How content can give your agency ‘infinite leverage’

For real estate businesses, online content has the power to be “the salesperson that never sleeps” – but only if you get the recipe right.

New York-based business influencer Matt Gray built his career on generating online content. At this year’s AREC conference, Gray explained why it’s essential for real estate agencies to “nail [their] content game”.

“It has never been more important to have a presence online,” he said. “Most people, before they buy any product, are going to go and research online – who’s the founder, who’s the person behind this?”

“When you go and put content out there, that content lives on without you having to do anything else,” Gray said.

“Versus in-person sales or one-to-one outreach, which is just one-to-one, content has the opportunity to bring you infinite leverage – the ability to reach thousands, even millions of people, with simply the click of one button.”

Online content has the power to supercharge a business, but without good strategy it can also be a recipe for unnecessary stress.

“A key piece that people get wrong is they start finding themselves on this constant hamster wheel where every single day they need to wake up, publish something, and it eventually just burns you out, because you’re on this constant hamster wheel.”

“Setting up systems as you go is essential so that it doesn’t become a burden,” Gray stated.

Here are the influencer’s five tips for time-pressed real estate agents looking to boost their content game.

1. Look to your heroes for inspiration

It’s hard to come up with ideas by staring at a blank page, so Gray advises would-be content creators to get inspiration from real estate leaders who are already at the top of their field.

Look at top industry voices on the social media platforms you aim to target – like X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok – and check out their most-viewed content.

“Study the words they use, the patterns, the spacing, the formatting, and then leverage the best content ever from your favourite people,” said Gray.

“Versus trying to create something from scratch in a reinvention field, I would encourage you to stand on the shoulders of giants.”

2. Generate content on the go

Often our best thoughts come at odd moments throughout the day – when we’re hanging out with friends, going on a walk, or having a shower.

Instead of letting these thoughts go to waste, Gray advised having an ongoing notes folder on your phone where you can jot down these ideas throughout the day.

“It’s super simple,” he said. “If I think of an idea, I put it in the ‘ideas’ notes folder.”

Before generating content, however, it’s essential to get a handle of what your audience wants to hear.

“The truth is, your customers have questions on their mind, things they’re curious about. Maybe they’re curious about the market, different trends – when is the right time to sell? Who’s the best person to work with? What are the best neighbourhoods?”

“All of this stuff you guys know. And so all of these questions on the minds of your dream customer give you the ability to create content that can help them solve those problems,” said Gray.

3. The content waterfall

The content waterfall system is one of the core pillars of Gray’s social media strategy.

Instead of creating dozens of new posts every week, focus your energy on creating one high-quality piece of long-form content – like an X thread or a LinkedIn post.

“That one Twitter thread can become 26 other pieces of content,” said Gray. “I’m taking the same core idea and just remixing it in other formats.”

“The X thread can become a long-form LinkedIn post. It can become an Instagram carousel. It can become a few Instagram reels. A few TikTok scripts. A long-form podcast idea.”

Using one core idea to create lots of smaller pieces of “downstream” content allows creators to “get that much more return from the effort that you put into your content”.

4. Schedule in blocks

Instead of creating content each day, Gray recommended setting aside a block of time every few weeks to write and schedule content in advance.

“Ideally, you’re managing your content creation so that you have maybe one day every two to three weeks where you’re banking through, say, 30 pieces of content in a couple of hours.”

“From there, your content operations is running on autopilot,” he said.

5. Redirect

Finally, it’s essential to always redirect your audience to paid avenues.

“We call it the ‘rented audience’ on socials, because the truth is you don’t own X, you don’t own Facebook, Instagram.”

“While it’s important to go and grow on these platforms, it’s probably more important that you’re actually going and funnelling these people to emails and phone numbers that you actually control,” said Gray.

He advised agents to set up an ongoing monthly email newsletter with all their current warm leads in order to generate a stable, homegrown audience of dedicated clients.