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Why is content marketing important for real estate agents?
Generating leads organically by providing valuable content about the real estate process to potential clients is a strategy that consistently works for real estate professionals.
Quality content shows your expertise and establishes yourself as trustworthy, especially if the content you're creating provides real value.
Since your target audience is potential buyers, the local community, past clients, and future sellers, coming up with video content, Facebook posts, blog content, and valuable information delivered using other resources is an important part of making this strategy successful.
Sometimes, however, you might find yourself investing time—possibly a lot of time—in coming up with those real estate content ideas.
Hours you're devoting to creating content are hours you're not spending with potential home buyers—which is your job as a real estate agent.
To make the content-creation process easier, we've come up with some creative ideas for your next content marketing strategy.
At the bottom of this blog post, we've also provided some tools for creating content that can help bring more traffic to your website and help you generate more qualified leads.
Creative ideas for your next content marketing strategy
Whether you're providing former clients with home value reports, email marketing by sharing real estate advice, or making a Facebook post with appealing property photos, effective real estate marketing is about educating and entertaining potential customers.
Here are a few tips to get you started generating content to use in your next marketing campaigns.
When used effectively, these can help you attract more leads.
Informative blog posts to promote on social media profiles
When you’re planning your content marketing, remember to think outside of the home buying and selling box.
Use content as a way to strengthen your brand as an agent by becoming a broader resource in real estate.
This means, leveraging your website by packing it with resources on topics ranging from home improvement recommendations to tips for first-time home buyers, to hyping local businesses and connecting those entering the real estate market with a local lender.
As a real estate professional, you can make your website a valuable resource for your community.
Do this by promoting your informative posts across your social media, and when it comes time for area residents to enter the real estate market, you'll be the real estate agent who comes to mind.
To boost your content, even more, be sure to educate yourself on strategies related to search engine optimization so your own site lands at the top of google search results when potential customers are seeking local information.
You can use resources such as the HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator, Portent's Content Idea Generator, and Writesonic's AI Article Ideas (explained toward the end of this blog) for help in coming up with real estate industry-relevant ideas.
TikTok content
More and more real estate agents are turning to TikTok and for good reason: it leverages the millennia-old tradition of storytelling to connect with an audience.
TikTok is also an app widely used by Millennials (the largest cohort of homebuyers) and Gen Z (the next generation of new clients).
Opportunities abound when you open the doors to possibilities with user-generated content.
Film happy clients signing their closing documents and have them explain how they chose the home they did. Engage with attractions in your community, or video your process of getting ready for an open house.
Some additional ideas include:
- Videos with general information about the real estate business
- Walk-throughs of luxury real estate listings
- Testimonials from clients
- Home maintenance tips
- Real estate market updates
Virtual tours
A virtual tour is a great way to give potential buyers a better feel for a listing.
They can be used for anything from showing off the interior of a home to highlighting features like a deck or curb appeal.
And since virtual tours allow shoppers to virtually "walk" through your property, they can see it before even stepping foot on the property. That means fewer disappointed visitors who show up and aren't ready to buy.
Video tours that are extremely appealing can attract more clients to your real estate website. After all, these tours don't have to exist simply to promote one listing, rather they can be evergreen content for social media and your website. Luxury listings especially are often shared and reposted on TikTok and Facebook—so they can be a great way to drive traffic to your website.
YouTube videos about the home buying process
Real estate agents love YouTube because it offers so many diverse ways to share information with their communities and attract more clients.
The content you create and share on YouTube can then be posted on your website or drive traffic to your website. YouTube also makes it easy to embed videos in email marketing campaigns.
Videos are marketing gold.
The internet public is hooked on them, and they add personality and dimension to your business listings.
Video is a great way to build your reputation online, share your professional perspective, and increase your search rankings and leads. They also help you connect with potential clients as well as validate your listing as trustworthy.
Thinking of making YouTube videos?
Here are some ideas to get started:
- Real estate market updates
- Share tips for hiring a real estate agent
- Offer tips to newcomers entering real estate for the first time
- Promote local businesses
- Show the world what it's like living in a specific neighborhood
- Don't forget to promote your website at the end of each video.
Facebook posts covering market information
Social media offers you an opportunity to gain exposure, interact with users, and gather data.
Use Facebook as part of your multi-channel marketing strategy to engage customers, generate leads, and increase sales.
Photos made by a professional photographer are proven to generate more interest in listings, and content marketing that leverages Facebook ad tools and groups is often very successful in driving traffic to your website.
Some marketing ideas that can be employed using Facebook include:
- Show the world what it's like living in a specific neighborhood
- Use polls and quizzes to learn about your audience and entice
- Share professional videos of home listings
- Update your followers with price reductions to generate interest
- Make use of other assets on Facebook including creating a featured properties tab, making a high-quality cover photo or graphic, and including google maps on your about page
- Share professional photographer photos while offering inspiration on home decoration
- Post google maps of favorite local businesses and attractions
- Share a video walk-through of an open house
31 websites to get content marketing inspiration
It's fun to come up with real estate content ideas, but we can certainly use all the help we can get when it comes to the act of actually creating that content, promoting it, and reaching that elusive potential customer. Below are some resources real estate agents can use to get the most out of your real estate marketing ideas.
1. Ahref's Content Explorer
Ahrefs is a suite of SEO tools containing link-building features, keyword research, competitor analysis, and site audits. It’s used by many to find content that’s already performed well (in terms of social shares and/or links) on a given topic. Most of the features in Ahrefs are designed to help people get higher Google rankings.
2. AllTop
Alltop is the digital equivalent of a magazine rack—it collects or aggregates headlines from top sites, including media and blog sites. It arranges the sites and headlines by topics, such as photography, celebrities, science, and yes, even real estate. Alltop is the ultimate starting point. You get your pick of the litter, so to speak when you go hunting for interesting blogs. Using Alltop as a starting point can save you hours of time, but bookmarking other sites with a tool like Netvibes can provide the best of both worlds.
3. Also Asked
AlsoAsked.com is a visual interpretation of the "People also ask" function in Google. Instead of clicking to expand your answers, the platform provides a chart showing how each topic relates to the one before. In a nutshell, it takes Google's data and delivers a nice visual of what people are asking.
4. Answer the Public
According to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Former Google data scientist and author of the book Everybody Lies, “Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche.” AnswerThePublic listens into search engines' autocomplete data and cranks out every question people are asking around your keyword. It's a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products, and services. The kind your audience really wants.
5. Answer Socrates
Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, once said that "the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." That's why we're big fans of Answer Socrates, a tool that generates hundreds of questions for almost any topic, in many languages. You can use these questions to write authoritative, thorough content, brainstorm product ideas, and see what real Google users are searching for.
6. BlogAbout
Have trouble coming up with a perfect blog title? The Blog About Blog Title Generator from Impact is one of the most unique generators on the market. Instead of taking your keyword and simply showing you a list of headlines, it takes a different approach. You still enter your keyword but this generator gives you a template to help create the perfect headline.
Visit BlogAbout Title Generator
7. BuzzSumo
Buzzsumo is a nifty tool for finding content already performing well on the web. Use popular topics to drive human traffic to your site, and search by post type, geography, and domain name.
8. Contentideas.io
ContentIdeas.io lets you save articles or blog posts directly to your pocket account, letting you pull them up whenever the mood strikes. Content marketers looking to create new content can use ContentIdeas to find the most trending topics in their industry and do competitors’ analyses by searching for specific content on their websites. This tool is a must-have for anyone who wants to do quality content research. Whether you're doing social media marketing or content marketing, ContentIdeas will help you find relevant content ideas within just a few clicks.
9. Content Gems
ContentGems has its finger on the pulse of the web. At any given moment, it'll tell you what to write about by gathering the best of the web. It then presents it to you in a format you can share with your audience.
10. Copy AI Blog Post Idea Generator
Copy.ai offers a number of tools including ad generators, sentence rewriters, business letter templates, slogan generators, meta description generators, and social media caption generators. The Blog Post Idea Generator is a free tool that gives you ideas on what to write. You can choose the industry and tone to customize results.
11. Exploding Topics
The next big thing is here before it's even big. That's Exploding Topics, a technology-spotting platform that helps investors and entrepreneurs find the next big things before they explode. Exploding Topics analyzes millions of searches and conversations on the net and through social networks. It features a technology-spotting algorithm, which spots and identifies hidden products, technologies, and industries months before they emerge. Exploding Topics is endorsed by many major brands and agencies such as Apple, Shopify, Amazon, Samsung, etc.
12. Feedly
Feedly is a free web service that lets you organize and share all your favorite news sources. Once you've signed up, Feedly will crawl all your favorite blogs, websites, and newspapers and present them in one easy-to-manage location. You can even use Feedly on your mobile devices so that you'll never be without the latest breaking news while you're on the go!
13. Flipboard
Flipboard is the brainchild of some of the biggest names in tech, including Google and Apple. It's part magazine, part social network, and part news app. Flipboard gathers content from sources like Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogs and news publications like The New York Times. Then it displays stories, articles, blog posts, videos, and other pieces of content in a magazine-like format so users can read at their own pace. The Flipboard app is available on multiple operating systems and devices, including smartphones and tablets. Or access Flipboard in a web browser from your computer. Users have the ability to create their own magazines as well as subscribe to the magazines of other users or brands.
14. Google Alerts
Google Alerts are like having a really smart friend who is always on the lookout for new information about the topics that interest you. You can choose to have your alerts delivered via email or add them to your iGoogle page or feedreader of choice. Forbes recommends setting up a Google Alert for your name, but you can also set up a google alert for any topic, title, name, or trend that interests you.
15. Google Trends
Google Trends allows you to compare search terms by normalizing the data. This is a process that divides each data point by the total number of searches for that term in a given geography and time range.
16. Help a Reporter Out
Help a Reporter Out is a newsroom tip service that connects journalists with people who are relevant to the story. It's a powerful database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage. For publicists and marketers, HARO is a great resource for getting your client mentioned in the media.
17. HubSpot Blog Idea Generator
HubSpot's blog topic generator is a magical tool that is as simple as it is brilliant. All you have to do is type in some of the keywords you're working with and it will instantly generate some blog title ideas using those keywords.
Visit HubSpot Blog Idea Generator
18. Ideaflip
It's a sad reality that many good ideas slip through the cracks during brainstorms. That's why Ideaflip was created. The platform is meant to give everyone a voice instead of just the loudest voices in the room. It's also designed to help bring people together—no matter how far they are physically apart—so they can work collaboratively on projects.
19. OpEd Project
Getting op-eds published in major regional and national publications is a great way to build authority and, once published, it offers you a chance to build content around your op-ed. The OpEd Project includes a number of resources for writing and publishing op-eds including tips and tricks, submission information, community resources, and a mentor-editor network.
20. Pinterest Trends
The Pinterest Trends tool lets you see what's hot on the site, from search terms to pins. You can discover when your audience starts searching for keywords and find out what's popular among all Pinterest users. Just as Google trends bring to light what people are searching for on the internet, Pinterest trends show what's "trending" on the platform. It's a great place to find inspiration.
21. Portent Idea Generator
Portent's Content Idea Generator is a title-making machine. Just type in your subject and it will spin up a catchy title and some tips to take that idea to the next level.
22. Quora
Useful and addictive, Quora is both a search engine and a social network. It gives you answers, and it lets you answer questions for others in subjects you're knowledgeable about. For content creators, it shows you the types of questions people have and what topics are popular.
23. Quuu
Quuu helps you grow your social media following by sending you hand-curated content in your niche every day, which you can easily schedule using any popular scheduling tool like Buffer or HubSpot.
24. Reddit
Reddit is a social news website and discussion forum that bills itself as "the front page of the Internet." The name is a play on the phrase "I read it" (which can be abbreviated R—as in Reddit—I—as in Internet—read—get it?) Users vote up and down on content they like, resulting in a social network of forums filled with community-determined content.
25. Slideshare
Slideshare is a search engine for presentations. It includes thousands of free slides and handouts from professional speakers, instructors, and professionals who share their presentations with the world. Slideshare is also an excellent resource to find topics that interest you and meaningful content that can inform or educate your next presentation slide, as well as provide real-life examples of how to use common presentation tools.
26. SparkToro
SparkToro is a clever little tool that uses the power of personality and behavior to help brands find their customers. It crawls social and web profiles to gather information about what people are reading, watching, following, and sharing. It then uses this information to create a profile of real people that are similar in many ways. With enough data, it can predict what content will resonate with potential customers.
27. Statista
Statista provides statistical data on many topics including real estate, business, economics, society, technology, and education. Their sources include market reports and publications such as newspapers and magazines.
28. Think with Google
Google's Think with Google is a free online think tank powered by Google sourced and analyzed data. It can be considered a free online think tank powered by Google sourced and analyzed data.
29. UberSuggest
Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that specializes in generating new keyword ideas. How does it do this? Well, the tool scrapes Google Suggest terms, giving you a list of keywords that people are searching for on the web.
30. WeFollow
Wefollow helps you to identify who the big fish are in your niche so you can keep tabs on them on Twitter.
31. WriteSonic
Writesonic is an AI-powered copywriting tool that can write high-quality marketing content for your business in a matter of seconds. With just a few lines of text, Writesonic can produce ads, blog posts, landing pages, product descriptions, and more.
Does any of the above tools spark your interest?
Tools and technologies can help you create and publish your marketing ideas, but it's ultimately up to you to control the quality of your content. You still need to know your audience incredibly well and understand what challenges they face that you’re able to solve. Use this information to create content that helps your community address their real estate challenges.
