The Content Only You Could Have Published

Open the social feed of almost any agent and you will find much the same material. Five tips for first time buyers, a reminder that spring is a good time to sell, an explanation of what a survey is, a photograph of a sold board.

None of it is wrong. All of it could have been posted by an agent four hundred miles away, which is the problem, because nothing in it gives a reader a reason to prefer you.

A simple test for whether something is yours

Take any piece you have published in the last month and ask whether an agent in a different country could have published it word for word. If the answer is yes, it is general information, and general information is now available instantly from a dozen sources that are faster and better resourced than you are.

The material that passes the test is the material that depends on where you are and what you have actually seen.

What you know that a search engine does not

You know which streets sell in a weekend and which ones sit. You know what three properties on the same road went for and why the one that looked best on paper took the longest. You know which block of flats has a service charge that puts buyers off, and which school catchment people ask about before they mention budget.

That knowledge rarely feels like content, because you acquired it gradually and it feels obvious to you. It is not obvious to anybody who is buying or selling once a decade, and it is the only part of your output that nobody else is in a position to copy.

Why specific is harder and works better

General advice is comfortable to publish because nobody can argue with it. Specific observation is harder, because it commits you to a view and someone might disagree. That is precisely what makes it worth reading. A person deciding whether to trust you with the largest transaction of their life is looking for evidence of judgement, and judgement only shows up when you say something that could be wrong.

There is a sensible limit to this. Specific does not mean indiscreet, and nothing you publish should make a past client identifiable or reveal what somebody told you in confidence. The observations worth sharing are the ones drawn from public information and your own reading of it, which is a large enough field to keep anybody busy.

The cost of publishing nothing while you decide

There is a version of this that becomes a reason to stop publishing altogether, on the grounds that nothing feels sufficiently original. Consistency still matters more than brilliance, and a modest local observation published every week beats an excellent one published twice a year. The aim is not to be remarkable. The aim is to be unmistakably from here.

It is also worth remembering who this is for. Not other agents, who are the people most likely to comment on it, and not the algorithm. It is for the small number of people in your area who will move in the next eighteen months and are currently paying no attention at all. They are not comparing your post to anybody else's. They are deciding, slowly and without telling you, whether you seem to know the place they live in.

A question to sit with this week

Look back at the last five things you published and apply the test. How many of them could have come from anywhere? Then write down three things you learnt about your own market in the past month that are not written down anywhere, and ask yourself why none of them have been published.

Where to take this next

If you want to work out what your market knowledge is worth and how to put it in front of people regularly, book a discovery call and we will build the plan.