More and more businesses are today thinking about attracting your product or service over the Internet’s potential clients. One of the exciting options is content marketing. Although Leads360 is not a real estate marketing, our products are aimed at both real estate agencies and real estate investors. So also for those who buy or sell real estate. The target group of clients is, therefore, partially the same.
I’m not a marketing expert, like most readers of our blog. Therefore, I believe that the knowledge we have gained will help at least someone at the very beginning.
What is content marketing?
It is about creating valuable content that aims to reach an audience, i.e., people / Internet users looking to answer a specific question. If a user finds an article with a response on your site, you will become an expert on that question. It is proven in practice that the user is more likely to call such a person than someone listed in the Pages section.
It is not just about writing articles for a blog; it’s also about creating posts on Facebook, creating videos with tutorials and various tips on Youtube, and adding photos to Instagram. However, the individual threads from these social networks always converge where the content is published, and this is usually the company website Blog.
Examples.
A real estate broker will write an article on his blog about the risks of selling real estate without a real estate agency. The property owner who is considering the sale or has already started the sale is intimidated by the dangers and turns to a professional for help. And why not for someone who knows the exact market, explained the risks to him and offered him a helping hand?
Proper timing and themes
The hardest thing is the right timing. Not everyone will read your article when they want to sell the property or when they want to buy a swimming pool. On the other hand, some people already know which swimming pool they will buy, but they do not know how to build it, others deal with winterizing, etc. When selling real estate, people most often deal with the right advertising, contracts, tax issues, price, etc.
Therefore, it is necessary to have quite a lot of content on various topics. In short, every visitor to the website or blog can find what they need at the moment. Unfortunately, for a potential prospect to see your article at the right time, you need to promote it properly. But about that in a moment.
Content quality
Here again, I speak more from my experience. It is difficult for anyone to create useful and quality content if they know nothing about the industry. However, if you do not have time or are afraid to express yourself “artistically,” you will not avoid hiring the right person. They are mostly people who can write nicely and can do individual research on assigned topics.
But a good “braid” will not be a cheap affair, and one article can cost you 3000 – 6000 Rs. Of course, it can be more expensive, but also less costly. However, I do not know what the quality will be. If it does, and whether the strategy will work, you’ll find either emotionally after a couple of articles or worse, after months and this from hard data (clickthrough rate, readability, share counts).
I often feel that articles from ordinary copywriters don’t go into depth (they can’t either; the writer doesn’t know the field). It’s a general “slap” that may be good for laymen. So I don’t mind such articles if someone gives me a tip for a weekend trip or how best to fill the pool with water. But the more specific and professional the field in which you operate, these people will encounter little knowledge of the facts.
I write a lot from practice and from experiences that I have experienced myself. Over time, these topics will be exhausted, and on the contrary, you will come across more general or field-specific issues. There, I close with “Google” for a few hours alone, read articles on the topic, call people in the field with whom I know they have solved, or see the problem.
Regularity
Content must be published regularly. Nowhere is it said that once a week is good and that once a month is not enough. From what I’ve found, monthly publishing is probably the deadline for people to remember who you are and that they get something from you. I chose the weekly frequency because it is “supposedly” the best. If I met the author of the article who wrote it today, I would sometimes put it in his nose – a week is concise.
Length of blog articles
I was also looking for the best length of blog article recommended by industry professionals. It occurs to me that I have not reached any specific issue. Some sources state 100-500 words (approximately 3,000 characters), while others recommend longer articles. It occurs to me that with 300 words, you don’t say anything. They may be more suitable for shorter messages. However, it isn’t easy to fit into this range if you want to do a case study.
But it’s hard for me. In short, if I have a topic, I try to write 1-2 A4 pages in Word. If the issue is longer, I think about how to divide it. When writing a particular article, I often develop ideas for other items that complement the topic.
Content alone is not enough.
It should be noted that the content cannot work on its own. An integral part of content creation is finding a way to reach this content to the target audience effectively. If you don’t let anyone know that you’ve created interesting content, no one will read it.
To get articles for our users and potential customers in Leads360, we use the service for sending emails (email marketing), and we also place links to social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin).
