10 Tools To Boost Your Credibility & Visibility
By JD Esajian on September 16, 2015
What tools have been made available to real estate pros that allow them to simultaneously boost both visibility and credibility?
Credibility and visibility remain two of the biggest challenges for all types of real estate professionals. Getting in the game, gaining traction, and staying in front of the competitors all require business owners to maintain visibility and credibility. Yet, the landscape is getting more crowded and confusing every day. To win, real estate agents, investors, executives, and business owners need to be more present. So how do you get more of that? Here are ten tools to get more of what you need:
1. About.me
About.me is an easy to use profile creation tool and social network. It enables real estate professionals to simply display their photo, short bio, and links to all of their other social networks, websites, and more. It is incredibly easy to set up, appears to rank well in search engines, is friendlier that other platforms, and could potentially help you improve your SEO. You also don’t want anyone else claiming your About.me profile and URL. What is even better is that many may find that this platform has the power to generate a lot of hits and traffic each month. That means free internet leads.
2. Vizualize.me
This another simple to use, one page online tool for boosting both credibility and visibility quickly. This is essentially a one page infographic style resume. It also appears to rank well in Google. Use this to display your expertise, experience, and value in a quick snapshot. This could be a great way to augment crusty old bios, and speed potential partners, investors, and clients to actually doing business with you. This could be especially useful for those raising funding.
3. Piktochart
Piktochart is one of the easiest to use infographic creation tools. It is very low cost to use, provides another domain to publish on, and infographics you can take away and use on your own real estate blog. Easy drag and drop functionality and tweakable templates make these a breeze, even for those that don’t feel tech savvy at all. You can even incorporate live links to your other profiles and website.
4. BiggerPockets
This may be one of the most controversial tactics on this list. The BiggerPockets online real estate forum and community is proving to be one of the most active and popular. Real estate pros can run their own blog on the platform and engage in forum conversations. And it is free unless you spring for pro level membership. This all suggests it could be a powerful platform for getting seen, conversing with live leads, and boosting SEO. However, like Facebook and Zillow BiggerPockets means publishing on, and building up a third party site which could end up turning on real estate pros later. Then there is the element of being a target, and being mixed up in a lot of bad advice.
5. WordPress
If there is one thing that every real estate professional needs it is a real estate blog. If you put just one tool into play on this list, make it blogging. Blog every week. This will consistently deliver on both credibility and visibility. The longer and more you blog, the more compound benefits you’ll experience. Just make sure you stick to the new rules of blogging, and keep these objectives in mind. Keep it interesting, keep it readable, become a resource that people will keep coming back to. There are many platforms for blogging but WordPress remains one of the best.
6. LinkedIn
How are you doing on LinkedIn? Have you passed the 500+ connections mark yet? What about 2,000+ connections? Remember that real estate is still largely about who you know. You never know when these connections will come in handy and take you to the next level.
7. Google+
While Google+ still hasn’t caught on like Facebook, and its future in its current state may be uncertain, there is no question that it has become the social network for serious business, especially in the real estate industry. Google+ ranks good in the Google search engine, and with this being one of the top spots for online business reviews it can be dangerous to ignore.
8. Google Adwords
The beautiful thing about Google Adwords is that for the right price, and with the right keywords real estate professionals and companies can theoretically always be right at the top of Google. It may not always pay or be the best ROI, but it can serve a purpose, and it can be used to fill in the gaps for real estate leads.
9. Press Releases
Whether paid or free, self-published press releases are a fantastic way to boost visibility and credibility at any time. In fact, they can be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal.
10. Signs
This may not be the most revolutionary idea, but the bottom line is that many consumers still judge the best pros and choose them by who has the most signs in the neighborhood.
Try these out for yourself…