[partner submission – WIKIRealty]
There’s no denying the power and opportunities social media offer your business. Having a social media presence is essential for growth, scale, and the longevity of your brand and career.
In a recent Zillow consumer trends study, local market knowledge and trust are vital to home sellers. In fact, 84% of sellers seek out agents who possess local market expertise, and 82% whom they feel they can trust.
And, with an overwhelming majority of consumers researching online, it’s absolutely critical to have a social presence that projects trust, highlights your unique local market knowledge, and elevates your brand image.
Hyperlocal content strategy is the method of producing specific and personalized marketing content targeting prospective customers in a geographically restricted area, generally by neighborhood or town.
In plain English, it’s providing local news, information, and insights relevant to the community. Focusing on hyperlocal content allows you to connect with the audience in an authentic and personal way.
In this article, I'll share with you our proven hyperlocal content strategy “playbook” and best practices that engage your local audience, build relationship and rapport, and ultimately drive direct and exclusive business for you.
The core for hyperlocal content strategy is focusing your efforts to a specific market area at the neighborhood or town level. Avoid marketing to a broad area; it is generally an ineffective use of marketing dollars.
There are many ways to inspire your content. The easiest way is to search Google news. Simply open Google.com, select the News tab, and search your neighborhood.
You are looking for relevant and interesting local news. We’ve found focusing on lifestyle, things to do, deals, and dining and entertainment related topics yield the best results.
Content does not need to be long or awe-inspiring. Drafting a 200 to 250-word summary of the article is a nice, easy stackable read. Feel free to incorporate your personality, option, and style in the post.
In addition to content, customers are visual so you will want to include an eye-catching photo that will grab their attention.
It’s important to “house” your content on a personal page with its own unique link. This can be on your website, blog, or content platform.
If you don’t have a website or blog, wordpress.org and Wix.com are excellent platforms. Alternatively, you can post to a content platform like WikiRealty.com which serves as your own blog page with additional “sticky” features.
The idea is, as customers click and read your content, you will maximize opportunities to relay your business message and/or allow the customer to easily contact you. Therefore, ensure your platform includes additional links to your blog posts, multiple CTAs, lead forms, and integrated MLS property search. This is what is known as creating “stickiness” to your site.
You are now ready to spread your content to the neighborhood! This is as simple as copying the unique URL of your content and posting to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
You will want to give your article at least three to four days to mature and spread throughout your social network. Then you can set up a Facebook retargeting campaign to promote your business message. Facebook’s ad wizard makes this process fairly intuitive (or you can use Promote from MoxiImpress to set up your Facebook ads).
There are a few ways to setup your ads — traffic, leads, boosts, etc. We’ve found optimizing for Messages yields conversation, thus better lead opportunities.
Once your content and ads are deployed, check your alerts and Messenger regularly. Respond to comments on your post, customer inquiries, and questions.
The best practice is to transition your conversations to text, email, or phone. This will allow you to engage the customer directly and log their information into your MoxiEngage CRM for long term follow-up.
Over the years, we’ve tested many post frequencies and have found one to two touchpoints each week is the “Goldilocks” zone for businesses. Too few, your audience will forget about you. Too many, audiences tend to “tune” out, especially if your content is not relevant.
A solid hyperlocal content strategy takes time for the flywheel to get momentum, so be diligent and persistent. Your objective is to foster a relationship and build your local audience. You’re in this for the long haul and have faith this will yield quality name recognition and attract business directly to you.
Having a social media presence is essential for growth, scale, and the longevity of your brand and career; current and future generations are online. With a thoughtful hyperlocal content strategy, you can have a social presence that projects trust, highlights your unique local market knowledge, and elevates your brand image for years to come.