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Style icon and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood once said that your life would be more interesting if you wore impressive clothes.
You can apply that principle to content marketing — your brand will be more attractive if you can create impressive content.
Don’t get me wrong; real estate blogging is great and can help you brand your business, but there are other ways to create valuable, shareable content.
To ensure that your content stands out from all of the standard formatted, dry blog posts on the Web, why not use a different approach? Frame your content in a new way.
There are many different ways that you can differentiate the message of your brand and engage with your local prospects. We have compiled 12 of the most creative media formats below.
1. Frame the content in the form of a quiz.
Why not create some shareable content in the form of a viral quiz? It’s a great way to segment your audience and create a viral buzz focused on you and your website.
Check out sites such as Qzzr.com and TryInteract.com for ideas on quizzes you can deploy in your market. It doesn’t have to be real estate-related all the time. You can create quizzes about your local area or city and target local homeowners in your city with a Facebook ad.
2. Hold a Q&A on Twitter.
Tweeting isn’t all about one-offs. You can release a block of questions and answers on Twitter and interact with people in your city. Later, you can repurpose that content into a curated blog post.
3. Ask a “yes or no question” in a text.
If you want a customer to give you a straight answer, then ask them a straight question. It is easy to get a simple response via a text message by using SMS applications. This type of content drives not only readership but also engagement.
4. Instead of thinking website, think document.
Go bigger by offering downloadable content. A discrete document, such as an e-book, white paper or PDF frequently is perceived to have a higher value. This tactic is great to create as a lead magnet for a landing page.
[Tweet “Go bigger by offering downloadable content — an e-book, white paper or PDF.”]
5. Use infographics and charts.
Infographics and charts are a great way to map out the data of your local real estate market. You can use sites such as infogr.am and Piktochart to create highly engaging images. Be sure to add your logo to the image — infographics can be great content that people love to share.
6. Review a recent case study.
Do you have a product that you need to present? Focus in on imagining how it was used by one ideal buyer or seller client to solve their problem. When you can be specific, it frequently has general appeal and helps with encouraging people to purchase work with you.
7. Set it up like a comic strip.
Everybody loves comics. If you can say what you need to in the form of snappy one-liners, you can always present them with sequential panels, stick figures and bright colors. Bitstrips can help you get started.
dimitris_k / Shutterstock.com
8. Use a shared space to place content.
Scrapbook sites such as Pinterest are excellent for pulling together related content and having it all in one place. Take lots of pictures as you tour and list homes, and build a significant following. You can also start a conversation in Reddit.
[Tweet “Scrapbook sites like Pinterest are excellent for pulling together related content in one place.”]
9. Consider video marketing
Video is taking off and will continue to grow. You can easily shoot video content when you are out in the real estate field. You can also record on-screen presentation on tools such as ScreenFlow and Camtasia.
10. Interview an expert and do a podcast
Craft your content in the form of questions that your audience might ask, along with answers provided by an expert. Maybe you are the expert, or you can collaborate with a lender, home inspector or another agent on your team. You can even turn this interview-style content into a real estate podcast.
11. Write a glossary or FAQ
It isn’t just great for SEO. Reference pages such as our real estate glossary are a type of evergreen content that will get the attention of real estate buyers and sellers now and years from now.
[Tweet “Reference pages will get the attention of real estate buyers and sellers now and for years.”]
Think of frequently asked questions, and start building a database of answers. What are the average days on the market? How long is the escrow period? What are the average closing costs?
12. Keep an eye out for more unusual content opportunities
Captions, ALT text, rollover text — these forms of microcontent can all be customized and add interest to your content. It will not only optimize your website — it will also make you appear very knowledgeable about your material.
Those are 12 real estate content ideas. You can find even more by just thinking about what attracts you eye when you’re reading content. Is it color, captions, sidebars, audio or video? They all provide you with clues for the next content marketing project you do that isn’t just a simple blog post.
Ben Janke is the real estate lead conversion specialist at Tech Agent Academy. Like Tech Agent Academy on Facebook or connect with Ben on LinkedIn.
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