In the real estate industry, reputation matters quite a bit and can make or break you. If you don’t have a great real estate reputation online, it can be hard to find buyers and sellers ready to hire you.
Even those agents without any type of reputation online can struggle to become successful in real estate. You need an online real estate reputation and it needs to be good.
With a good online presence, you gain access to unlimited potential and you can gain new leads regularly. While the old way of building your reputation was likely through word-of-mouth, today, it’s likely happening on social media, through online reviews, with your blog posts, and through your online listings.
According to an article from Forbes, many major decisions are made after a search online for reviews and other information about a real estate agent or another type of business. You need a presence online and a good reputation.
There are ways to boost your real estate reputation online. Let’s look at some of the top options you can use to make sure you have a solid online reputation and you can grow your real estate business.
Top 7 Ways to Boost Your Online Real Estate Reputation
1. Use Monitoring Tools to Maintain Your Reputation
One of the ways you can make sure your online real estate reputation stays in good standing is with the right tools to help you monitor your online reputation. While serving on Google or another search engine for yourself can help, you can also use Google Alerts or a professional reputation management firm to help you.
It’s important to know if something is put out about you, whether it’s an article, blog post, or a review. If it’s not favorable, it should be addressed immediately. The longer unfavorable content remains out there about you and easy to find, the more damage it can do.
2. Become an Authority in Your Niche
Your blog gives you an excellent tool to help you become an authority in your niche. Whether you work with luxury home buyers and sellers, first-time buyers, or a variety of buyers and sellers, you can use your blog to show your audience your expertise.
Even if you don’t have time to write for your blog, you can hire an expert real estate content writer to handle your blogging. This can help build up your online real estate reputation and show you in a favorable light online. Plus, blogging helps with SEO and helps you gain a large audience when you share your blog posts on social media.
3. Take Advantage of Social Media
Of course, with blogging, you can show off your expertise, but you also want to share those blog posts, and plenty more. According to the NAR, nearly 90% of real estate agents are using social media and you should be, too. Social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn should be at the top of your priority list.
You can share your blog content, new listings, articles from the real estate industry, and more to grow an audience on social media. Not only will it help to provide a good real estate reputation online, but it can also help you find new leads.
Just like writing blog posts, you can outsource the social media marketing and management you need to a professional. This can help keep your time free to work with clients and nurture leads, while your social media continues to grow.
4. Get Positive Reviews
There are plenty of review sites out there today and having positive reviews goes a very long way for your online real estate reputation. You want to focus on a few of the major options and make sure you get favorable reviews from clients you work with.
Positive reviews can help build your reputation and can even help you rank higher on review sites online. So many people go online to read reviews before they make a decision about a real estate agent or anything else these days. If you don’t have favorable reviews or very many reviews, it can be hard to convince someone to work with you.
You want to get reviews you can use on your website and even some on Yelp, Zillow, social media, and other websites. Try to get your best clients to provide reviews you can use and also on other sites, too.
5. Use Management
Maybe you’ve already found out that your reputation either doesn’t exist online or it’s not great. If this is the case, you can hire a reputation management company to help repair or create a great reputation for you online. They will have specific tools and tips they can use to help push down anything negative about you in the search results while highlighting the positive things.
6. Choose the Right Broker
When you align yourself with other professionals, such as your real estate broker, you want to make sure they have a great online reputation. A broker with a bad or average reputation will pass some of that reputation onto you.
With the right broker, you can gain a better reputation from their great online reputation. This can help your clients see you in a better light, especially if you don’t have much of an online real estate reputation.
7. Refer Clients to Great People
Your clients will likely ask you for referrals when they need a real estate attorney, mortgage broker, or other professionals. Make sure you choose professionals with great online reputations. When you make a good referral, it makes you look good in the eyes of your clients, which helps your reputation.
If you’re trying to earn real estate success in today’s world, your online reputation incredibly important. There are many ways you can go about creating a better real estate reputation online. Use these tips and make sure you choose the right broker to help.
