It’s really easy when you’re an estate agent or letting agent, to look around at what others are doing and then fall into the same pattern. If they’re making these mistakes though, it could harm your brand.
Talking about yourself too much
We all want to share the good stuff we’ve been doing. It’s why social media is filled with humble brags, and people sharing their achievements. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being proud of yourself. But the rules of business are different. If your blog posts are only about the charity events you’ve been involved in, your expansion, your team, the number of houses you’ve sold, your MD being on Homes Under the Hammer and so on and so forth, no one will be interested.
You’ll be writing the posts (or paying to have them written), and when you flick through the website on the odd occasion you’ll be really pleased to see lots of good news about your business, but, in the nicest possible way – who cares? Potential customers won’t care about that stuff until they’ve got a reason to, which is why it’s recommended that 80% of your content is about your customers and what they find useful, and 20% of the content is sales-related or self-promoting.
Bad writing
If the content you put out is filled with poor grammar, it doesn’t matter how good your point is, it’ll get lost. It’s an unfortunate truth, but the use of bad grammar online in things like phishing scams has led it to become a marker of distrust.
We know some people struggle with this sometimes, and if that’s you there are tools that can help you! They’re not perfect, but they’ll highlight areas in the text you’ve written that need work, as well as tell you how to change them. We’ve written about Grammarly and HemingwayApp here.
Being boring
This is a hill I’m willing to die on. It doesn’t matter if a business does something incredibly mundane like making nuts and bolts for cheese making machinery, the people reading their content are still real people who need to be entertained.
Bringing that back to the property industry, landlords are all real people. They’re not all straight-laced businessmen in sharp suits who haven’t smiled since the late 70s. So there’s absolutely no need to write content like they are! It’s totally possible to write about quite dry topics with an injection of your brand’s personality. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I’ve even written a guide on how to write about property legislation when it’s as dry as old boots.
Keyword stuffing
No one wants to read content that sounds like it’s been written by a robot. There’s a lot online at the moment about AI content writing being cheap and efficient, but it’s no good being cheap and efficient if it’s also a bunch of old balls.
People aren’t stupid. They’ll be able to tell if your blog has been written by a robot with the sole purpose of getting you ranking on Google by using repetitive phrasing. Google will also see past this approach, so you need to always make sure your content is personable, and all about adding value to your customers and potential customers, rather than being about what YOU can get out of it.
Jumping on irrelevant trends
It’s so tempting when you see it’s something like ‘Dress up as Wolverine and eat Frosties for breakfast day’ to want to post about it because everyone else is. But if it’s not very relevant to your brand, the chances are you’re going to look a bit desperate, like you’re trying to be cool. Often you might even get engagement, but it’s from other people who love Wolverine and Frosties, not people looking to sell or let their home.
There are some great awareness days and holidays on the calendar that can be totally relevant. We’ve created content for clients around hedgehogs for hedgehog awareness day and content about smoke alarms for pancake day. It does take a bit of thought and planning, but it’s totally worth it when you provide helpful and relevant content around a subject everyone is talking about.
I’ve capped this at five because I’m not a big fan of being negative, but if you’re finding your marketing efforts have stalled, consider the kind of content you’re putting out and whether any of these mistakes are creeping in.
Need help to create a kickass marketing plan without the mistakes? Look no further! We can help you plan your content and social media, and even write and post it for you, if you don’t have the time. Learn more here.
Katie Gillingham
Katie is a Freelance Copywriter living in rural Dorset with her daft old Labrador. She first started writing content for the property industry back in 2015, and loves nothing more than bringing brand voices to life!
