To get you on the right track to nurture and convert potential customers, we’ve provided a list of the top lead generating pages your site must have.

1. Impressive Homepage

Your homepage is the first impression people have of your brand. You’ll want to make sure it’s eye catching and represents the brand you want to display.

If you specialise in something in particular eg. apartments or acreage houses or even just your area, make sure that it is clearly visible and your visitors can get a good idea of who you are as an agent.

The design and layout of your page is crucial. You have a professional brand offline so it is essential that your website is professionally designed and matches that.

Here are a few points to help make your homepage more attractive and generate more leads:

Make it easy to contact and find more about you.

When people come to your website the majority of time they are looking for more information about you and then to get in touch with you.

You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find this information.

Denis Najzar has the two options available as soon as you land on the website.

Attractive content

Entice visitors to delve deeper into your website’s content with things like profile videos, blog posts and listing photo’s.

This engaging content will get people to stay on your website longer as they consume the information. As they are reading and watching they are being pre-sold on why you are the best choice for them as an agent.

A profile video of yourself is a great way to engage your visitors and show more about yourself as an agent.

Clear navigation and calls to action

The ease of use of your site is essential. People need to understand how to navigate around and find what they are looking for as soon as they load the website or they will leave.

Make sure your menu is clear and easy to navigate.

User experience is so important that Google even use it as a ranking factor to decide who will appear on the first page.

Your site should flow easily and have multiple calls to action to generate leads.

On your homepage you should have clear options for people to get in touch with you and to request an appraisal.

2. About Page – Why You?

You’ve gotten things off to a good start with a professional looking homepage. For some the homepage will be enough information that they need before they get in touch with you or request an appraisal,

However most visitors will want to learn more about your story and why you are the best agent for the job.

This section should strike a balance between highlighting your skills as an agent, and how you got your start in real estate.

People want to relate to people they do business with.

This section allows you to give people more context about why you are the best agent for the job.

On this page you can include some awesome results you have gotten for clients, your local community involvements and how you market their property.

It is important to have clear ability for people to contact you and request an appraisal on this page.

Below is an example of Joanna Gianniotis’s “About” page or “Why Joanna” page. You can view the actual page here.

3. Active Blog

If the idea of blogging worries you, fear not. Blogging is the number one tool for driving traffic to your site–even ahead of SEO (Google traffic), and a great way to improve your real estate marketing efforts.

A blog is a great way to improve your marketing efforts and give’s you a platform to communicate with your audience.

A blog allows you to provide updates on changes within your local market or current happenings in your community.

Consistent blogging shows people that you’re an authority figure in real estate in your area, which will ultimately generate more business for you.

The best part? Since blog posts are usually written in a casual style, posting regularly is a great way to let your personality shine through while connecting with your leads.

Check out this article that highlights how real estate agents should be using a blog in 2017.

4. Community Pages

Community pages are a place to show everything that is great about your area.

Show the best businesses and attractions, and highlight the type of lifestyle that is associated with the area.

Show the closest schools, public transport, and medical facilities.

Think about the types of clients you normally work with, and which demographic they fall into. Then tailor the content to their interests.

Images of the local parks, restaurants and iconic houses are awesome on these pages.

Include the latest real estate statistics on these pages and have a call to action for people to request an appraisal.

The content you are putting out on your local area pages show that you are a local, just like your vendor, that knows what’s going on in the community and understands the local market.

5. Home Buyer Seller Resources

These pages will become some of your most used pages for leads.

It’s vital to engage people through attractive images and video, along with the data to make purchasing and selling decisions.

Here are some of the things that you can include:

• Market activity report
• Stamp duty calculator
• Local trades and services
• How to present your home for an inspection
• To auction or not to auction
• Preparing for a photo shoot
• Clarifying building and pest
• Flood maps
• Make an offer

These pages are great for generating you leads. If you are talking to somebody and one of these comes up it is a great way to subtly guide them back to your website to get the information. Then once they are on your website they will have the opportunity to see more about you, your testimonials and past results.

This strategy works incredibly well and is a great way to drive traffic to your website and leads without being pushy.

6. Home Valuation Page

Your prospects will be interested in this page when they are thinking of selling. Have a field to capture their details so as you can contact them for their appraisal.

A layout like the one below works well. They have included a video testimonial of an awesome result that they got for a client. This will help to encourage people to fill out the form.

If you don’t have a testimonial video don’t worry. A simple page that just says “Find out an how much your home is worth” can work well too.

7. Email Newsletter Signup

After people have read through your website they may want to keep up to date with you in the future as they may not be ready to sell yet. You can then send your leads market research, testimonials, or your latest blog posts.

Give people the option to sign up to your database. The more helpful information that is on your website the more likely people are going to be to sign up as they will be hoping to receive more of that helpful information in the future.

You can even incentivise people to sign up in return for something. Eg. you could shoot a quick video on the 5 things you can do to add $5000 value to your house.

For people to get the information they need to sign up to your newsletter.

8. Generic Landing Page

Having a generic landing page like the one below can work really well to generate leads. When you are doing direct marketing, vendors can prefer to enter their details into a website that looks like it is independent. A generic landing page like this can be a great introductory step to you.

These pages can be really cheap and simple to set up and work great.

A simple landing page like this works really well when combined with Facebook advertising and can bring in a mass of leads for a very little ad spend.

9. Testimonials

There’s a reason people ask the opinions of their friends and family about the newest restaurant or bar before they try it out.

People want a relative guarantee that they’re not wasting their time or money and will have a good experience.

Real estate agents are no different. Genuine reviews and testimonials from happy vendors will go a long way to multiplying the amount of leads you receive.

• Video Reviews, from clients after you’ve gotten them a great result, will provide you with social proof and allow people to make an emotional connection to you.
• Written Reviews give you the chance to include blurbs on your website about people’s experiences with yourself and your agency.

It should go without saying, but you’ll want to include the most recent and positive reviews.

Add call to actions throughout your reviews to generate more enquiries.

Conclusion

There are lots of ways that you can increase your current amount of leads coming in. Adding some of these pages to your marketing strategy won’t take you a lot of effort but the results long term will be great.

What did you think about these real estate lead generation pages? Let me know in the comments section below.

The post 9 Real Estate Lead Generating Pages To Enhance Your Marketing appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

We all understand that it’s essential to build our brands and demonstrate a point of difference in a crowded marketplace.

The strategy I am going to break down for you today will help you grow your brand and create tremendous goodwill in your local marketplace.

1. Set Up A Personal Website That Allows you To Blog

You need a place to centralise all of your marketing efforts. That’s where your personal website comes in. It acts as the central hub of all of your marketing efforts.

Whether you are doing flyers, billboards, social media, business cards or other advertising your personal website is the best place to send potential clients to learn more about how you do business and allows you to position yourself as an expert.

When setting up your personal website make sure that it has a blog.

A blog allows you to share articles and videos on your website that people can read and watch.

People love reading and watching helpful videos and articles. This means that you can bring more interested people back to your website to read an article or watch a video. You can then generate leads with call to actions to request an appraisal or get in touch.

Your website needs to look professional as it is the first impression that a lot of your potential clients will have on you.

If need help setting up your personal website get in touch.

2. Review Your Area On Your Website

Most real estate agents think the only content that they can talk about is real estate and listings.

You see it in 99% of agents Facebook pages. The only activity is when they post a new listing. It’s great to talk about real estate but long term if it’s all you talk about it will turn people off.

Your blog on your website gives you the platform to share informative content with people.

The key to a successful blog is to post content that people actually want to consume. Crazy right?!

A great way to easily get content that people want to read and watch is to interview the most important people in your area.

People like

• The owners of the local coffee shops and restaurants…
• The local football coach…
• The local school teachers…
• An interior designer to give house presentation tips…
• The local butcher, florist, electrician,  anyone with an interesting story…

Get the idea?

These are really simple things that you can do and make great content that people want to read and watch.

Here’s what you do.

1. Get the Interview

You go into the the local coffee shop and ask to speak to the owner and say you want to do a quick interview with him that will go on your website that is all about the local area.

You can record the whole thing on your phone, they have good enough cameras to get a high quality interview.

Ask them about why they got into business and what they love about the local area. Everyone will have a different story to tell.

You want to find the stories that are tucked away in the local businesses, school system and the iconic neighbours.

Those stories are the narrative that will create emotion which on a tipping point maybe the reason that somebody does business with you.

2. Post Production

You can get your PA to transcribe the interview and post the video to Youtube.

You are then able to embed the youtube video on your blog (If you have a wordpress based website this will take you 10 seconds.) You can also add the transcript of the whole interview below for people to read.

You could even take a few pictures from around their business and use them throughout the article and on social media.

3. Promotion

Now that the article is published on your website it is time to promote it. Publish it to Facebook and send an email out to your database.

You can then go back to the local business owner and show them the article your put together on your website which will look great and they’ll be over the moon for the free exposure.

Ask them if they would be able to share the article on their social media accounts as well. Which they should be happy to do as its their business that the article is all about.

You then get to tap into their social media friends who are all from the local area who will want to see the interview with Dave from the coffee shop. To read the article they all have to come back to your website with your branding and your call to actions.

Not only do you get great content plus exposure to more people in your area but you have made a great relationship with somebody that is talking to potentially hundreds of your ideal clients a day.

Another take on this and a great form of content is to review the local area.

You can review:

• Local Business’s
• Restaurants
• Schools
• Parks and amenities

Write honest reviews of the best places to eat out on a Friday night. Or the top things to do with your kids on the weekend in your local area.

Here are a couple of examples of great articles that you could write about your area.

Make sure that your content is targeted around your local area and the people that live in it. These are the types of content that people will want to read and share with their friends.

This content shows that you are active in the local community and know what’s going on.

You can also work in articles with market updates and other real estate happenings in the area like the one below.

This type of quality content will have people coming back to your site regularly and will keep you top of mind as the go to real estate agent in the area.

4. Build your Database.

When you are publishing good content some people will want to sign up to keep up to date.

Give people the option for people to sign up to receive your regular content on your website.

The more emails that you collect and build your database the better as you can then send them emails about your future content so as they come back and read and share that too. When they are ready to sell their home you will be top of mind as they have been coming to your website for months reading helpful content.

A good way to collect more email addresses is to offer something for free. This can be in the form of a report or even just another article that you have put together.

Here are a couple of ideas for a free giveaway.

• 5 Ways to increase the value of your house without breaking the bank
• 7 Best things to do in Brisbane this weekend
• The Biggest mistake sellers make when selling their family home.

You can create that content in the form of an article, pdf report or even a video. It doesn’t have to be a massive piece of content and shouldn’t take you ages to get finished.

Another way to collect emails is to have an opt in like this on your videos.

You can set it to only display to people that haven’t already subscribed so that people that have can watch all of your videos freely. We use Wistia to add this opt in form to our videos but there are lots of other options out there.

5. Share Your Blog Posts With Your Database.

You can keep people engaged with your latest content by sharing your latest articles and videos with them.

This will create an engaged community of people that value your opinion and will trust you as a source of knowledge in their community.

Not everybody that consumes your first piece of content will be ready to sell their house. But if they have been following the information that you have been putting out for a number of months and years, when the time comes for them to sell you will be the clear expert in their eyes.

6. Set Up Facebook Retargeting

People that visit your website won’t always contact you on their first visit. That’s where Facebook Retargeting is a massive benefit.

People that have been looking at you on your website are clearly interested in you so wouldn’t it make sense to give them an offer to get a free appraisal

Facebook allows you to run ads to people that have visited your website in a specific time period.

This is an awesome opportunity to get leads.

You can record a quick video that says something like this:

Hey home values are going up. Figure out what your home value is – Link to your website appraisal page 

Here’s an example of a simple but effective appraisal page

Why video?

Here’s the thing:

People love video. And it turns you into a more relatable person. Not only that, but Facebook loves video.

Facebook Videos stand out more than anything else on Facebook. 

Facebook “autoplays” all the videos. And they catch your eye. They are the only thing that moves when you scroll through Facebook.

It doesn’t have to be long or super high quality. A recording on your phone will be enough.

You can then run that ad directly to the people that have visited your website recently. This will capture a lot of the people that had been thinking about you but didn’t quite take the leap and call you initially.

There are also a lot of people that won’t get in touch with you from the first interaction. So multiple touches is key to capturing these lost leads.

Other examples of retargeting ads that you could run include:

• An ad to your Market report
• Normal link ad to your appraisal page
• Client Testimonial either a video in Facebook with a link to your appraisal page or a link directly to your testimonials page on your website with a call to action to request an appraisal on that page.

Running these ads will only cost you a few dollars a day to get in front of your ideal clients and the rewards will be great.

Read this article for more help setting up a Facebook Retargeting campaign

Here’s the biggest mistake agents make when advertising and lead generating:

They Stop Too Soon.

Successful marketing does NOT work like this:

Marketing is like relationships. 

You need multiple touch points before things really take off!

Here’s an example:

Conclusion

They key with any good marketing strategy is consistency.

Being able to get your face in front of your ideal potential clients on a regular basis is invaluable.

I would love to know your thoughts on this strategy. Let me know what you thought about it in the comments section below.

If you don’t have your own personal website yet I would highly recommend getting one setup asap. Send me an email or click the button below to get started.

The post The Best Real Estate Marketing Strategy For 2017 appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

What is a Facebook Custom Audience?

Facebook Custom Audience’s allow you to upload a specific audience of people to run ads to.

For example you can create a custom audience of email addresses from your database, retarget people that have visited your website or even people that have engaged with something that you have posted on Facebook.

This gives you an incredible amount of power to reach your ideal target clients on a platform that you might not have been able to previously.

People that are on your database, visited your website or engaged with you on social media are clearly interested in yourself and your business.

Being able to display an ad in front of this person is a massive advantage to your marketing.

How To Create A Facebook Custom Audience

Log into your Facebook Ads Manager and click Audiences.

On this page you can then click create audience to start creating your first Custom Audience.  A popup will open which will ask you to pick which type of Custom Audience you would like to create.

Types of Custom Audiences

You will have the option to pick between 4 different custom audiences.

Customer File – A list of email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user ID’s that Facebook will use to match with users profiles on Facebook. Usually Facebook matches around 60-80% of your list to an active Facebook account that you can market too.

Website Custom Audiences – Instead of using a list of email addresses to create a list of people to advertise to Facebook can create a list of people that have visited your website. To do this you will need to install a small piece of code on your website called a Facebook pixel.

App Activity – If you have an app you can target people based on the actions that they take when using the app. This option won’t apply to the vast majority of real estate agents.

Engagement on Facebook – You can create a custom audience of people that engage with your ads or your page.

How To Create A Customer File Custom Audience

If you want to create an ad that you can target people from your database then you will want to go with the customer file.  You will then have the option to either import a list from MailChimp (an email autoresponder software) or manually upload a CSV file with the data.

Manual Upload

The majority of you reading this will not be using a MailChimp account so manually uploading your database will be the only option. To manually upload your database click “Choose a file or copy and paste data”

This is where you can upload your database of emails, phone numbers or Facebook UID’s.

Here you will have the option to upload your database via CSV or TXT. If you have your database in this format you can upload that in the box.

If you don’t have your database in a file that can be converted to CSV or TXT you can copy and paste the information in the copy and paste field.

It may be beneficial to have a quick read through Facebooks best practices for preparing your customer data to make sure that it is formatted correctly so that all of your database is accepted by Facebook.

Once you have uploaded your database you can give your audience a name. Make sure it is something that you will be able to recognise in the future as you may create multiple custom audiences down the line.

Now Facebook will need to map your data. In the list uploaded below there are only email addresses. If you are uploading a list that has multiple elements such as names, emails and phone numbers. You will have multiple fields that Facebook needs to map.

Facebook will show a preview of the data and will tell you what it thinks it is.

There are three statuses you may see in this preview:

• means Facebook thinks they know what type of data this is (but you can change this if it’s wrong ) and will use it when trying to match the information in your customer file to people on Facebook. Only the data with this symbol gets uploaded for matching.
• means Facebook aren’t sure what type of data this is or you’ve told us to leave it out of matching. If you get this symbol you can manually tell Facebook what the data is.
• means the data type has been identified (either by Facebook automatically or by you), but Facebook can’t detect a supported format. You may have to reformat the data in your file or select a formatting option.

I there is a field in your database that you don’t want to upload you can select to not include it in the dropdown field. Once you have a green tick next to each field you are uploading you can click upload and create.

Depending on the size of your database it can take some time to match each of your customers to people on Facebook. You’ll get a notification when it is complete.

How to Create A Website Traffic Custom Audience

There are a number of great ways to use the website traffic Custom Audience’s on Facebook. If somebody is looking at your website they are obviously interested in doing business with you or one of the houses you are selling. But most people don’t make a decision on their first on their first visit. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to get your face in front of a potential vendor after you know they have been looking at you online.

You could show them an ad where they can request an appraisal, show them a marketplace report, or ask them to get in touch with yourself.

What about people that are looking at a listing you have for sale on your website. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to show them that listing again or other similar listings you have. You could even show them an ad asking them to get in touch about selling their house.

The opportunities are endless when it comes to retargeting your website’s visitors and can bring in great results.

Installing The Facebook Pixel

So as Facebook can tell who has visited your site you must install a small piece of code in your website. The Pixel allows Facebook to track users of your website and add them to your custom audience.

Important Note: There can only be ONE Pixel per Ad Account!

1. Click Create a Pixel (if you already have a Pixel, you won’t see the “Create a Pixel” button)
2. Enter a name for your pixel. Since there’s only one pixel per ad account, choose a name that represents your business.
3. Make sure you’ve checked the box to accept the terms
4. Your Facebook Pixel tracks multiple events depending on the page.

You’ll need to add the pixel to every page of your website that you want to track. Ask your web guy for help doing this.

Once you have added the pixel to your site you can check if it’s working with a free Google Chrome Extension, Pixel Helper.

After your pixel is installed on your website your websites visitors will be tracked by Facebook and will be able to be used in your Custom Audiences.

When creating a website traffic Custom Audience you will have the option to target the audience to:

• Anyone who visits your website
• People who visit specific pages
• People visiting specific pages and not others
• People who haven’t visited your website in a certain amount of time

You then also have the option to set a range on how recently the person visited your website.

To get best results when first starting out keep the “In the Last” number of days smaller as it is easier to re-engage somebody that visited your website within the last week than over a month ago.

The longer you have this period the more people will have forgotten that they were on your website and will be less likely to take action on an ad they see from you.

Targeting ads to your custom audience

Once you have created a custom audience it is time to start marketing to them. Creating an ad that targets your custom audience is really simple.

When creating an ad in Facebook Ads Manager, the first option you get will be to select a custom audience.

Just start typing the name of the Custom Audience you want to target and select it from the autocomplete list. If you want, you can select more than one Custom Audience to increase your reach.

In the example below I have selected to run an ad to a custom audience of people that have visited my website in the last 30 days.

You can then just complete the rest of the ad setting like you would do for a normal ad. Read this article for help setting up your first Facebook Ad

3 Ways To Use Custom Audiences In Your Marketing

1).Regain lost clients

How many times have you been in the middle of something online but got distracted and not come back to the website. It happens time and time again. Wether it’s people getting distracted or just not being quite ready to get in touch with you about selling their home, there are lots of potential clients that leave your website that you never hear from.

Being able to get your brand in front of somebody that was actively looking at your profile online a second and third time gives you a massive opportunity to get more seller leads and close more listings.

2). Capture lost buyers

Facebook allows you to create custom audiences of people who visit specific pages on your website. That means that you can create an audience of people looking at a listing once and show it to them another time or even show them other similar listings that you have available.

This simple technique to re-engage potential buyers won’t cost you much money at all however your brand and your listing will be displayed in front of everyone that has been looking at the property. This is also a great plus that you can go into a listing presentation with and be able to show your vendors how you can drive more targeted buyers back through their property.

3). Show Your Audience Your Recent Success’s

If you’ve just sold a property or got a great result for a vendor that you want to share, a Facebook ad targeted to your Custom Audience can be a great way to get your message in front of your ideal clients multiple times.

You can show your great results to your database in a custom audience and combine that with people that have been recently visiting your website.

Repetition is the key in any brand building and marketing exercise. Continually showing your success’s to a group of people interested in you that have visited your website and signed up to your database is a great way to get more leads.

Next Steps

In this article we’ve gone over a lot of powerful ways to get your brand in front of your most targeted potential clients.

One of the best ways is through retargeting people that have been looking at your profile online. These people are clearly looking for a real estate agent and are interested in you.

However a lot of those people you will never hear from. That’s where retargeting can be a massive benefit. With a very small budget you can your brand and message in front of those people multiple times.

We all know that the majority of sales aren’t done on the first interaction. The same applies online when generating leads.

Obviously you won’t be able to place a Facebook tracking pixel on realestate.com.au and your company website.

That’s where having your own personal website is a massive benefit.

Not only does the website make you look more professional and stand out from the other agents in your area.

You have the opportunity to create custom marketing campaigns like the ones we have gone over to capture more leads from the people that are already looking at you now.

If you’d like to talk about setting up your own personal marketing platform get in touch.

The post Get More Real Estate Leads With Facebook Ad Custom Audiences appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

Facebook ads can be very effective when you know how to correctly set up and run a targeted campaign to attract your ideal clients in your local area.

After you’ve set up your first successful campaign it is pretty easy to rinse and repeat the process.

The problem a lot of agents have is setting up a winning Facebook ad. While it is relatively straight forward to get up and running there are a few key areas that need to be addressed in order to get the best results from your advertising budget.

In this post we dive deep into how to construct a successful Facebook ad for real estate.

Create an Ad

The first step is to log into Facebook Ads Manager. This is where can you control all of your Facebook ads and monitor the results they are getting.

To access Ads Manager log into Facebook and click the little arrow in the top right corner to see a drop down of options then click on Create Ads.

Choose objective

Facebooks Ads manager lets you select an objective for your ads so it can deliver your ad to people who are most likely to take your desired outcome. Before you start your ad Facebook will prompt you to select an objective for your ad.

The type of ad you are looking at running you vary what objective you choose from the selection.

Let’s say you are looking to drive people to your website to view a listing or generate leads. You would select the traffic or send people to your website option.

If you have a Facebook pixel on your website then you can even do the Conversions option. However most of the time the Traffic option is great to get started.

If you were looking to get more interaction on your fan page then you would click select the Engagement objective.

For this example we are going to be using the traffic objective.

Target Your Audience

Targeting your audience is the most important part of creating your Facebook ad. You may need to tweak your targeting options as you move forward to find ones that deliver the best results for you.

Facebook has an audience definition gauge located on the right hand side of the page. This provides you information on the potential number of people that your targeting can reach and will show you an estimate on the number of people that will see your post daily depending on the budget that you set.

You can see that when you start there is no targeting options other than people that live in Australia aged between 18-65. This has a potential reach of 15 Million people.

As a real estate agent your ideal target audience is going to be a lot smaller than this and so you need to adjust the targeting to make sure that only people that you want see our ads. This means that you can save money by not paying to have your ads broadcast to people that are never going to do business with you.

Custom Audiences

The first targeting option is Custom Audiences. This feature allows you to upload an audience of people that you can then run an ad to.

For example if you had a list of email addresses on your database you could load these into the custom audience and if the user signed up to Facebook with that email address you will be able to show your ad to that person. This can be a great way of staying in front of your past clients and other people that have expressed an interest in you along the way.

Another more advanced use of custom audiences is to retarget visitors from your website. This requires you to place a tracking code on your website. Once that is done Facebook will keep a track of everybody that visits your website and will then allow you to run a targeted ad directly to those people.

This can be really powerful as somebody that has been looking at your website is clearly interested in you. Wouldn’t it be great if a potential client visited that your website was then shown your marketplace report the next day in Facebook, or even just an ad that encourages them to ask about a free appraisal.

This gives you the opportunity to capture people that were one your website but maybe got distracted by something else and didn’t end up calling you. This strategy obviously works best when you have a personal website.

Custom audiences are more advanced so for your first ad you might just want to leave that blank and just run an ad with localised area targeting, which I will explain how to do in this post.

Locations

Facebook allows you to target extremely specific locations which is really valuable as a real estate agent.

When targeting areas you are able to input postcodes that you want your ads shown. You can input these in the locations tab. This is a really powerful tool that allows you to show your marketing directly to the people that you most want to see your message.

Add all of the postcodes that you want your ads to be shown too in this field. There is also an option to add bulk locations which can come in handy if you are adding lots of postcodes to market to.

You will notice that once you have made your targeting more specific the potential reach of your campaign (shown on the right hand side) will be adjusted to represent the number of people that your ad will now be shown to. This number will change with every modification you make to the targeting of your campaign.

Age and Gender

Depending on the ad you are wanting to run you may want to target the your ad specifically to a certain age group or sex.

I usually change the age from 18 – 65+ to 25 – 65+ to make sure we aren’t sending ads to teenagers and people that don’t have homes to sell. This number might vary depending on your area or the purpose of your ad.

Homeowners

One of the most powerful targeting options that Facebook gives real estate agents is the ability to only show ads to Homeowners. This allows you to be really specific with your marketing and not waste money displaying ads to people that are renting or don’t actually own the house they are living in.

This means you can save money by displaying your ads to less people however the people that are seeing your ads are more likely to become your ideal client.

To target your ad specifically to homeowners in the detailed targeting section select: Demographics > Home > Home Ownership > Home Ownership (AU) and then tick the box that says Homeowners.

You can play around with other demographics and interests but to get started these are pretty good targeting options that can start to get you results.

Save the Audience.

Facebook will give you the option to – Save This Audience. This can make it quicker for you to create ads in the future as you can reload all of your targeting options with the click of a button.

Ad Placements

Now we need to choose where we want our ads to be displayed. Facebook allows you to place your ads in peoples news feeds, Facebook’s right column, Instagram and Facebooks audience network.

There is a difference in all of these places and some ad placements are better than others.

Facebook News Feed

News feed ads display natively in users news feeds. This is great from our perspective as it doesn’t look like an ad (which people don’t like) it looks the same as any piece of content from the users friends or people they follow. This means that people are more likely to read deeper into your ad rather than just skimming over it like they would if it was a banner on a website etc.

Facebook Right Column

Facebook right column ads have been less successful for us and I usually don’t run them. The reason being is that they are the ads that appear on the right hand side of the page. People have grown used to seeing ads in the right hand side of websites and usually discount anything on that side of the page. Ads in the right column obviously aren’t available. on mobile either which is where the majority of Facebook users are these days.

Instagram

Facebook owns Instagram and as such allows you to post ads on the platform. The ads appear very similar to Facebook news feed ads which is good. Instagram has tended to skew to a younger demographic however in the past years the numbers are being made up with now 45% of users over the age of 30. Instagram is worth testing in your area to see what kind of results it brings.

Facebook Audience Network

Facebook has a network of mobile apps and websites that your ad can also be featured in. The ads come in both a native and display format. Go here for more information on the Facebook Audience Network. Below is an example of an ad displayed in an article on the Facebook Audience Network.

You have the option to allow Facebook to automatically place your ads in the places that they are most likely to perform best in or you can manually select which of the above places you want your ad shown.

Depending on the ad you are running your options might be different.

If this is your first ad on Facebook you might want to try the automatic placements and see which areas of placement perform best for you.

I usually find that Facebook news feeds and sometimes Instagram deliver the best results and the cheapest clicks and impressions.

Set Budget

Your budget will determine the number of people that will see and click on your ads. You can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget. You also have the option to run your ad continuously or to set a start and end date.

As you adjust your budget you will see the Estimated Daily Reach will change to show you an estimate of the amount of people that your ad will be shown to each day. If you have selected to display your ads on Instagram you will see the amount of people that will see your ad on Instagram as well.

You then have the option to optimise you ad for either Link Clicks, Impressions, or Daily Unique Reach. This ad we are trying to get people to click a link back to our website so we are going to leave it at Link Clicks.

However if you are running another ad, for example a property you just sold where you don’t necessarily need people to click anything you just want as many people to see your name and the great result you got for a vendor you might choose to optimise for impressions.

Daily unique reach just means that your ads will only be shown to people a maximum of once per day. That way people don’t see the same ad from you multiple times in a short period.

After you have selected what the ad is optimised for then you can enter a bid amount. You have the option of letting Facebook automatically bid for you to get you the most link clicks at the best price or you can select to manually enter a price that you are willing to pay for each link click.

Using the Automatic feature usually gets you the most clicks but can sometimes work out a little bit more expensive than the manual bidding.

If you select manual bidding Facebook will give you a suggested bid that will get you a good amount of visibility and clicks for the ad. If you do go the manual option and bid too low your ads will be shown to very little people.

You also have the option of paying per 1000 impressions that your ad receives or per link click (CPC).

Create Your Ad

This is where you get to decide what your ad will look like. First you will have to choose the format.

Facebook offers 5 different types of ads to choose from:

• Carousel: Create an ad with 2 – 10 scrollable images or videos
• Single image: Create up to 6 variations of your ad using 1 image
• Single video: Create an ad with one video
• Slideshow: Create a looping video ad with up to 10 images
• Canvas: Tell a more immersive story by combining images and videos into a full-screen, interactive experience

Once you decide between the two, you’ll need to upload your creative assets. It’s important to note that for each type of ad, Facebook requires users to adhere to certain design criteria.

For single image ads, Facebook ask that users adhere to the following considerations:

• Text: 90 characters
• Link Title: 25 characters
• Image ratio: 1.91:1
• Image size: 1200 pixels x 627 pixels. (Use a minimum image width of 600 pixels for ads appearing in News Feed.)

For multi-image ads — also known as Carousel Ads — Facebook provides the following design recommendations:

• Recommended image size: 600 x 600 pixels
• Image ratio: 1:1
• Text: 90 characters
• Headline: 40 characters
• Link description: 20 characters
• Your image should not include more than 20% text. See if your image is appropriate

For Video Ads

• Recommended image aspect ratio: 16:9 or 1:1
• Text: 90 Characters
• Title: 25 Characters
• Max video size up to 4GB

Report on results

Once your ads are running it is important to keep track of how they are performing and how many people they are sending back to your website. To do this you can look in Facebooks ad manager.

From the ad manager you can track the number of people that are viewing your ad, clicking your ad and the cost per click for you.

If you created multiple variations of the ad you can track that in here too and see which headline and image combination is giving you the best results.

Your Website

After people have seen your Facebook ad they will be looking to either request an appraisal,  contact you or find out more information about you. This is where your personal website is vital.

Your website needs to display your brand and the value you bring to the table to make sure that your potential clients take the final step and call you.

Landing pages like the one on BrentonFaehrmann.com.au are a great way to generate targeted appraisal leads from your Facebook ads.

If there’s any way that I can help you further with your Facebook advertising or if you’re ready to get your brand online with a personal website give me a call on 0413 845 461.

The post How To Create A Successful Facebook Ad For Real Estate appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

Coloured visuals greatly increase the willingness of somebody to read and interact with your content.

Visual content obviously makes sense with social media networks like Pinterest and Instagram, but it actually works just as well in Facebook and LinkedIn.

Did you know that Facebook advertisers get 65% more engagement from their target audience with visual content?

To put it simply if you are producing content whether its posts for social media or articles on your website they better have visually appealing content.

The problem with producing content with great images is that it can be difficult to create your own high quality images all the time.

This post by Neil Patel includes information on 10 tools for finding high quality images that can be used both on your blog and in social media updates.

Let’s take a look at the list!

1. Pixabay

What would you do with access to a catalog of more than 750,000 free stock photos?

When it comes to finding images for your blog and social platforms, there aren’t many services that offer more than Pixabay.

There’s a lot to like, including the fact that you can run a fast and efficient search, right from the homepage:

Once you enter your keyword and begin your search, the results will knock you off your feet.

For example, a search for “content marketing” returns 40 images. This isn’t a lot, but that’s because the topic doesn’t lend itself well to a large number of images. Even so, you’re likely to enjoy both the selection and the quality.

One thing I like to do, when using Pixabay, is experiment with the many types of search criteria:

For example, if you need a particular image size for a blog post, you can easily enter your parameters and save time.

Pro tip: Pixabay is good for more than just images. You can also search for vector graphics, illustrations and videos.

2. Unsplash

It’s not the most advanced photo library and it definitely doesn’t have the most available images. Even so, Unsplash remains a favourite, among bloggers and social media professionals.

With its “do whatever you want” license, you never have to worry about copyright issues. Thanks to its Creative Commons Zero approach, “you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes.”

Just the same as most services on this list, the fun begins when you run a search. From there, you’re presented with a breakdown of your findings:

As you can see, a simple search for “trees,” turns up 2,700 photos from 1,300 collections. It also shows the number of users who have uploaded these photos.

If you want to dig deep for related images, click the “collections” button. This will take you to another page:

From here, you can check out images from collections submitted by particular photographers.

Pro tip: use the “new” search, at the top of the page, to find the latest photos released on Unsplash.

3. Gratisography

While the name itself is cool, the real fun begins when you begin to search for that perfect photo.

When it comes to image quality, Gratisography is definitely at the top of the industry. Every service on this list provides high quality images, but Gratisography takes this to the next level. It only takes one search to realise that this is the case.

Since all of the pictures come from the same photographer, you won’t have access to the largest library. Even so, what Gratisography lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality. Here’s an example:

Not only is the subject unique, but the colour and quality is second to none. If you want to search for images, with no quality concerns, you should start here.

Pro tip: use one of the suggested search phrases, such as people or animals, to help you get your feet wet.

4. Life of Pix

There’s a lot to like about Life of Pix, including the following:

• All photos are high resolution.
• All photos are free to use.
• New photos are added weekly.

With those three things in mind, it’s easy to see why Life of Pix is a big hit. I’ve found it to be a great place to find social media images, especially for Facebook.
In my opinion, this isn’t a service that you’ll turn to every time you need a photo. However, when you’re seeking the best quality, combined with a unique view, it may have exactly what you need.The biggest issue with this service is a lack of photos. You aren’t going to find hundreds or thousands of options for each search. What you will find, however, is that every photo meets the highest of quality standards.

Pro tip: check out its sister site, Life of Vids. It’s here that you’ll come across a variety of interesting videos, all of which are also free to use.

5. StockSnap

With hundreds of free images added every week, StockSnap is a service that you can rely on for all of your needs.

Starting on the homepage, you aren’t bogged down with clutter. Instead, all you see, above-the-fold, is a search box and popular searches:

Once you have your bearings, you can then run a search that suits your needs.

For example, a search for “business,” turns up nearly 700 photos. If you want to narrow your options, you can do so by relevance, date, trending, views or downloads.

One of the things that I like to do is search by views, as this gives me a better idea of which images are most popular.

At that point, I like to click-through to the photo and then see others that may have been created by the same photographer. I’ve used this strategy, time and time again, to uncover high quality images that haven’t been overly used.

While similar in many ways to other services, StockSnap sets itself apart with its streamlined search and great filter options.

Pro tip: use the ‘send me photos’ feature, to have the newest free stock photos delivered to your inbox every week.

6. Snapwire Snaps

While there’s nothing wrong with searching Snapwire Snaps for photos that suit your needs, there’s something else about this service that you need to know: you can sign up to receive “7 free beautiful photos every 7 days.” Do you need all of the help that you can get, when it comes to collecting photos for your blog and social media updates?

With this, all you have to do is wait for the photos to arrive in your inbox. From there, you can save the ones that could work in the future, while forgetting about the rest.

If you’d rather search for photos, as opposed to waiting for them to arrive in your inbox, you can do that as well.

By clicking through to one of the many collections, you’re presented with a variety of opportunities.

Once you make your way into a collection, there are various photos to review and choose from.

Pro tip: spend plenty of time searching the library, as there are photos from “200,000 of the world’s most talented photographers.”

7. Picjumbo

Picjumbo offers everything you would want from a stock photography site. It’s simple to use, the quality is top flight and the selection is above average.

When you first visit the site, you’ll be greeted with the following message:

This isn’t something that you have to do, but it’s a great way to stay connected to the service while saving yourself time.

If you want to manually search, you can do so in two ways:

• Via the search box.
• Click on one the most popular categories.

Either way, you’ll be taken to a large library of super high quality images. Here’s a perfect example:

The thing I like best about this service, outside of the quality, is the ability to find an image for almost every imaginable category.

It doesn’t matter if you’re searching images related to business, animals, real estate or something else.  There’s a good chance that you’ll find at least a few images on Picjumbo that pique your interest.

Pro tip: use the Latest button, located at the top of the page, to find recently added images.

8. New Old Stock

This is exactly what you get with New Old Stock. As the name suggests, this service provides “vintage photos from the public archives.”Let’s face it: some photography sites offer exactly what you expect. And then, there are those that go above and beyond, thanks to a unique angle on the industry.

If you’re seeking a way to add an old school feel to a blog post or social update, you’ll start your image search here.

Here’s an example of a photo that will take you back in time:

In a world where every photo seems to be taken in the recent past, due in large part to the use of smartphones and tablets, New Old Stock is a breath of fresh air.

The only thing that you need to remember is this: there may be some questions in regards to the rights and usage. Fortunately, this is detailed here, noting that “ all photos are, at the very least, available for personal and non-commercial use.”

In other words, you should be okay to use these photos on your blog or social media accounts.

There is no way to go back in time and take photos of past events and places. Instead, if you’re seeking a vintage image that can add a unique aspect to your content, you need to rely on a service such as New Old Stock.

Pro tip: since New Old Stock doesn’t have the best search functionality, save images that you may be able to use in the future. If you don’t, you may find it difficult to find them on the site, down the road.

9. Awesome Screenshot

Are you looking for a better way to take screenshots?

If you’ve spent any time reading my blog, you know that screenshots are a big part of almost every post. Not only does this help break up the content, but it gives me another way to share valuable information and advice.

While there are many ways to take screenshots, some applications are better than others. Your job is to find one that you are comfortable using, day in and day out. If you’re anything like me, you’ll take hundreds upon hundreds of screenshots every month.

I enjoy Awesome Screenshot for a number of reasons, including the fact that I can permanently store images for later use.

How you use the tool depends largely on your browser of choice. If you’re using Firefox, for example, you’ll want to visit this webpage to download the add-on.

It takes a little while to understand how the tool works and what it can do for you.  But, a little bit of experimenting can go a long way.

Some of my favorite features include:

• The ability to capture the entire page or any portion.
• The ability to annotate with text, circles, rectangles, lines or anything else that you need to explain or alter the screenshot.
• One-click upload to share.

(via Mozilla)

You don’t have to use Awesome Screenshot, if you have another tool that you prefer. However, if you’re having trouble with your current tool or you’re looking to start using screenshots in the near future, this one has everything you could want.

Pro tip: experiment with the many features, to ensure that you aren’t missing out on something that could help make your screenshots more unique and useful.

10. Smartphone (or Tablet)

You may have spent so much time searching the internet for free photos that you’ve overlooked the obvious: you can use your smartphone or tablet to take your own.

Do you take your iPhone 7 everywhere you go? How about your new tablet?

If so, you need to put its super high-powered camera to good use.

You don’t need any special skills or knowledge to use your smartphone or tablet to take photos. Instead, all it takes is some time and dedication. Soon enough, you may realise that this is the best way to obtain photos for your website and social media accounts.

In the event that you require some assistance, sign up for one of the many available online smartphone photography courses.

For example, the iPhone Photography Secrets course on Udemy is extremely popular. With nearly 2,000 enrolled students, you won’t be the only one seeking a bit of professional advice and guidance.

Also, don’t overlook the fact that there are many photo editing apps, such as Snapseed, for your smartphone. You can use these to edit your photos, before putting them to good use.

Conclusion

Did you know that more than 30 percent of marketers believe that visual assets are their most important content?

These are the types of statistics that should get you excited about including images in most (or all) of your blog posts and social media updates.

Do you have experience with any of these tools? Would you add others to the list? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The post 10 Ways To Make Your Real Estate Content Visually Appealing appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

In general most people would rather watch a movie than read the book that it’s based on.

Videos attract more attention than regular text or images. Especially online.

Producing regular video content that is entertaining and informative is a great way to engage your ideal clients and become the local expert.

The problem is that video is typically expensive and difficult to create.

Nowadays it’s no longer acceptable to have poor quality video especially when you’re trying to present a professional brand.

The good news is that if you have a phone that was released in the last couple of years you can get started creating professional looking videos without having to pay for a videographer.

Having professional videos done is awesome however for a lot of agents the barrier of price and time and effort to set up a shoot holds them back from getting started and actually producing content.

Pulling your iPhone out of your pocket and hitting record won’t cut it if you’re looking to get a professional looking video. Here are a few ways that you can get professional quality video from your phone.

1. Film from a steady base.

The newest phones have built in image stabilisation but no matter how steady your hands are, nothing beats using a tripod.

If you have a tripod you can get an attachment like this that will allow you to attach your phone to the tripod so it will provide you with a steady shot.

The tripod attachment pictured above is a Joby griptight mount and costs about $20

If you don’t have a tripod you can use the attachment above with the Joby Gorilapod like this that has bendy legs that will allow you to mount your phone to a desk or even a tree/light pole if you are shooting outdoors.

If you are serious about producing video content I would invest in some form of mount that allows you to get a consistent steady shot.

If you are out and about and want to make an on the fly video but don’t have a tripod, here are a couple of tips to help get a better shot:

• Keep the phone close to your body.
• Rest your elbows on a nearby object.
• Use your body to absorb bounces and shakes.

2. Film in landscape

Pretty self explanatory but its amazing how many people still film with their phone upright and then have the big black boxes on the side of their videos when they upload them to youtube.

3. Audio

Is fairly easy to get good quality video footage from a new phone. However most of the time your phones audio recording abilities never give you the professional touch you’re looking for.

Most of the time the phone you are recording from is to far away from your subject and picks up too much background noise.

Poor audio can make your awesomely professional video go downhill very quickly.

One option to improve your phones current audio recording capabilities is to use an external microphone.

The rode Videomic me is a directional microphone that attaches directly to your phone and allows you to focus the audio you record directly on your subject.

That means that the microphone will reduce noises from behind and to the sides of the camera so you will have less background noise and clearer audio.

It does connect through your phones headphone port so if you have an iPhone 7 you will need the adaptor to connect it to your phone.

Ideally you want to get your microphone as close to your subject as possible.

To achieve this you could buy a extension cable like this which would allow you to attach an external microphone like the rode Videomic me closer to your subject.

4. Lighting

Any professional videographer will tell you having a well lit video is key to the end product looking great.

When filming on your phone your footage will look best when your subject has a good amount of light on them.

If you’re filming indoors you may need additional lighting to get the best result. You can pick up studio lights online that will do the job and are reasonably inexpensive.

However if you can’t get your hands on any studio lights and are filming indoors position your subject so that they are facing a window and use the sun as your light source.

5. Exposure Lock

Your iPhone will automatically focus and expose your shot. This is great for taking quick pictures and videos on the fly, but if you’re filming somebody talking in front of the camera it doesn’t always work so well.

Your phone tends to keep adjusting and refocusing which can lead to jittery looking footage.

After you’ve got your iPhone mounted on your tripod press and hold on the area you want to focus on. This will lock the focus on this area. You can then slide your finger up and down the screen to adjust the exposure.

6. Don’t use the digital zoom

Unless you have the iPhone 7 plus whenever you zoom on your phone you are loosing picture quality.

Since the lens isn’t zooming optically (like a professional camera lens), all you’re doing is enlarging the picture digitally which means that your videos are going to look more pixelated.

If you need to get a close up shot of your subject, move the phone closer until you get the perfect distance.

Conclusion

Videos are a great way to connect with your ideal clients and build your brand as the best agent in your area.

Professional looking videos are essential to maintain a high end brand.

If you are thinking about creating videos to promote your personal brand but didn’t want to commit to hiring a videographer or purchasing expensive camera equipment then get started with these phone recording tips.

Have you tried recording a video with your phone? Share your thoughts (or even videos) in the comment section below.

The post 6 Tips To Record Professional Real Estate Videos From Your Phone appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

A strong and well known personal brand is the prerequisite for becoming a successful real estate agent.

To put it simply, the more people that know, like and trust you. The more leads you’ll get and the more listings you’ll win.

A personal brand isn’t just being well known, while having your face on bus stops and billboards will help to build awareness for your brand you also need to build a connection with your target clients. This way they will remember you when the time comes for them to sell or refer a friend.

Here’s a great infographic put together by Seth Price that highlights how to create a connection with your clients and build a memorable personal brand

Let me know what you think.

The A-Z of building a personal brand as a real estate agent.

The post Personal Branding – 26 Tips To Help Grow Your Real Estate Brand appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

More and more real estate agents are starting to realise the power of social media to grow their brand. Whether you are trying to put together a post to engage with people in your local community or create a Facebook ad to capture hot seller leads, you need one thing…

Great images!!

Here are a couple of stats that show the importance of great images in your posts.

• Content on social media with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images. (Source)
• When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. (Source)
• 40% of people will response better to visual information than plain text. (Source)

You know how important having a great image on your post is. The problem is that creating great images can be time consuming and difficult.

Luckily there are more and more tools available today that allow you to easily create great images in literally minutes.

Here are our top image creating tools for real estate agents.

Canva

Canva is a great tool for non-designers. It has a simple drag and drop tool that allows you to create great looking images really quickly.

Canva has a range of templates that you can choose from so that your image will be the exact right size for the post you are creating.

Canva is also allows you to use custom dimensions that are great for creating images for your website and blog.

Overall, it’s a great tool that allows a bit more customization and functionalities, beyond just social media templates.w

PicMonkey

With PicMonkey you can edit photos or design brand new images for your social media posts. Picmonkey allows you to Edit and Touch Up photos using a range of tools.

You can add text, effects and overlays or design your own pictures from scratch. There is also a lot of content on their blog that teaches you how to create great images.

BeFunky

Another photo editing tool but this one doesn’t require you to register, you can just get straight into it! Switch between the Photo Editor, Collage Maker and the Designer without losing your work. There are a selection of free images available in the free version, but like any of these tools, you can pay a little fee to get access to even more! Edit photos, Touch Up, add effects and get “artsy”!

Here is an example from the befunky Instagram account.

Pablo

A rather new tool by Buffer! Pablo boasts “Social Media Images Made Simple”, and it really is.

You’re given access to 25+ stylish fonts and have access to their library of 50,000+ royalty-free photos, there’s probably everything you could think of. Choose which social media platform it is for, either Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook & Twitter and select a pre-designed template or start from scratch. The small and simplified selection of editing tools really does make it quick and easy to create images. There’s no messing around, but you’re always left with a gorgeous image that you can download for free and share around.

Pablo also has the chrome extension that you can download here. If you’re surfing the web and like a particular image/quote you can simply hover over the image and the Pablo icon will appear. Clicking on this icon will open Pablo in a new window so you can begin creating!

Venngage (Free & Premium)

Looking for a tool to create infographics? Venngage is your go-to-tool. It’s super simple and has both free and paid accounts. All you have to do is choose one of the professionally designed templates, add your data, text and visuals and customise the design. You’re then free to download and share! Venngage offers a bunch of free charts, maps, icons and visuals, so even if you have nothing that is your own to start with, there are tons of free resources to help you create what you need.

Here is an example from the Venngage Instagram account.

Recite

Quotes are awesome on social media and you can “Turn A Quote Into A Masterpiece” with Recite. There are heaps of different themes and designs to choose from. Any quote you have can be instantly turned into something eye catching and interesting to read.

All you have to do is add your quote to the box and choose a template you like best. Thats it!

You can then download the image or send it directly to your social media accounts.

Over

Over is an app that will turn your phone into a full fledged design studio. Over is available on both Google play and the App store and comes packed with a ton of image editing features.

If you are looking to create great images for Instagram or Facebook than this is the app for you.

Here is an example image from the Over Instagram account.

Fotor

A great tool to make photo collages. There are a range of different templates to choose from as well as editing tools and text overlay options.

DSCO

From popular photo editing App, VSCO, comes DSCO (pronounced, “disco”). This App is available on iOS and allows you to capture, edit and share animated GIFs. You can then share to your social media accounts from the app.

Conclusion

Creating stunning graphics was much harder just a few years ago. You had to beat your head against the wall while trying to learn difficult feature-rich tools.

Not any more. I’ve covered some great tools in this article that are easy to use. You can publish your first design within half an hour (or less). And, with social media posts getting increasingly visual, creating more graphics to share your message is the least that you could do.

There’s no more excuses to not post great pictures to your social media.

Are there any other tools that you regularly use to create images for your social media? I would love to hear about them in the comments below.

The post 9 Useful Tools to Create Stunning Images For Real Estate Social Media appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

Google can drive a large amount of targeted people to your website if you can rank on the front page for multiple search terms.

It can be a great way to reach more people and position yourself as the local expert.

There are a few things that if done correctly can drastically improve your presence in the search engines.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at how you can correctly optimise your real estate content to get found in Google.

How Google Ranks Websites

Before you can start optimising your website you need to understand what Google is looking for in order for your website to be featured on the first page.

To do this lets put ourselves in Google’s shoes. Google is a tool that people use to help them to find things and learn more about certain topics.

So let’s say Sally is coming to Google searching for “best ways to add value to your home”

Google had better provide some good content on ways to add value to your home. If Google doesn’t provide Sally with what she is looking for or the websites that Google says are relevant have a poor user experience (eg. they are old, take ages to load or don’t work on a mobile phone.) Then Sally is going to be unhappy with Google.

This is the reason that people use Google over other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. People trust that Google is going to deliver the best information to help solve their problem.

Google is a robot that uses an algorithm to sort through the billions of webpages on the internet.

Google’s algorithm then determines what the content on each of your pages of your website is about and how authoritative your website is in regards to other websites that are also talking about that content.

Content Relevance

If you are looking to be found in Google for a search term, Google wants to make sure that your content is relevant to that search. Back to the example before, if you want to be found when Sally is searches “best ways to add value to your home”

Then you need to have content on your website about the Best Ways To Add Value To Your Home. There are a number of ways that you can show Google that your content is relevant to a search term which we will cover later in this article.

Having content that is really relevant to the search term is the first step to getting your website ranking on Google.

Content Authority

So lets say that you have a page on your website that is all about “best ways to add value to your home”

You should then appear in Google right? Possibly not.

There are lots of websites out there on the internet that could all be competing for that same spot at the top of the first page of Google.

And they might all have content that is about the “best ways to add value to your home.” So how does Google decide who deserves to be on the first page?

Google also looks at the authority of the website that the content is on. For example if you are searching for the “temperature of mars” you would see results from Space.com, NASA, Wikepedia, Sciencemag.org

These are all sites that have a high level of authority around the topic.

Google has a range of factors that it uses to determine the authority of a website.

• Age of the website – The older the website the more Google trusts it.
• Number of pages – If a website has lots of pages that are all about similar topics this helps to show authority.
• Social media shares – If people are liking and sharing your website it tells Google that you have content that other people might want to read too.
• Number Backlinks – This is when other websites link back to your website. This shows trust to Google as other websites are saying that your website is a credible source of information.

The authority of your website combined with the relevance of your content on the page provides Google with an idea of where they should rank your website. This is why realestate.com.au ranks at the top for pretty much every real estate related search term. They are an old website, with lots of pages, social media shares and thousands of backlinks.

Introducing Blogging

What is a blog?

A blog is short for web log. It is a place where you can post articles and videos to your website.

Blog’s are extremely beneficial to help increase your websites search engine rankings in Google.

Google loves blogs, they provide great content for people to read and watch.

Blogs also allow you as a real estate agent to provide valuable information to your local marketplace, which can be shared on social media to get in front of more of the people that matter to you.

And the more helpful content that your website has the more authoritative Google will find it.

Strategy

If your website has been setup correctly, all of your current pages should be optimised for keywords that you are looking to rank for.

Keyword selection is important. If you don’t get this right you will struggle to get found in Google.

You can use the Google Keyword Planner to get a rough idea of what people are searching for.

A keyword (or search term) is the words that people enter into a Google search. eg. real estate agents Aspley is a different search to Aspley real estate agents and will show up different results in a different order.

Obviously you want your website to be found for the keyword “your area real estate agent” but there are also many other search terms that can bring you in traffic and leads that are less competitive.

For example here is an article that Haydn Meyer posted on Brisbane’s most expensive suburbs

This article is ranking on the first page for the keyword “Brisbane’s Most Expensive Suburbs.”

Let’s look at the traffic that this blog post has received. (This is just one article’s stats not the entire website)

The article was published on the 31st of March 2016. In the 6 months since this article has been published it has generated 953 page views to Haydn’s website.

You can see that initially the post got a bit of traffic when it was posted. Most likely from social media and his email list. Then the traffic is quiet for a bit. There is two months in April and June where the post doesn’t get much traffic at all.

This is because Google hasn’t ranked the page yet. Google doesn’t usually put articles on the front page as soon as they are posted to prevent spammy articles from appearing. After the post had built up some authority in Google’s eyes it started to rank.

Imagine if you had 10 or 20 of these articles all bringing you in hundreds of views to your website per month. Can you see how this strategy can quickly snowball and get your brand in front of lots of new people.

The way we teach our clients to increase their search engine rankings is through blogging. The more you effectively blog the better your search results will be.

Note that I said effectively, if you are just aimlessly posting content to your blog, without a strategy and without optimising the posts correctly you will not rank in Google.

How To Optimise your Blog Post For A Keyword

In the example above Haydn’s blog post was ranking for the keyword “brisbane’s most expensive suburbs”

To optimise a page for a keyword there are some key places that you want to include the keyword.

These include:

• Page Title
• URL
• As a Heading 2 and Heading 3 in the content.
• First 100 words
• A couple of times throughout your content.
• Image Alt Text
• Meta Description

Let’s go through this blog post and look at what is done well and what could be improved.

Title

The keyword has been included in the title which is important. The title is the most important on page SEO factor. It is what’s called a H1 tag, which carries the most weight when Google is trying to determine what your page is about. You only want to have one H1 tag per page.

URL

You can see that the url doesn’t include the keyword. Usually WordPress will automatically include the title as the url but something has happened in this case and the keyword isn’t there.

If the URL looked like this when the article was published it would be much better optimised for the keyword.

Headings Throughout the Content

The title is the most important heading on your page, but subheadings also help to optimise your page for a keyword. You can add H2 and H3 tags to headings throughout your post to optimise it better.

WordPress allows you to easily add H2 and H3 tags to headings throughout your content.

The keyword wasn’t included in any headings on this page.

We have added the keyword “brisbane’s most expensive suburbs” to this heading and given it a H2 tag.

First 100 Words

The closer your keyword is to the top of the page the better. We have added the keyword into the first sentence to better optimise this page. You will then want to include it a couple of times throughout your content. Don’t go overboard with this or it will look spammy,  but you need to make sure that Google knows what this page is about.

Image Alt Text

Google is a robot and as a result it can’t see images like we can. So when you include pictures in your post Google doesn’t know what the picture is about. Ideally you would want your pictures to be about the topic that your blog post is on. To tell Google that your pictures are about that topic, in this case “brisbane’s most expensive suburbs” we want to make the image’s alt text include that keyword.

To do this you just need to click on the image in your post and edit it.

Then you have the option to add Alternative Text or Alt text to the image. Add your keyword there, then click save. Do this for every image on your page.

Meta Description

Adding the keyword in your meta description is less important than it used to be but is still beneficial to include. We use the

You can add the SEO description to your page

We use the Yoast SEO plugin on our websites to allow us to easily edit the meta descriptions like in the picture above.

The Yoast Plugin also provides you with an SEO Analysis of your page. You simply need to type in the keyword your want to rank for and it will give you some ideas on how well optimised your post is. You want to have as many green lights as possible.

After you have performed these steps your article is ready to be published. You can promote the article through your social media channels and to your database.

Blogging is a long term game. You won’t see results overnight but if done consistently you will see results come in.

The best way to get found in Google is through fresh content. And the best way to create this is through blog posts.

If you would like to talk more about how you can increase your search engine rankings get in touch.

The post How To Get Your Real Estate Content In Google – SEO Tips appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.

Personal Branding is about identifying and communicating what makes you unique, relevant and important to your target audience.

If you understand your values, passions and strengths you can leverage this information to separate yourself from your competitors and create a brand that really stands out.

Here is an article I wrote on using your values and passions to create a personal brand.

I’ve put together a list of 5 must do’s when building your personal brand plus some actionable steps that you can implement into your business today.

Brand Yourself

Create a brand that gives people the ability to recognise who you are as an agent. There are many ways that you can brand yourself.

You could brand yourself by the types of houses you sell. Ian Watt brands himself as the go to guy for luxury condominiums.

Or you could brand yourself with other describing words like Kerry Parkes who says “get moving with Mr Enthusiasm”

Create something that reflects who you are and what you deliver to your clients.

Brand Your Area

Creating a brand for the area that you service can be a powerful way to communicate with your target clients in that region. I’m talking about creating a nickname for the suburbs that you service eg. Brisbane Seaside or the Inner West.

Short names like those that are easily identifiable by the people that live in them. People that live in the Inner Western suburbs know that you are talking about them if you say “Inner West”.

It is a much easier way to communicate with your target market by saying something like “I’m selling the Inner West” rather than having to list off each suburb you service individually.

You can create a real community feel when you are talking to people by using a name for the area. For example if you put a post on Facebook “7 ways Inner West Homeowners are increasing the value of there property”

It is more attractive and enticing for someone that lives in that area to click through and read that article.

People in the community may already refer to your area by a nickname. If that is the case I wouldn’t recommend trying to create something new as it could cause confusion.

Build Offline and Online Assets

When building your personal brand there are certain things that communicate your brand message to your target audience. Assets are things that you own and control like your personal website and blog, but they are also things like your social media usernames and Facebook Profile. Offline assets are things such as business cards, bus stops or traditional newsletters.

If you haven’t already, you want to secure all of your brand’s names across the big social networks and register your domain.

You can use a tool called NameChk to see if your desired username is available across hundreds of social media sites.  Namecheck also shows you a list of domain availabilities.

Check to see which names are available across these platforms. The ideal result would be that your full name is available on each of these platforms. However if you have a common name it will most likely be taken already. If this is the case you will need to come up with a variation.

Try and keep your username as short as possible as this is easier for people to remember, easier to type and easier to put on other assets like flyers and websites.

If you full name is available to register as a domain name I would highly recommend purchasing it as this is highly valuable online real estate.

There are hundreds of social networks that you can register usernames on. Many of them you won’t ever use and there is not much point being on.

Here are the 7 I recommend securing a username on:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• Snapchat
• Pinterest

Domain Ownership

Your personal website is your most important part of your branding strategy. It is the hub of your marketing activities and all efforts should lead back to this. Securing your usernames on social profiles is important, but securing your own domain should be number one on the list.

The reason behind this is that you own and are in control of the content on your own website. You are in charge of everything on your site and it can grow with you.

If you were to build your entire branding strategy around a Facebook page you are giving control of your most important asset to somebody else. Facebook often make changes that effect the way pages can operate.

Your goal should be to use the social networks to attract and build an audience but then direct those people back to your main site where you are in control of everything. Your personal website also gives you the opportunity to capture names and details of people to generate leads.

The best possible domain name is one that fits your preferred name.

You can use Crazy Domains to check availabilities and register a domain name.

You also want to stick to either .com or .com.au as a domain name as these are the most recognised domain suffix’s.

Here are some examples of our clients domain names

http://haydnmeyer.com.au

http://jonathonbird.com.au

http://amayabrookman.com.au

You also want to register similar domains and forward them to your main domain.

For example if your website is built on yourname.com.au

You can also register yourname.com and forward that domain to yourname.com.au so that no matter which variation somebody types in they arrive at your site. It is common for people to accidentally type in .com instead of .com.au and vice versa.

It’s better to take the extra time to get both domains rather than have people getting error messages because they typed in the wrong domain suffix.

Registering both variations gives you a more complete ownership of your online assets.

Another example of registering similar domains is what we did for Jonathon Bird

He decided to register

http://jonathonbird.com.au

http://jonathonbird.com/

http://jonbird.com.au/

No matter which one of these domain names you go to you end up back on his main site. This makes sure that he doesn’t lose any potential clients that enter the wrong url.

You may also find it valuable to secure domains related to your area eg. AscotRealEstate.com.au

These domains are valuable for SEO purposes if you were to build a blog on one, but can also just be forwarded to your main website as well for the time being.

Personal Website

After you have secured your domain names the next step is to create a professional website. This gives you a platform to communicate with your target audience on a medium that you have complete control over.

Unlike social media profiles where you cannot control the layout, features, style and colours of your page. Your own website gives you complete control to display your brand the way you want to.

Here are a couple of must have features for your personal website:

1. Professional Photo 

A professional photo of yourself needs to be positioned front and centre on the homepage. Your photo should represent the image that you want to display to your target audience. 

2. Your name

People will come to your site and won’t always know who’s site it is. You want them to see your name and photo as soon as they land on your website.

3. About Page

When potential clients are viewing your website they are going to want to find out a bit more about you. This is where you can tell your story and highlight areas that make you stand out from the competition.

4. Testimonials

Social proof is incredibly important in building your brand. 72% 0f consumers trust online reviews as much as in person recommendations.

5. Call to Actions

No matter how good your website looks there is no benefit to you if it doesn’t generate you enquiries and leads. You need to have multiple call to actions across your website.

7. Options To Contact You 

If people are searching for you online there is a high chance that they want to get in touch. The best way to allow them to do this is with a contact page with all the best ways to get in touch with yourself. You then need to make it easy to find this page. Adding a button on the homepage as soon as the page loads works great as people can’t miss it.

8. Blog

A blog gives you the ability to communicate with your target audience by providing fresh relevant content. You can showcase your knowledge, expertise and personality through your blog posts. With a targeted blog strategy you can attract your ideal clients to your website where they can get to know you.

Those are just a couple of tweaks that you can make to your website that can help build your brand and get you more leads.

Conclusion

Throughout this article we have given you 5 great ways for you to build your personal brand. Take inspiration from others doing well, but always focus on how you can differentiate yourself and create your own brand.

Are there any other things that you are doing to build your personal brand as a real estate agent? I would love to hear about them in the comments below.

The post 5 Must Do’s When Building Your Personal Brand appeared first on Personal Agent Sites.