Most agents consider Zillow a nuisance at best and a major competitor at worst.
The real estate website is filled with misleading data. It doesn’t show every house on the market and paints an incorrect picture of neighborhood home values.
However, there are ways you can use Zillow to your advantage.
If you think of it as a valuable marketing tool and not as the enemy, you can win Zillow leads without paying advertising fees.
There are a number of things you can do for free on Zillow in order to maximize your success on the platform. For the most part, homeowners use Zillow for information. That makes it a platform where you can stand out, even if it’s not primarily used to find agents.
If you make your profile stand out, homeowners will contact you, either through Zillow or through your website. This is another platform to brand yourself as an authority in real estate.
So many agents don’t have a Zillow profile or have one that’s missing information or even a picture. Make your profile as detailed as possible.
This is your first impression to homeowners browsing Zillow, so treat it with importance. You should have a high-quality headshot as your picture. Keep your bio short but make sure it includes all important information.
Link to your website and social media profiles, as well. You can even add a video if you want to go an extra step.
Traffic from Zillow to your website will hopefully lead people to contact you.
Sellers want to see the types of homes you list and how many you’ve sold. Zillow will automatically add your listings and some past sales to your profile, but not all of them. That’s one of the biggest problems with Zillow — missing listings and sales.
All homeowners want and need to know about your sales history. If it's blank or missing data, they’ll simply get off your page. Go back and make sure your entire listing history is on your profile.
Zillow is notorious for having incorrect listings data on its website. Don’t rely on automatic data that Zillow reports.
You can go into your profile and update each sale and price. Prospective sellers will be looking for how much the home sold for compared to the original listing price. They’ll also look for how long it was on the market.
If there are fact errors here, they'll affect how you’re viewed. Go through each one individually to make sure it's correct.
You know how important reviews are. There’s nothing wrong with asking old clients who gave you a review before to put the same review on Zillow.
Reach out to them by email or phone. If they enjoyed working with you, they’ll understand why it’s important and write a review. Afterward, start asking new clients for reviews on Zillow.
Agents should reply to every review on Zillow, as well. For good reviews, it’s a chance to say thank you and demonstrate your politeness. People want to work with respectful people. It’s quick and easy to respond to Zillow reviews. There’s no reason not to.
If you’re part of a team, get reviews for you and the team as a whole. These are separate profiles on Zillow.
Zillow Advice lets homeowners, buyers or agents ask questions about real estate. It’s an open forum where anyone with a profile can respond. It’s like Yahoo Answers or other similar forums.
Helping out people with your knowledge is a way to be an authority. Viewers of your profile can see your answers and will recognize you as someone with real estate knowledge. The more you answer, the better your profile looks.
Don’t steal answers from other sources. The goal here is to be original. Be as detailed as possible with your answers.
Set a goal of answering a few questions per week. If you're an expert at expireds, stick to that category. This is your chance to brand yourself in a specific niche.
Zillow has plugins and widgets that go on other websites and social media. To get the most out of Zillow, you need to promote your Zillow profile on other platforms.
Zillow makes it simple to add something like this to your website. If someone is browsing your site, chances are, they use Zillow, as well. Showing them you’re active is important.
You can display things such as listings, polls, ratings, quizzes, real estate calculators and statistics with these widgets. Do remember these will send viewers away from your website, so put them in the right spots where someone will return. Make sure your profile is looking great on Zillow, or they may not return to your site.
Not only does this expose your clients listings to more people, but it increases the number of contacts you have on Zillow. Zillow is the largest real estate network on the web, so it makes sense to get out there as much as possible.
The more interactions you have with Zillow Group, the more contacts you can make.
You can easily add a video to your Zillow profile. An intro video is a good idea. Talk about your start in real estate and why you love it.
Or you can add a video testimonial from a happy client. These are easy for the viewer to watch and help them get a feel for you quickly.
Having a fully filled out and detailed profile will help you stand out from other agents on Zillow. Revisit it every month or so to update your sales and information.
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