What are the most important concepts associated with content creation and online marketing that real estate investors need to understand?
From coast to coast, and small to big, it’s clear that content strategies are capable of separating the most successful investors from the rest of the pack. Accordingly, a properly run content and marketing strategy is enough to keep a business sustainable. In February, Seth Godin really hit the point home by saying that not much else matters in marketing or website design if the words aren’t right.
So if content is so important for real estate marketers, how can they do more of it? How should quantity be balanced with quality and consistency?
The Vital Importance of Content
The importance of content for real estate professionals and companies can’t be underestimated. Whether it is simply business cards or 140 character Tweets, real estate website content can go a long way in determining the direction of your company. Content makes all the difference in conversions, profitability, ROI, and survival.
Poor content means paying more for poor conversion rates, and netting less money on every deal. The reverse is true with great content. Make an effort to put out the best content possible and it will pay for itself. In fact, poor content will virtually guarantee a slow demise, while a foundation of great content can help independent real estate professionals grow faster and more profitable than expected. The profits yielded by great content will continue to pay for expansion, and create exponential results.
Which is more important when it comes to real estate content; quality, consistency, or quantity?
Real estate investors are constantly bombarded with the message of how important it is for them to publish more content. There is plenty of data out there to show how publishing real estate blog posts more often creates exponential growth in results and better marketing ROI. Some also argue they need content to be in higher quantities of words per post in order to get more love from Google and other search engines.
Of course, the big challenge is that most brand new real estate start-ups simply don’t see how they can afford to produce high volumes of content consistently. At least quality content anyway. This leaves most chasing quantity goals, while sacrificing the others. Too often the result is mediocre volumes of content, and often in inconsistent bursts.
Consistency is important too. When it comes to Google rankings, consistency is almost more important than quantity. Whatever you budget for volume of posts and length, make sure you stick to a publishing schedule; whether it is once a month, biweekly, three times a week, or multiple times per day. You can always scale if you are producing good content. This may take several months or a year, but you’ll never get to the level where you can consistently produce volumes of quality content if you don’t get started right.
With that in mind, prioritize your content strategy by:
- Quality
- Consistency
- Quantity
Tips for Maximizing Content ROI
Best Transaction Funding highlighted just how high costs of hiring copywriters has become. Outsourcing can still offer great savings and deals, and very few real estate professionals can afford to take the time out to craft their own content consistently. So with per article costs topping $230 a piece, how can investors put quality content on their pages?
Those that have found success haven’t compromised on quality. They still look for deals and probably don’t pay $200 a piece. But they do prioritize publishing unique content, interesting content, and information that offers value – even if they have to do less of it.
A successful content strategy will maximize each piece of content by increasing its visibility. They circulate content, push it out with email and social, get others to link to it, and establish themselves as local experts that other bloggers, news sites, and journalists will keep coming to as a resource.
They’ll invest in re-purposing content to get the most out of every word and dollar. This might mean bundling blog posts into books and special reports, converting it into videos, podcasts, slideshows, and splicing it up into Tweets, Google+ updates, and pins, and pulling out key content to create off-page articles, blogs and PR. In fact, while owning your own online real estate is absolutely critical, off-site content on third party sites can still be as valuable when it comes to branding.
In addition to blogs, social media, and articles, building out content also means targeted landing pages. Those considering paid advertising or PPC marketing will find that these pages help to increase conversions, while driving down paid ad costs, and improving ROI.
