6 Tools to Manage Your Personal Real Estate Brand Online

In an industry like real estate, the concept of personal branding is crucial. While you may have spent a career establishing your name in the industry, that doesn't mean your personal brand is nearly as strong in the online realm. Your face may grace buses, benches and billboards locally, but you may not carry the same clout on the web.

While it may come easy to some people with unique names that their site or social profiles will pop up in search results right away, not everyone is so lucky. Just for fun, I just ran a generic search on my name and it took 22 pages before I saw content related to me. I rank behind a pro football player, a celebrity real estate agent, politicians and a wrestler, so it's not easy to stand out when you have a common name online. Google has become great at personalizing and localizing results over the years to deliver the right information the user is trying to find, but it doesn't mean there won't be lots of competition even for local results.

More Articles on Branding

• The Ultimate Guide to Branding for Real Estate
• The Importance of Brand Consistency

I'm going to assume that you already have your own real estate agent website as a starting point for your branding efforts, so here are a few tools you can use to start getting a hold of your personal brand online.

Tools to Help Manage Your Personal Real Estate Brand Online

1. Namechk

Namechk is a free tool and a great first stop when it comes to getting started with branding your business online. The service allows you to search hundreds of different sites to see if your username is available. In this day and age, it's very important to be able establish consistency across multiple platforms. Ideally, you can find a unique username to use across a wide spectrum of platforms and make it easier for your customers to find you online.

2. BrandYourself

BrandYourself helps you grade what type of shape your online presence currently is in. Are there negative reviews or articles tied to your name? The goal with this site is to get the positive items to rank higher than the content that might show you in a negative light. There is a free tier, as well as an ongoing paid tier that you can subscribe to.

3. justdelete.me

JustDeleteMe is for helping you prune your existing online presence. There are literally hundreds of services listed along with the level of difficulty involved with removing your profile. The world wide web has been around for awhile now, so many people have spent a good portion of their lives partaking in the online world. Things that may have interested you a decade ago may still be floating around out there. This service can definitely help tie up loose ends that may exist in your online presence.

4. TalkWalker Alerts

It is important to monitor the things that are being said about you online. Setup Talkwalker Alerts to send you email notifications when you're mentioned online. When creating alerts, be sure to add variations of your name, as well as inputing your name with and without quotes.

5. SocialMention

Similar to TalkWalker, the service handles mentions that occur on various social networks. And this doesn't just include the major social networks—it includes photo upload sites and various other social destinations online. Set up your notifications to be sent directly to your inbox or via RSS and keep on top of what might be said about you online.

6. Social Network Profiles

Social network profiles rank well in search engines. While I definitely think you should be using social media to promote yourself online, that's not always for everyone. Flesh out your profiles on LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and Facebook. Even if you aren't an active user, at the very least they can reinforce your real estate website. Having additional links to your personally branded pages helps because it gives Google more search results to deliver based on pages you actively control.

To view the original article, visit the Lone Wolf blog.