(This article originally posted on The News Funnel)

Influencer — (noun) a person or group that has the ability to influence the behavior or opinions of others. The influencer is the individual whose effect on the purchase decision is in some way significant or authoritative.

While people of influence have always existed, the proliferation of social media and online marketing has given us the ability to speak to the masses in ways that were never imaginable before. The Internet has given birth to influencers in every conceivable genre —from real estate to beauty, automotive to fashion, and everything in between.

These things don’t happen by chance, however. There are some practical steps you can take to become a real estate influencer via content marketing. Here are some of the must-dos.

#1. Choose Your Platforms

In 2016, it’s likely that you’re on a multitude of social platforms, but do they all speak to your target audience? If you’re in commercial real estate, for example, there is a very large and active CRE Twitter community, as well as a big LinkedIn community. On the other hand,residential real estate agents are often able to speak to their prospects most effectively via Facebook and even Pinterest.

No matter what platform you choose to promote yourself as a real estate influencer, be certain that you’re tailoring your message to the appropriate audience and platform. What you might say in 140 Twitter characters is vastly different than what you might post on Facebook.

For more on this, check out our recent post: 4 Places You Must Share Your Real Estate Content for Maximum Exposure.

#2. Strategize

Once you’ve determined the platforms you’ll use to promote yourself as an influencer, it’s time to start strategizing your message and the type of real estate content you want to share. Will you be hard-hitting and brutally honest? Witty, yet informative? Will you share statistics on the market, or opinion-based pieces?

During this strategizing phase, consider your audience, your platform, and your niche—then find a happy balance.

#3. Prepare

Now, it’s time to prepare. You’ll need some original content to promote and share to get your message out to the masses. For most, this means creating and managing a real estate blog, and then filling it with content. Whether you’re an avid writer or would prefer to have a real estate content marketing service do the heavy lifting, it’s important that you find your voice and keep it consistent.

An editorial calendar can be just what you need to prepare—filling it with the content type, dates, goals, distribution channels, and more.

We created an in-depth look at the 5 Essential Elements of an Effective Editorial Calendar.

#4. Be Real

This fourth tip is short and sweet—be real! This means being yourself, sharing content that you genuinely care about, and interacting with your audience in a true and this-is-the-real-me kind of way.

To be a real estate influencer, your audience has to believe in you and what you’re telling them. That’s achieved through being yourself.

#5. Follow and Be Followed

Now that you’ve strategized and created content, it’s time to make sure you’ve got an audience that will listen and engage. Remember, this isn’t a one-way street. To build a strong audience, you’ll need to reciprocate when your content is shared, engage with people when they respond to your content, and follow others who are in your space.

You need to dive head first into the community and treat others as you’d like to be treated.

We’ve created a lot of great lists to help you know who to follow in the real estate space. Here are some of our favorites: The 10 Most Influential Real Estate Brands on Social Media, 10 Truly Awesome CRE Tech Blogs, Top 15 Largest CRE Brokerage Firms on Twitter, and 30 CRE Influencers to Follow on Twitter.   

#6. Get Noticed

And here’s the fun part—it’s time to get noticed. Promoting your content (and yourself) as influential doesn’t have to be difficult, but it does take some planning and execution. We recently published a blog on the top 21 Ways to Promote Your Real Estate Blog—this is a great place to start.

Just remember, there’s a big difference between sharing your content on social media a few times (to make sure all of your audience has the opportunity to see it) and spamming people’s news feeds. Promote yourself with grace.

#7. Work It

Now it’s time to put in the work. It’s time to hustle to get your name out there!

Need a bigger audience? A great way to do this is to guest blog (lots of blogs accept contributions) or to use a content aggregator like The News Funnel to reach a wider audience that’s tailored to your specific location and niche.  

Putting in into Practice

Whether you’re new to real estate content marketing or are a current influencer looking to up your game, learn more about how our Content Marketing services can boost your influence.