Many homebuilders are missing the mark when it comes to creating great content on their websites. We’re so focused on creating content for search engines that we miss the opportunity to create content for actual homebuyers. There’s a difference in the outcome of putting text on a webpage vs. creating something that’s visually interesting and helpful to homebuyers. Great content will attract and convert more homebuyers and promote trust in your brand. The result of that will be successful marketing, more leads, and even high-value SEO. Ready to get started? Read on to learn what goes in to creating great content that converts.

1.  Be helpful

Above anything else, great content should be helpful to homebuyers. One of the best ways to be helpful to anyone is to solve their problems. Think to yourself, as a builder, what problems can you solve for a homebuyer? What questions are they asking that you know the answers to? This doesn’t have to be specific to your company. You can even help them by providing information about the local housing market and the value of buying new in the areas you build in.

1. Don’t be salesy

This is a hard one to grasp in the context of marketing your company, but goes hand-in-hand with the idea of helping your customers. When you show homebuyers that you’re authentically there to help answer their questions and solve their problems, they’ll naturally be inclined to want to do business with you. No need to work a self-promoting sales pitch into your content. Just be helpful.

1. Create visual interest

Great content should be visually interesting and easy to read. In-depth articles are great, especially when they fully answer a homebuyer’s question. However, big blocks of text are not user-friendly, and so aren’t helpful. Help your users access your content by making it visually interesting. Breaking up text with photos is a good place to start, but the real winners will think outside the box and find ways to present content in even more interesting and interactive ways. Hiring a creative designer to help you format and present your content online is a smart move.

1. Make it personal

So many builders get by online copying what everyone else is doing. While this is easy and certainly cost-effective in the short term, it comes across as impersonal and creates a sense of distrust in your brand. A great way to get started with personal content is via your sales team. Find out what questions homebuyers are asking them, and have your team take turns writing blog posts to answer these questions. Include a photo of the employee who wrote the article on the blog posts and give the author the freedom to write as themselves rather than disguising their voice to sound formal. Consumers want to buy from brands who feel like their friends.

1. Try video

Not great at writing and don’t want to hire someone? Try making regular videos and sharing them on your YouTube channel and Facebook. Just make sure to keep them short, engaging, and helpful. Most users won’t watch a video longer than 1-2 minutes, so try to keep your videos somewhere in that time frame.     When you decide to take your content strategy to the next level, do so in an effort to better connect with homebuyers, not to promote yourself. That will happen naturally as users discover and share your helpful content. Think about why you get up every day to build homes. What do you want homebuyers to know about living in your community or buying a new home? If you don’t know right away how you can be of help, ask! Ask your prospects what they’ve struggled with in their home search and find ways to help more people like them by creating content that solves that problem. Do this regularly and watch your “word-of-mouth” referral online skyrocket.