They will just read your blog, take your advice and use the cheapest letting agent in town?
Some say that most blogs can be more destructive than productive. We live and work in free market economy based on the principles of supply and demand. If no one knows about your lettings agency and more importantly what makes you different to all the others, you won’t be in demand. It’s excruciatingly hard to earn money when no one knows who you are or what you are capable of doing.
My thoughts on writing a blog reflect my thoughts on life. It starts with this set of principles … be generous and clear, be an expert, open minded, persistent, adaptable and most importantly, trustworthy.
Notice I didn’t say anything about stuffing your blog or tweets with keyw0rds or hashtags. That’s shallow stuff compared to who you are and how you treat others. Effective blogging revolves around being a principled human being who genuinely wants to help others.
My first principle of writing this blog is to be generous: I’m giving advice to help you grow your letting agency without asking anything in return. Do you think that letting agents will take advantage of me, that they will profit from my advice without paying me a penny? Yes they will, but this does not bother me in the least; I have no desire to work with people who don’t treat others fairly, and it does not matter to me if they get something from me for free. The people I care about are those who truly care about other people,
My second principle is to have faith in my expertise: You get to read what I advise you should do to get more landlords before you even have to consider whether you want to buy my services. Without confidence in my own expertise to grow most letting agents business by at least 20% to 30% organically within 12 to 18 months, I’d be foolish to make such an offer. To follow my approach, you will need to be equally comfortable with your own offerings.
My final principle is belief: If all goes well, Mr (Mrs) letting agent, you will get loads of useful information you can apply immediately to your lettings agency.. but eventually, some of you will ring me, some of you will want me to price up what I can do for you and finally, some of you will then employ me to do the work. In fact, I know I will get more lettings agents using my services than if I adopted the traditional approach of “I am a Letting Agents Consultant – let me help you grow your business!”
I’m trying to demonstrate that there is nothing wrong with spreading the word about your work, that includes social media, as long as you make damn sure that you only profit after you actually help other people… you will get business. I started writing the blog in the last week of December and have already secured enough business to be viable for the most of the year.
You, my letting agent friends, need to give your advice generously to landlords in a property blog. Please feel free to pick up the phone to me and I will tell you what you need to put in that blog. Most of you won’t ring but some of you will, some will ring me and take the advice I will freely give and I never hear from them again.. but some of you will ask me to do/write the blog for them… a blog that in previous offices I helped, grew turnover by over £80k per year, year on year .. so what’s it to be?