👻 Boo-st your real estate marketing with ghostwriting

This may (or may not) come as a surprise but often the content you’re reading is written by someone other than who it says on the byline!

These days, many online blogs and websites use ghostwriters in order to give their readers fresh and interesting content to read on a regular basis. And it’s not just the people like well-known entertainers, professional athletes, and politicians that you’d expect, many real estate professionals even use ghostwriters to publish content on their real estate blogs and social media pages.

What is ghostwriting?

A ghostwriter is a specialist writer who composes articles for others on a paid-per-article basis. While the ghostwriter completes the article, he or she is not given any credit as the author.

In this relationship, the ‘author’ is the professional who hires the writer to produce the articles while the ‘ghost’ is the freelance writer who creates the articles and gets paid for them.

This is particularly useful for those who don’t like to write or who are simply not good at it. Writing is a creative process and many people can find this quite difficult because they are better at talking than putting their thoughts down on paper or in print.

In fact, for many people, writing just one page of copy can take several hours while a ghostwriter who writes for a living, can complete this in much less time and with less effort.

A freelance writer will make the content interesting and enticing while maintaining the general ‘voice’ of the professional who has hired him or her to write the copy.

At Hoole we have an entire team of dedicated writers who ghostwrite for our clients. In fact, our blogging team are our largest contingent of staff. Hence, I thought we’d better finally come out of the closet and share the truth about this marketing tactic that is used to great effect.

Use content marketing to build your real estate brand

Content marketing is a technique used to attract, engage, and retain your local audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, and other media. It is a crucial tool real estate agents should use to build their brands.

By consistently posting new content on your website or social pages, like articles, blogs and reports, you’re establishing yourself as an expert in your local area. This will set you apart from other local agents (who piggyback on their property campaigns to promote themselves).

Becoming the real estate thought leader in your community gives you the ability to influence how local people think about the market, encouraging them to seek you out when they want to sell or rent their home.

When it comes to your brand marketing, it is important to keep in mind the majority of local property owners don’t actually need the services of a real estate professional until a single point in time. So using a sales-focused marketing approach of ‘what’s your property worth’, ‘get an appraisal’ or ‘I just listed’ may not be of much interest to them when they are not active in the market. But with strategically planned content marketing you can stay relevant at all times.

A more general content approach gives you a relevant and low-pressure way to hold their hand through their property journey, remaining front of mind until the moment they are ready for you to pitch your services to them.

Why use a ghostwriter for real estate brand marketing?

More often than not, an expert writer can create an interesting and polished article much faster than you can, especially if you don’t like writing. It leaves you free to focus on what you are best at – listing and selling.

Even famous authors use ghostwriters to produce content for them. For these authors, a ghostwriter is a creative assistant who can bring the author’s ideas to life. You’ll find that many politicians, professional athletes, and entertainers use ghostwriters to create autobiographies and books that they publish in their own names.

Engage a team of ghostwriters and they will also research the local area and come up with unique and interesting real estate blog topics that you might not even have thought of. In fact, for most professionals, coming up with real estate topic ideas is the most difficult part of the process.

At Hoole we have the benefit of hindsight. Because we write for a large number of real estate agencies and high profile agents (and monitor the stats) in numerous markets across Australia and New Zealand, we get to see what resonates with different age groups or people in similar types of communities. We then apply that knowledge across all our client accounts for enhanced marketing results.

What are the benefits of content marketing for real estate?

Content marketing allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors who only focus on marketing properties for sale or rent. It allows you to extoll your knowledge of the local area and, as a result, you become the go-to person who people seek out when they want some real estate related information.

When you hire a ghostwriter to produce long-form content that is published on your website or your profile, you let people know that you have in-depth knowledge of both the local area and the industry as a whole.

In addition, because ghostwriters understand SEO and how Google works, your published content has the ability to appear on the first page of Google search results. Your content will be picked up based on key search terms and phrases for your area, and can also appear for investors based in other parts of the country.

But most importantly you’ll have a far better chance of your website appearing in front of locals that have an ‘intent to sell or list’, if your content is written by a professional team of writers, who specialise in real estate and property content.

What type of real estate content or blogs would my ghostwriter produce?

Your copywriter has the ability to create content on a whole range of interesting topics. Some examples include:

• Thought leadership articles that show that you know the local area better than anyone other real estate competitor. Here’s an example client of ours; Ray White’s co-Principals, Cameron Smits and Fiona Hawley in Swan Hill in Victoria.
• Articles that clearly define you’re a leading network leader in the property industry such as these articles and videos by our client Miriam Sandkuhler, the owner of Property Mavens, Australia’s first franchise for buyers agents.
• You can also have your own in-depth market reports produced by an experienced real estate research and writing team. Here’s an example of a Home Sales Report for the Balmain Peninsula, which we update every year.
• Lifestyle content that is pertinent to your local area and the current time of year. This type of content is very popular with local residents who own a home or investment property in your area but are not currently looking to list or sell. Topics can include local attractions or service providers, home-related shopping or renovations, and special entertainment events that may be coming up. Here is an example from Living Northern NSW a community-focused website that we built from scratch and filled with content covering multiple regions and towns. It act’s like a trojan horse, building an audience with whom our real estate client can thenremarket their real estate services.
• Articles that are specific to the type of real estate service you provide. Examples from our family of clients include; home sales agency Hutton & Hutton, property management agency Vogue Property, and commercial real estate agency Herbert Commercial.
• SEO pages for your real estate website are written to show up in front of people that have an intent to list, lease or sell right now. They ensure your site is found when someone searches for something specific related to real estate in your area by using relevant and specific keywords. Some examples our SEO pages our team have written are this ‘Sell with us’ page or this ‘Let us manage your investment property’ page.
• Content that answer frequently asked questions like ‘how to prepare your home for sale?’, ‘how to retain quality tenants or renters’, and ‘how much does it cost to sell your property?’.

Where do I upload my content? Do I need a website?

That’s a very good question and one that we get asked often. In actual fact, you don’t need your own website as long as you have a profile on LinkedIn. A unique feature of LinkedIn is its LinkedIn Pulse which allows you to publish articles under your own profile.

This is a great way to engage with potential clients and to set yourself apart from others by coming across as an expert in your industry. 

Here’s an example of one of our clients, Geoff Smith who uses our real estate copywriting services. He is the longtime owner and director of the Sydney-based Ray White Lower North Shore Group. We write and publish regular content for Geoff on his LinkedIn profile and across his social media accounts.

You might be surprised who has content written for them

As we mentioned before, a lot of famous people have content written by a ghostwriter. These people include:

• Politicians like Donald Trump, John F Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
• Influential business owners such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates.
• Famous entertainment personalities and actors such as Gwyneth Paltrow.
• Well-known sports personalities like David Beckham.

Hoole is here when inspiration hits

At Hoole Marketing, we have a dedicated team of real estate writers, editors, and staff who can create and manage a constant supply of content that we can upload to your websites and your social media accounts.

We can help write every aspect of it from scratch or just help with fleshing out and polishing up your thoughts and ideas.

Our clients include real estate agencies such as Belle Property Balmain and Established Property. For these clients, we write for the brand or the office as a whole.

We also create content for agency principals like Monique Dower and individual real estate professionals such as Geoff Smith.

If you’d like to get some advice on how you too could use ghostwriting in your real estate brand marketing, please get in touch – I am always happy to provide a one hour free consultation. Simply book into my calendar.

Written by Melanie Hoole

My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.