One of the most effective marketing tools you can use in building your online presence as a top real estate agent is in writing articles and submitting them to online article submission sites. In saying that, there are some key ways to approach the process if you want the best success.
Some agents will say, ‘Why take the time to write articles?’ The fact of the matter is that the search engines love content that is of high quality and useful to the searching public. It stands to reason that the search engines will feature your articles highly when they are useful to the searching public. You just need to write plenty of articles relevant to your local area and your property speciality. Those articles should be placed on one or two highly ranked article submission sites.
It is interesting to note that many agents will only list their properties on the Internet and do little other personal marketing online. There are so many other things that can be done to improve the personal profile of the agent and the agency. The impact of the Internet on our commercial real estate agency business is becoming more significant in so many different ways.
Here are some ideas to help you with the article writing process for your agency, and to help you build your Internet profile:
- It should be understood that the article writing process is based on you providing quality relevant content to the public on the Internet. As a direct result, you will need to have reasonable skills when it comes to writing and editing interesting property topics. If you have difficulty in writing in any way, then you will need to get a ghost-writer to do the work for you. That ghost-writer will need to have reasonable writing skill and a good understanding when it comes to the property market.
- At least one article should be written per week and lodged on to the article submission site. Choose the site or sites that have the highest profile on the Internet today. You can locate them through a simple search engine enquiry.
- The articles that you write can also be loaded to your personal blog.
- Each article submission site will have specific policies relating to content creation and placement. They will review and approve your content providing it satisfies their placement and quality policy.
- Most if not all articles need to be over 400 words in length. The article submission sites will have rules in this regard.
- When it comes to writing the article, break it up into suitable paragraphs and dot points that send a clear message.
- The articles need to be well written. Stick to a topic and a headline that attracts the readership that you require. As part of that process, you can use some key words commonly used on the Internet as part of the property searching process. Given that you understand your property speciality, there are many things to write about and expand on to the business owners and property investors that you serve.
- The topics that you write on should be informational and of benefit to the searching public and property investors. This then means that you should not promote listings in the articles that you write. The promotion of listings should be left to the websites that you currently use.
- At the end of each article, you should have a simple summary paragraph or ‘Bio’ that links back to your website. If the article is informational and helpful, the readership will then follow the link back to your website.
It should be said that many agents will not adopt the article writing strategy. That is simply because they do not have the personal discipline required to undertake the writing process. If you believe that your Internet profile should be improved, then this strategy will work very well for you. Over time your regular writing will increase your personal name and exposure to the property market. Writing high value content in a regular way will direct the Internet and the search engines towards you as a property specialist.