The mantra “Location, Location, Location” has always been our war cry in real estate. Now more than ever, local and even hyper-local content, connection and community are some of the best ways to supercharge your real estate career. Focusing in on the community and embedding yourself is a strategy that both newbies and experienced agents can implement. By doing so, you maximize your efforts, visibility and earning potential.
There are quite a few tech tools available to REALTORS® these days to help you boost your community presence. It doesn’t take a mint to do so, but it does require a good action plan and follow through. Let’s jump on in:
- Pick a community that will work for you financially. Analyze the turnover, sales, market and, to a lesser degree, the competition. We won’t worry so much about who is already there (competition) because a fresh new face and approach can be a welcome addition to any community. More importantly, does this community have enough closed sales to support your income goals?
- Use a mapping tool, like Google Maps, to map out the community and even hyper-local communities within it. Post those maps to your website or blog. Don’t forget to include a link within each map of homes for sale or recently sold homes. These maps can be very useful for both you and your clients, especially in communities that have amoeba-like boundaries.
photo courtesty of Papillon Real Esate
- Geo-tag your photos and videos. Geo-tagging is adding a code to your picture or video that indicates where it was shot. Some cameras do this automatically now, but if not, your photo software might. (iPhoto does.) Or you can geo-tag them when you upload to sites such as Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, etc. Geo-tagging allows your media to show up on Bing Maps and Google Maps, including Google Street View and Google Earth.
photo courtesty of Papillon Real Esate
- Join a geo-social community such as Foursquare, Brightkite or Gowalla. Using these apps (usually from your mobile phone), you check in to various locations. These check-ins can be posted to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, showing that you not only talk the talk but also walk the walk in the community you serve. As you see others checking in at the same locales or near you, you can friend them, building your sphere of influence. Once you get going, they will be friending you as well. This is an easy-to-use community builder. Make a point to check in to your listings and add a “tip” both on your listings and all your checks. If you do, when others check in nearby, the “tip” will show up, direct them to the location and share that the tip came from you. This gives you added presence in your community and exposure for your listings.
photo courtesty of Flickr user Josua Kaufman
- Create a Facebook page for your neighborhood and post related stories, pictures and more. By subscribing to information services such as outside.in and everyblock.com, you can be sure to be kept in the know about what is going on in your area. Then post links and stories to your blog, Twitter account and Facebook page.
- If you are on Twitter, find local Twitter-folk and connect with them. There are lots of ways to search for Twitter users in your area. Twitterlocal.net and Chirpcity.com are just a few services that will help you find local tweeps. Many cities and communities have vibrant local Twitter groups that meet regularly for tweetups.
- Create single property websites for your listings and include street-views. This allows the potential buyer to not only look at photos of the house, but "drive" or "walk" around the street and neighborhood to get a good feel for the surrounding areas. Realbird.com's websites do this automatically if your area is on Google Maps. If you happen to have geo-tagged photos on the web (as mentioned above), they may actually show up in the street view. How cool is that!
photo courtesy of Papillon Real Estate
- If you are a member of ActiveRain, make sure to post all of your community blog posts to their Localism.com sister site. This is a great resource site for the public to check out pictures and blogs of the community.
- If you are a blogger, make sure to put as much geographic location as possible in your blog posts. This allows Bing to pick up localized blog posts with their map app, “Local Lens,” and highlight them on Bing Maps.
- Subscribe to Trulia and Zillow alerts. Find out when the public asks questions about your local community real estate market. When you answer their questions in an informed and professional way, it positions you as the knowledgeable local REALTOR®.
- Create a Flickr group for your community. Encourage locals to join and participate in your group. You can do this by simply asking them if certain pictures can be included in the group photo “pool,” and you will be amazed how the group will grow from there.
photo courtesy of Phoenix Light Rail Group
- Make sure to use your community name as a keyword whenever possible. Do this in your blog, tweets, Facebook page, photo/video tags and descriptions. Google’s fingers stretch far and wide, and you want to be the “it” person when people search for your community online. If they find you posting blogs, check-ins, photos, market reports and more, you will become known as the girl/guy around town.
Combining “old school” real estate business-building techniques, such as farming, with new technology applications allows you to solidify your position in the community as the local real estate expert. You are able to do so in an authentic, professional way and present yourself as a real person in the community. This gives you maximum “street cred”—no pun intended!
You can’t do everything overnight, but you can map out and stick to a well-thought-out plan.
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Janie Coffey has been in construction, real estate and development for 20 years and founded sister real estate and construction companies, Papillon Real Estate and ReDevelopment LLCs, five years ago. She has put her degree in Marketing and Business Administration to good use and is a "techie" by nature. Janie is the geo-technology writer for Agent Genius, an online real estate resource site. She is working on a graduate degree in the history of business and technology in her “free time.”
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