Last modified on October 23rd, 2017
By Christina Burch

You probably already know that a blog – aside from being an excellent opportunity for you to share and disseminate information – also brings big value to your property management company.

Content is one of the most effective ways to market your property management company so it’s wise to develop a strategy to ensure you’re taking full advantage of content marketing.

Here are some tested methods on how to come up with fresh and relevant topics for your property management blog:

Check Your FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions can be a gold mine for topic ideas. Keep track of questions people ask through emails, phone conversations, or through your website’s chat functionality. You can then make a summary of the questions asked depending on the number of people asking them and assign topics to each of them.

Here are some examples of frequently asked questions that could make helpful blog posts:

-What are your fees?

-How is property management handled?

-How much will my property rent for?

-How does property management work?

-How soon can my property get a renter?

-How will you market my property?

Keep Tabs on Your Competitors

If you’ve hit the wall in terms of finding new topics to write about, you should take a good look at the competition. Check their blogs for their latest posts and what kind of engagement they attracted. If you stumble upon some posts that have attracted quite a bit of social activity, you can use it as inspiration for even better content. Consult tools to find posts that have a high amount of shares on social media.

It is worthwhile remembering that the idea here is not to copy and paste what your competition is doing. You want to take their topic ideas and then create content that goes into much more depth and provides more value to your readers.

Turn To Social Media

No one can deny the fact that social media has evolved to become a haven of resourceful ideas. Facebook groups, for example, can be a rich source of information for bloggers looking for trending topics.

Look for social media groups relevant to real estate investing and property management. Jot down topics that attract the most engagement from the audience and use these topics to create interesting blog posts on your property management website.

Refresh Old Content

Revamping old content can be a quick and easy way for you to keep visitors engaged without the need to produce fresh content left and right.

Start by analyzing the number of views, comments, and shares of previous posts. You can use Google Analytics to figure which posts are bringing in the most traffic to your website. Once you’ve identified these topics, consider which have the potential to be refurbished.

For example, if the post topic was “Real Estate Market Trends in 2016”, you could then update the content for 2017 and highlight the real estate market’s latest trends.

Keep Tabs on Blog Comments

In addition to keeping a pulse on Frequently Asked Questions, you should also get in the habit of checking for comments on your existing blog posts. Discussions arising from comments can be a great resource to find ideas for your next blog topic. Even though you thought you covered a certain topic in great detail, you may still find some readers asking some very pertinent questions in the comments section that warrant some educating. If you do find a barrage of questions on a particular subject, it’s a clear sign that readers are interested in content relevant to that topic.

Outline Your Job Description

While this may sound obvious, there’s a good chance you haven’t done a thorough job in describing the services your company provides. As a property manager, think of the specific functions that you’re required to handle, and craft blog topics describing the work that goes into each function. For instance, you can write a detailed blog post about “Advertising Your Rental Property”. You can go into detail on the exact process your company uses when advertising rental properties. Or, in the case of inspections, you can narrow in on “the four key types of landlord inspections,” and focus on several areas – move-in inspections, routine safe and clean inspections, drive-by inspections, and move-out inspections.

Consider expanding on the following topics:

-Advertising

-Maintenance

-Leasing

-Screening

-Setting Rental prices

-Inspections

-Eviction

Consult Google Keyword Planner

Once you have a better idea of which topic you want to expand on, consult Google’s Keyword Planner to help you come up with variations and related keywords.

A quick search using the tool on “What is property management?” may result in topics such as:

-What does a property manager do?
-What are the responsibilities of a property management company?
-Why do you need a property manager?
-How do you find a good property management company?

You can also tweak the tool’s search parameters to further narrow down to specific topics you want to cover on your property management blog. Additionally, the tool provides the results alongside the number of people searching for those terms on a monthly basis – so you can be sure to focus on topics people are most interested in.

Consistent blogging can be extremely beneficial for your business. By implementing the aforementioned methods for generating topic ideas, you’ll be on your way to creating a successful property management blog – one that educates your community while also providing opportunities for growth for your business.

This post was provided by Alexander Hassoulas, Director of Business Development at Upkeep Media, an online marketing agency that specializes in working with property management companies to grow their business. You can contact Alexander at alexander.hassoulas@upkeepmedia.com.