Document Your Day-to-Day to Become Your Market's Thought Leader

There is a very common phrase when it comes to content marketing: Document, Don't Create. For you Realtors that want to beef up your content marketing strategy and build your own brand, this is going to be the magic bullet that allows you to do this--and more easily then you imagined. But how exactly does this work?

Before we start with how it works, let's start with why this is so important. You see, the common issue we find when speaking with Realtors about what kind of strategy they have with their content marketing and brand building is that they tried it, it took forever to get the marketing piece "perfect," and it didn't have the impact they wanted, so they decided to do something that required less stress and effort. I can totally understand people's reasons for feeling this way, but it's totally off-mark and makes no sense at all.

First off, you should never worry so much about making a piece of content "so perfect" that it ends up paralyzing you and takes forever to get out. Your hunger to make this one perfect piece of content is the problem. With content marketing, it's not one at bat, it's many at bats. The more content you put out, the more visible you are to people in your marketplace. This means more people will recognize you (your brand), and consider you a thought leader in your marketplace.

So if we can all agree that there is no magic bullet out there that will allow a single piece of content you make to catapult you into the stratosphere as the most known and revered Realtor in your marketplace, how can you deploy an effective content marketing strategy that will get you where you want to be--without having to expend too much effort?

It's easy:

Document. Don't Create.

Many Realtors get stuck trying to create content because they are trying to figure out how to portray their brand to their marketplace in a certain way. This can be super stressful. If you are a new real estate agent, this can be even more stressful. The truth is that you shouldn't have to come up with a strategy to portray your brand. Just live your life and document it. This is the difference between trying to be one of the Housewives of Beverly Hills versus your true self, a Realtor in your marketplace.

Documenting will especially play well for the real estate industry. The typical homeowner has no idea what exactly it is a real estate agent does in their day-to-day business. Even worse, because of some bad apples in the industry, public sentiment of Realtors in general is not super favorable. Documenting your day will help address these two issues. You aren't coming off as some polished know-it-all who claims to be the top 1 percent of x, y or z. You are showing them, for example, "Here is a challenge I'm facing today. It's a tough one, but I believe this is the right path to take to best serve my client's needs."

If you approach your content marketing in this fashion, you will win.

Every Media Platform Will Work with Your Efforts to Document

Before any of you say, "Well, I don't shoot video" (which, by the way, you DESPERATELY need to), I'd like to point out that using documentation as part of your content marketing strategy will actually work with any platform you are using to promote your content and your brand. Here are some quick examples:

Instagram and Snapchat

You can use Instagram Stories to post short videos throughout the day that give people updates on what you are doing with your listings, how you are preparing for listing appointments, pro tips on how to get up-to-the-minute market information, updates on things you learned at your weekly brokerage meetings, etc.

YouTube

Upload short, edited videos that tell a story about something you did. For instance, maybe you just sold a really difficult listing, or perhaps a listing that was the highest priced sale of any home in your marketplace. In either of those scenarios, if you shoot little clips of video throughout the entire listing process, you can edit those clips together nicely to tell this story and show homeowners in your marketplace what it is you do and how good you are at it.

Facebook

Besides the obvious (posting video on your Facebook video page or using Facebook Stories), you can also use your Facebook page to promote educational materials you create to your clients and prospects. You can also post links to blog posts you've written and boost those to promote your brand, as well.

Twitter

You can post photos, post links to your blog and links to videos you create.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another fantastic platform for sharing video and written content like blogs.

So as you can see, it is certainly not impossible to document yourself to build your brand and take advantage of multiple social media platforms to promote your brand.

To view the original article, visit the Leading Agent blog.