Lee’s series taught us how to set up a site properly for selling or renting property ( though the rules hold true for all web sites.) We have a few seats left for be2campeast, dont forget to sign up if you want to attend- they are limited places.
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.
