Monthly Archives: October 2016

In the age of the internet we live in, clickbait is becoming less and less effective. Whilst it definitely worked a few years ago, the inhabitants of the internet have wised up and become more discerning in their content choices.

In this article, we’re going to give you 5 simple tactics to getting clicks on your content without having to lower yourself to clickbait.

1. Set yourself realistic expectations

There’s no point in stringing your audience along with a title that the article can’t live up to. It’ll probably work initially, but after a few times your audience will start to lose trust in your brand. If you can’t meet your audience’s expectations, your attempts will gradually start to fail and your numbers will trail off.

Instead of writing articles like ‘10 Adelaide homes so good they’ll make you cry’ that don’t shed a single tear, aim for more realistic content. Instead, try an article like ‘Adelaide’s top 10 homes on the market’. It’s much more achievable and your audience won’t feel shortchanged.

2. Create a list

When your target audience is being served up a plate of content from hundreds of different sources each time they hit the internet, you need to make yours stand out. One easy way of doing this is by formatting your content into a list.

By doing this, you’ll offer up what you have to say in a concise, easy to digest package that’ll make them want to click.

If you can give your audience what they want laid out by numbered sub-headings, they’ll leave feeling content and more likely to read your content in the future.

3. Spark emotion from your readers

One of the essential points of content creation is developing an emotional connection with your audience. Once again, this doesn’t mean promising them that your Adelaide listings will make them cry with joy. Instead, it means noticing the emotions that your audience connect with and working them into your language.

4. Remain authentic

Authenticity is big in content creation. When your writing team strips away the business lingo and taps into topics they actually care about, your engagement rates are going to soar. By sharing experiences with your audience, you’ll be able to connect with them in a social context.

This is exactly why it’s so important to have a marketing team with mixed interests and personalities. If you can achieve this, you can rest assured that they’ll be able to connect with your target audience.

5. Revise your headlines, then revise it again

When you notice a clever headline in a news story, that doesn’t mean that it was created on the spur of the moment. In fact, the most successful news stories start with headlines that are rewritten several times.

It might be painstaking at times, but the effort you put into your headlines will be returned in audience engagement. Despite any deadlines you may be facing, a bit of extra love and care for your content will pay off in the long-run.

Remember – your headline is the first thing that your audience sees. Your article could be the best in the world, but if the headline doesn’t hit home, you’re going to see minimal results. It should be your primary focus when writing content online.

As far as topics go, real estate isn’t the easiest to capture someone’s interest with. It’s often quite dry, but publishing regular content is a great way of keeping in touch with your audience.

People love to think that they’re making a large purchase from a real estate agency that’s made up of professionals that they can actually connect and associate themselves with. For this reason, you should aim to create content that educates, engages and entertains them.

Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done and if your blog’s preliminary topics are new listings and mortgage rates, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Research has shown that businesses who blog 3-4 times a week generate 5 times the traffic compared to businesses that don’t. Other studies have also found that 70% of consumers prefer to learn about a company via reading blog articles than any other form of contact.

These stats go to show that the value of well-written blog content is high on the real estate customer’s standards. Take a look at the following tips to find out how you can boost your blogging abilities this season.

Make sure your content is customised

There’s nothing worse than reading an article that’s generic, bland and lacking personality. If you really want your readers to connect with your real estate agency, you need to publish content that’s customised to them. There’s no better way to reach your target audience than by blogging about the areas you have real estate in. Here are a couple of article ideas:

• Publicise upcoming events in the area
• Produce a neighbourhood or town guide
• Cover the opening of a new restaurant or attraction

You can also create articles that are less location-specific, but target certain types of buyers:

• Interior design tips
• Landscape gardening tips
• Top home showcases

If you are still stuck for inspiration, check out our post on 20 Time Saving Real Estate Blog Topic Ideas.

Capitalise on visual content

Visual content truly is king. When creating content online, adding a visual element will help to attract and maintain the attention of your audience. Some studies have even shown that it can increase clicks by up to 5 times.

Videos are a particularly great way of communicating your brand’s personality. If you’re presenting your agency as experts in home financing, then you should cover topics surrounding this. Other video ideas, however, include tours of both new and sold properties, how-to design videos and client testimonials. For more ideas, have a look at our 10 Video Styles That Should Be In Every Real Estate Marketing Plan

Regardless of the type of video you settle for, aim for no more than 5 minutes of content delivered in clear English.

Still not convinced that video is for you? Make you you read Why Video Is Important For Every Real Estate Agent.

Convert current readers to your target audience

You can also ensure that you’re getting content in front of the right people by turning existing readers into your target audience. With a bit of work, this can be done through education.

If you’re promoting mortgages, create a calculator to help people figure out how much they can borrow. If you’re selling properties within a particular area, publish stats on average house prices.

You can also engage your current audience by creating infographic-style posts and publishing them on social media channels such as Instagram. Pinterest is known to be one of the top sites that people check when hunting for a new home.

Analyse your posts for future improvement

It’s a good idea to take the above tips into consideration, but if your content isn’t doing well, there’s no sense in publishing it. Track the performance of the posts you make using online analytics tools to see how much traffic and engagement they’re generating.

Find out which posts work best and create similar articles around that topic.

Creating a functioning blog takes time and effort, but it’s a strategy that’ll bring in customers for years to come. Get started now and continue to reap the benefits long into the future.

If your real estate agency had one easy way to increase your blog & social media views, they’d probably be doing it, surely? Well, recent research has just uncovered that inserting images into your posts can do this to perfection.

There are, however, a whole load of scary legalities surrounding using images, such as the original owner trying to sue you for usage without permission. This article is going to teach you how you can use stock photos to enhance your posts, 100% risk-free.

What is image copyright?

Copyright is a legal process that protects creative works from being used without permission. Although good for those in creative industries, it can make things slightly difficult when sourcing images for your website and social media.

There are slight differences from country to country, but image copyright prevents anyone except the copyright holder from:

• Reproducing their work
• Distributing their work to the public
• Displaying the work publicly

In short, if an artist took a photo or created an image, they own the copyright. This is the case even if they never registered their work with a formal copyright body.

Using someone else’s image

In the simplest form, you can use someone else’s image after they give you personal permission. This doesn’t mean you need to speak with the photographer before every time you use their image.

Sadly, this can prove costly. If you’re working with a small budget, however, there are some inexpensive mediums you can use to source your perfect image. As always, though, which images will work depends on your audience and the channels you’ll be using.

Consider the platform you’re using

It’s the same with any marketing effort – you need to tweak your content to the platform you’re posting on. One easy way to make sure you’re doing it right is by asking the following questions:

• What sorts of images are popular on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram?
• How are other real estate agencies using stock photos on these channels?
• How do they address copyright issues?
• Are they tweaking or changing the photos at all?

When using images on social media, these are the primary points that you need to be considering.

Source free images from Creative Commons Zero

Once you’ve decided on the platforms you want to be sharing images on and what your audience wants, it’s time to find your perfect picture. Before you head to Google and start searching away, however, you again need to consider the copyright issues that you could run into.

If you’re after images that are 100% free and have no copyright laws attached to them, the Creative Commons Zero license is what you should keep an eye out for. This license “enables scientists, educators, artists, and other creators and owners of copyright – or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance, and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.”

It’s an excellent and cost-effective option for obtaining great images without the cost and copyright implications typically associated with other stock libraries. For this reason, it’s well worth checking out.

Consider any symbolism or connections people may draw from the images

When creating blog content for your real estate agency, sourcing stock photos should be a primary focus. These images can then be used to enhance any similar posts you make on social media.

If you’re using both images in blog content and on social media, however, you should carefully consider whether the images are actually relevant to both types of post. Your real estate agency also needs to make sure that the images add value to the posts you’re making.

During this process, you need to place a heavy focus on the audience’s frame of mind. Some points you need to be thinking about include:

• What sorts of images will command attention from your audience?
• What sorts of images will drive clicks?
• Are these images relevant?

Tweak and change your stock images

Your brand is unique – why shouldn’t you change your images to match? If you’re promoting your real estate agency as a specialist service, you should use your images to set yourselves aside from the competition.

This can be a difficult task if you’re working with free stock images and a strict budget, but creativity goes a very long way.

There are plenty of tools you can use to edit images and they don’t all have to be as complex and pricey as Adobe Photoshop. Prior to customising your stock images, however, make sure that they’re marked as ‘modifiable’ on the website you downloaded them. Once again, you can avoid this issue by using Creative Commons Zero images.

Once you’ve made sure that editing the images is permitted, you can customise until your heart’s content. Add your brand’s colours, logos and make that image yours.