Well, one of the easiest ways to create good, relevant content for your Real Estate website is to document your daily activities. Now I don’t mean document everything, like what you’re having for lunch (although some people do).  I mean documenting the activities that you, as a Real Estate agent, should be out doing anyways.

Here’s Garron to explain a little more:

Like I mentioned above, these activities are things that you should already be out doing, as a Real Estate agent.  Then you can use them to create interesting content, that reiterates what you actually do for a living which is sell Real Estate.

Here are some examples:

Alicia Selliken – Alicia previews roughly 50 homes per week.  From that she creates content based on what she sees while out doing so. She lets people know where she’s been in her “Home Tour” posts along with any “Great Homes” or “Real Estate Details” that catch her eye.

Claire Widmark – Claire loves coffee. She takes every opportunity she has to visit local coffee shops, learn more about the business, meet the owner and even the other patrons of the shop. Just being out meeting people, is a Real Estate activity (and one that is often overlooked in today’s digital world) that Claire enjoys.  Her site features “The Weekly Grind” which showcases Portland’s best coffee spots.

Dale Chumbley - I touched on some of the thought behind Dale’s site last week (see: Real Estate Website Showcase: Clark County Real Estate Guide) but not on his actual activity set. Dale is out in his community every single day visiting shops, restaurants, and other places that residents of Vancouver, WA may find interesting. He’s documenting it all, and building a fantastic local following around his activity set and online presence.

So, this whole idea of creating content from your daily activity isn’t really that hard, if you put just a little bit of thought into it. Plus, it pretty much squashes the thinking of “I’m just too busy to do this “blogging” thing”.  The 3 agents above are blogging about what they’re doing, and getting more business from that activity alone than any other form of marketing they’ve tried.

One last thing to consider: none of your content matters if your website doesn’t have good design elements, and some sort of lead capture built into that design. These are things we can help you with, as part of our custom WordPress website design process. Contact us if you’re interested in learning more.

We just finished up another custom WordPress website for local Real Estate agent Dale Chumbley this last week.  Check out Dale’s: Clark County Real Estate Guide to see the finished product.

The thought and design behind this site was based on the creation of Dale’s “365 Things To Do in Vancouver, WA” project that he began on Facebook 173 days ago (at the time of this writing) where Dale basically shares a years worth of cool, fun, or for some reason noteworthy locations in Vancouver that offer something “to do/see/eat/etc”.  As a lifelong resident of Vancouver, Dale knows the area like the back of his hand, which is something his family, friends and clients quickly grow to appreciate.

As we’ve discussed before, you’ve got to have a central online location (and a good strategy) to use as the “hub” of your online presence.  If you’d like us to help with the look, feel and overall design of a custom WordPress website, feel free to get in touch. We’d love to work with you.

Using the strategies we laid out last week as the basis for review, let’s take a look at what’s going on with Kevin’s site that makes it such a great example of a custom WordPress Real Estate site that actually generates business.

Design: The custom design of the main landing page presents the content in a very clean, easy to read structure.   Having a clean layout that gives your visitors exactly what they’re after is very important in creating a “sticky” landing page that will result in the visitor clicking through to the other areas of your site.

Capture: Notice the large “Portland Homes for Sale” link at the very top of the site?  Yeah, so do visitors that are searching for new homes when they land here…  Clicking that link drops visitors directly into the HomeQuest interactive home search IDX map where they can build custom searches, save searches and register for any updates as new homes come onto the market.  Kevin has configured his HomeQuest IDX settings to force registration after the visitor views 5 listings.  Listings are also displayed using the HomeQuest shortcode on individual neighborhood landing pages. Clicking listings on the map, or on the neighborhood pages produces the same forced registration result, which usually results in a new contact created into your HomeQuest contact database.

The follow up you provide once the lead has been “captured” is equally important.  We discuss this in a video I created with another agent (Using HomeQuest – An Agent’s Daily Routine).  If you have an extra 30 minutes, I’d highly recommend watching it for a better idea of how to get the most out of the HomeQuest CRM platform.

Content: This is where Kevin’s site really excels.  Kevin has done an exceptional job in content creation with a neighborhood focus.  As you would expect for a relocation site, his content is focused on providing as much information about Portland as possible.  Everything from relocation tips, neighborhood info, schools, and even his favorite “cool places” in Portland.

Kevin has also started using stop animation videos in his “1 Block Tour” series.  Creatively using video like this is a great way to show personality and allow your site visitors to get a better idea of the agent “behind the website”.

Promotion: As I mentioned above, the overall strategy of this site was to focus on content to take advantage of search engines around the specific terms related to relocation.  Other parts of Search Engine Optimization include internal links, external links, etc.  So, if you look at the structure of Kevin’s site, you’ll notice he’s done a great job of linking internally back to his own content which is important for SEO purposes.  His neighborhood pages link back and forth to each other, and he does a great job of using internal links as reference in his blog posts.

While this is one piece of the puzzle, getting external links is the more important piece.  Again, Kevin has done a great job of actively promoting his site by leaving relevant comments on blogs (which creates a link back) and creating content worthy of people linking to it.  Plus, his site has been featured in several national presentations as an example of a great Real Estate agent site, which has been helpful as well.

The second part to Kevin’s promotion strategy has been to create the “101 Cool Portland Places” which leverages the viral marketing power of a Facebook Page.  At this point, he’s got roughly 1500 members on this page that are able to interact with Kevin in multiple ways, each time he posts a link (which leads back to his website/blog) to the page.

So, for those of our clients that wonder what they should be doing to take advantage of the power of integrating WordPress and the HomeQuest platform, Kevin’s site is a great example to follow.  Pair that with a custom designed site from our design team at HomeQuest, and you’ll have the winning combination you need for a successful online Real Estate presence.

Wordpress makes it easy to create a website within minutes that you can call your “online hub”.  But is it really that easy?  Of course not…  If it was, every agent under the sun would be creating a Wordpress site, dumping some content into it, and carrying the sacks of cash it generates straight to the bank. Well, that’s not how it works.  There’s some work involved. Some strategy behind the work. Some thought behind the strategy.  But, if you’re willing to put in the work, we can help with the rest.

So, lets take a look at some of the strategies, and the thought processes behind them, in creating an online hub for your Real Estate business:

Strategy 1 – Design – Probably one of the more important strategies in creating a “successful” online presence is incorporating custom design work into the mix.   The design of your website should reflect you as an individual, your strengths as a Real Estate professional, the communities you’re involved in and the activities you do on a daily basis, all wrapped into a website you’re actually proud of.  The design should closely mirror the content you create, and even carry over into your other marketing and branding activities. (See: What Makes this Custom Wordpress Real Estate Site an Instant Classic?)

Strategy 2 – Capture – Another important strategy that you have to work into the overall design of your online hub is some sort of lead capture, like the HomeQuest Wordpress IDX platform provides.  Now I know there’s been this uprising of thought over the last few years in the Real Estate blogging community that we should stop using words like “leads” and “capture” and “conversion”.  I’ve often wondered if those behind this way of thinking even had leads to convert in the first place.  Regardless, capturing and converting leads is how we in the online Real Estate space get clients.

Strategy 3 – Content - Possibly the most important strategy, and where the real work comes into play in the building of a successful online hub is the creation of good content.  Good content helps in two ways; first with keeping your readers engaged and secondly by providing something for the search engines to find you.  Content can be in the form of writing, video, pictures and any combination of the three.  Once you nail the design and capture elements, this should be your main focus.  Your content should also reflect you, your strengths, activities and communities you’re involved in. It should basically mirror your design in that if you’ve got a site that’s designed around “modern homes” you shouldn’t create (much) content around anything else.  Here’s an idea for creating good neighborhood level content.

Strategies 4 and 4.5 – Promotion - Promotion can actually fall into two categories, which is why this post is labeled 4.5 strategies…  Basically you have promotion of others, and self promotion of your own content.  Promotion of others is a great way to catch the attention of local residents, businesses, etc. and also a great way to generate relevant links back as people return the favor.  Self promotion is the “art” of showing others what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, possibly leveraging some of the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter along the way.

Like I mentioned above, putting together a successful online hub requires a bit of work.  Most of the heavy lifting revolves around the creation of content and then promoting that content to your communities.

HomeQuest can help by designing you a Wordpress website custom tailored to you and your business, along with providing the top of the line IDX/CRM platform needed to get your online hub working at its full potential.  Contact us today if you’d like more information on how we can help.

Here’s one such example:

Jesse Knight’s PDXClassicHomes.com – This site, which is geared towards the classic homes of Portland and the neighborhoods they’re in, is a relatively new site but quickly gaining traction in the search engines around the specific search terms Jesse is targeting. Part of the strategy Jesse has been focusing on is building a high quality landing page for the various styles of classic homes.  Each of these pages contain related images, and information on each style of classic house that is found in Portland.  A great resource for someone looking to purchase a classic home!

Now Jesse is beginning to build out the various neighborhood landing pages that include links back to the classic home styles.  Plus, he’s using HomeQuest to display the listings from each specific neighborhood directly into these pages.  So he’s building dynamic content around the indexable listings.  Search engines love this!

By using static content “pages” as conversion points, and dynamic content “posts” as the supporting content, Jesse is able to create a site that is beautiful, fun to read, and very search engine friendly. That’s the winning combination we’re after with every custom Wordpress Real Estate website we design.

For more examples of other custom Wordpress websites designed by HomeQuest, visit our examples page.

We know the importance of having an IDX and client management system that performs (SEO, lead capture, etc), but also recognize a big part of that is having a site that looks good.  We think these changes will help.  This new update should be out soon.  Enjoy!

Original Content

Write about what you know and love, make a name for yourself. Your content should be original, and it should reference sources if there are any. If you leave your site bare with only a property search and a paragraph about yourself as an agent, you do not have a compelling website.

SEO

Make sure that you have filled out the SEO page on your site. Click here to see how to change the SEO information for your site.

This information influences how your site appears in the Google listings, including the name and the keywords that are associated with your site. Filling this information out helps Google find you and list your site under the correct keywords that you want to focus on.

No Default Content

Your site comes with some text on the Home page, your first blog posts, and in your Agent Profile widget. Change this text! The default is no good, and it should be changed to represent you. The process of Editing a Page, Editing a Blog Post, and Editing your Widgets is also a good exercise in learning the hosted IDX sites and how to use them.

Pages

See the links in your navigation bar? Those are your pages. Each link represents a page in the system. You can change these links, add more pages that appear up there, and even change the order. Click here to see more about Pages.

Blog Posts/Neighborhood Info

Hosted IDX sites from HomeQuest let you place your own neighborhood information right on your listings map. Your clients will see your blog posts placed right on the map as they are searching for homes. This lets a client know how active you are in that neighborhood, and how well you know the area. The more you post, the more informative your map is. Click here to see more about blog posts.

Why have custom icons?  As an agent, you find yourself selling a neighborhood to a family just as much as you have to sell the house.  To sell a neighborhood, just blog about it and your map posts will do the talking for you to any website visitor.

How do I get started?:

To use the special mapping icons, you must have specially named Categories added to your system.  Any post included in one of these categories will display with a special icon.

Adding the Categories (Do this step once)

Note: You must add these Categories, they do not exist by default.  Make sure to keep the exact name or the special icon will not display.

Special Category Names:

• Listing
• Miscellaneous blog post (anything that the system does not recognize)
• Coffee shop
• Shopping
• Happy hour
• Restaurants
• Schools
• Events
• Parks

Categorizing a post (Do this everytime you want a post to show on your map):

Add a post (from Write > Post) like a normal blog post.  (Note: Make sure to geocode the post, only geocoded posts appear on your map.)

When you categorize the post, make sure to use one of the pre-defined special categories listed above.

Example:

Finding your Twitter link:

Your Twitter link is the easiest link to get, its just: www.twitter.com/YOURUSERNAME

(Example: www.twitter.com/garrons)

Finding your Facebook profile link:

Once you are logged into Facebook, right click the “Profile” link at the top.  Select “Copy Link Address” from the menu.  Your link is in the clipboard and ready to be pasted.

Finding your LinkedIn profile link:

In your HomeQuest account, click the “Websites” tab.  Click the “Site Admin” button.