client, or find out something new and exciting about your area you’re going to crush this!
You need to turn this into a habit. It will take time but you CAN do this! One way to help program your brain into making it a habit is to start adding reminders to your calendar. For example, if you’re planning to meet a vendor or referral partner at a local restaurant, change the event title to remind you to create content while there and set an alarm for it. Take pics of the food and cocktails, take pictures with the people, do a brief interview with the manager and owner (don’t forget to tag them and the place).
Set regular alarms in your phone telling you to stop what you’re doing and create content.
Overtime it will become like breathing and maybe even *gasp* fun!
Triple-Dip Your Content To Go The Distance
Now, as promised I’m going to share with you my strategy for making this entire process as easy as possible.
I have two tips for you here, depending on how much you’re willing to invest either time or money into your success.
If you only have time to invest, then I highly-suggest that you time-block your content creation and build a massive back-up library that is automatically scheduled to go out (using tools like Buffer and Tailwind).
I know from my own experience that life has a way of getting in the way and giving us every excuse in the book to put off creating content like blogs regularly. Real estate content creation is just like going to the gym. The second you take a day or two off you totally fall off the wagon.
The best way to do this is to schedule a block of a couple days or maybe even a week where you do nothing but create insane amounts of content. I do this for my own blog, podcast, and Youtube channel. I’ll sit down over a couple of days and bang out everything for the next 2-3 months so I don’t even have to think about it and can focus entirely on current and prospective clients.
I NEVER let myself get to the end of that content bank before I line up the next set either. It’s always smart to give yourself a solid 2-3 week buffer just to be safe.
Now, if you are willing to invest money into your success, you will be able to save yourself a TON of time!!!
When you hire a real estate content writer like myself to write your real estate blog, you can actually leverage every article into dozens of pieces of content!
Here’s how…
Let’s say you hire me to write your real estate blog and I write an article about the top five golf courses in your market. You can take an afternoon to visit each course and talk to a pro (on camera or preferrably Facebook Live) about their course. Next you can multi-purpose that video and article by:
Using the audio for a podcast episode(s)
Use the audio & video for your Alexa skill
copy/paste the blog into Content Samurai to generate another video for YouTube
Use video clips for snapchat and Instagram
Taking highlights or quotes from the article and copy/pasting them on pics for Instagram posts
This list could go on forever!
If you are like most people, it’s the writing of the blog article that is the most daunting part of the process.
All of the research, writing, editing, graphic design, SEO, and NLP integration takes the average agent over 5 hours per article!
Over the course of the year, that adds up to 780 hours just to produce the bare minimum of blog posts per week! Then you have to create the audio and video versions and post them to your social media.
At this point it only makes sense to outsource the task of writing your real estate blog to a high-level real estate writer like myself who can tackle this enormous task for you so you can foucs your working hours on your clients and still have a life.
What’s The Alternative?
At this point in the digital era of real estate, you have two options:
Continue to pay for leads through pay-per-click, Zillow, etc. and ignore the content requirements.
Create the majority of hyper-local content in your market and win the majority of the business.
Here’s what I can tell you for sure…
The cost of leads through avenues like pay-per-click, Facebook Ads, and ZIllow will only continue to rise until you can’t afford them anymore and the ROI is actually NEGATIVE.
If you continue to prioritize those lead generators over creating hyper-local real estate content, you will have to pay a FORTUNE trying to catch-up to the competition which may actually be impossible at that point because they will have an SEO age advantage over you.
This is a crucial turning point.
You have an opportunity here to get out ahead of your competition and leave them wondering how you became THE real estate authority in your market or you can be the one that winds up wondering how someone else go there.
The choice is yours.
Will you be a leader or a follower?
If you want to be a leader…
I want to make you THE real estate expert of your market.
I want to help you turn things around so you NEVER have to chase or pay for leads but instead have ready, willing, and able clients coming to you asking you to take them on as clients.
No matter who your ideal client is, or what your market looks like, I have a strategy that will do this for you.
If you would like to learn how I can turn you into the digital mayor of your real estate market, book a free consultation with me here.
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