Working Your Real Estate Vendors and Lenders for Content

Where to get real estate website content is a question asked often in the search engines. You may be able to write some or even all of your content when it comes to ability, grammar, and spelling. Or, maybe you have someone to edit what you write.

Before you spend money for content that often isn't of high quality, think about what your vendor and business contact partners can provide for you free--and gladly do it.

Gather Your Vendors

Sit down and write down all of the people you deal with or correspond with in relation to your real estate business. We're not talking about competitors. We are talking about, for example:

• title or abstract companies
• attorneys
• surveyors
• home inspectors
• landscapers
• furniture stores
• pest control companies
• home repair
• builders
• you'll think of others

Make up a list, even checking your email contacts to catch those you forget.

What Value Can They Contribute?

Next, to each one of them, write down what they do and can write about that would be of interest to your site visitors. Forget about their writing ability for now, as it isn't important. You don't have to ask them, as you know what kind of questions your clients and prospects are asking. For example:

• Attorney: How an attorney prepares a deed on a property.
• Title Company: What is the value of title insurance?
• Surveyors: What will be marked in a survey as an encroachment?
• Home Inspectors: What is the most common defect in your area noted in home inspection reports?
• You're getting the idea. Do this for every contact/vendor type.

You have two goals here. You first want to determine what content would be of value to your website and your site visitors. Second, you want to make sure that what you're asking for is a common service or product of the vendor/contact. You don't want to ask for something that they will not want to write about.

Don't get carried away with this step, as you can just ask them for what they find is the most commonly asked question about their business, and just ask them to answer it in article format.

What's in It for Them?

It's great wanting free relevant content from your business partners, but there must be something in it for them as well. As they're doing some work for you, it needs to be enough value to get them to take action.

Here's what you can offer that should get their buy-in:

1. A backlink to their website, a value for SEO. Make sure it's a text link with relevant text to the page to which you link.
2. A photo of their choice for their business.
3. A credit with their business name, logo, slogan, etc.

Don't say you'll recommend them, more like "this article courtesy of _________." This way you can get competing vendors to contribute, or at least ask them to do so.

Make It Easy

Send each of them an email asking for their content, and if you don't have a contributor already with these features, create a fake one for an example to which you can link them.

Tell them that all they have to do is send an email with their article text. Make sure to tell them that they do not need to worry about grammar or spelling issues, as you're going to edit their text.

Once you've created their article and posted it to the site, send them a link with your thank-you. If you use analytics or other statistics to check your page traffic, now and then send them another thank-you with the number of site visitors who have visited their article.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.