II.E. Community

A good way to burnish your credentials as a Local expert and build trust is to share stories and information on your website about the target market. Schools (because families have children) and Restaurants (thanks to the food channel) are good topics. You can demonstrate your real estate expertise by writing about market statistics, homes that sold, and new construction projects.

A great source of all this information is the Local Market Explorer plugin for WordPress. This application draws in data from Zillow, Walkscore, Education.com, Yelp, and even photos from Flickr (many of which you can use on your website) and places it in one page. Just scan the information for inspiration AND specifics and rewrite it. Or, pay an inexpensive freelancer to do this for you ; )

Here is how we use the Local Market Explorer plugin.

Finally, a great way to say, “I’m Local” is through the design of your website. Many wordpress themes allow you to easily add a custom background image or header easily. You can find many large background images of landscapes that match where you live or go to webshots.com and ask permission from a local photographer to use one of his or her images.