Content Marketing Platform

Acting as the user experience lead, we built a consumer-facing blog. In addition, it serves a large content authoring team, and acts as a social content marketing tool for real estate agents.

Problems and Goals

My first step in was to identify the key problems that I would solve with this project:

• Our agents were desperate for fresh, quality content to easily share on social media. 
• The brokerage wanted to improve consumer brand recognition. 

With these problems in mind, I collaborated with key stakeholders to establish our goals:

• Create a sustainable plan for creating content, serving agent and brokerage goals.
• Build a tool that is engaging to consumers and empowering to agents.
• Gain buy-in from internal VIP's to encourage usage and funnel content ideas. 

Our plan was to serve these with a blog with tailored authoring tools, easy social sharing and always fresh, high quality content.

Users

I identified three groups of users that this new site would need to serve.

• Agents are eager to populate their own social media feeds.
• Consumers want to read quality content, not look at ads.
• Authors needed tools and process they could learn quickly.

Research

Most large brokerages (including ours!) opted for heavily branded content that was focused on listings, open houses and noteworthy transactions. We knew this appealed to people interested in buying or selling right now, but it does not hold on to them long term.

 I found ideas from smaller brokerages that created an image. They used Instagram and Facebook shares as a way to showcase beautiful homes in a personal way. They maintained subtly branded blogs that appealed to life at home - cooking, decorating, entertaining - and things that make you want “more” home. Content was:

• Consistently conveyed an aspirational tone and a luxurious lifestyle
• Implied the knowledge and sophistication of the brokerage and its agents
• Not always expensive to produce - real estate has plenty of great themes and images

Process

This was a new type of project for this team, so I had to start from scratch - there was no existing product in our suite to build upon. I started by building a content hierarchy, leading colleagues through a card sort exercise to gauge what types of content were appropriate, and how to best sort them. We also developed personas to broaden our perspective when making decisions. 

Next, I sketched user flows considering different entry points into a blog and the goals of different users. Agents would use this site as a content library, while we wanted their clients and our consumers to feel comfortable clicking around into other relevant articles. This turned into a "sales sheet" used to pitch the site internally, and explain the integration of social media into content marketing.

Evolution of the Sales Sheet

Wireframes let me explore specific features to serve these two user flows. I sketched different ideas for key page types - individual posts, category archives, homepage - and then turned those sketches into small cards I could rearrange. This became a basic paper prototype and sitemap. Colleagues, agents and authors were able to walk through it, and we could swap in different cards and components for discussion.

As content plans emerged, so did goals for our authors' experience. Along with designing individual post layouts, I planned the content needs to produce them. A similar wireframe > paper prototyping method let the site's editor and I experiment with features for both open-ended and templated post types. We developed a handful of ideas to eventually become Wordpress custom post types, with inputs tailored to existing marketing workflows.

Solution

The solution is a site built around Wordpress, using a basic starter theme to streamline development.

Agents are served by social sharing buttons placed at the header and footer of each post, as well as on the homepage and all post archive pages. 

Consumers are presented with a broad array of content. Stories focus on southern California lifestyle, with high quality imagery, subtle branding and a message centered on life at home.

Authors create stories using multiple custom post types, most with form field inputs. Short form content - such as lists of recipes or themed properties - can be created in less than 5 minutes. 

Results

The results have been tremendously successful. While numerical data is proprietary, the outcomes were easily quantifiable:

• Direct feedback from agents cited the site as a key tool in winning listing business, both by promoting themselves with shared articles and offering property features.
• Consumers connected with the site faster and in greater numbers than past online initiatives, with less ongoing maintenance and minimal additional spending.
• Authors exceeded initial goals for post frequency, thanks to the low learning curve and simple workflow of our custom post types.
• Building a reliable content platform also created a foundation for targeted social media advertising.  

Finished Design