Afternoon everyone .... just got back from a week Italy. Puglia in the South East corner (the heel bit as my Granddad used to say). We did miss Joey (star lettings dog for newer readers) and you should have seen his face when we picked him up (Grandma doggysat for us) he couldn’t believe we had come back.
So, having croissants this morning, we had pancetta and eggs. Mrs. W asked me how I wanted my eggs and because I think I was still suffering from jetlag (its 2hrs 45 mins to Brindsi!!! But still possible to get jetlag – I had been on a jet so...), my mind went blank for a few seconds .. poached of course! But that got me thinking about how many ways there are to cook an egg ...hard boiled, soft boiled, scrambled eggs, omelettes, poached, fried and baked. I think you’ll agree quite a challenge to name all the multiple uses of that little egg ..
You see that thought process neatly encapsulates how I think letting agencies should be thinking about what content to create to become the local property expert. Many letting agents tend to think of content and content marketing as just blogging. Social Media is characterised by a once in a while update to LinkedIn profiles (you know who you are!).
Most letting agents are uncomfortable in the social-media-land and nervous (in my view correctly) of Facebook (please be very careful with FB). Letting agencies feel that lack of time, irrelevance, cost or mixed feelings are reasons enough to abstain from creating great content about your local property market to educate and engage existing and potential landlords alike.
But, those letting agencies are missing out. Content and social media marketing are now much more than the creation of articles, blogs and the odd Tweet. Great content is not just one dimensional, it is so much more. Letting agencies who have the ability to create great content about your local property market in all its forms and distribute that content via their website and through social media stand to reap a rich harvest of engaged existing landlords and opportunities for potential to engage with your lettings firm.
Consider one piece of content and how it could be spread into other formats / channels. Think of your great content about the local property market as a series, to distributed on every medium, a number of times rather than just a standalone episode. (a bit like Top Gear where it’s on Dave and every other satellite channel .. not just BBC2 on a Sunday night).
Think of a great piece of letting content in the round. Great letting content should be something you can not only boil, but fry, poach and make an omelette with as well. Put those ingredients with other media and you start being more creative. Some of clients have started to recycle their articles as an infographic, cutting down almost a 500 words into one picture ..... well, you know what they say. One of my clients has recorded himself on video, talking about the local property market and published on YouTube. I have even got one client using Rightmove Featured Agent advert to drive lots and lots of people to his website .. again just recycling the articles. I have a number of clients who, with my help, publish their newsletter as jpeg on Linkedin with a hyperlink back to a downloadable PDF – landlords and professionals are loving this.
Remember, when I say great content, all I mean by great content is, (great content is interesting stuff about YOUR local property market) Great content can stretch far and wide - great content will be shared by fellow professionals in your town (because everyone is interested in their local property market), your friends and colleagues. Even better, if you are producing exceptional content about the local property market, it will be shared by people outside of those immediate circles.
Think about it: your great content, shared by people you do not know but digested and read by people who may become landlords on the strength of that content.
And that's about it.
If you want to know what great content looks like .. have a look at this Derby Property Blog http://lettingssimon.blogspot.co.uk/ and one in Chelmsford www.chelmsfordpropertyblog.co.uk/