Data Tools Are a Must Asset for Starting a Real Estate Newsletter
Most real estate marketing experts will agree that a newsletter is a fantastic idea. However, for the average broker or agent a newsletter poses several challenges. Real estate data tools are one solution.
Because here’s the first challenge: Sure, a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly newsletter to prospects and clients sounds like a great idea in theory. In fact, this super-agent has built quite a following with his “pop-culture” themed newsletter. Kenny Truong, who was named to Inman’s Influencer List, reportedly has 6,000 subscribers to his newsletter. What a fantastic well of prospects, clients and referrals!
But as a busy agent or broker, who’s really got the time to create a newsletter with interesting information?
There’s other obstacles as well.
This is an era where many people are abusing the entire idea of news by creating their own “fake news.” In fact today, fake news seems to generate more headlines than news itself. And this fake news is not just confined to political news either. Many sites are hawking so called “secrets” about this celeb or “you won’t believe this” about other celebs. It’s literally a deluge of phony content to generate clicks. Readers are more skeptical than ever.
So how does a busy agent or broker generate legitimate news items?
Here’s the third challenge: How does that broker or agent create news they can host on their own site? It’s easy to post headlines to articles. But that sends prospects to someone else’s site. After all, that’s the one of the main purposes of a newsletter —to not only inform, but to generate traffic and leads.
Fortunately, there is a very simple solution. With today’s big data technology, a broker or agent can actually embed a few links into their site that will pull in a wealth of relevant, hyper-local data. This is data that doesn’t cover national news or international sports. It’s granular data that is local to the agent’s immediate marketplace or even neighborhoods.
For example, using data feeds from big real estate data providers such as Home Junction Inc., an agent can display Recent Homes Sales and Market Trend data on their website.
What a fantastic and, frankly, very easy source of news for a newsletter. Of course, prospects and customers are going to be interested in local housing trends. What’s incredible about this real estate data is that it’s not like a broker or agent has to put on a hat with the word “Press” on it and go out and dig up this information.
It’s fed on a regular basis right to their site.
Those simple bits of real estate data are probably enough to serve as the main topic of any newsletter. Consumers love this stuff. Prospective home buyers get to see where the market is heading. Prospective sellers will love to see the direction the value of their home is going.
There’s plenty of other real estate data to consider as well:
- School Information
- Demographics
- Business Listings
- Home Values for Individual Properties
Sure, a broker or agent might prefer to write a blog about local market trends. Or new communities under construction. Or a new mall going up in their neighborhood. All great content for a newsletter.
But the one main factor to remember with a newsletter is that this is a regular feature that consumers expect.
So as anybody who writes a regular blog knows, writing that first blog is easy. You have all sorts of ideas saved up in your brain. Same with perhaps the second blog.
But after that, a typical blogger discovers coming up with new articles can be a chore, a headache for some. You continually need fresh ideas and content. Deadlines constantly loom, no matter how much you prepare for them.
On top of all this, what if you see you are generating a great response for your newsletter? People are opening the email, reading the articles and visiting your site. You can’t just stop.
Make it easy on yourself. Get some real estate data tools that help you create your own news in a snap. After all, you are not a reporter. You are a real estate professional, and that’s enough work as it is.
