Property News Blog: Is blogging the right soap box for estate agents? 24th September 2013

As the marketing director for findersandsellers.com, I have noticed what can only be described as the neglect of social media among real estate professionals in both the residential and commercial sectors. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to tar everybody with the same brush here. But I am somewhat surprised by what appears to be a significant percentage of estate agents in the UK, who believe the need to embrace modern marketing techniques, doesn’t really apply to them.

Recent research has shown that last year (2012) almost 44 per cent of business enquiries were gained via social media. That is an increase on 2011 and a trend that marketers suggest is set to continue.

Some estate agents are starting to wake up to the power of social media and are dedicating more content and time to increasing their target audiences. However it isn’t enough to simply list your latest properties on your Facebook page, or tweet a stream of listings via Twitter every hour. Instead you need to be imaginative and creative, you need to identify what your target audience is searching for and offer them what they want.

A large part of our own marketing utilises multiple social media platforms including, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google +, YouTube and Linkedin to name just a few. If you read the guidelines associated with any of these platforms, they nearly always repeat the same mantra.
To be successful ensure your posts, tweets or pins consist of quality, interesting content, which will enable you to engage with your audience.

This of course is easier said than done. I mean how do you get your message across in the 140 characters of a tweet?

I believe blogging is the answer. Social media networks such as Twitter are a great way to draw attention to your website and therefore your business, but I am convinced blogging is better and I believe every website, no matter what your focus, should include an active blog.

Think of it like this, your blog acts as a mouthpiece for your brand. It can be your soap box, a place that enables you to share much more than you can say on Twitter or Facebook. Quite simply it allows you to get your particular message across. Everything your business needs to engage your target audience and pull in more customers can be incorporated into your blog and you’ll find it works particularly well in conjunction with social media.

There are a dozens of freely available blogging platforms online, the three most popular (in my opinion) being, Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr. However when searching for a suitable platform, be aware that some can actually limit your search engine exposure, while others look so bad that they could distract your readers from the message you are trying to put across.

My personal preference, which seems to be the preference of the majority of bloggers, is WordPress. It is estimated that one in every six blogs now runs on WordPress and it makes sense. The platform is free, it boasts a huge library of plugins and themes, is extremely flexible and offers blogging solutions for the casual blogger, as well as those blogging for business.

Although at first glance, WordPress may appear more complex than some of the other free platforms available, the help system and forums, which can be accessed at the click of a button, offer step-by-step guides about how to get started and, unlike the earliest versions, these days you don’t need a knowledge of HTML coding in order to publish your posts.

I’ll leave you with another statistic.

• 40 per cent of all UK websites receive zero traffic – Blogging can help.

Being visible online is essential to business sustainability. Having a website is one thing, but to ensure your website isn’t one of the invisible 40 per cent, means you have to work hard at driving visitors to it and blogging along with other forms of social media can help.

About the author

Scott Creasey is the Marketing Director for findersandsellers.com a 100% free property advertising portal aimed at residential and commercial real estate agents around the world. With nearly half a million residential, commercial, agricultural and industrial properties listed free of charge, findersandsellers.com is now the third largest property portal in the UK and Europe.