Case Study - How a Top 5% Real Estate Agent Uses Content Curation

Bo Kauffmann is the perfect example of how smart content curation can help solo service providers stand out in even the most competitive of markets.

Thanks to his curation first strategy, Bo is one of the top realtors in the highly-competitive real estate market of Winnipeg, Canada.

The primary reason for Bo’s success? From the very beginning, he understood the value of the Internet, social media, and quality content.

After years of hard work, Bo was looking for an easy-to-use solution that could help him help him reach his content marketing goals and generate more leads with less effort.

Addressing the Change In Consumer Behavior

The real estate market is extremely competitive. With print marketing and old fashioned sign boards losing effectiveness, smart realtors are leveraging digital channels because that’s what consumers prefer.

According to a study by the National Association of Realtors, 42% of home buyer’s turn to Google as their first step in purchasing a home. Only 14% of home buyers directly contact a realtor.

Bo understood this change in the market and so turned much of his attention to digital channels

“I wanted to make sure I had a strong online presence,” Bo explains. “That’s why I’ve had a website, blog, and social media accounts for more than 10 years.”

But maintaining high-quality content across several digital channels is a time-consuming task. He needed a fast, simple way to overcome common content marketing roadblocks. In particular, he needed:

Something to supercharge current online marketing efforts
Assistance with managing content marketing and social media as it was becoming too time consuming

He was where he needed to be, but he also knew there must be a better way to manage his content marketing process.

When Content Marketing Becomes Too Time Consuming

Bo has hundreds of blog posts on his website Winnipeghomefinder.com. He also maintains an exhaustive collection of social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Stitcher, and iTunes.

Unfortunately for Bo, it takes dozens of hours each month to generate the content needed to keep all of these channels and networks updated.

The time needed to keep on top of his content creation left him little time to handle the other areas of his business.

Bo realized he needed a content curation tool to streamline his content marketing efforts.

“I wanted something that could compliment, and provide content for, the articles I write for my blog, so that I could provide more value to existing and prospective clients,” Bo says.

The Solution : Bo Gives Curation Suite and the Listening Engine a Try

After researching various curation tools on the market Bo settled on giving Curation Suite a try. With Curation Suite, Bo can source, curate, and publish high-quality content right from his WordPress dashboard, saving him hours of research and content creation time every week.

Bo also took advantage of the Listening Engine upgrade, allowing for more detailed searches and the discovery of even more content for his audiences.

Since turning to Curation Suite and the Listening Engine add-on, Bo’s never been happier with the execution of his content marketing execution.

The Results

It didn’t take long for Bo to start seeing results with Curation Suite. After installing the plugin and fine-tuning the listening engine to source the best content, Bo was ready to supercharge his content marketing efforts.

Curation Suite has given Bo the freedom to take a step back from his content marketing. He no longer has to spend dozens of hours sourcing interesting content and finding relevant images.

He has more time to spend serving the needs of his existing clients and nurturing the leads generated through his curation and content strategies. He can turn his focus away from laborious tasks and onto smart methods of scaling his business.

Dramatically Improved Online Presence

With Bo’s newly improved content strategy came a drastic improvement in his digital presence. Sharing the content his target audience wants and needs has helped him grow into the authoritative realtor in his market.

“The search features of the Listening Engine automatically pull back content based on the websites and keywords I follow,” Bo explains. “I also like the ability to share on social media platforms directly from the dashboard.”

The only content worth publishing is the content your audience wants to read. Having a tool that discovers that content for you is not only a huge time saver, but also a smarter way to deliver more of what your audience wants.

For a real estate agent that means consistently finding the top trending stories, evolving news, and local developments.

Curation Suite’s ability to quickly discover relevant content and publish right within your WordPress dashboard means you’ll save time in both finding that content and publishing it for your audience.

To take content marketing to the next level, Curation Suite also integrates with the best third party social media tools including Buffer and Hootsuite enabling professionals in any niche to stay highly relevant and part of the local conversation.

What Does Bo Think of Content Suite?

“After using Curation Suite and the Listening Engine for about 6 months I loved how easy and complete this tool is!” Bo says with a wide smile.

“Try it! Use it! Find out for yourself how Curation Suite and Listening Engine can impact your content marketing goals.”

Curation Suite has been a major contributing factor to Bo’s success and breaking into the top 5% of Winnipeg realtors.

Tips for Using Curation and Curation in Real Estate

There’s a few things to keep in mind when using a strategy like content marketing and curation to create leads and awareness in real estate.

First, most new visitors and people you will attract simply aren’t in the market for a real estate agent.

Focusing on building authority, maintaining a fresh and consistent digital presence, and permission marketing (like email and social) is essential. That way when someone is in the market for a real estate professional (selling or buying) you’re top of mind and a trusted source of information.

So what type of content should you curate?

You’ll want to mix it up with local real estate stories and general fun and interesting news from your local area. Publishing these type of stories allows you to be part of the local conversation.

When using the Listening Engine you’ll want to create a mix of topics. A few topics that will help you stay abreast of local or even national real estate news. Then a few topics that will help you discover trending stories and news in your local market.

How much do you want to publish and share?

At a minimum you want to curate once a day. Generally this post will be what is called a single source curation. It’s important that you mix up the topics that you cover. People like a variety so mix it up a bit.

The above gives a general view of single source curation. This individual stories could include some of the below ideas:

A new restaurant opening
How a new construction project will effect the local area
An up and coming special event such as a concert, circus in town, etc.

At the end of the week you could publish a weekly roundup. A comprehensive list of the most important developments and news items within the local market.

Social sharing is a little more complicated and really depends on the network. As a general rule of thumb we recommend following the below which we’ve seen bring in the best results.

Share on Facebook 1-2 times a day.
Google+ share 1-2 times a day (different content than Facebook)
Twitter anywhere from 3-10 times a day

With the Listening Engine finding the right content to share is easy. Simply fine tune the engine to source the best topics related to your market and sort by social shares or the proprietary trending scores. This will provide you with a huge list of high-quality content that you can share using the Hootsuite or Buffer integration.

Creating a huge list of high-quality content to share with your social media followers has never been quicker or easier.

The key as with any content strategy is consistency. Consistent high-value content will ensure success.