Real Estate Agents: How to Crack Craigslist

It’s probably part of your process: After securing a property listing or re-listing a vacant property, you post it on Craigslist. And depending on how many other tasks you’ve had to complete at that sitting you might not give this one your very best effort, especially observing the often minimal real estate listing ads already on the site.

You can’t be blamed, though, because Craigslist is a minimalist haven: From property listings to garage sale notices to used rollerblades, the ads tend to be spare with maybe an image… and certainly not as detailed as online property listings on your broker’s web site or a formal brochure.

It’s too bad, though, because by not differentiating yourself here you’re missing an opportunity to connect with millions of real estate prospects every day who already have thousands of links to choose from in their home search. Making a good impression here is crucial.

This week on Geek Estate, Oregon Realtor Jeremy Linder shared his experiences on Craigslist and offered some tips on how to use the site effectively to promote real estate listings. In addition to emphasizing content recommendations and tracking, which can certainly help determine which ads are having the most impact on homebuyers, Mr. Linder kicks off with the following bit of advice:

“Take a few minutes and search your local CL and note what kinds of ads and headlines everyone is posting. More than likely most agents are using the same or very similar ads with little different between them. Your ad needs to stand out from the rest and the more your ad looks like a private party ad the better your results will be.”

In other words you want to stand out, which can’t be refuted. However, it’s also important to build a consistent, branded look around your listings on Craiglist that become familiar to readers.

ReachFactor has a function that automatically builds a pre-formatted Craigslist flyer for every one of your property listings. Using the tool, you simply cut & paste your own flyers into the site. This is a great way to generate instant traffic to your site, which is a crucial element of your Craiglist real estate strategy.

You want to get people away from your competitor’s ads and in the direction of your web site.

View the original article on the ReachFactor blog.