Our very own Chief Kerfuffler Simon Whale hosted a panel webinar recently with Jerry Lyons, Nick Cheshire, Abigail Grey, and Adam Mackay from the Estate Agent Content Club. So, let us meet each of our speakers and find out what the Estate Agent Content Club is all about.

Jerry Lyons, an ex-journalist and PR expert, founded the Estate Agent Content Club which now has more than 120 independent agencies among its members.
Along with his team of industry experts he creates blogs, prospecting letters, email nurture campaigns and E-guides for non-competing agents across the UK.
The business also has a charitable arm called The Karma Club which has donated more than £12,500 to community and charitable causes since January 2020.

Nick Cheshire Nick has built a successful agency with a brilliant culture and amazingly hasn't even turned 30 yet!

'Not your "typical" estate agent', he was working for smaller independent agent but identified that the market was moving forward and advancing with technology.

Nick set up Nest in Essex and has set about focussing on two things:

The client experience and marketing.

Abigail Grey
After taking over the reins of her family's agency, Abigail has gone from strength to strength in her local areas of Wembley and Wembley Park.

Grey & Co are one of the longest-established, independently owned estate agencies in the area. Through her use of video content, Abigail continues to engage her local audiences, has become a familiar face and advocate for the property industry.

Who are the Estate Agent Content Club?
In addition to being an award-winning digital marketing agency that has developed a niche in the property sector for over 12 years, their services include Website design, iOS & Android App development and SEO. “We love helping agents stand out from the crowd, enhance their brand awareness and generate leads. We guide our clients through from start-to-finish and work doesn’t stop when a project launches. We encourage clients to provide ideas for enhancing our platform for everyone's benefit.”

Perfect... let's get into some of the main talking points then.

How have you found the process of communicating with the public? Does it come very naturally to you as agents, or did you have to learn it over time?

Nick - “From my side it's something that we have learned over time but equally, I think us putting it into text is not so easy.  Estate agents are known for waffling and I think waffling in a blog post doesn’t come across well, as its too long and can be quite boring. So, getting that art of keeping it short, sweet, sometimes humorous but getting the message across in fewer words is something that I've always particularly found difficult.“

Abigail - “I think it's probably one of the things that got me reinvigorated about estate agency a few years ago, looking at what we’re doing, and I think changing my whole attitude to how we were doing it. Previously, I thought we were just a service industry. Now, we are a service industry primarily but almost in equal measure we are a marketing agency and that’s something that has taken a little while for us to grasp that concept.  I think there are still quite a few agents out there that don’t realise we have to be an omni-channel marketing machine, and content is really the linchpin of all of that. The public need to know why they need to see this content or why they should be reading it and a summary of the key points that they can take away and I think that’s one of the amazing things that Jerry does.”

What does the Estate Agency Content Club do for your members and why is there the need for it?

Jerry - “It's really simple, we started off providing written articles for estate agents purely because a couple of my friends who run an agency, approached me a few years back and said they didn’t have the time, the will or the skill to write these kind of content articles and posts. It does take a bit of skill to write an article, believe it or not; so we launched the club properly 2 years ago, and it was the gap we saw in the market for written content for estate agents. From there it's grown to videos as well. A lot of our members use the content almost like a script for videos. So, let's say we’ve done a piece about a change in landlords' legislation, we’ll do an article, but I've noticed more and more of our members are using that article to talk directly to camera using a teleprompter.”

Nick likes to do things differently and it’s the small things that make a difference.

Nick - “So we had standard for sale boards originally, which just had either ‘For sale’ or ‘Sold’ on it, but, because we deal one-to-one with the clients here, I just felt that the individual needed a little more recognition for the fact that they had been the one who had sold the property. So, we kept the boards exactly same and we took the ‘Sold’ slip and we put ‘Sold By’ then we’d put a photo of the agent, their name and their mobile number . We just found it was a little bit like a pat on the back, so it helps a little with morale. But most importantly, I think, for the public to see that there’s an individual that’s sold that property and it’s not just the company, adding to the whole ‘We are people and not just a company’”

What does great estate agency content look like to you? Who is doing it well?

Jerry - “Andy Overman springs to mind, Luke Sinclair, Oliver Press. There's loads of agents doing it and the common thing with the guys that are doing it is, they’ve got involved with their community. Like the stuff Abigail has done with Hassan, that was interesting and that was community-based content. It's got sod all to do with property, but everything to do with capturing people's attention. I think one of the things every business has got to get their heads around, whether they’re estate agents or even butchers, is: we are in the attention business now, everyone is competing for attention. So, whether you grab that attention by a community article or an article about getting kids ready to go back to school, it has nothing to do with property, but it always gets a good response on social media.”

“Think of HITS for your content. Is it Helpful? Is it Interesting? Is it trustworthy? And finally... is it Sustainable? The problem with most agents is that they can start creating content all on their own, but they can't sustain it.”

“Talk to the people about what the Karma Club is. What's your belief around the Karma Club and how did it start up?”

“So the Karma Club is where we take a fiver every month from our members, it comes out of our pocket, not theirs. This money is  put it into a collective pot and then at the start of the month we will approach members and  ask them to nominate community groups and causes that they want to support in their local areas.

Abigail - “We’re so reliant on the community for our business that we have a moral responsibility to give something back, and if all you're doing is taking, you're never going to get any reciprocity”

Scan here to watch the full webinar or read on for the highlights!