Social Media In Property Week: Taking Care of Housekeeping

This week we have a very special week of blogs from  just one guest blogger.

We have had some fantastic guests.Today I would like to introduce you to Lee Smallwood. Lee was one of the first people I ‘met’ on Twitter, and the one who encouraged me to set up this blog. (Boy, what a find!)

His help and advice have been invaluable to me over the past months. He is one of the few people that really ‘gets’ social media marketing and can find an angle to make it work for any business. (He’s a top chap and curry fanatic too!)

Taking Care Of Housekeeping

Just for the record – I’m not a property developer, I don’t buy property to let or sell; in fact the closest I’ve come to it is playing Monopoly (!)  So when Robbie asked if I could write some blog articles on how property developers can utilise social media I immediately said “YES”.
Why? Well there’s so much that developers/investors could be doing online – whether they’re buying to sell on or buying to let – I saw it as an opportunity to help… well, a little bit at least.

Little Acorns

I titled this blog ‘Taking care of housekeeping’ because there’s, errr well ‘stuff’ to do before you start. And what you do first depends on what position you’re currently in; are you:
·         Looking to sell a house you’ve developed?
·         Looking let a house that you’ve already developed?
·         Looking to buy a house to let?
·         Looking to buy a house to sell?

And, if I was talking to you face-to-face my next question would be; “other than your Agent, solicitor, IFA, immediately family and/or friends, who else knows what you want to do?”

Get Visible & Let ‘People’ Know

Have you got a website showing your property portfolio – including the ones you’re developing, selling and letting? To set up a website these days costs nothing but a couple of hours and no programming experience. Sites like wordpress.com, posterous.com, blogger.com all are free to use and can be setup in literally in 5 minutes. But setting them up correctly requires a little insider knowledge – and that’s what I want to help you with, plus, how to increase your online visibility using social media.

What’s The Benefit Of Having A Site Set Up Specifically For Your Portfolio?

Well, it acts like a hub, a home for your property – no matter what you’re wanting to do with it and you’re in control of how it appears on line. Let me explain:
I found this house on Rightmove
Nice place huh but as much as rightmove .co.uk has a high volume of traffic, they’re not all together web savvy people as the name of this image is ‘70943_039_IMG_00_0000.jpg’ – now you tell me how the name of that image tells you:
a)      Where it is?
b)      Price bracket?
c)      Number of rooms? etc,

What the image should have been called is something like:
<postcode>_<town>_<StreetName_<NumberOfRooms>_<Price>.jpg

Also, in order to create more visibility on this property they use the wrong H1 heading tag for the page:

<h1><span><i>my</i>rightmove</span> – manage saved properties, searches and alerts</h1>

Well, I suppose they’re promoting something – but it’s certainly not the house (!) What it should be saying is something like:

h1><span><i>my</i>6 bedroom detached house for sale </span> £1,650,000 Any Place House, Any Street, A10 B3C</h1>

…And Finally

If you have your own site promoting your property, it’ll give you the control to create a page that’s  optimised for the web i.e. allowing you to display/promote you’re property (and what you’re doing with it – selling, letting etc) and can act as an additional source of reference for people searching for property to buy, rent, develop etc in that area.

Now, I’m not saying that you’re going to go head-to-head with the likes of Rightmove, however, over the next 3 articles I’ll discuss how using a variety of social media platforms can increase visibility online and your chances of what you’re trying to achieve overall.

See you tomorrow 

Lee Smallwood will be back every day this week to further your knowledge on the social media in property front. You can find Lee on Twitter here too.What a great week we are in for! Stay tuned folks. Don’t forget to join our feeds or social media channels for regular updates of our blogs.

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