“It’s the best marketer, not the best real estate agent, that wins.”

 

My partner Michael Reese has been making the same statement about success in real estate for the last decade: “It’s the best marketer, not the best real estate agent, that wins.”

He’s not speaking poorly of good real estate agents - or real estate agents at all - when he says this.

Heck, he’s an agent himself and honestly, being a good agent is a minimum requirement.

What he is saying, though, is that the agent who can market best (and market themselves and their brand best) will be far more successful than an agent who just does a good job at selling houses.

And to be a good marketer, you need to be able create authority with your subscribers using a consistent, meaningful content strategy that builds credibility.

Now you may be asking yourself: “Why do I care about content and using it to build authority with people?”

The answer is simple: you should care because establishing authority and delivering value is the core idea behind content marketing.

You can’t make sales in your industry unless people value your advice.

When your prospects consider you an authority and value it as part of the decision making process, they don’t question your recommendations – they just do what you tell them to do.

To that end, you must heavily consider a solid, high-quality content strategy and deliver it consistently to build massive authority.

What is high quality content?

Any expert in content creation and dissemination will tell you there are three core elements of high-quality content:

• Well-researched: You’ve done your due diligence and the information you share demonstrates that.

• Actionable: Your readers can take away strategies and ideas from the information you’ve provided and put it to use in solving their specific problem(s).

• Detailed and In-depth: You provide more than just the basic information...content with teeth if you will

Good content takes time, even if you have a lot to share with people. It also must be well written, easy to consume and make sense to even the most novice of readers.

After all, even The New York Times is written at a 3rd grade level.

No matter what content you create and deliver, make sure it is the best it can be. After all, it’s a direct reflection of who you are.

What Content Do Your Subscribers Want to Get From You?

There are some staples that every marketer should use to generate and then disseminate content to their subscribers.

They are proven methodologies and provide you with the perfect media to get your message out and then interact with your prospects/readers once they’ve consumed what you’ve had to say.

The most prevalent and effective approach is to write a blog.

At the risk of over simplifying things, a blog (short for weblog) is an online journal/informational website that displays journal entries (and any accompanying conversations) in reverse chronological order)

Blogs are virtually everywhere on the Internet and they are very effective in helping you build massive authority with your subscribers.

As well, if you don’t have subscribers, then a blog is one of the easiest, fastest and least expensive way to build one.

Remember, as a real estate agent, you’re looking to connect with, stay in touch with and build relationships with people so that when it comes time to sell or buy a home, your name is one of the first ones that pops into their head.

Having a blog where you can post regularly and then interact with your prospects/readers is a great forum in which to do that.

Blogs also help you:

Organize Your Thoughts and Learn - Expertise is learned over time and even experts don’t know everything. The process of researching and writing a blog puts you in position to learn everything you can about your craft and articulate it in an extremely effective manner.

Tell Your Story - Your prospects need to identify with you. They need to see similarities between themselves and you. They need to like you and feel, almost, that they’re like you. Telling your story lets people know who you are and it gives them a way to connect with you at a deeper level.

Stand out - Differences sell and if you want stand out from your competition, you need to show how you’re different anywhere people see you. Statistically speaking, only 1 percent of Internet users consistently create new content for consumption. The other 99 percent are spectators who only view it. Through blogging, you separate yourself from the 99 percent of people that don’t blog. Being different is crucial in an ever-changing industry like real estate.

If you don’t write well or don’t have the time, record your thoughts, have them transcribed and then use that for your blog.

Of, use a service that provides expertly written material for you.

Let them see you.

Another great source of content you can release to your subscribers is video.

According to Internet Retailer, viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product review video.

Videos both engage visitors more effectively and increase your web site’s average time on site. The longer someone stays on your site, the better your site does in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings.

Videos and other visuals make your content look professional, trustworthy and more credible.

Not only that, they makes your content look good and help readers understand and consume information much more easily.

Research shows that our brains process visual information almost 60,000 times faster than plain text.

To that end, your subscribers are much more likely to retain the information you shared via video and other visual content content versus simple text.

When you’re writing a blog post or product reviews, you can even add videos and create snapshots to explain things in detail to your readers.

The better job you do using video and other visual imagery, the more authority and credibility you’ll have.

Let them hear you.

According to automotive insurance giant, AAA, the average driver spends 17,600 minutes, or just over 293 hours per year.

That gives you a captive audience to speak to for roughly 5.64 hours per week, making a podcast and excellent means of delivering content.

Two excellent pieces of news regarding podcasts:

First, podcasts represent 1/5th of the audio consumed and roughly one half of the Internet radio that’s listened to.

Second, the fat middle of podcasts listeners are in the sweet spot of the demographic where the largest number of real estate consumers exist, ages 25-54.

Podcasts are smart for content dissemination for a few reasons:

1. Easy to create: With a microphone and a recording device, you can record yourself speaking for as long as you like on any topic. You can even use your laptop or smartphone to get started.

2. Easy to consume: People can use their car radios that have the technology either to go online or use bluetooth through their phone. Or, they can listen directly from their smartphone if they choose.

3. People get to know you: As your subscribers are driving and listening to you, it’s as if they’re spending time with you and getting to know you better as they drive and you talk.

In a survey conducted on 300,000 podcast listeners, it was determined that 63 percent of the those surveyed ended up buying what the host was promoting. This is a clear sign that  podcasts are effective in engaging your subscribers and helping you influence their buying decisions in a positive manner.

The rest of the story,

There are other content strategies that you can use to communicate with your subscribers to build authority with them.

Writing a book is an extremely effective strategy for accomplishing this feat. In fact, even with the digital world taking over people’s consciousness in the last 25 years, writing a book is still the number one way to establish credibility and authority with an audience.

What’s even better is that the material in your book can be used to create all of the other content you need to foster an incredible relationship with your subscribers.

From your book, you can create blog posts, emails, videos and podcasts.

The good news is that you don’t need a book to get started. You can build a list of subscribers using the strategies I’ve discussed here and then write a book later and have a ready-made list of buyers for when you publish it.

Your subscribers want to hear from you and you’ll need them to hear from you regularly if you want them to choose you when it’s time to buy or sell a home.

Your content needs to be good, but it doesn’t need to be perfect to get started.

Begin today and work at evolving the content you provide over time.

This post was originally published by Market Maker Leads.