As a real estate agent, you know your survival depends on generating leads, both from your sphere and people you haven’t yet met. To get business flowing your way means marketing to people on a regular and consistent basis, with information that helps them and highlights your expertise and trustworthiness. Most agents want to be regarded as the expert in their local market. The big implication here is that it requires localized content. Yet many agents purchase bland national content and post it to their blog and social media pages. That’s not a good idea. Today we’re going to explore the importance of localized content and give you ideas for producing great content for your business.
Standing Out in a Vast Sea of Content
It’s important to understand what you’re up against when you promote your business with content. According to Pew Research Center, 68% of American adults use Facebook. And virtually everyone is posting content. A LOT of content. The average user posts 90 pieces of content per month. That works out to nearly 19 billion pieces of content per month in the US. And that’s just Facebook. People also post tons of content on Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
For your content marketing to work, it must stand out and get noticed. No small feat given how much good content is being produced. To stand out, your content must be relevant to the people you are trying to turn into leads. Being relevant means providing value. Being relevant means being timely. Being relevant means being a story teller. This is where national content, that you either curate or purchase from a 3rd party, falls flat. It just isn’t as relevant as localized content because when it comes to real estate, people care about their local community, not the whole country.
National Content Can’t Be Local
National content tends to be bland. To publish it anywhere, it can’t be very specific or actionable. It can’t talk about any particular area, or region. It has to appeal to everyone and therefore tends to appeal to no one. Think of it like this – a client of ours is an agent in Pasadena California. It would be natural to create localized content for her, but a post about the Rose Parade in her community isn’t going to work for an agent in Chicago. But on the other hand, a generic post about holiday parades isn’t nearly as interesting to people living in Pasadena. Each agent, the one in Pasadena and the one in Chicago needs localized content.
National Content Is Duplicate Content
When you post content that you acquired from a 3rd party who is selling to many agents, you are duplicating the content of all those other agents. You might be thinking, “So what, they aren’t in my town.” Well, duplicate content is a big-time no-no with search engines. Google’s policies on duplicate content are very clear. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en Even if your website doesn’t get banned for using duplicate content, it won’t get much traffic because Google chooses who to rank in its search results and it won’t rank you if you’re posting the same thing as a bunch of other agents. In this regard, using duplicate content defeats the whole purpose of content marketing – having people actually see it.
You Are Local and Your Content Should Be Local
Your content should reflect your local expertise. That’s why you’re publishing content in the first place. Localized content is more relevant and interesting for the people in your area. When you publish helpful content about changes to local zoning laws, or information about local schools, new restaurants or local sports teams schedules, you are showing that you understand the local community – that you are “plugged in.”
How to Create Localized Content
Often, we see agents use national content because they can’t think of enough things to post about in their area. Or they run out of time in their day to publish. So here are some ideas to help you regularly post localized content to market your business.
1. Local construction. Recap upcoming local projects that might impact your prospects such as road resurfacing, road closures, bridge repairs, etc.
2. Tax trends. Make a chart showing the last few years of property tax changes in your area.
3. School schedules. Publish a chart of the upcoming year for your local schools.
4. Zoning changes. Let people know what they can expect in their neighborhood.
5. Take a time-lapse video as you drive through a neighborhood.
Whatever you do, show local pictures and videos whenever possible. Whenever possible, show YOU in the local community. That’s right folks, embrace the selfie!
We create high-quality localized content for real estate agents. If you’d like free up your time, you can leverage us to help you stay in contact with your community. Contact Us.
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