During my time off from working as an agent, I've been doing a lot of freelance work.
One thing that has confused me has been the numbers of real estate agents hiring writers and bloggers from across the country, and sometimes across the globe, to write content for them. I have done articles for agents in states I've only visitied a few times, and in a couple I've never been to.
This wasn't that hard when writing content based on services offered, copy for home websites, and things like that, but it felt lacking when I was writing about their local area. Sure, there is all sorts of information online about any town or neighborhood you can imagine, but it still seems to me like the agent would have had a better chance to add new information by posting themself or finding somebody local to post for them.
Now, I see that there is a national company offering "hyperlocal" websites for agent. You fill in your neighborhood, tick a few boxes, and it generates a site with local content. The compnay promotes it as local information with "no writing required", but again it seems like relying on only aggregated data defeats the whole purpose of a hyperlocal site.
What do you think?
Can an article or site produced by someody outside the are be considered truly local, or is the whole point of a hyperlocal site the added value that comes from having a person who knows the area giving there input on specific things?
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