Content Creation: Touchpoints for Lead Generation

When Désirée Ávila transitioned from teaching to selling real estate, she needed to find a way to differentiate herself and connect with people.

Enter content creation.

By building websites and writing articles—pursuits at which she excels—she could offer value and market her services, she realized.

“I wanted to create publications that would serve my community and show who I was: a professional real estate agent who cares about the people she works with.”

Désirée Avila

To accomplish these goals, Ávila, with Charles Rutenberg Realty in Fort Lauderdale, soon realized this work was virtually another job.

“Just like with real estate, [creating content] is an everyday thing,” she explains. “I’m always looking for stories, and my secret joy is documenting and sharing community news.”

Read on for her approaches and best practices.

Target your different markets

Over the past few years, Ávila has built separate websites to fulfill different goals and reach different markets. For instance, as she’s begun to cover a larger geographic area as a real estate agent, she’s broadened her content coverage to encompass more of South Florida. Here’s a look at her various sites:

• Désirée Ávila professional website: Ávila’s main hub and real estate website (desiavila.com) and landing page includes content about her credentials and buying and selling in South Florida. She currently adds about one article per month and plans to beef up the real estate coverage.

• VidaFloridiana: Several years ago, Ávila—whose parents are from Brazil—created this Portuguese-language blog (vidafloridiana.com) to target Brazilians interested in moving to Florida. “Most minority communities need more professionals who speak their language, literally and figuratively,” she says. Although the site initially received a lot of traffic, she shut it down since it didn’t translate to ROI in real estate sales. A few months ago, though, she rebranded and updated the content, with an emphasis on lifestyle (for instance, stories on how to register kids for school and get a driver’s license). Now, she adds about one post per week.

• Living in Oakland Park website (livinginoaklandpark.com) and Living in Oakland Park Facebook group (facebook.com/groups/livinginoaklandpark): In 2019, Ávila was looking for somewhere to advertise. To her surprise, she realized her town of Oakland Park lacked its own publication. She built the Living in Oakland Park website, populating it with local news (like profiles of local businesses and city commission candidates). To share this content, she created the Facebook group, which now has about 13,000 members and includes a Spanish language counterpart.

• Savant South Florida: This English language blog (savantsouthflorida.com) provides real estate content; however, Ávila plans to transition it to more lifestyle coverage, like the best brunch spots in South Florida and places for retirees to live in Fort Lauderdale.

Outsource what you can

Each week, Ávila spends two to eight hours on website maintenance (fixing bugs, backing up info, updating plug-ins), editing and writing. That said, her assistant editor, real estate assistant and freelance writers generate most of the two to three new articles per week.

“Having a team allows me to delegate and focus on the things that only I can do, like web development,” she explains. To facilitate content creation, her team sends local businesses forms they can complete with their story. Then, her assistant editor emails these filled-out forms to the writers, who pen the profiles.

Add value and be professional

When it comes to content creation, real estate agents are sometimes pressured to share fun or playful posts on TikTok and Instagram, Ávila says.

“But you should do you, and the people who’ll be attracted to your style will find you.” For her, that means focusing on written (rather than video) content and demonstrating professionalism. “I work hard to make sure my blogs reflect who I am, what I know and what I can bring to consumers as a real estate professional,” she says. So, think twice before sharing a video of yourself partying, she counsels. “You want to use your content to attract the kind of person you want as a client.”

Overall, she says she is now seeing leads from her efforts, particularly from her Oakland Park site and Facebook group. The websites are a marketing vehicle for her, she says, because people see her as both a Realtor® and someone who provides something of value for her community.

“It’s about serving people, and I think that’s a teaching characteristic that translates well into real estate,” she says.

Dina Cheney is a Connecticut-based freelance writer.