How Can You Prove You're a Local Real Estate Expert?

It's a question you may ask yourself often: How can I demonstrate to consumers in my market that I'm the best real estate agent in the area?

As with most components of real estate, the answer has become more involved and multi-dimensional in recent years. Once, planting yard signs in front lawns and having a witty slogan on a shopping cart may have been enough. Now, with consumers able to access more information than ever, proving yourself as the go-to local agent requires a consistent, digitally savvy reputation management strategy.

Fortunately, you can take two clear actions to establish yourself as the most trustworthy real estate agent in your market.

1. Dominate local SEO

When it comes to reputation management, real estate agents face a hard reality: If you don't rank at the top of Google search results about local real estate, you will lose credibility and fail to prove your position as the best agent in your market.

Imagine it from a consumers point of view: They're in the market to buy or sell a home, see one of your signs or social media posts, and search for you on Google.

What they get back is a barren online presence, without any client reviews, a dedicated website, or information about your address, business hours, and current listings. Maybe they can't even find you at all. Who could blame them when they decide to look for another agent? If you were looking for a lawyer or plumber or other service provider, would you hire somebody who didn't come with any recommendations? You might even think they are out of business, if you couldn't find them online.

This is why it is crucial for you to have a strong presence on local Google search results. More than ever before, real estate searches start online, and more than ever before, Google is serving real estate searchers locally-focused content.

When consumers look for you online, establish the SEO presence necessary to ensure that they are served a strong, informative, persuasive content. To start, create a Google business profile and populate it with your address, phone number, websites, and up-to-date photos.

Then, solicit and manage reviews from clients, fellow agents, and your family and friends. This way, when people search for you on Google, they see that you have satisfied customers, impressed colleagues, and a history of superior real estate service.

2. Leverage social media

People's media consumption habits have changed dramatically since the advent of social media. As an agent, this gives you an opportunity. Use social media effectively and you can make sure that local consumers know about your listings and your knowledge.

Traditionally, social media has been divided into organic and paid efforts. Both have their benefits and can help showcase your local real estate footprint and expertise.

Organic posts tend to be good for general observations about the state of the local real estate market. By posting about what's happening in the market, you show people in your community that you have a strong handle on what's going on – which homes are selling, at what price, and how long after being listed.

Paid social media posts are also valuable if you want to establish yourself as the leading local real estate expert. Most of your paid social media posts are likely to feature home listings, and we know that agents who buy Facebook ads through Homesnap earn 2.5 times more leads from Facebook than agents without paid social media ads.

Those leads come through increased digital reach – people see an ad and know about your foothold in the local real estate market. Whether they become a lead now or later, paid social media helps showcase to consumers that many local buyers are already trusting you with their real estate needs.

Proving that you're a local real estate expert is essential to earning new clients, and requires both having the knowledge required to be an expert and the online presence necessary to convince consumers of your abilities. By upgrading to Homesnap Pro+, you can accomplish both of these objectives, and become the local agent who buyers and sellers contact first.

To view the original article, visit the Homesnap blog.