As a real estate agent, credibility and trust are the pillars that hold the foundation of your success. People only do business with those whom they trust and before that happen; that person must first prove themselves credible.
But how do you show potential clients you’re credible and trustworthy when they’ve never met you before? You do that by becoming a local real estate expert.
Benefits of becoming a Real Estate Expert
Becoming a real estate expert isn’t hard. All you have to do is combine your market expertise with a solid public relations and content marketing strategy to educate and inform the public and before you know it:
- The news media and the public will begin to seek out your opinions and cite you in their publications; both online and print
- This free publicity will generate inbound links that will increase your search engine optimization (SEO)
- This traffic, both online and offline, will generate more leads which will mean more business.
But even with the benefits associated with being a local real estate expert – and the relative ease in becoming one, most real estate agents still fail to take advantage. Here are five ways to become a real estate expert and reach a bigger audience and build more business.
Choose a Niche to Focus on
There’s a high probability that you know a little bit about everything in real estate, but being an expert in all these niches doesn’t let you stand out from the crowd.
Instead, focus your niche on a niche that you’re passionate about. You can also look at your business and calculate where most of your deals are coming from. Ask yourself:
- Are your buyers mostly looking for first homes
- Are they established families upgrading their lifestyle?
- Or do you want to go into the B2B aspect and target investors?
Start a Blog to build Authority
Your blog is the foundation of your content marketing strategy. It is where you share your thoughts and opinions. It is where you share your experience in the real estate industry with potential clients about what they need to know as a buyer or seller. The more you educate your audience about real estate, the more likely they are to give you a call.
Your blog posts should be specific and address your local market and target audience precisely. Tailoring your content to your specific niche and market enables you to attract qualified leads looking for information through search engines.
You can target your audience by reverting to the point above about choosing a niche to focus on. Examples are:
- Historic houses
- Modern designs
- Suburban homes
- Condos or apartments
- Retail or industrial space
Join Real Estate Associations
One of the simplest ways to gain credibility is to join the board and committees of local, state and national associations. Joining and becoming active in a real estate association gives the news media an identifying phrase to attach to your name.
Benefits
- It adds credibility to you before potential clients and other peers
- You can leverage on your associations to comment in news releases and blogs
Associate with your Local Media
By becoming familiar with your local news editors and journalists, you easily build a relationship that you can leverage on to get news features, interviews, quotes etc.
Follow these approaches to get noticed by the local press:
- Research journalists that write about real estate and lifestyle and respond to their news. If you have a newsworthy article, make it straightforward, in a news article style, with any opinions kept in quotes; then send to them.
- Connect with them on Linkedin and be active on their published posts etc. Be active in relevant groups and be everywhere, contributing valuable information to the discussion.
- Follow them on twitter and engage with them by retweeting them, mentioning them in relevant tweets etc.
Be heard by Legislators and Local Officials
Most public officials, especially the local ones will listen to you on specific issues dealing with real estate. A few tips are:
Call their attention to minor issues they can easily solve which will earn them the approval of people
Position yourself as someone who can be called for public hearings and be vocal about your opinions. (Don’t forget to send a press release on what you said to the news)
Conclusion
Becoming a real estate expert is more about making people aware of what you know than about you knowing more than anyone. It takes strategy, hard work and confidence, but the result is a reputation that has credibility and brings more business through the door.
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