I was reading an article sent out by Royal Bank of Scotland
to their customers about increasing
business, kindly forwarded (together the Awesome pic) on to me by my very good friend Jeremy from
Uxbridge (thanks Jezzer).
The article, and I will quote almost word for word :( I cut out the boring bits)
...At the inaugural UK Blog Awards in April, a ceremony which celebrated the ways in which blogs can provide a small, medium or multi-national company with a personality while also giving an outlet for a first-person voice to offer industry opinion and customer feedback.
Co-organiser of the awards, Becki Cross, explains 77 % of internet users read blogs and 46% of people read blogs more than once each day. She said, “Blogging is the most effective form of inbound marketing and an opportunity for businesses to show their thoughts and expertise, to build trust and rapport with their customers, including new and potential ones.
The stats speak for themselves as companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who don’t and companies with active blogs receive 97% more leads.”...Hold on my fellow letting agents, what landlords want is an agent who knows what they are talking about, who is an expert and trustworthy and someone they can get on with (rapport).
Ok, that sounds nice Chris ... but cold facts time. Well, if
I said blogs could do the following, would you be interested and would/could it
increase your bottom line
- Make your lettings agency the number one authority of the local property market
- Drive people to your website
- Improve your google rankings without costing anything.
- Develop better future and existing customer relationships
If the answer is Yes .. lets look at this a bit more depth
If you write well written articles about the local property market, you will very quickly become known as the local property guru. By posting topics which resonate with your landlords and show your knowledge of the local property market, potential and existing landlords will get to know you as the knowledge source for the products they want. (Everyone wants to know about property.)
They have to be articulate, well researched articles about your local market, articles like this ...
The Somerford
Estate housing market outperforms the Friar’s Cliff housing market by 82%
Property
values rise by £371 per week in Christchurch
Property Market : Christchurch vs
Bournemouth vs Lymington
Upper Gordon Rd in Highcliffe – a
surprisingly good place to invest in property?
Christchurch Rents – what’s
been happening since the Credit crunch?
Become the hub, or the place to go to, for your local town’s property market. You are building trust, too. The more you can show that you are well versed in your field, the more likely any landlords will trust you to supply what they need. Your landlords additionally benefit from the learning you provide them.
Secondly, your blog gives you the opportunity to create relevant content for your potential and existing landlords. Use this as a marketing tactic to drive traffic back to your website. Make the blog the foundation for all of your social media platforms. Your business might be on Twitter and Linkedin. Post the whole article with a generic link back to the blog as whole - with relevant visuals (local roadsigns ... yes yes yes .. lots of road signs interlaced into your blog articles.) It gives the people reading your tweet or linkedin post a reason to click through to your blog.
Additionally, using Hootsuite, post links (those people on my courses know them as sign posts) directly in your blog articles, to drive traffic to specific landing pages of your website – the local pictures are brilliant, especially if use Hootsuite to its fullest – maybe an idea for another article in the future ... um?
Thirdly, I knew a man who didn’t know the different between SocMedia and SEO. He would always say, ‘ Chris, you are doing some fab work with your SEO on Linkedin!’ Funny man! Bottom line though google lurruves fresh content and guess what your blog is ... fresh content. If google loves something it goes up the google page (which is a laymans terms for saying better SEO). Fresh content is still a key to beating out your letting agent competitors in the search engine results page.
Finally, blogs provide another source to deepen the connection with your existing (and potential) landlords. By connecting directly on your blog, your clients are able to get to know your business from the comfort of your online home base. Again, build trust by being a source of information. Landlords like to be informed and appreciate that you are the one teaching them and if you know your stuff then they can trust you.
Do this my blog reading friends, and whilst you might not become a Propertygod .. you can become the top letting agent and property guru in your town. If all this sounds all good, pick up the phone (07950 147 572) and lets have a chat or email on christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk .
I can teach how to do it OR you can pay me to do it for you (or the hard part that is)
Christopher