All Forum Posts by: Kevin William

Social media content is similar to any type of content you're creating. As much as possible, it should be personal, unique and in-depth. 

There's essentially zero value in 2016 in creating filler content that is similar to the content on 1000 other real estate websites. For example, boiler plate language on staging a home. 

Instead, write up a 2000 word case study on a specific example showing how a successful staging resulted in getting 10% increase in sell price. Use photos and anecdotal comments and observations that come from your personal experience. 

Would that 2000 word case study + photos take time? Of course. It's hard work. Which means very few of your competitors are doing it. 

If you combine the above strategy with smart keyword research, you can build a long-term SEO machine. Again, you'll find very few of your competitors are doing this. Life is busy, this stuff is hard and takes time. But, it's effective if done well.

How does this apply to social media content? Social media posts can be useful for staying in touch with people who already follow you (existing relationships and previous clients). You can do some basic monthly updates to stay in touch, but it's not likely that this content will lead to many new clients or leads. Creating the type of content outlined above and pushing out through your social media channels, however, can lead to new business. 

When someone interacts with your content, you want them to say, "Wow, that was really smart and informative." 

From my experience, most real estate professionals don't drive many leads from social media. It's more useful for maintaining a connection to existing relationships and previous clients. It's important to have the necessary presence on the main channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, maybe even Instagram. But I wouldn't stress over the amount of effort you put into it.

Automating your social media activity as much as possible is also useful. If you have a wordpress site for example, you can set up the site to automatically post your blog posts when they go live to your social channels. 

Edgar is also a pretty interesting tool that schedules social media posts for you and re-uses old posts again in the future (https://meetedgar.com/). This applies mostly to non-time sensitive content, but can still be very useful.

DIY website builders like Wix and Squarespace can create simple, nice visual websites. Remember these services are built for the masses so you're not going to get any functionality specific to real estate (other than dropping in simple html embed codes that a third party provides).

If you want a true IDX integration, I'd suggest going with Wordpress then hooking up with a third party IDX provider such as IDX Broker. I've worked on a number of IDX powered wordpress sites and they can be very effective if setup right. In this situation, you'll pay for Wordpress site / hosting (or you could do it yourself) + a monthly IDX fee to the third party IDX provider.

IDX providers can sometimes have limitations for commercial real estate folks simply because CRE listings are typically not isolated to the local MLS. Listings can be in a number of places so the properties pulled via IDX are usually only a subset of what is available.

Still, the true value of IDX integration, in my experience, is on the lead generation side. IDX is the best way to generate leads off a real estate website (individuals looking to browse properties).  

In 2016, SEO really comes down to two things: Quality, targeted content and back links. Most VAs don't execute either one of those tasks fully to a high degree of quality from my experience.

For example, to rank well for competitive keywords, your content needs to be super high quality. I can't stress that enough. Search Google for your target keyword. Will your content be better than the top content in the search results? If not, you're wasting your money. 

VAs are good for filler content, but filler content really doesn't work in SEO like it used to. While this means the effort and cost is now higher for getting content ranked, it also means very few people are doing it well. Take that further, if you can rank your content for competitive keywords, it's not easy to "de-throne" you in those rankings.

I've worked with many real estate professionals on SEO and find very few that are doing it well. 

Hey fellow agents, are any of you using anything in particular for email marketing and/or DRIP campaigns? What's the best solution out there? Any recommendations?

I'm interested to get started in real estate investing. Perhaps a duplex, triplex or something of the sort. I'm not interested in taking on a high degree of risk. Primary residence is worth about $325k (I owe $180k on it). Also have about $100k cash.

I've been planning on trying to pay off the primary residence before getting into rentals, but I've reconsidered this.

There's a pretty attractive location that is pretty hot, yet still has some really crappy houses nearby. I've considered exploring the idea of buying the crappiest one, tearing it down and building a triplex or quadplex on it. Though admittedly I've done very little true due diligence on the #s for this situation and if the zoning is even permitted.

Again, I'm comfortable with using leverage, but I will likely always keep it manageable. I never want to be in a situation where I'm concerned about staying afloat. If that means waiting a couple more years before getting into real estate, that's ok, too.

What would your advice be for getting started? What would you do in my situation?