7 Content Marketing Tips for Estate and Letting Agents

Some small businesses (including estate and letting agents) have historically been slow to adopt a content marketing strategy as social media use and importance has grown. But as SEO has evolved significantly in recent years, it has become clear that businesses need to look at their content marketing techniques to remain competitive in the rankings and provide great reasons for customers to visit their websites.

Whether the content is created in-house or outsourced to an agency, there will be a time when creative ideas for interesting new content become scarce. Here are seven tips for creating outstanding content for estate and letting agents.

1. Create a Content Marketing Calendar

Having a calendar that documents a content strategy is a great way to ensure timely content creation, but this strategy is too often overlooked. 61% percent of marketers say that their biggest difficulty with content creation is that it takes too much time, but only 44% percent are reported to have a documented content marketing strategy.

Putting together a calendar of content scheduled for the month is a great first step that provides a set amount of time to strategise, brainstorm, create, and publish.  Also make sure you’re involving staff members who are speaking regularly to your customers and clients, so that you can build your content around the topics and information they are most interested in, so that you can focus your ideas on those that will generate the most interest.

2. Find Out What Works

Before researching other sites for inspiration, understand the characteristics of past content that you’ve put out, and how it has worked. Make sure you’re using Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to check the most visited pages on your website and search queries to see what content has performed the best and the keywords people have used to find it.

Social statistics can also provide insight into content that has performed well. There are easy-to-use dashboards that provide information on the number of shares, and clickbacks from those shares.

Understanding these trends will help better inform what topics and strategies have worked in the past.  When you do your research you may find that only a handful of your competitors are posting blogs and news stories on their site, so use this opportunity to really demonstrate a point-of-difference and show off your agency knowledge and personality!

3. Understand and React to Social Trends and News Stories

Social media is also helpful to provide ideas for topics in real-time. Writing content around trending topics, helps provide valuable content to people actively looking for it. Twitter has had trending topics available for a while, and Facebook introduced trending topics earlier this year.

If there’s a property-related story in the news (and with an election looming housing is a ‘hot topic’ at the moment!), see if you can enhance your content by addressing different sides to a story, or supplement it with different media like videos and photos.

4. Create a Survey

Create news with a simple survey. Understanding views on a topic can provide useful material for articles. This may help with backlinks to your site and help build your reputation as a great source of information in your area.  Use it as an opportunity to connect with your current and potential customers and show that you are listening to their feedback.

Creating and conducting surveys have become much easier with products like SurveyMonkey that allow you to create surveys at an affordable price-point (and sometimes free).

5. Utilise Visual Content

While much of SEO focuses on text that search engines can digest, visual content is much more appealing. Audiences are naturally wired to be more engaged with visual content, as 90% of the information that comes to the brain is visual, and content that utilises imagery gets 94% more views than those without.

Keep visitors engaged and scrolling by adding still images or videos to written content where you can, and creating infographics is also becoming an affordable option.  You could create infographics with the research that’s already being done, or get one created to include in a blog. It will really help liven up a text-based article and highlight the main points and statistics in a more visual way.

6. Start a Video Blog

Another easy way to create consistently high-quality content is to create videos.78% of people say they watch online video every week, and 55% say they watch every day.

Starting a video blog isn’t expensive or time-consuming. Short videos are the easiest to digest, and simple to shoot with a personal webcam or simply on your mobile phone, with the TikTok being one of the best ways to reach and market to the younger audience, with quick, straight to the point content, and if you choose, you can look at reliable Twicsy alternatives to buy TikTok followers to make your profile more attractive from the ground up.

Video blogs require minimal editing, if at all, and can be posted immediately to YouTube. You might already be using property videos to bring your property listings to life, and so putting together some short video blogs where you talk about the customer services you offer could offer a nice personal touch and provide that point-of-difference.

7. Repurpose Content

If finding a topic and doing the research for it is too time-consuming, why not research and gather several articles around a certain topic. Gather content with an underlying theme, like “Property Maintenance Tips,” and put them together with an additional blog post. This creates a valuable package of materials for readers to digest.

Another way of repurposing content is to revisit an older story and provide an update, if there are new statistics or information available.

In summary, content marketing is now a main part of building SEO, and it works by engaging new and existing audiences, and encouraging sharing.  For small businesses, it can be difficult to stay on course, and ideas are tough to generate on a consistent basis, but with a little forward-planning and structure it can be an easier job.

Alex Evans

You May Also Enjoy

Estate Agent Talk

Closing the gap on client relationships and recommendations

New research from iamproperty has highlighted the growing disconnect between what buyers and sellers want from their agent and what they experience, which could be killing recommendations from happy clients. iamproperty’s quarterly consumer survey revealed that only a third of respondents (32%)¹ would recommend their agent following their experience. With many agents relying on recommendations…
Read More
Estate Agent Talk

Northern Ireland to expect over 25,000 new home movers

Belfast-based estate agency John Minnis has revealed that Northern Ireland is to welcome an estimated 25,000- 30,000 new arrivals from the UK and Europe over the next five years, as migration to the region reaches its highest levels in more than a decade. Recent figures show that 11,700 people relocated from other parts of the…
Read More
Breaking News

Red tape and rising costs stifling new-build availability across the capital

The latest analysis from London estate agent, Benham and Reeves, has revealed how protracted building timelines are preventing the capital’s housebuilders from delivering the level of new-build housing stock required to meet demand, with new homes currently accounting for just 7.5% of all properties listed for sale across London. Benham and Reeves analysed the latest…
Read More
Estate Agent Talk

UK’s new wave of ‘second cities’ offers strongest yield growth for property investors

The latest research from West One Loans has found that whilst investors may continue to favour the nation’s key cities such as London, Birmingham, and Manchester, a new wave of ‘second cities’ is delivering the strongest growth in rental yields. These emerging markets are offering investors the chance to achieve attractive returns, driven by rising…
Read More
Estate Agent Talk

Decline in change of use further constricting housing supply

Jonathan Samuels, CEO of Octane Capital, believes that a decline in conversion projects could ultimately prevent the Government from hitting its ambitious housing delivery targets, as the firm’s latest analysis has revealed that the number of homes created through change of use has fallen sharply in the last five years. Octane Capital analysed official Government…
Read More
Rightmove logo
Breaking News

Annual price fall driven by south, which could be harder hit by rumoured property taxes

The average price of property coming to the market for sale rises by 0.4% (+£1,517) this month to £370,257. However, average new seller asking prices are now 0.1% below this time last year following several months of muted price growth The dip in annual prices is driven by London and the south, as the south…
Read More