Brokers and real estate coaches have have spent years teaching real estate agents that Geo-farming is a valuable and important component to generating more leads and sales.
But let's be honest, nobody really enjoys farming do they? When you think of farming for real estate leads, what comes to mind? Door knocking out in the sweltering heat or freezing cold, sending out expensive direct-mailers that barely get a response, and making thousands of rejection-filled cold-calls that are exhausting and discouraging.
Frankly, all of these methods of farming for real estate leads are expensive and they fucking suck. However, I do agree that farming is a valuable way of growing your real estate business. So today I am going to share with you my method for using content and social media to do all of your farming so you can spend more time actually being a real estate agent.
The One Thing You Need to Farm Real Estate Leads From Anywhere (on auto-pilot)
Anywhere you can bring a laptop, tablet, or phone, you can reach targeted buyers and sellers one powerful tool; your real estate blog!
I know what you're thinking...
"But Sarah, how can a real estate blog collect targeted and action-ready buyer and seller leads?"
"How do I write a real estate blog, when I hate to write?!"
"How do I get people other than my mom to even read my real estate blog?"
Well, listen up because I am about to drop some serious real estate blogging bombs on you!
WARNING: The following advice will force you to spend more time working smarter so you can get back to being a real estate agent and [GASP] enjoying your life.
Three Tips to Turn Your Real Estate Blog into a Farming Goldmine
I understand that starting and growing a profitable real estate blog from scratch can sound overwhelming but it doesn't have to be. The key is to always remember that you are using your blog as a marketing tool to:
increase your social following
boost your SEO
improve your credibility/ be perceived as an expert
grow your email list
get buyers and sellers to reach out to you when they are ready to make a move
With these goals in mind, you need to be posting long-form and short-form posts to your blog at least once a week. By the way, if you do not love writing, don't understand how to structure original blog posts to convert leads, don't understand how SEO works in blogging, or just don't want to be bothered, email me.
Beware that you should NEVER post generic or copied articles to your blog if you are serious about getting clients from your real estate blog! Seriously, NEVER!
So now let's talk about a few of the most valuable and marketable types of content you should be producing and posting to your real estate blog:
Local Community Profiles
Community profiles written in long-form are a great way to generate local leads from your real estate blog. These posts should be at least 1,000 words, but 2,000-3,000 words is best. Make sure to include a history of the community if it has an interesting background, as well as, feature the different components that make it a great place to live. Don't forget to include your back-links to properties in that community and a call-to-action at the end!
Promote Events
If the community you farm plays host to various events like a block party, community charity event, or anything fun or interesting you should be using your blog to promote it. This will not only gain the attention from potential buyers searching in the
area, but the homeowners already living there. They are also very likely to share your post, getting you free marketing. If possible promote the event before-hand, then follow-up with stories from the event. Don't forget to include pictures and video which are one of the greatest ways to boost your SEO and get found on social media.
[Hint]When taking pictures and mingling with people at the event, let them know you are writing a story about the event and you would love to share it with them when it is ready; prompting them to give you their email address. See what I did there?
Give Relevant Advice
Consider the issues that are important to homeowners and potential buyers in your farm and produce content that speaks to those issues. For example, if homeowners in your farm have voiced concerns about a new law or regulation affecting their community, you could write an informative piece about the issue and offer ideas for coping with the issue at hand. This will position you as the trust-worthy expert of their community.
Building a Bad-Ass Audience for your Real Estate Blog
If you still don't have a real estate blog or your current blog is not making you money, it is time to rethink your content marketing strategy.
Your real estate blog needs to be collecting leads, converting them, and creating passive income for you 24/7, 365 days a year! Otherwise, blogging is just an exhausting exercise in futility.
Before I show you how I leverage social media to get thousands of visits to my blog posts I want to make a very important point about blogging and social media as a whole: the size of your following doesn't count as much as the quality of your following! In other words, it is WAY better to have 10 people seriously considering buying or selling a house reading your blog or following you on social media, than it is to have 10,000 who don't give a rat's ass about buying or selling real estate.
How to Leverage Social Media for Content Marketing
There are two types of traffic on social media; organic and paid. I use both in my content marketing strategy but you can do whatever is best for your business and makes sense for the audience you are targeting.
Know Your Audience
The key to being successful with your social media posts is to understand the audience you are trying to target. The audience should be the niche market you were targeting with your real estate blog article. For example, if you wrote "17 Reasons New York Buyers are Flocking to Queens", your audience is people with an appropriate budget looking to purchase real estate in Queens and the surrounding area.
Using Paid Ads to Target Your Audience
There is no doubt about it, paid ads on social media can be kick-ass for getting traction with your real estate blog posts. Again, you need to be mindful when selecting the demographics for your target audience for your paid ads. For our Queens article above, it would be best to target people identified as "likely to buy", with an appropriate income, and interests related to real estate in NY and Queens.
Using Groups for Organic Traffic
This is actually one of my all-time favorite tips to grow your real estate business using social media without spending a penny. It takes a bit of time in the beginning, but it is more than worth it - I promise!
What you need to do is start joining groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ that are home to members of your target audience. An example for an agent working with buyers and sellers in Queens, might join groups like "For rent/sale in Queens". The more relevant groups you can join, the better. Every time you post a new article to your real estate blog, you also share it to every group...then sit back and watch your following grow. It will only take you a few minutes to do this and will bring you results will greatly improve your ROI. Plus, I have to admit, it is a rush to watch your phone blow up with FREE likes, shares, and comments on your blog posts!
Want to Make it Even Easier to Make Money with your Real Estate Blog?
Okay so remember in the beginning when I said that you could do all of this and it would be very little work with serious returns?
Well, I wasn't lying BUT if writing real estate blogs isn't in your wheelhouse and you hate spending time on social media, then this is going to feel like a ton work.
However, you can still get all of the benefits of real estate blogging without doing any of the work! All you need to do is hire a professional freelance real estate writer like me to write your real estate blog for your. Then use your assistant or another member of your team to do all of the social media work for you. This way, you don't have to do a thing except serve the influx of new clients that start calling you to buy or sell a home.
Ready to hire me to write your profitable real estate blog for you? Check out my pricing here.
As always, I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this article. It means more to me than I can express to have you here and I hope you learned something! If you enjoyed this article or at least got something out of it, I hope you will be generous enough with your colleagues and friends to share this article with them on your social media. There are links/buttons posted below for your convenience. Thanks again!!!!
-Sarah
